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Proportional Representation
Society of Australia Inc. |
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Tel +61429176725 |
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2025-02-10 |
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Early
Debates (1863-1898) on Proportional Representation
in
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A feature of the floor of the
entrance foyer at At
first sight, the 88 Lower House MPs that are
entitled to sit within might be thought to
constitute a multitude of counsellors in biblical
terms. Unfortunately a little more thought soon
reveals that there is little safety in numbers where
important attributes like diversity, breadth of
representation, and independence of thought are
largely absent. Why have 88 MLAs, representing only
two mutually antagonistic points of view (one ALP
view and one Coalition view), and only two MLAs,
representing any other points of view, as has been
the case since 2001, when other substantial
minorities are left with no MLAs at all? Of
course, if those attributes are present to excess,
there might be some reduction in coherence of
purpose, but the way to avoid such a reduction is to
reach a sensible medium position between Victoria’s
complete absence of any proportional representation
in its Lower House, and the alternative that
occurs in some legislatures, such as
Israel’s,
where closed party lists, and a low percentage
threshold of 2% for a party to be elected,
understandably do not show the proportional
representation principle at its best. The PRSA
advocates a Hare-Clark system,
with multi-member
electorates. The
introduction of quota-preferential proportional
representation, which is the direct and preferential
form of proportional representation, for elections
to A life member of
the PRSA’s Victorian Branch, the late Mr Roger
Donegan of Mont Albert, had obtained
for the Society some interesting extracts from
debates in Victoria’s colonial parliament that he
obtained from various volumes of the official
record, the Victorian
Parliamentary Debates (more recently known
as "Hansard"). A major debate on
providing for proportional representation for
Victoria's Legislative Assembly, as had earlier in
that decade been provided for the districts of
Hobart and Launceston in Tasmania, occurred during
consideration of the Plural Voting Abolition
Bill, which was the bill that resulted in the
Constitution
Act Amendment Act 1899, when Mr Robert
Murray-Smith, MLA
for Hawthorn, moved, on 2nd August 1898, "That it be an
instruction to the committee to provide for the
adoption of Hare’s system of proportional
representation." [Victorian
Parliamentary Debates Vol. 88, p. 581] Mr Alfred Deakin, who
later became "Proportional representation
is not a device to secure the better
representation of minorities only. ...
Proportional representation is a plan to secure
the better representation of majorities as well,
and it is in the interests of the majority and
of majority rule that I propose to submit that
our present system is gravely defective, and
that the proposals which have been submitted for
proportional representation, although defective
in certain particulars, are less defective than
the system under which we suffer at present." "... As a matter of fact,
illustrations can be abundantly cited to show that
the majority does not rule under the existing
system on the questions on which the majority
should rule, and that instead of this proposal
being antagonistic to the majority, it is a
proposal which will bring the legislative forces
of the country and its Legislative Assembly into
touch with the majority of the peoples in the
electorates, just as directly as the referendum
does for the whole of the people. [VPD Vol. 88, p. 669]" "I will support any measure
for letting the Upper House or this House try the
system of proportional representation ... [VPD Vol. 88, p. 676] The only important issue is
the accurate representation of public opinion. [VPD Vol. 88, p. 745]" Mr
Isaac Isaacs, who later, as Sir Isaac Isaacs,
was Chief Justice of the High Court, and then
Governor-General of Australia, might have been
thinking of party list PR
when, in opposing the motion, he said, "And
so each man, instead of being an independent
voter, would be dragged in as one of the mere
details of the party machine, and would have to
vote exactly as he was told." [VPD
Vol. 88, p 746] Mr
Rbert Murray-Smith's motion was voted upon, and was
lost [VPD
Vol. 88, p. 750]. Unfortunately
neither this nor other attempts, either before or
since, to introduce proportional representation for
elections to the Victorian Parliament were brought
to a successful conclusion until the introduction of
legislation in 2003 to
provide for election of Victoria's Legislative
Council by PR in November 2006, which year was the
150th anniversary of the first general election for
members of that Legislative Council. Earlier
discussion of PR included the following: The
Premier, Mr Duncan Gillies,
moved, on 25th September 1888, that a Bill, that
amongst other things, would increase the number of
single-member electorates from 29 to 73, be read a
second time. [VPD Vol. 58 pp. 1213-1215] The
number of multi-member electorates, with the
non-preferential "limited vote"
system applying, was to be reduced to make way for
this development. Such electorates, using that
voting system, which were also phased out in the United Kingdom
in this era but still, curiously, still apply in
some electorates for the ancient House of Keys
on the Isle of Man, had been used in William
Walker 1338 votes, Charles Taylor 1323 votes. In
the debate on the Premier’s Bill, Mr John Gavan
Duffy said, "The
Minister for Customs (William Walker)
had alluded to (the Victorian electorate of)
Belfast as a horrid example of an electoral
anomaly; but the honorable gentleman himself was
returned at the last general election by a
majority of only fourteen." The Premier
interjected, "What does that matter?" Mr
Duffy continued, "The honorable gentleman having
been returned by a majority of fourteen, it followed
that one-half of the large and important
constituency of Boroondara, less fourteen, was
completely disfranchised. Was not that an anomaly?
