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QUOTA
Newsletter of the Proportional Representation Society of
Australia Number 73 March 1994 www.prsa.org.au ·
Keating Government Showdown on Senate PR Electoral System ·
Public Sector Union Electoral System: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing ·
Clerk of the Senate Warns - Party Government: the Australian Disease ·
From March: Hare-Clark for Many More Tasmanian Municipalities ·
Tasmanian Board of Inquiry on Composition of Parliament ·
Senate Casual Vacancy Procedure Is Still a Cause of Party Conflict ·
List
of issues of Quota Notes Keating Government Showdown
on Senate PR Electoral System
The
Federal Government, unlike Tasmania's Government, which late in 1993 made an
unheralded attempt to adversely modify the Hare-Clark
system, has since last year been suggesting moves to abolish the Senate's
proportional representation electoral system. Annoyed by the Australian
Democrats, and their proposals to use powers under Section 49 of the
Constitution, it has spoken of moves to change the Senate
voting rules. Senator Evans said the "rationale would be to ensure that the Senate reflects the
kind of majority view as to who should be governing the country that prevails
in the House of Representatives." He
said the present Senate was unlikely to pass legislation changing the Senate
electoral system, so the most likely method for the change would be to use
the legislation to trigger a double dissolution election. If the Government
won the election, the legislation with which it was triggered would be
considered by a joint sitting of Parliament, at which the Government was
likely to have the numbers to pass it. Mr Keating said, "Like
the republic, it is an issue worthy of mature, sensible debate." Ted
Mack, North Sydney Independent MHR, (Question Time, 3 March) challenged the
PM "...
an attempt to achieve executive dominance by electoral manipulation ... his
apparent desire to crush minority views is seen as undemocratic ..." Mr
Keating replied "...
the essential, robust element of our democracy is
the representative nature of the Australian ballot. The Senate is not a
representative ballot; it is a proportional ballot." He
added, "But
hiding behind the proportional representation system, picking up 3 or 4 per
cent of the vote, or 2 per cent of the vote, and hoping to pick up part of
someone else's quota and then parading as a paragon of democratic virtue is
the sort of nonsense which, frankly, the rest of us should not have to
stomach." One
Opposition MP, Mr Downer, appeared tempted to support abolishing PR but most,
including the Nationals, seem wary of an ALP power grab. The last
Liberal leader wanting to abolish PR for the Senate was the late Sir Billy Snedden, but his view lacked Party support. Like the republic debate, the details of
changes proposed have not been specified, although Mr Kim Beazley said that
the Prime Minister was talking about a preferential system such as is
used for the House of Representatives. The Australian (4, 5 March) confused
matters by also saying he confirmed the idea of changing to a system of
direct (sic),
first past the post election for senators. Do Mr Beazley's remarks save
us from reverting to a first-past-the-post folly, like the 1902-19
multiple version? Would the ALP mark its longest single
stretch in power by reverting to the multiple majority-preferential system that Chifley, with Menzies' approval, replaced with
PR? Mr John Howard might have correctly recognized that the Government might,
if any plans exist, be toying with single or two-member electorates for the
Senate, when he said, "If
those opposite have their way, there will no longer be senators from NSW,
Victoria, or WA. There will be senators from the Riverina, western In
that case the Senate would become like most of our State Upper Houses before
the ALP reformed them in the 1970s - either a tame mirror of the Lower House
or its implacable enemy, but never anything in between. In its 1993 Submission to the Parliament's
Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, drafted by Bogey Musidlak, now
PRSA National President, the PRSA detailed the
remedy for concerns about parties with few first preference votes gaining a
senator. Both major parties ignore Robson Rotation,
which, in most elections, would remove an unnecessary but self-inflicted
handicap on the major parties. Instead candidates' names in each group on the
ballot-paper appear in a fixed order decided by mutual choice of the
candidates in that group. Both major parties in With the fixed order down the ballot-paper
in Senate elections, the first preference votes of each major party are
concentrated almost entirely on the leading candidate. Their other candidates
gain that candidate’s surpluses in due course, but their last viable
candidate often needlessly falls below minor party candidates. The focussing
on major party surpluses has delayed exclusions, and allowed minor hopefuls
to accumulate votes from those without hope. The latest example, detailed in
the submission, is Senator Dee Margetts (WA
Greens). Progress totals soon before she was declared elected were: ALP 94687 LIB 80554 WA GREEN 58398 AD 44984Nearly 90% of the excluded AD's
votes then went to Ms Margetts, bringing her up to
98,299. The rest were shared reasonably evenly. Therefore the fourth Liberal
was next excluded. After 85% of his votes were transferred to Ms Margetts, she was elected. Tasmanian Assembly elections
show that larger parties do far better by spreading their first preference
votes among their candidates, as Robson Rotation helps achieve. A rigid party
order, given wholesale effect by Senate style Group Voting Tickets, does the
opposite. The Machines dread publicity on this! Public Sector Union Electoral
System: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
The
Federal Court declared a poll last year to fill four positions on the
Victorian Branch Executive of the Public Sector Union void and ordered a new
