QUOTA  NOTES

Newsletter of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia

QN2021D December 2021 www.prsa.org.au

• Western Australia's Bill to discontinue Group Voting Tickets receives Royal Assent
  
  
• "Elections" to Hong Kong's Legislative Council
  

  
  

• General election of Japan's 465-member House of Representatives for 2021-25
  
  
• Australia's 99 unelected senators since 1983
  
  
• U.S. Democrats seek reform for Congressional polls
  
  
  
• "Voices of ..." candidates expected to contest the 2022 Federal polls
  
  
  
• Death of former PRSA(SA) President
  
  
  
• National Office-bearers for 2022-23
  




• List of issues of Quota Notes

Western Australia's Bill to discontinue Group Voting Tickets receives Royal Assent

The Proportional Representation Society of Australia opposed Group Voting Tickets - as did the Coalition - when the Hawke Labor Government, with Australian Democrats’ support, introduced them for Senate polls in 1983. In 2016, the Coalition, with Greens’ support, but not Labor’s, discontinued GVTs for Senate polls.

That discontinuation in 2016 of Group Voting Tickets for Senate polls followed their discontinuation in 1999 for polls for the Legislative Council of New South Wales, and was followed by their discontinuation in 2017 for the Legislative Council of South Australia.

As reported in QN2021C, Western Australia’s Government introduced a Bill to reform the electoral system for WA’s Legislative Council. That Bill was given Royal Assent on 24 November 2021 by the WA Governor, Hon. Kim Beazley AC. Ironically he was, in 1983, the Federal Minister that introduced Labor’s Bill for Group Voting Tickets for Senate polls into the House of Representatives 38 years earlier.

The resulting WA Act discontinued Group Voting Tickets, but an above-the-line option for voters remains, like that for the Senate. It continues, for each registered party’s candidates, the stage management in which each party organization can decide the order of its candidates, both above-the-line and below the line, thus belying the Government’s bold boast of electoral equality (even in the Act’s title) for all candidates. As in the 2016 Senate reform, partial optional preferential voting now applies for WA’s below-the-line option.

The Act combined the six regions into a single State-wide electoral district, for which all 37 MLCs will be elected concurrently with the Legislative Assembly. That single district for all MLCs reduces the quota for election from 14.3% to 2.6%, thus reducing the wasted vote to just 2.6% compared with over 49.9% for each of the Legislative Assembly districts. It also removes the possibility of any malapportionment of electoral districts for the Legislative Council.

Victoria’s Legislative Council is now the only legislative chamber in the world to be elected by the discredited contrivance of Group Voting Tickets, but GVTs still linger for NSW municipal polls, and for polls for the City of Melbourne.

“Elections” to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council

The seventh general election, since the transfer in 1997 of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China, for the 20 of Hong Kong’s 90 Legislative Councillors that are directly elected, was held on 19 December 2021.

Since the sixth general election, in 2015, China’s government had instigated major changes to Hong Kong’s electoral laws. Many Hong Kong citizens considered they were designed to ensure candidates that support much more absolute control by that government would be very assured of obtaining a considerable majority of the 90 seats to be filled.

Despite the Basic Law, Beijing arbitrarily ejected from the Legislative Council some sitting MLCs that had displeased it, and disqualified them from re-election. That, and those changes, prompted long-running, large scale public demonstrations against them, which were eventually quelled - after orders from China’s government - by strong police action.

The changes had increased the total number of seats from 70 to 90, but had reduced the number of MLCs to be directly elected in geographical constituencies from 35 to 20, and re-arranged those constituencies from five 7-member districts with their MLCs elected by a party list proportional representation system to ten 2-member districts in which their MLCs were elected by the single non-transferable vote, which Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have largely abandoned.

China’s culling of pro-democracy candidates, and widespread calls for a boycott of the polls, led to a record low turnout of 30.2%, and a nearly clean sweep of pro-Beijing candidates being elected.

Those implementing the changes promoted them as worthy to benefit candidates that were ‘patriots’. That word is a grim echo of that word in France’s notorious Law of 22nd Prairial in Year 2 (10 June 1794), which heralded the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. That law provided that the status and rights at trials, at which the only possible verdicts it prescribed were death (by the guillotine) or acquittal, must be much greater for a person the Revolutionary Tribunal deemed to be a ‘patriot’ than for a person it deemed to be a ‘conspirator’.

General election of Japan’s 465-member House of Representatives for 2021-25

Japan held the above election on 31 October 2021. As is normal, the election for the 465 members of the Lower House of its Diet was not held concurrently with the periodic election of half of the members of its Upper House, the House of Councillors.

