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QUOTA Newsletter of the
Proportional Representation Society of Australia QN68 December 1992 www.prsa.org.au
Paul Keating recently became
the first Australian Prime Minister to be censured
by a vote of the Senate, after publicly
describing the Senate as unrepresentative
swill.
Mr Keating
maintains his position as Prime Minister
by having a majority of Labor MHRs in
the Lower House. The Australian Labor
Party gained those MHRs with less than
39.5% of the first preference votes cast
at the last election. The Coalition
gained 43.4% of the votes cast. The
remaining 17% of the voters gave their
first preference votes to candidates
that were not connected with those
parties, but they gained no more than
one MHR (0.7% of the House). If MHRs were
elected on a proportional representation
basis as applies in nearly every European
lower house, the present small absolute
majority of Labor MHRs would instead be
close to that 39.5%. Perhaps Mr
Keating is trying to distract public
attention away from the painful reality
that the ALP's majority of MHRs and his
resulting position as Prime Minister is
due to the distortion produced by
Australia's highly unrepresentative Lower
House electoral system. The major parties
cling to that system desperately. It is
all that maintains their duopoly - the
electorate's voting pattern certainly
doesn't. An
unrepresentative Prime Minister has been
properly censured by the Upper House
where, thanks to the Senate's proportional
representation electoral system, his party
has 37% of the seats, a share that
corresponds to its recent electoral
performance. That percentage is much
fairer and more reflective of how
Australians voted than is the ALP's
unjustified majority in Mr Keating's power
base - the unrepresentative Lower House. Several newspapers recently
published letters along the above lines
from the Federal Parliamentary Leader of
the Australian Democrats, Senator John
Coulter, and the PRSA National
President. Legislation to establish
an ACT Electoral Commission and to implement the
result of this year's poll on the ACT Electoral
System has begun its passage through the ACT
Legislative Assembly. The ALP Government has
accepted several Opposition amendments including
a preamble, which records the fact of the
February poll, and explicitly states that the Hare-Clark system
was chosen and that it included Robson Rotation.
This contrasts with Tasmania's Electoral
Act 1985, which regrettably does
not mention either Hare, Clark or Robson by
name.
Also in
October the Melbourne Diocese of the
Anglican Church conducted its first
periodical elections using the
quota-preferential system that was adopted
by an Act of Synod last year as a
replacement for the previous points system.
The Returning Officer informed the
Victorian Branch Secretary, Dr Lee Naish,
that counting took only one day, compared
with two days under the previous system. In the
election of four Lay persons to the
Diocesan Council, only two candidates, who
were well recognized as opinion leaders
for major viewpoints within the Diocese,
obtained a quota of first preference
votes. There was no
motivation for, and relatively little
occurrence of, the circulation of full and
detailed tickets carrying exhortations to
complete them exactly as specified, which
was felt by most participants as a most
regrettable tendency encouraged by the
previous points system. All the other
Anglican Synods still elect committees by
first-past-the-post.
PR Anglicans note! The Victorian Parliament is the last surviving bicameral Australian Parliament that does not have a House elected by a proportional representation electoral system. Thus not only is the House from which the Victorian Government is chosen improperly reflective of the voters, but also there is no properly balanced other House to provide the review and fine-tuning of legislation, based on a true reflection in each electorate of the strength of all the votes cast there, that occurs in all our other bicameral Parliaments. At the 1988 Victorian elections, it could be seen that the governing ALP was already being regarded with suspicion by the voters, as the ALP gained significantly fewer first preference votes in each House than the combined vote of its Liberal and National opponents, but the single-member electoral system rewarded it with an absolute majority of Assembly seats The PR analysis of that election indicated an Assembly where the ALP would only have been able to continue governing with the support of several of the Australian Democrat MLAs that would have been elected. Of course that would have been derided by some as weak government, which could have precipitated an election well before 1992 if the ADs had considered that they should no longer support the ALP. As there was no PR for the Assembly, the ALP was able to rule for four years as a strong government. That
strength allowed it to lose the
State Bank of Victoria, and to be
responsible for various other financial
problems that the Coalition criticized
throughout those four years without once
suggesting that strong government
as a general principle might be worth
