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QUOTA
Newsletter
of the Proportional
Representation Society of
Australia
Number 72
December 1993
www.prsa.org.au
·
Groom
Government Attempts to
Weaken Hare-Clark ·
ACT
Government Breaks its
Undertakings on Hare-Clark ·
NZ
to Abandon its Electoral
System of Single-Member
Districts Only ·
PRSA
Invited to Constitutional
Centenary Foundation Forum ·
National
Office-Bearers for 1994-95 ·
South
Australia’s Supposed
“Landslide” ·
List of
issues of Quota
Notes Groom
Government Attempts to
Weaken Hare-Clark A
sudden attempt by Tasmania's
Liberal Party Government,
without significant prior
publicity or public inquiry,
to adversely alter Tasmania's
Constitution Act
1934
by reverting to the pre-1958
arrangement of having 6
members per Assembly electoral
district instead of the 7 that
have been established for the
last 25 years, has suffered a
temporary setback thanks to
public vigilance, opposition
by the ALP and the Green
Independents and, most
importantly, the decidedly
non-ALP Upper House.
ACT Government Breaks Its
Undertakings on Hare-Clark The
minority Follett ALP
Government tabled its Electoral
(Amendment) Bill 1993 in
the ACT's unicameral
legislature on 16th December
in response to the 1992
ACT plebiscite where 65%
of ACT voters chose a pure Hare-Clark
electoral system.
Hare-Clark was specified in
detail in the official
plebiscite material as
the alternative option to the
single-member electorates
openly favoured for the ACT by
both the Federal and ACT
Governments. The
news of the Follett
Government's Bill reversing
its public pledge headed the
front page of The
Canberra Times. The main
but not the only breach of
trust was the inclusion of
post-1984 Senate-style Group
Voting Tickets and the
associated above-the-line
boxes. Bogey Musidlak was
reported saying, for the PRSA,
that people would be ticking
an order above the line (the
party's) that bore no
resemblance to the order of
names below the line. He said, "It
looks like the first attempt
in Australian electoral
history to have the
ballot-paper wilfully
misleading the voters. If it
were a commercial document,
the Trade Practices Commission
would be on to them in a
flash." The
independent expert, Malcolm
Mackerras, said, "Hare-Clark
is inconsistent with
above-the-line and I would
regard it a flouting of the
wishes of the electorate." The
ACT Government is breaching
trust with the voters at the
plebiscite and with all future
voters using a Robson
Rotation ballot-paper.
Robson Rotation was a feature
specified at the plebiscite. A
court challenge might be
needed. Senate ballot-papers
have a fixed, stage-managed
order of the names of the
candidates in each Group, and
voters can and normally do
expect that to be the same as
the order of the Group's
candidates in the
corresponding Group Voting
Ticket. By the very nature and
purpose of Robson Rotation
there would be no such
implicit nexus in the devious
ballot-paper envisaged by the
ACT Bill. The
Bill will be debated
in February 1994, and
the voting intentions, so far
unrevealed, of Mr Dennis
Stevenson MLA will be critical
to the outcome. NZ to
Abandon its Electoral System
of Single-Member Districts
Only
The
crudity of New Zealand's
entirely single-member first-past-the-post
electoral system was bad
enough for 53.8% of NZ referendum voters in November
to abandon it. Once again, as
in the ACT plebiscite, a
single-member electorate
system has failed to gain
popular support. The
replacement is MMP, a sorry
contrivance, with a thin
veneer of plausibility. Half
the MPs will still be from
single-member electorates -
the rest will not be directly
elected by the people. Sadly The
concurrent NZ General Election
mocked the claims made by the
single-member electorate
supporters. It gave no
comfortable substantial
majority to one party, and 55%
of the voters elected nobody -
they gave their
non-transferable votes to
unsuccessful candidates. PRSA Invited
to Constitutional Centenary
Foundation Forum
The
Constitutional Centenary
Foundation Inc.
On 12th
November 1993 a 2 hour Forum was
held in Victoria's Legislative
Council Chamber, which was
Australia's Senate Chamber from
1901 to 1927, on the
desirability of a popularly and
directly elected Constitutional
Convention being established by
legislation to draft
Constitutional Alteration Bills
for consideration by Federal
Parliament, and decision by the
electors if Parliament passed
such bills. Such a method is
being considered partly because
it was the remarkably successful
method by which the Constitution
was drafted and approved in the
first place. The
Foundation invited the National
President, Mr Geoffrey Goode, to
represent the PRSA. Proceedings
began with addresses by three
speakers, Professor Stuart
McIntyre, Professor of History
at the Dr Costar
considered that an entirely
directly-elected Convention,
where each State was one
electorate returning the same
number of delegates, would be
feasible, but that it would need
to use a quota-preferential form
of counting rather than the first-past-the-post
block vote that
was used in the 1890s. He
further commented that he
thought that it would be
undesirable to use Senate-style
Group Voting Tickets, and that
some degree of optional marking
of preferences might be
favoured. He did not go into
further detail, such as the use
of Robson
Rotation, or the
provisions for filling casual
vacancies. Dr Costar
remarked that some people might
consider that a directly-elected
Convention would not be representative
enough, and that
consideration may be given to
creating positions for various
special groups, to ensure that
they were not unrepresented.
