QUOTA 
NOTES
Newsletter
of the Proportional Representation Society of
QN2004B
June
2004
www.prsa.org.au
PM Admits Lack
of Public Support for Change to Section 57 of the Constitution
The Prime
Minister, John Howard, tabled the final report of his Consultative Group on
Constitutional Change (QN2004A)
in Federal Parliament on
The PM said,
“The introduction of proportional representation in the Senate, combined with
the move in 1983 to 6 senators being elected from each state at a half Senate
election rather than 5, has made it almost impossible for any government to
obtain a majority in the Senate in its own right. A party now needs 57.16% (sic)
of the vote in a state at a half Senate election to win a majority of seats in that
state. … The Consultative Group concluded there is not ‘any substantial measure
of support for either of the two options presented in the discussion paper’. As
a result the government is not proposing a referendum on this issue at the next
election.”
The Consultative
Group’s Report said that it had conducted public meetings in State and
Territory centres, but that the highest attendance was in
Publication
just before Easter on the Web site of the Department of Prime Minister and
Cabinet of a variety of Report particulars, but without links to mentioned
documents, prompted the PRSA President, Bogey Musidlak,
to enquire about the status of the new material, which quickly vanished during
April. The Age ran an accurate story about the original plan running out
of puff, and the recommendation of a program of education and consultation
about Section 57 and other constitutional issues more generally.
The Group, of three, included ex-ministers Neil
Brown and Michael Lavarch. The other member,
Professor Jack Richardson, Secretary of the 1959 Joint Parliamentary Committee
on Constitutional Reform, wrote of a WA submission about the 22 minor party and
independent senators elected in the last 4 Senate polls, with only 2 polling
the “required 14.28% quota of primary votes alone and six had less than half a
quota. In a double dissolution election in 1987, when the quota became
virtually halved (7.69%), one candidate was elected with only 2.5% of the
primary vote, and that such candidates owed their election to the distribution
of preferences.” He also wrote, “It is my view that the time is about ripe for
the existing system of electing senators to be critically assessed as
objectively as possible and away from flamboyant demonstrations in its favour.
One suggestion is that parliament should examine its powers under Section 7 of
the Constitution to divide each state into separate Senate electorates. Another
suggestion is that Senate candidates (sic) should have to achieve a
fixed threshold vote, for example of the order of 10%, before being eligible
for election. Various European electoral systems, including federal
Suggestions
about artificial barriers to election are often based on a
confusion between non-preferential party list systems where votes for
sub-threshold parties are simply wasted, and our direct preferential voting for
individual candidates required by Section
7 of the Constitution. In Australian Senate polls, a quota is, and should
be, equally valid whether it consists entirely of first preference votes, or
mostly of later preferences. ACT experience with the discredited d’Hondt system that included an election threshold for
groups or independents illustrated how such systems can result in a handful of
votes determining several vacancies.
Law
Amended to Set Aside an Australian Electoral Commission Redistribution
The 2003 Final
Northern Territory Redistribution issued by the Australian Electoral Commission
was to reduce the number of Lower House divisions from two to one. The “latest
available statistics” the AEC used showed that the NT’s population had not
increased as fast as
David Tollner, Country-Liberal Party MHR for Solomon, reacted by
introducing a Bill to require a minimum of two NT seats. The Joint Select
Committee on Electoral Matters examined his Bill in 2003. It recommended,
rather than his Bill, a Bill to establish more precisely the statistics to be
used by the AEC in redistributions generally. That Bill focussed on statistical
confidence intervals for population counts, and on the timing of the
“availability” of those statistics.
The Bill
recommended by the JSCEM to amend the Commonwealth
Electoral Act 1918 was not opposed by any party in the Parliament and
was passed as the Commonwealth
Electoral Amendment (Representation in the House of Representatives) Act 2004.
It received Royal Assent on
Peter Andren, Independent MHR for Calare, speaking on the section
of the Bill setting aside the 2003 NT Redistribution, voiced what many might
have sensed when he reminded MHRs of the bad
practices of many earlier Australian parliaments in arbitrarily legislating to establish
particular numbers of seats in certain areas. That came to be recognized as
opportunistic malapportionment that needed to be
prevented by devolving the entire procedure to a permanent Electoral Commission
required to implement regularly a prescribed widely-accepted objective
redistribution process for particular electoral arrangements.