poll, which again was conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission. Last
month the new poll was held with the same five candidates as before. The
court had found that over a thousand voters had not been sent postal ballots
by the existing management of the Union which, after recent amalgamations, is
now one of With the
involvement of the Federal Court of Australia, and the Australian Electoral
Commission, one would think that the will of the electors would be faithfully
implemented, at least in the new poll. The legislation
governing union ballots, which requires the Electoral Commission to conduct
the poll, unfortunately like much such legislation, does not carefully
control the electoral system to be used, but allows that to be decided by the
governing body of the organization, tempting it to be quite creative. The Public
Sector Union ballot-papers issued by the Commission carry the deceptively
simple directions: "You
must vote for at least FOUR candidates by placing the numbers 1 to 4 in the
squares opposite the names of the candidates for whom you wish to give your
primary votes." Voters
used to voting in public elections in Australian
practice is for each ballot-paper to have a unique first preference vote,
which is a substantive vote ranking ahead of the other preferences, which are
merely contingent or alternative votes that only come into play if the
required majority or quota, as the case may be, is not obtained by the
candidate receiving the relevant first preference votes. But the Public
Sector Union is different. Part (a)(i) of Public Sector Union Rule 171 states, "The
preference votes to the number of vacancies to be filled shall be termed primary
votes, and shall have equal value in the first count and be credited to the
candidate for whom they are cast, whether marked 1, 2, 3, etc., according to
the number of vacancies;". Part
(b) states, "The
primary votes shall first be counted and a list shall be prepared of
the candidates in order according to the primary votes cast for them. The
candidate who is lowest on the list thus compiled shall be excluded from the
count." Apologists
for the Public Sector Union system may rely on the perhaps overlooked word primary
in the directions to claim that voters ought to understand the initially
non-preferential nature of an ostensibly preferential system. The pigs in
George Orwell's Animal Farm, proud of such a wolf in sheep's clothing, might
have declared, "In
This multiple first-past-the-post variant, surreptitiously
presented as a preferential system,
can in the above poll easily prevent a candidate that gains up to 79% of the
first preference vote from being elected*, as a possible outcome with 100
ballot-papers completed shows below:
Any candidate
that gains more than 50% of the first preference vote should have a case
before a court for an order for either a new poll under fair and just rules,
or at the very least, an order to change to a fair electoral system for
future polls. It would set a useful precedent. Clerk of the Senate Warns - Party Government: the
Australian Disease
The Clerk of the Senate, Mr
Harry Evans, has written a stimulating article Party Government: the
Australian Disease and Australian Cures in Legislative Studies, the
biannual newsletter of the Australasian Study of Parliament Group, Vol. 7 No.
2 Autumn 1993. He writes, "Although
it is now an established truth that the party system reduces the performance
of parliament, it is still not fully realized that modern political parties
are a radical negation of parliament as an institution, that they are
organizations designed to prevent parliamentary government from
working." Mr
Evans states that the power and harmful effects of party rigidity and
discipline are worse in In arguing that the party system severely affects
Parliament's quality and integrity, he says, "In
relation to integrity, it may be regarded as no accident that the country
with the most rigid party system also has the most conspicuous monuments to
failures of integrity in the shape of endless royal commissions and other
non-parliamentary inquiries into political malfeasance." He
says, "We
are familiar with the historical phenomena of communists and fascists to whom
there were no objective truths or moral principles, only proletarian truths
and morality and bourgeois truths and morality, Aryan truths and morality and
Jewish truths and morality. Something like this mode of thought is now in
operation here, and is at the base of many of the problems which have
occurred. The true and the good is that which helps the
party, and whatever helps the party is true and good, until a royal
commission imposes something else." He
praises Robson Rotation, but
differs from the PRSA in saying that " The
PRSA is most encouraged by Mr Evans concludes, "This
small but significant parliamentary example indicates that PR, if adopted for
lower houses, may indeed enhance the performance of legislative functions and
overcome some of the restricting effects of the party system on parliament as
a legislature and as a controller of the executive government." From March: Hare-Clark for Many More Tasmanian
Municipalities
A new Local Government Act in Casual vacancies will be filled, until the next
periodic election, by countback of
the ballot-papers from the previous election. The order of names on
ballot-papers will be by the double randomization method originally suggested
for ordering Senate columns from left to right by PRSA member Alison
Harcourt. Robson Rotation will not be used owing to the cost in the
relatively small polls involved. It might be considered later if use of tickets,
which are not usual in Most councils have chosen
to have the State Electoral Office conduct their polls. An important
experiment has been the adoption of universal postal voting, with postal
ballots being sent to every enrolled elector. Some polling booths will still
available, but reduced costs and a higher percentage vote are both hoped for.