rethinking. No, they were simply waiting
for their turn to be a strong
government, and have now
introduced legislation that many that
voted for them seem to be considering
something of an over-reaction. During their
decade in opposition the Liberal and
National Party MLCs enjoyed a majority in
the Upper House, and were able to reject
much ALP Government Legislation, including
more than one bill to introduce PR as an
option for local government elections, and
two bills to change the Legislative
Council electoral system to a form of
quota-preferential PR. Unlike the first of
the latter two bills the second was
introduced, as a bill confined to that
purpose only, before the 1988 election. It
was a campaign issue, but the new
Legislative Council still rejected it. A PR analysis of this year's election by our Victorian Branch showed a clear Coalition absolute majority in both Houses although, unlike the result under the present law, Liberal MPs alone would not have formed an absolute majority in either House. Given the
limitation that applied to the ALP's
decade in power, of having the Coalition
parties holding an absolute majority of
the Council seats, despite their failing
to win an absolute majority of votes at
either the 1982 or the 1985 elections, it
is interesting to see how closely balanced
the Upper House would be if a Hare-Clark type
PR system had applied to it at both the
1988 and 1992 periodical elections. The Full
Council would have contained 20 ALP and 20
Liberal MLCs, with the balance, and
balance it would be, consisting of 3
Nationals and 1 Independent. Such a
Legislative Council, with an absolute
majority for the Coalition of one seat,
would not be inherently anti-Government as
was the Council from 1982 to 1992, but it
could reasonably be expected that extreme
aspects of the Kennett Government's
legislation might be rejected as, provided
the ALP and the Independent agreed, any
one Coalition MLC crossing the floor could
defeat a bill, and any two could amend it
in that House. Of course
some MPs and their supporters, from both
of our adversarial major parties, would be
horrified by such a possibility, which is
the norm in most other Australian
parliaments, as the fun and games of
industrial confrontation might be avoided
that way, and the long-suffering voters
might be spared unnecessary trauma The PR
analysis of the polls took account of the
present arrangement in Victoria whereby
each Upper House Province is contiguous
with four Lower House Districts. Thus the
PR model analysed involved two PR
Legislative Council Provinces, each with
eleven MLCs to be elected. Each of those
Provinces was contiguous with five
seven-member Assembly Districts and one
nine-member District. Those multi-member
Assembly Districts were contiguous with
that number of existing single-member
districts needed to provide the relevant
number of Assembly seats. The results
are summarized in the following graphs for
both the Assembly and the full Legislative
Council.
Soon after becoming Premier Mr Jeff Kennett announced that he favoured amending Victoria's Constitution Act to provide, in cases where the difference in numbers between the Government parties and others in the House in question exceeded a prescribed minimum, that casual vacancies in State Parliament be no longer filled by a poll of electors, but instead by a system of nomination of the replacement MP by the party of the vacating member. Mr Kennett had not mentioned this proposal prior to the October election. His justification was the cost savings that could result. Such a proposal, for single-member electorates, has not been proposed by any Australian government previously. Mr Kennett's
proposal was opposed by the ALP Opposition
and various community groups, including
the PRSA. Fortunately Mr Kennett indicated
that he might not favour amending the
Constitution Act without bipartisan
agreement. The ALP's
opposition to this undemocratic move is
welcome although it is ironic that one of
the worst features of its own Constitution
(Proportional Representation) Bill 1988
was its unprecedented provision, for
Victoria, for casual vacancies to be
filled by party nomination, rather than by
the electors, under the Hare-Clark
countback system. The countback system,
applied to single-member electorates,
formed the basis of an excellent, but
unsuccessful bill, introduced by the
former SA Senator David Vigor, who is now
a Vice-President of the PRSA's South
Australian Branch. Strange Election Results This Year The other
candidates received 25.1%, 24.7%, 22.6%
and 1.5%, but their voters had no
influence on the outcome, let alone
receiving any representation. Their only
consolation was that the party of the MP
elected advocates quota-preferential
proportional representation for the House
of Commons. The previous record for the
lowest share of the vote electing an MP to
the Commons was 26.9% in 1922. Of course far
more outrageous results occur with this
procedure yet it still persists. At this
year's presidential election in the
Philippines, Fidel Ramos was elected from
7 candidates after gaining 23.5% of the
vote. The remaining 76.5% of the voters
