Reserving quotas of seats attempts to make parliaments more representative in one respect by making them less representative in another. The numbers are pre-arranged so that the parliament contains a certain minimum proportion of female MP's; yet the cost is restricting the freedom of party members and voters to pre-select and vote for the individuals whom they judge to be the best available.
There may well be "dead wood" among our current preponderance of male MP's. But there is no guarantee that those seats reserved for females will be taken off the non-performing males. The real problem is largely the single-member system used for all lower houses on mainland Australia. Having only one MP for each electorate means each party runs only one candidate in each electorate. Thus, mandating that there must be a female ALP candidate in certain electorates inevitably will mean that there is no male ALP candidate in those electorates - even if ALP voters and party members therein would prefer a particular male on an individual basis.
Making the system more "representative" of the gender balance would make the system less "representative" of the free choice of the voters. Most voters vote with party or ideology rather than gender uppermost in their mind (how many left-wing feminists would vote for Bronwyn Bishop ahead of Bob Ellis?). Yet while the ALP weeps crocodile tears over the under-representation of females in parliament, it is happy to perpetuate the under-representation of sizeable minor parties such as Greens and Democrats.
Both these problems would be greatly reduced if - as Senator Cheryl Kernot last week advocated - Australia adopted a system of proportional representation with multi-member electorates for its Lower Houses. With 5 or 7 seats for each electorate, each party would stand a team of candidates instead of a single individual. Each party team would include at least one woman candidate, without need for mandatory quotas in the party rules or the electoral law.
Proportional voting systems, like those used for the Australian Senate and for almost all European democracies, tend to produce a much higher percentage of female MP's than do single-member systems. Moreover, with multi-seat electorates all female voters - not just those in the 35% of electorates reserved for women - would have access to a female local member.
Even if mandatory quotas were added on to a proportional representation system, their effects would be much less objectionable in a system of multi-member electorates. Unlike the single-member status quo, reserving a minimum number of seats for women does not automatically exclude male candidates from running and winning seats in the same electorate. Instead, in a multi-member electorate both male and female candidates can run on the same team, and the voters can freely choose which ones they prefer. If the central party machine did intervene to add more female candidates to the party team, this would ensure gender balance by widening, rather than restricting, voters' choice.
This argument was used recently by ALP Right candidates for State Conference in Queensland. ALP Left candidates argued that the ALP already has some mandatory quotas in that 2 of the 5 Conference delegates from each electorate must be women. The Right, however, counter-argued that quotas are not objectionable if used for multi-seat positions; whereas, if quotas were extended to single-seat positions such as Lower House preselections, then including more women will inevitably mean excluding more men.
Chris Tooley,
President, Queensland Branch,
Proportional Representation Society of Australia.
(27 Turner Street, Windsor Qld 4030: phone 07 857 2704)
PS: Also available to be contacted for information: Tom Round (Branch Secretary) -826 Main Street, Kangaroo Point, Qld 4169, phone 07 217 4169 home, 07 875 6824 work, fax 07 875 5608).