Mr Andren also told the House, “I am an unwavering proponent
of proportional representation as the only way of delivering proper and fair
representation to the electorate.”
Improved
Transfer Value Proposed in WA
After the 2001 Legislative Council elections, concerns over the
method used to transfer surplus votes of elected candidates in the Mining and Pastoral
Region were raised in the Western Australian Parliament. A number of
ballot-papers increased in value when the unweighted Senate-based formula set
out in the legislation was applied after one count.
The WA Electoral Commission subsequently commissioned Dr Narelle Miragliotta to prepare a
research paper on the five most recognized methods for transferring the surplus
votes of elected candidates. The Proportional Representation Society of
Australia was contacted for its thoughts and views prior to the release in July
2002 of the publication Determining the Result: Transferring Surplus Votes
in the Western Australian Legislative Council.
Focussing on whether all papers for an elected candidate are
transferred or just some, whether some ballot-papers can increase in value, and
how readily a particular approach could be applied without computers, that
report set out the pros and cons of each approach. Under consideration were
random selection (the old Senate method still used in NSW Upper House and municipal
elections), the Gregory transfer (limiting attention to the last parcel of
votes received by an elected candidate), the current unweighted Senate
procedure (dividing a surplus by the total number of ballot papers received), a
Weighted Inclusive Gregory approach (under which previous transfer values are
all scaled back to the same degree) and the Meek procedure (under which elected
candidates continue to receive further votes and recalculations are iterated).
After withdrawal of more extensive legislation (QN2003D), on
The proposed Weighted Inclusive Gregory method would prevent
ballot-papers increasing in value during a scrutiny. Officially described as a
“minor revision of the counting method for the Legislative Council”, this
amendment would be a welcome change, viewed by the PRSA with a sense of
optimism that similar faulty definitions in other jurisdictions and for Senate
elections will not persist much longer. Although the Bill is not an immediate
legislative priority of the Gallop Government, the importance of this reform
has been conveyed to WA parliamentarians.
Under
A few
provincial cities, and only one metropolitan council, chose to be unsubdivided, so that each year a third of the council was
elected as a group with the whole municipal area being a single electorate. The
majority-preferential electoral system applied, but in its multiple form, which
was the winner-take-all system used to fill each State’s multiple Senate
positions from 1919 to 1948, before the introduction of the present system of
quota-preferential proportional representation. Under that winner-take-all
system - long ago discredited for the Senate - a ticket with 51% support
(possibly much less on first preferences) wins all seats.
The
Cain ALP Government (QN43 & QN 65) lacked a
Legislative Council majority. It thus could not achieve a PR option in its Local
Government Act 1989, but it did introduce triennial elections. These were
mandatory for the City of
From
1993, the Kennett Liberal Government began wide-ranging changes. The 200-odd
municipalities were reduced to 80, and councillors were replaced by three
Government commissioners in each municipality that had by 1997 set, within
legislated limits, but on an ad hoc basis, the number of wards, and the
number of councillors in each. The result was a wide range of different
structures. Some councils had 5, 7, 9, 10 or even 11 single-member wards, some
had combinations of 1, 2 and 3-member wards, and some had no wards. Wherever
two or more councillors were elected in a ward, the old multiple
majority-preferential system applied.
The
Kennett Government, with a majority in each House, surprised many people by its
1995 passage of
In
2001 (QN2001B)
the Bracks ALP Government, although lacking a
majority in each House, managed to amend the Local Government
Act 1989 to have Melbourne City Council unsubdivided.
The Lord Mayor and Deputy are now elected jointly, and join the 7 ordinary
councillors, who are elected by PR, but with a NSW-style Group Voting Ticket
option that fortunately does not apply to any other Victorian council yet.
Just
before the 2002 State election, the Bracks Government
introduced a Bill to allow quota-preferential PR as an election option. The
other parties, in their last months of having a majority in the Upper House,
rejected the Bill.