Tasmanian Board of Inquiry on Composition of Parliament
The Tasmanian Government has
appointed a four-member Board of Inquiry, headed by the Chairman of the
Australian Electoral Commission, Mr Trevor Morling,
to report on possible new formats for Tasmania's Parliament, following the
Legislative Council's resolve to block Government plans for 6-member Assembly
electorates, pending such an inquiry. The Inquiry has been asked to consider the
Government's original plan, and other options such as two houses sitting and
debating together but voting separately, much like Anglican synods. It is to
report by 30th September. Implementation of change might be proposed by a
referendum in 1996, to take effect in 2000 A.D. Senate Casual Vacancy Procedure Is Still a Cause of Party
Conflict
The Liberals' problems in
replacing Senator Brian Archer seem just as agonizing as was the business of
replacing ALP Senator Michael Tate Mr Gray did not
change from his 1987 view that parties should give Parliament a choice of
nominations to fill a vacancy. As Premier, he rejected Mr John Devereux's
nomination to replace ALP Senator Don Grimes. A life member of
the Young Liberals, Mr Michael Walsh, a lawyer from Ulverstone in
north-western That Rule 15A
appears to have no other purpose than to forestall and infringe upon the
right of the Tasmanian Parliament, supposedly secured under Section 15 of the
Commonwealth Constitution, to choose, as the replacement senator, a member of
the same party that the vacating member belonged to. There is no more
recently altered section of the Constitution than Section 15, which is by far
the longest section, and it even provides for the case where there may not
have been any prior announcement of Mr Walsh's nomination. If in that case
the Joint Sitting had elected him, the party would, before he took his seat
in the Senate, be allowed to repudiate his nomination by expelling him from
the Party, and the Parliament would be subjected to the farce of choosing
again. The farcical nature of Section 15 is a clear instance of State
parliaments being rendered Gilbertian. The Premier
ignored the Party Machine's claim that Mr Walsh was no longer a Party Member
and agreed to both Liberals being nominated. The Joint Sitting voted
46 to 7 for Mr Abetz. The Australian (23/2) reported that it was believed that the 7
votes for Mr Walsh came from Independent MLCs, and that the Premier ordered a
show-and-tell vote by Liberal MPs in the secret ballot to make sure
all voted for Mr Abetz. Was that contempt of
Parliament's decision for a secret ballot? This Senate casual vacancy quarrel
has accelerated two other issues in Soon it was time
for ALP wrangling. Ms Franca Arena MLC of NSW, who had failed in her bid for preselection for Senator Sibraa's
ALP Senate casual vacancy, savagely attacked the ALP preselection process as
a perversion of mateship that favoured party officials or their
wives. The replacement, Gosford solicitor Ms Belinda Neal, 31, wife of
ALP NSW general secretary Mr John Della Bosca, won
the crucial endorsement of a group of right-wing union leaders and party
officers. The other front
runner of the six women contesting the preselection was quoted as saying, "The decision must be made in a
way that is open to scrutiny, that is seen to be
fair and democratic and must be made on merit." Was she suggesting it wasn't being
done that way? Ms Arena said
that five of the six NSW ALP senators - including Senator Graham Richardson -
were party officials before being preselected. Her remark appeared on 19th
February, the same day P.P. McGuinness wrote in The Australian, "What the Prime Minister was
really saying was the Labor senators are
unrepresentative swill. Well, given the number of party apparatchiks among
their ranks, I could not disagree with him. Moreover, the Senate is elected
by proportional representation (a measure introduced by a truly great Labor prime minister, Ben Chifley), which ensures that
small parties and even Independents can obtain representation. In this sense,
the Senate is more, not less, representative of the electorate than the House
of Representatives..." The present indirectly elected
senators, now 6.6% of the Senate, are:
Why is there no law for notice of these to appear in
newspapers? © 1994 Proportional Representation Society of National
President: Bogey Musidlak, 14 Strzelecki Cr, NARRABUNDAH 2604 Tel:
(02) 6295 8137 info@prsa.org.au Printed
by Pink Panther Instant Printing, |
