Single-member electorates 34.7% Hare-Clark 65.3%The informal vote was 5.57% of the 165,304 ballot-papers cast. That turnout was 90.19% of those eligible.
The decisive vote by the citizens of the ACT was a clear preference for Hare-Clark by a ratio of almost 2 to 1.
The hard work of convincing many of the 101,936 voters that chose Hare-Clark (only 54,165 voters chose single-member electorates) was done by the Hare-Clark Campaign Committee. It was formed from the various groups advocating a vote for Hare-Clark and included the Liberal Party, the Australian Democrats, other ACT parties, and the PRSA's ACT Branch. With prominent campaigners like the Liberals' Lyle Dunn and the PRSA's ACT Branch Convenor Bogey Musidlak and a hardworking team, the public opinion polls in the weeks before the Advisory Poll gradually swung from a majority favouring the single-member electorates option to one favouring Hare Clark.
The PRSA as a whole pulled its weight by donating over $2600 through its ACT Campaign Appeal, and by the attendance in the ACT, as volunteer campaign workers, of stalwarts from the NSW, SA and Victorian Branches for many days up to the poll.
The amusing letterhead Lyle Dunn successfully suggested that the Committee should use is shown at the foot of Page 4. Also shown is a very helpful supportive message from the newly-elected Ray Groom in Tasmania, helpfully initiated by the Hon. Neil Robson, who had just retired as one of the Liberal MHAs for Bass. There is no doubt that the result of the Tasmanian election on 1st February giving a single party a substantial majority of seats in the House of Assembly produced a well-timed rebuttal of the ALP's scare tactic of claiming that Hare-Clark produces unstable government.
The campaign showed that Hare-Clark was particularly palatable because many voters realized that without it they could be left with a House of Assembly where all 17 members belonged to the same party, which would almost certainly have been the ALP. The ACT-based electoral commentator, Malcolm Mackerras, re-inforced this when he was quoted in The Australian newspaper as saying that the Tasmanian election would have produced an Assembly entirely of Liberal MHAs if single-member electorates had applied there. A further popular attraction of Hare-Clark was the role that Robson Rotation, in conjunction with the filling of casual vacancies by re-examination of the general election ballot-papers, gives the voters in making effective choices between candidates of the same party.
The relatively threadbare nature of the single-member electorate campaign, which was run by the ALP alone, was shown in the official information booklet that contained the case for each of the two options and was published by the Australian Electoral Commission and distributed to all electors well before the poll. The case for Hare-Clark was thorough and used 6? pages of the booklet, but the single-member case only bothered to use 2? pages so that the remaining 3? pages that case was allocated were issued blank. They may have considered that the less said about the single-member case the better! An ALP Media Release preferred to denigrate Hare Clark and the PR Society. Its first sentence read,
"The ACT Branch of the Australian Labor Party has attacked the leaflet distributed by the Proportional Representation Society supporting Hare-Clark as grossly misleading."The 34.7% of the voters that preferred single-member electorates is a distinctly smaller percentage than the 39.9% of voters that gave their first preference vote to the ALP, which was the only party that advocated a vote for single-member electorates. If even small numbers of the voters that gave their first preference vote to non-ALP candidates had voted for single-member electorates, the percentage of ALP voters that declined to accept their party's view would have been significantly higher than the 13% minimum desertion already apparent. The ALP will be able to govern as it has the declared support of the Michael Moore Group.
The Hare-Clark campaign involved large numbers of pamphlets being letter-boxed throughout the ACT and handed to voters on polling day, and the production of a gigantic Berrymander Wheel named after the unhelpful deputy ALP leader in the outgoing Assembly, which showed how the non-government candidates would get buried no matter where the single-member boundaries were placed. The PRSA's ACT Branch, with publicity being given by The Canberra Times, co-sponsored with the legal firm of O'Connor Harris & Co. an essay competition for under-18 year olds with prizes for the best and second-best essays in two categories, for Hare-Clark and for single-member electorates. Total prize money was $500. Mr Malcolm Mackerras judged and presented prizes for the Hare-Clark essays.
The pace-setting campaign was the most intensive and successful campaign for proportional representation ever mounted for a public poll in Australia. Soon Australia should have two of its Lower Houses elected by Australia's (no longer just Tasmania's) unique and world-beating Hare-Clark form of proportional representation, which boasts direct election of candidates without any group voting tickets, filling of casual vacancies by re-examination of general election ballots, and Robson Rotation. D'Hondt is dead, but Hare-Clark still needs to be entrenched in ACT or Commonwealth law so that it cannot be weakened or abandoned without a referendum (i.e. a binding plebiscite).
The results are summarized below:
PERCENTAGES
ALP GREEN OTHERS LIBERAL
INDEP.
1ST. PREF. 28.8 13.2 3.8 54.1
VOTES
PR SEATS 31.4 14.3 0.0 54.3
LIKELY 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0
SINGLE-
MEMBER
SEATS *
* The figures here are based on M. Mackerras's estimate (See P.1).
The title the Honourable is retained as a matter of course by former ministers in Victoria and the Commonwealth only. In Tasmania it is not a matter of course. Neil Robson was held in such high regard across the parliamentary spectrum that last year a recommendation by Tasmania's then ALP Premier, the Hon. Michael Field MHA, to the Governor of Tasmania, that Mr Robson should be allowed to continue to use the title for life, was approved. Since leaving parliament the Hon. Neil Robson has accepted an invitation to become a member of the PRSA, and brings to the Society invaluable experience, which is greatly welcomed.
This appointment showed a further weakness in Section 15 of the Commonwealth Constitution, which deals with Senate casual vacancies. Instead of the replacement senator being determined by the Electoral Commission promptly re-examining the votes cast at the preceding general or periodic election, as happens with both WA Upper House vacancies and Tasmanian Lower House vacancies, he or she is nominated by the State Parliament in question, unless it is not in session, in which case the Governor may appoint a senator pro tempore. Unfortunately the WA Parliament was technically in session, as it had not been prorogued, but it was not sitting and was not scheduled to sit until some time after the Senate began sitting. This delay left the WA Senate representation incomplete during the new Prime Minister's maiden foray in parliament. Some critics of the ALP claimed that it was very convenient for the ALP State Government to not have the WA Parliament sit to endorse the nomination, as that ensured that there would be one fewer embarrassing non-government voice in the Senate at an inconvenient time. The long-term lesson however is the need to remove the absurdity of a State Parliament being required to endorse a replacement senator when such a decision should be entirely a matter for an Electoral Commission to resolve by consulting the preferences indicated by the voters when they last voted.
Fortunately that Government reneged on its promise. Its successor, a National Party Government, has now proposed an advisory poll that would include other options one of which is direct elections by quota-preferential proportional representation. Although that is an enormous improvement on the former choice between two evils, all is not yet well as it appears that the non-binding poll will be in two parts, firstly a question as to whether voters want to retain the present system or not, and secondly they are to be asked, in a non-preferential poll, which one of some three or more options they would prefer if there is to be a change from the present system.
There would be no trouble if that second poll were preferential, but New Zealanders are not used to such polls, so it is possible it will not be. It is not clear yet just what arrangements may be made to respond if the first question results in a majority for a change, but the second does not give an absolute majority of voters selecting a particular option.
©1992 PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA
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