Since 1996, the Lower House has been elected using a parallel electoral system. In 2021, there were 289 of its members elected for single-member districts using plurality counting, with the remaining 176 members elected from 11 multi-member districts using party list proportional representation with d’Hondt counting.

Despite a weak constitutional requirement that should limit malapportionment of its electoral districts, the Lower House still has a more than 2:1 ratio between the largest enrolment and the smallest enrolment, and the Upper House has an even greater disparity.

Before 1996, the Lower House’s MPs were directly elected using a non-hybrid system of multi-member electoral districts, with a uniform counting system, which was the single non-transferable vote.

Japan is the world’s third-largest economy and has a reputation for the fine skills of its people and the high quality of its products, so it is unfortunate that it moved to a hybrid electoral system, with no provision at all for transferable votes, rather than moving to a PR-STV system, which is fairer and more refined. As is often the case, the choice - by Japan’s governing MPs - was perhaps made to suit them and their parties rather than to better empower Japan’s electors.

The general election resulted in the single party of the outgoing government, the Liberal Democratic Party, being returned to government, with a minority of the vote in both the single-member segment and the parallel multi-member segment.

Overall the LDP won 55.7% of the seats - an increase of 25 seats, despite its total percentage of the vote decreasing. The party has had always by far the largest number of members in the Lower House since it was formed in 1955, and its periods out of government have been quite brief. The multi-party opposition remains fragmented.

Australia’s 94 unelected senators since 1983

An article in QN2004C was the most recent to report on Australia’s large number of senators that are appointed, effectively by political party organizations, and not elected by the electors, to fill casual vacancies in a given Parliament, and can continue to sit and to vote there for up to nearly six years.

The names, since 1901, of all replacement senators and the dates they were appointed on - without any choice by the electors since 1977, or routine media publicity by Australian governments on those appointments - are at least listed on a Wikipedia page.

Table 1 below shows the numbers of senators appointed during each of the fourteen parliaments since the Parliament was enlarged by some 19% in 1983 to have its present number of 76 senators.

Parliament	Years	Senators appointed to fill casual vacancies and cause
		Total	Resignation	Death	Per cent
46th	2019-22	8	7	1	10.5
45th	2016-19	10	10	0	13.2
44th	2014-16	8	8	0	10.5
43rd	2011-14	11	10	1	14.5
42nd	2008-11	1	1	0	1.3
41st	2005-08	8	7	1	9.2
40th	2002-05	4	4	0	5.3
39th	1999-2002	6	6	0	7.9
38th	1996-99	11	10	1	14.5
37th	1993-96	10	9	1	13.2
36th	1990-93	5	5	0	6.6
35th	1987-90	7	7	0	9.2
34th	1985-87	4	3	1	3.9
33rd	1983-85	1	1	0	1.3
Total		94	88	6
Median		7			9.2
Mean		7			9.3

Table 1: No. of senators appointed to fill casual vacancies in each Parliament since 1983

Table 2 below shows the eight unelected senators in the 46th Parliament from 2019 to 2022. Seven of them replaced resigning elected long-term senators, who were in office from 01 July 2016. Those seven senators can remain in office until 30th June 2022.

Vacating senator (elected by the people)	Replacement senator (unelected by the people)	State	Party	Date appointed as a senator (unelected by  the people)	Years able to sit in the Senate unelected
A.Gallacher	K.Grogan*	SA	Labor	21SEP2021	3.7
M.Fifield	S.Henderson	Vic.	Liberal	11SEP2019	2.7
A.Sinodinos	J.Molan	NSW	Liberal	14NOV2019	2.6
C. Bernardi	A.McLachlan	SA	Liberal	06FEB2020	2.4
R.Di Natale	L.Thorpe	Vic.	Greens	04SEP2020	1.8
M.Cormann	B.Small	WA	Liberal	25NOV2020	1.7
R. Siewert	D.Cox	WA	Greens	14SEP2021	0.8
S.Ryan	G.Mirabella	Vic.	Liberal	02DEC2021	0.5

Table 2: Unelected senators’ terms in the 46th Parliament

The eighth senator - and an exception to those - is South Australia’s Labor Senator Karen Grogan*. She replaced the elected long-term Senator Alex Gallacher, who died.

His term began on 01 July 2019. The balance of her unelected term ends on 30 June 2025, so it will straddle two parliaments. It is longer than an elected MHR’s maximum term.

The maximum number of unelected senators reached to date was the fifteen unelected senators that sat in 1997, which was nearly 20% of the Senate. The median value of the terms they were entitled to sit and to vote was 4.7 years.