During
2003, the PRSA’s Victoria-Tasmania Branch (PRSAV-T)
lobbied the Government, Opposition and Independent MPs for the introduction of:
·
Consistent
electoral arrangements across the State, namely quota-preferential PR for all
municipalities, with wards represented by an odd number of councillors, with a
minimum of three,
·
The use of Robson Rotation,
and
·
Countback to fill casual vacancies.
Unfortunately,
the PRSAV-T was only partially successful in arguing for consistency, but at
least provision for PR, and for countback, was made. Robson Rotation
was not introduced.
Early
in the new Parliament, in which the re-elected Bracks
Government had a majority in each House, the Local
Government Act 1989 was amended to provide that, when two or more seats
are to be filled together, proportional representation is the only system to be
used, and that casual vacancies there are to be filled by countback,
unless that is impracticable. It is regrettable that the single-member ward
option persists, and that Robson Rotation was not introduced.
Rather
than introducing a consistent system of quota-preferential PR for the whole
State, as both major parties have accepted in
·
each municipality
must undergo an Electoral Representation Review, at which members of the
public may submit their views about how the system of election should be
conducted,
·
a government
Electoral Commission should then develop a recommendation to the Minister, and
·
the Minister
would, after considering that recommendation, issue an order determining the
electoral system to be used in that municipality.
The
reviews, to be at intervals of eight years or less, began with Surf Coast
Shire. Encouragingly, an unsubdivided council,
electing nine councillors by proportional representation, was recommended.
The
amended act also now provides that, beginning in 2008, all municipal elections
will be held concurrently, every four years, on the last Saturday in November.
As
In
early 2004, there were reviews of 9 other councils, encompassing urban,
provincial city and rural councils, and the PRSAV-T made submissions at each
stage of the process. Unfortunately the recommendations are a mixture of
single-member electorates, unsubdivided councils
electing 7 or 9 members, 3-member wards and some mixed systems. The most
bizarre recommendation is probably for Moreland Council, in Melbourne’s north,
which will have two wards each electing 4 members and one electing 3.
Even
numbers of councillors in a ward can, if a majority viewpoint is fairly small,
give distorted results in which a minority of the vote can gain the same
representation as an absolute majority of the vote.
The
PRSAV-T applauds the move to PR, and the end of the winner-take-all
system for multi-member districts. It will seek a consistent straightforward
system, with a council’s electoral district(s) required to have the same odd
number of seats, being three or more. The PRSAV-T will monitor the results of
the first elections under the new system, in November 2004.
Ending WA Malapportionment by a Federal Law Needs Further Work
While
the attempted passage of State legislation amending Western Australia’s current
weighting of enrolments was being played out in the courts (see QN2003D),
Australian Democrat Senator Andrew Murray’s State Elections (One Vote, One
Value) Bill 2001 [2002] was referred to the Senate’s Legal and
Constitutional References Committee. Based on a mid-90s WA Commission on
Government report, the Bill sought to use Australia’s accession to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which confers the right
“to vote and be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal
and equal suffrage”, as the basis for overturning all such arrangements.
The
PRSA and its WA and SA Branches made brief submissions in October 2003 showing
major flaws in the way the legislation could work (www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s-lc.htm).
The Australian and ACT Electoral Commissions and Tasmanian Electoral Office
also raised some of these matters, and voiced additional concerns about the
basis for making population projections and their timing, confusion or
uncertainty over various terms, and potential consequences of judicial review
in some cases.
The PRSA’s WA Branch pointed out the “obvious loophole” in the
proposed legislation enabling a malapportionment to
be generated by “having equal-sized electorates with different numbers of
seats”. It suggested drafting that did not assume the same number of members
being elected from each district.
The PRSA’s SA Branch stated that in both the ACT Legislative Assembly
and the WA Legislative Council, the number of members varies among electorates
whereas the Bill “presumes that all electorates return the same number of
parliamentarians”. It noted the failure in SA of single-member electorates with
equalized enrolments to give a party with over 50% of the two-party-preferred
vote a majority of seats. It said a term like “equal number of voters” was more
appropriate than “one vote, one value” in the title.
The
PRSA submission also started with the inappropriateness of such wording in the
light of single-member outcomes. In 1996 the
Coalition parties turned a combined 46% of first preferences into 60% of the WA
Legislative Assembly seats, while in 2001 Labor
converted 37% of first preferences into 56% of seats.