... Had the Premier, who chose to sneer at any line
of argument which did not exactly please him, never
heard of the representation of minorities? (Mr
Gillies: "No") Then he would lend the Premier a
little book on the subject. (Mr Gillies: "By whom?")
Written by a gentleman named Hare. (Mr Gillies: "You
are mistaken.") If he (Duffy) must speak by the
card, he would say that the system was called the
proportional system of representation, but it is
more popularly known as the representation of
minorities.[VPD
Vol. 58, p. 1715]" In
a Victorian Legislative Assembly debate, on 17th
February 1881, a former Premier,
Sir John O’Shanassy, said, "I am surprised that no plan of
proportional representation is provided for in the
Bill, especially as leading statesmen and
philosophers are every year more strongly
advocating the adoption of that principle in
connexion with the electoral system. Why should
the representation in every district be given to a
bare majority of the electors and the minority be
left out in the cold?" That
former Premier of Victoria went on to say, "Why is the system of proportional
representation altogether ignored, when it is
founded on justice, and the professed desire of
the men in this country who call themselves
liberals is that the whole people shall be
represented - not merely a part, but the whole?
..." [VPD
Vol. 35, p. 1484] Sir
John O’Shanassy had not made his views known
precipitately. He had said, over seven years
earlier, on 26th August 1873, "I gave
an early adhesion to the principle which he (Thomas Hare)
endeavours, in his admirable treatise, to
illustrate - a principle under which all classes
of feeling may be represented in a body of
influence and weight. ... Mr Hare has been
described by an honorable member of another place
as a "closet philosopher", but the fact is - and I
visited him when in the mother country
- that he is a practical lawyer; he drafted his
own Bill; and I assert, after considering that
Bill, you can vote as easily, under Mr Hare’s
system, as you can stamp a letter and put it into
the post-office. ... The machinery looks
complicated, but the elector has no more to do
with that than the person who drops his letter
into the post-office has to do with the postal
machinery." [VPD
Vol. 16, p. 1214] Sir
John O’Shanassy had advocated the implementation of
Hare’s system in 1863 when he was Premier [VPD
Vol. 9, pp. 540-541]. In a debate on
the Electoral Act Amendment Bill on 4th
March 1863 [VPD Vol. 9, p. 538],
Mr Charles Gavan Duffy said, "In their
own (Victorian Legislative) Assembly the principle
(Thomas Hare’s system of proportional
representation) had been introduced; and, in a
House of sixty members, twenty-five
voted for it and twenty-three against it.
Since that time nothing further had been done. ...
The honorable member (Mr Higinbotham)
also stated that it (Hare’s system of proportional
representation) had not been carried in Victoria;
but it had been so, although before it could come
into operation a change of ministry took place,
and Mr Chapman
(the member for Mornington, who was sent for to
form a government, was opposed to the principle." |
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