had no effect on the outcome. Finally, it
being Presidential election year in the
United States, it is worth pointing out
the erroneous nature of the headlines in
Australian newspapers in November 1992
that described the popular vote for
Presidential Electors pledged to Mr Bill
Clinton as being a landslide for
Clinton. The reality is that the
popular vote for such Electors pledged to
Mr Clinton was under
43%, i.e. over 57% of those that
voted chose Electors that were pledged to
others. Rather than being a
landslide, Mr Clinton's success
was the result of the second-lowest percentage
of the popular vote for a
President-elect since 1872, which was the
first election where Presidential Electors
from all States were elected by popular
vote, all State legislatures by then
finally having ceased appointing Electors. It must be
expected that the result of the Electors'
voting on 14th December 1992, which will
be declared by the President of the
Senate, Danforth Quayle, on 6th January
1993, will mark the 11th of the 31
Presidential elections from 1872 onwards
where the successful candidate has failed
to gain an absolute majority of the
popular vote. In two of those elections
(1876 and 1888), the successful candidate
not only lacked an absolute majority of
votes, but he did not even receive the
largest number of popular votes. Of the 31
Presidential elections since 1872 only
one, Woodrow Wilson's election in 1912
with just under 42% of the popular vote,
was a result with less popular support
than Mr Clinton received. Another quirk
of the indirect Electoral College system
is shown by the two candidates since 1872
that received the largest percentage of
the popular vote in their respective
contests, but failed to receive an
absolute majority of the Electors' votes -
Tilden losing to Rutherford Hayes in 1876,
and Cleveland to Benjamin Harrison in
1888. Another
undemocratic twist in the story could have
occurred at this election if the Electoral
College candidates pledged to vote for
Ross Perot had gained a plurality of the
popular vote in even one State and perhaps
thereby denied the other nationwide
Presidential candidates an absolute
majority of Electors' votes. That would
have required the House of Representatives
to elect the President from the three
Presidential candidates with the highest
number of Electors' votes, but in doing so
the representation from each State can
only vote collectively, and that
collective vote is a single vote per
State. The 50 odd MHRs from California
would collectively have the same influence
on the outcome as the single
representative from Alaska. That
provision has so far only been implemented
twice. At the third Presidential election,
in 1800, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr
each received 26% of the Electors' votes,
and John Adams, the outgoing President,
received 24%. The House of Representatives
had to vote 36 times before one of those
three, Jefferson, received the mandatory
absolute majority of its vote (by States). At the sixth
Presidential election, in 1824, Andrew
Jackson received 38% of the Electors'
votes and John Quincey Adams, son of the
former President John Adams, received 32%,
but the House of Representatives elected
Adams. Four years later the two faced each
other again and Andrew Jackson won 68% of
the Electors' votes. In his first message to Congress as President, Andrew Jackson said:
"... The right to elect the President belongs to the people. Their choice should never be defeated, either by the electoral college or by the House of Representatives. ... In the election of the President, as in all other matters of public concern, as few obstacles as possible should exist to the free expression of the public will. Let us, then, try to amend our system so that no citizen can become President except as a result of a fair expression of the will of the majority. ..."Attempts since Jackson's day to move to a direct election of the US President have so far been fruitless. The archaic system that persists, not to mention the continued use of single-member electorates to elect people to supposedly representative chambers, makes it hard for the US to be taken seriously as a leader in the practice of democracy. As US voters are
not enabled to indicate their votes
preferentially, nobody will ever know the
answer to what one would have thought was
a fairly important and relevant question
when the President is not chosen by the
Legislature. Would an absolute majority of
US voters have preferred Bush to Clinton,
or vice versa? We should not
be too smug. Who becomes our Prime
Minister is also decided by an electoral
college - our House of Representatives. It
is, between elections, a standing college
rather than a periodic one, and it does
not have as many archaic distortions as
the US college but, as it is based on
single-member electorates, it is by no
means a proper or faithful reflection of
the national will. Death of Former ACT Branch Secretary
© 1992 Proportional
Representation Society of Australia National
President: Geoffrey Goode 18 Anita Street
BEAUMARIS VIC 3193 Tel: (03) 9589 1802 Mobile 04291 76725 quota@prsa.org.au |