Imbalances between votes and seats in metropolitan and rural areas
in 2001 were starker. For instance, Labor won 70% of
the metropolitan Assembly seats with 40% of first preferences (and, more
fairly, 47% of the metropolitan Council seats with 41% of first preferences).
Liberals gained 32% of first preferences and won 20% of metropolitan Assembly
seats, yet 29% support in rural areas was enough for 39% of Assembly seats
there. Nationals won 22% of rural Assembly seats after obtaining nearly 13% of
first preferences, whereas One Nation had 16% support there, but won no seats.
The key provision in the proposed Bill was so poorly drafted that
“it would invalidate the ACT’s Hare-Clark
system while making it possible for quite large levels of what is called
vote weightage to persist for
The
norm was assumed to be four-year terms, despite a 3-year limit in the ACT then,
and in
The
PRSA concluded that the Bill’s “articulated intentions can only be effected by
building the enrolment quota criteria around a calculation that sets a Statewide quota at total enrolments at some point in time,
divided by the total number of MPs in a particular chamber, and multiplies this
by the number of members to be returned in each electorate” and referred to the
specifics of ACT legislation as a model for doing so.
Limited
public hearings were held in February 2004, allowing Australian and ACT
electoral officials to expand on how problem areas in the proposed legislation
might be addressed, and taking legal views on potential constitutional
obstacles to the Commonwealth passing legislation imposing electoral
requirements on the States, and how these might best be avoided.
In
its report tabled on
Senator
Murray - a member of the Committee for this Inquiry - wrote that he agreed with
the report and its findings, and would rework the Bill “not just to enshrine in
Australian law the most fundamental of universal political rights and
principles”, but also “to try and implement the recommendations of the Western
Australian Commission on Government 1995-96”.
The 2004 Lok Sabha Elections in
The
PRSA National Secretary, Dr Stephen Morey, was in
First-past-the-post
counting applies, with press button voting machines. Candidates’ party
affiliation is displayed by symbols, such as a hand for the Congress Party, and
a lotus for the BJP Party.
The
result was hailed as a great victory for Congress, but even a cursory look at
the vote shows that Congress’s percentage of votes decreased (from 28.3 to
26.2%), while their seats increased from 114 to 145. Less than 50% the sitting
Congress MPs retained their seats (49), and most of the seats now held by
Congress are gains. A similar pattern is true for the defeated BJP, which had
even fewer votes than Congress in this, and in the previous election.
The
new Parliament contains 48 parties, most of only one or two members, and most
on a regional, caste or tribal basis. The election result was much influenced by
state factors and the complex interplay between different parties. Only a
state-by-state, region-by-region analysis of the voting figures and comparison
with seats won would establish the extent of distortion in the result.
Nevertheless
this time, purely by chance, it appears that the parties will be represented in
Parliament by numbers of MPs that roughly correspond to their support. It in no
way justifies the single-member electorate system used, with its crude
first-past-the-post counting, but the counting process was extremely efficient
and fast. Within ten minutes of the opening of counting (held a week after the
close of the last round of polling), the first results were coming through. A
trend was clear a few minutes later, and the whole result was apparent faster
than any other election I have ever followed.”
Visit to
Electoral Reform Society in
Former
National President of the PRSA, Geoffrey Goode, visited the well resourced
headquarters of the Electoral
Reform Society in
The
ERS knows STV well, so Mr Goode stressed our governments’ fondness for
stage-managing our PR, constrained, at least for federal and WA polls, by the
constitutional requirements there for direct election of members. He warned the
ERS, whose members are not used to the ballot-paper design ploys that our
governments have legislated for, that how-to-vote cards, Group Voting
Tickets, and the ordering of candidates’ names on the ballot-paper work
against voters, and for parties, and that only the ACT and Tasmania have laws
for proper measures in those areas. He displayed a NSW “tablecloth” 1999 Upper
House ballot-paper, to general amazement.
© 2004
Proportional Representation Society of
National
President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki
Cr. NARRABUNDAH 2604
National
Secretary: Dr Stephen Morey 4 Sims Street
Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (03) 9598 1122 Fax (03) 9589 1680 ggd@netspace.net.au
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