PR for the Victorian Legislative Council!

The first reading speech of the latest bill to introduce PR to the Legislative Council was on the morning of Wednesday February 26, 2003 (three members of the PRSAV-T council were in the visitor's gallery to witness this historic event). The bill is available on the web here. We discussed the Bill with various MPs in the hope of getting it ammended. Some brief criticisms are documented here. It passed the Legislative Council on Thursday March 27, after some ammendments in the Assembly. Any help in publicising the apalling casual vacancy provision (Craig Ingram unsuccessfully tried to have this ammended) would be appreciated.

The previous bill to introduce PR to the Legislative Council, the Constitution (Parliamentary Reform) Bill failed to obtain an absolute majority on its third reading in the Legislative Assembly early in the morning of Thursday 10 October 2002 (despite what it may indicate on the "Status Report" from the link above). The two independents, Craig Ingram and Russel Savage, having unsuccessfully attempted to get the Bill split into two components, voted against the Bill (details here). Some commentators thought the government was hoping to have to Bill rejected by the Legislative Council, so it could be used as a reason for holding an early election (something which violates the independents' charter which the government agreed to in order to get the support of the independents). Since gaining a majority in both houses at the election, it is anticipated the ALP may move quickly to introduce another PR Bill.

• Our submission (November 2001) to the Victorian Constitution Commission is available in the following formats: HTML for browsing, PDF, Postscript.
• Our supplementary submission (February 2002) is available in the following formats: HTML for browsing, PDF, Postscript.
• Final Report of Constitution Commission, Victoria (PDF format).
• Constitution Commission, Victoria (official home page of the Commission, background information, questions and answers, etc)
• September 2000 edition of Quota Notes (some improvements to the legislation initiated by independent MLA Craig Ingram)
• March 2000 edition of Quota Notes (gives further details of the campaign)
• Constitution (Reform) Bill (introduced to Parliament by Steve Bracks). This was withdrawn and two new bills were introduced: Constitution (Amendment) Bill and Constitution (Proportional Representation) Bill. The first addresses the issue of parliamentary term and passage of the Annual Appropriation Bill, the second concerns the electoral system. We applaud the separation of these distinct issues into different bills (we criticised the Constitution (Reform) Bill because it dealt with all of these issues - see below). However, the details of the proposed electoral system do not appear to have changed substantially so most of the criticisms below still apply. The Liberals announced they would not support the bills.
  Criticism of the Constitution (Reform) Bill
• Legislative Council Reform page from independent MLA Craig Ingram (excellent coverage of the issues involved)
• Public meeting Sunday 5th December 1999, at 2:00 p.m.: "The Benefits of and Strategies for Getting Proportional Representation in the Victorian Upper House..."
  The PRSA National President spoke about how the PRSA helped achieve the most voter-friendly system in Australia for the ACT (also described here).
• What you can do (a handout for the meeting above)
• Analysis of recent elections (shows how undemocratic the Upper House is currently)
• Analysis etc of 1999 Victorian elections