Unfortunately in the subsequent
discussion several speakers
supported the notion that a
partly pre-ordained
representation was superior to
one that was entirely directly
and popularly elected. The
PRSA President made the
observation, as a comment on the
encouraging historical
background view that had been
put by Professor McIntyre that,
of the six Australian colonies
that each had ten
representatives at the 1890s
Constitutional Convention, it
was only in the four most
advanced colonies that citizens
voted directly to decide their
representation on the
Convention. In the remaining
then relatively backward
colonies of Mr
Goode also mentioned to the
Forum that when British
ministers in London proposed
altering somewhat the draft
Commonwealth of Australia
Constitution Bill 1900, which
was presented to them by an
Australian delegation there, and
which was eventually endorsed by
referendum in all six colonies,
the delegates had a powerful
argument for their insistence on
there being no such alterations.
They argued that not only had
each colony accepted the draft
Constitution by referendum, but
a majority of the colonies
(which contained over 80% of
those eligible to vote at the
referendum) had selected their
delegates to the Convention that
produced the draft Constitution
by direct election from the
electorate at large. What
business was it of the The
PRSA intends to make a detailed
submission to the Foundation on
electoral matters relevant to a
directly-elected Convention, and
on electoral provisions that
should be included in the
Commonwealth Constitution. ♫ ♪ ♫ "O
Canada!" ♫ ♪ ♫
These
opening words of the Canadian
National Anthem seemed
appropriate on hearing the
result of November's elections
to
Real
Choices/New Voices
This
is the title of a significant
new book published this month
in the "Why
does Professor
Amy blames the US plurality
voting system for contributing
to some of the nation's most
serious political problems,
including the two party
oligopoly, issue-less
campaigns, low voter turnout,
and lack of minority
representation. Real
Choices/New Voices argues that
proportional representation
would create more
representative legislatures,
minimize wasted votes,
eliminate gerrymandering,
encourage issue-oriented
campaigns, enhance
representation of women and
minorities, and ultimately
increase voter turnout. Why
does the US cling to a
plurality voting system - in
which a single legislator, the
one that wins the most votes,
is elected in each district?
Americans assume that their
electoral process is the most
democratic without really
exploring other options. They
are content to support the notion that if
it ain't
broke, don't fix it.
In fact their electoral
process is broken and it
desperately needs to be fixed.
Most Western democracies have
proportional representation
governments, in which
officials are elected in
large, multi-member districts
according to the proportion of
the vote won by their parties.
It is time the American people
learned that a true democratic
government must benefit
everyone, not just a select
few." Professor
Amy contacted the PRSA for
information while he was
writing his book, and he
kindly acknowledges the PRSA
and its help at the front of
the book. The
price of the 224-page book is
US$35, and it is well worth
it. It is to be hoped that the
book will help to fuel the
feebly flickering flame of
proportional representation in
the USA, as the apparently
complacent retention of
single-member electoral
systems there continues to
give a poor example to the
rest of the English-speaking
countries, which are the main
users of such systems. National
Office-bearers for 1994-95
The
Returning Officer for the
recent elections of PRSA
National Office-bearers, Mr
Tom Round, has declared the
candidates below elected
unopposed to the following
positions within the Society
from 1st January 1994 to 31st
December 1995: National President: Mr Bogey Musidlak National Vice-President: Mr Geoffrey Goode National Secretary: Mr John Alexander National Treasurer: Mr Leonard Higgs Mr
Goode, who succeeded the late
Mr Jack Wright as National
President in 1986, is pleased
to see Bogey Musidlak elected,
and is looking forward as the
new Vice-President to working
with him. Mr David Higbed,
the retiring Vice-President,
did not stand again. Bogey
was the Research Officer for
the NSW Branch in the early
1980s, and has been National
Research Officer since 1989.
He is also the Convenor of the
ACT Branch. Some
of the PRSA's success stories
that have given him heart have
been the detection, with Jack
Wright, of flaws in the 1983
Bill to amend the Commonwealth
Electoral Act (there was
confusion between exhaustion
and non-transferability of
votes, the election of the
correct number of senators
would not have been guaranteed
in practice), analyses of NSW
municipal PR elections that
were helpful in repelling
recent NSW Government attempts
to dispense with PR there, and
undoubtedly the successful ACT
Hare-Clark plebiscite during
1991-2. Bogey
believes strongly that we must
collect more information so we
can articulate our position
cogently and early in public
debate and also identify
clubs, societies and other
organizations that might
institute fairer election
rules. As there have been some
excesses under current
procedures, progress might be
made with trade union and
company board election rules.
South
Australia's Supposed
"Landslide"
At
the South Australian election on
11th December the Liberals
appeared to have won just over
80% of the seats in the House of
Assembly, although they won only
53% of the first preference
vote. The single-member
electorate system robbed them of
probable office in 1989. Their
margin in first preference votes
over the ALP was 3.1 percentage
points then (QN56). This
time it gave them an exaggerated
percentage of the seats, which
will lead to a restive backbench
and an enfeebled Opposition. The
table below shows how much
fairer a Hare-Clark
result would be in a system of
seven 7-member electoral
districts. The Opposition would
have one or more members in each
electoral district in the State
and not just the 9 out of 47 now
likely, yet the Liberals would
still have an absolute majority
of seats in the Assembly.
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