U.S. Democrats seek reform for Congressional polls

The U.S. Constitution places the method of election of the U.S. President and Vice-President exclusively in the power of the State legislatures. The Constitution is notoriously difficult to make significant changes to, as the legislatures of a mere 13 States can veto a change. Nevertheless, the Federal Congress has the full power to pass laws on the method of election to one or both of its two Houses that would - if agreed to by the President - override any inconsistent State laws.

The U.S. President, Joe Biden, who was a senator for Delaware from 1973 to 2009, recently took issue with a provision of the Senate’s long-established Standing Orders that lets a senator filibuster unless a 60% vote requires that the filibuster cease. He said he favours ending that provision, which would happen if all the fifty Democrat senators, and the President of the Senate, Kamala Harris, voted to do so.

A successful vote would remove that major obstacle for electoral reform bills that were recently passed by the House of Representatives to be passed by the Senate, and submitted for the President’s approval -although they could still be struck down, in whole or part - by a challenge to them in the Supreme Court.

The bills would apply uniformly to all U.S. States and Territories, and should reduce the distortions produced by State-based gerrymandering, and remove certain existing obstacles to electors exercising their franchise. They have been extolled by former President Barak Obama, but strongly criticized by Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans.

Australia’s federal Parliament had no time limits on speeches until 1919 but, after a senator’s 12-hour speech against a bill to change its Lower House voting method from a plurality system to a transferable vote system, Billy Hughes’s Government was able to have the Standing Orders altered to prevent such filibusters obstructing the passage of Government legislation.

‘Voices of …’ candidates expected to contest the 2022 Federal polls

In the winner-take-all single-member divisions of Clark, Indi, and Warringah; voters' dissatisfaction with the major parties, and success in recent House of Representatives general elections of candidates from none of the political parties in the present House, led to all those seats being won by independents in 2019.

For the 2022 election, many independent candidates using the ‘Voices of…’ brand are now targeting winnable Coalition seats. A strong source of funds for them is Climate 200. See Table 3 below for some of the more prominent candidates to date.

Federal division	Sitting MHR	‘Voices’ candidate
Boothby, SA	Nicole Flint*	Jo Dyer
Flinders, Vic	Greg Hunt*	Claire Boardman
Goldstein, Vic	Tim Wilson	Zoe Daniel
Hughes, NSW	Craig Kelly	Penny Ackery
Indi, Vic	Helen Haines	Helen Haines
Kooyong, Vic	Josh Frydenberg**	Monique Ryan
North Sydney, NSW	Trent Zimmerman**	Kylea Tink
Mackellar, NSW	Jason Falinski**	Sophie Scamps
Wannon, Vic	Alex Dyson	Alex Dyson
Warringah, NSW	Zali Steggall	Zali Steggall OAM
Wentworth, NSW	Dave Sharma**	Allegra Spender

* Indicates a Liberal MHR expected to not recontest the seat.

** Indicates a Liberal MHR expected to recontest the seat.

Table 3: Prominent ‘Voices’ candidates likely for the 2022 polls

Independent ‘Voices’ groups in the Australian Capital Territory and in Tasmania are also seeking candidates for the elections in those two Senate electorates, in which voters have experience of how well the Hare-Clark system empowers them to elect their preferred candidates to the Assemblies there.

Those experiences explain why the percentage of below-the-line voting at Senate polls there is much higher than in the rest of Australia.

Death of former PRSA(SA) President

Mr George Jukes - who was President of the South Australian Branch of the Proportional

Representation Society of Australia from 1983 to 2003 - died on 03 December 2021, aged 102.

George Jukes was born in Port Lincoln on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, where he was for many years a tailor in Tasman Terrace (the front street).

His initial interest in PR-STV began after meeting like-minded people at Kimba, the largest South Australian town between Ceduna and Port Augusta.

When George sold his business in Port Lincoln, he and his family moved to Adelaide. He began

coming to meetings of the SA Branch in 1979, and was soon afterwards elected as its Vice-President.

National Office-bearers for 2022-23

The Returning Officer for the elections of PRSA National Office-bearers - Ms Marian Lesslie, the Secretary of the PRSA’s New South Wales Branch - has declared the candidates below elected unopposed for the term 01 January 2022 to 31 December 2023:

           National President:             Dr Jeremy Lawrence

National Vice-President:     Mr John Pyke

                      National Secretary:             Assoc. Prof. Stephen Morey

National Treasurer:             Mr Bruce Errol

© 2021 Proportional Representation Society of Australia

National President: Dr Jeremy Lawrence   npres@prsa.org.au