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QUOTA
QN2023C
September 2023
www.prsa.org.au
Western
Australia replaces Richard Court era’s
Western
Australia’s Local
Government
Act 1995 was amended this
year to replace the plurality counting for municipal elections that
Richard Court’s Liberal Government
introduced when it achieved passage of that
consolidated Act in 1995.
The 1995 legislation had replaced the
earlier law for transferable voting, which
had included some PR-STV counting. The 2023 amending Act, which
received Royal Assent on 18 May 2023, restored
in Schedule 4 of the consolidated Act the
earlier PR-STV provision, and also provided,
in its Schedule 4A, for recounts for filling
casual vacancies, and for fully
optional
marking
of preferences. As a result, transferable voting
now applies to Western Australia’s current municipal
elections
- for all of its 137
municipalities
- where polling will close on 21 October
2023. All but eight Councils will have
elections by postal ballot, which will be
conducted by the Western Australian Electoral
Commission. WA continues to have periodic
elections every two years where polls are held
to fill half the councillor positions for
their four-year terms. Western Australia’s Shire of East
Pilabara is the most extensive municipality by
area in Australia. Its ten
councillors are elected to
govern an area that covers 372,000 square
kilometres, which is 25% larger than
Victoria and Tasmania combined.
New
South Wales repeals Michael Baird era’s The
NSW Labor Government’s Local Government
Minister, Hon. Ron Hoenig MLA, has
announced the City
of
Sydney Amendment Bill 2023 to
repeal
the parts of the Baird Liberal
Government’s City
of
Sydney Amendment (Elections) Act 2014 that
allowed any corporation entitled to vote
to exercise two votes at Sydney City
Council elections, compared to the single
vote that residents were entitled to. The
City
of
Melbourne Act 2001 still lets
corporations appoint two representatives,
each of whom must vote at elections for
the Council.
The 2014 change did not apply
to other NSW Councils. Its repeal should be
welcomed, as it arbitrarily distorted the
representation of interested parties for
seemingly dubious motives, and it was very
expensive to implement and maintain. Mr Hoenig had a long experience
in local government in New South Wales, as
he held the position of Mayor of the former
Botany Bay City Council for an unbroken
period of 31 years, from 1981 to 2012. As a rare NSW Council that did
not use PR-STV counting at its polls, almost all its
councillors elected then were those
endorsed by the Australian Labor Party. A
2017
report by the NSW
Independent Commission Against Corruption
found serious cases of corruption by
Council staff. Mr Hoenig left Botany Bay City
Council to become the Labor MLA for the safe
Legislative Assembly seat of Heffron where he succeeded the former MLA
and NSW Premier, Hon. Kristina Keneally.
She resigned from that seat so she could
be appointed as a Senator for NSW to fill
the casual vacancy created by the
resignation of Senator Sam Dastyari. More MHA
changes since Tasmania’s final
election for a 25-member House
of Assembly
Last
year, QN
2022A reported on
stresses in Tasmania’s House of Assembly
that many of its members have recognized as
caused by the high concentration of tasks on
too few government MHAs, who can consist of
as few as just 13 members of their party. That recognition seems to have
prompted the unanimous vote by all 25 MHAs to
pass legislation to require that the next
Assembly elected shall consist of 35 MHAs, as
had been the number the House had until it was
reduced to 25 in 1998. Since that report, two Premiers,
Will Hodgman and Peter Gutwein, have resigned
as MHAs, as have other MHAs; the Liberals,
Adam Brook, Sarah Courtney, and Jacquie
Petrusma; and the Greens Leader, Cassie
O’Connor, citing the excessively demanding
nature of the role. Their seats were each filled by members of their own party, by countbacks. This month, Tasmania’s Premier,
Hon. Jeremy Rockliff, asked his
Attorney-General, Hon. Elise Archer, to
resign from all her
ministries, owing to what he said were
unacceptable messages from her. She did
resign, and said that she would also resign
as an MHA for Clark, but later said she
would remain an MHA, but as an Independent. If she were to resign as an MHA,
that would lead to a countback that
would be very likely to have one of the three
unelected
male
Liberal candidates at the 2021 election
become her replacement. The
small number of members of the Assembly might
well continue to cause stresses until the next
election, which is due in 2025, but it might
be called earlier, as was the 2021 election.
It is to be hoped that the next election, for
35 MHAs, will lead to less pressure on
ministers.
An
interim report by JSCEM’s Inquiry into It
was noted in QN2022D that Submission No. 323 by the PRSA
to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral
Matters was among the nearly 1,500 that it
had received. It is therefore not surprising
that it has so far issued an interim
report only. The only mention of proportional
representation was in the additional
comments by the
Greens member, Senator Larissa Waters, of
Queensland, whose Point 1.30 said the Greens
urge the introduction of proportional
representation in the House of Representatives.
PRSA(Victoria-Tasmania)
Inc. appeared at Victoria’s Electoral
Matters Committee After
PRSAV-T Inc. lodged a submission to
Victoria’s Electoral Matters Committee
on the desirability of discontinuing any
above-the-line voting option on
ballot papers for Victoria’s Parliament,
and for taking a Hare-Clark approach for
elections to both its Houses, the
Committee invited it to appear before it
in August 2023. The
submission, and the transcript of the
hearing before the Committee, can be
accessed here. The Committee received 110 submissions. A dominant theme of most of them was the importance of discontinuing the Group Voting Ticket device used for polls for Victoria’s Legislative Council. That uniquely Australian device is no longer used in any other legislature in the world.
A 1988
Australian Constitution Alteration
proposal where the PRSA stated its view
The
Proportional Representation Society of
Australia has formed no view on the
question that will be put at the
referendum to be held on 14 October 2023
on the Constitution
Alteration
(Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Voice) 2023. Its
text makes no reference to the method
by which any election of persons might
be conducted. As reported in
QN
2023A, its
South Australian Branch did however
contact the mover of a South
Australian bill for a State version of
such a Voice to urge him to replace
his proposed plurality counting with
PR-STV, and was pleased when he agreed
to replace it. In Victoria,
legislation to hold an election for a First
People’s
Assembly fortunately provided for
it to be counted by PR-STV.
1988:
The most pronounced action that the PRSA
has ever
taken in constitutional referendum
considerations was for the Hawke Labor
Government’s Constitution (Fair
Elections)
Bill 1988. The then PRSA National
President
urgently contacted a supportive
Australian Democrats senator, Dr John
Coulter -
who later became the Democrats’
parliamentary leader - to warn him that,
unless
Clause 5 of that Bill was omitted, PR-STV
might not, perversely, be able to
be used for future House of
Representatives elections. The Democrats
successfully moved, with the Coalition’s
support, for that omission, even though
the House had to be recalled to pass the
amended Bill. The PRSA’s postal ballot of its
members
showed a majority supported the
amended Bill, but the only
jurisdiction where
a majority of voters approved the Bill
at the referendum was the Australian
Capital Territory.
Call
for Nominations for Elections of the
four PRSA Office-bearers for 2024-25 The
Returning Officer is Mr Deane Crabb
of the PRSA's
South Australian Branch. Under the PRSA Constitution, the Returning
Officer rotates among the Branch
Secretaries or equivalent. The order,
by precedent, is SA, the ACT, VIC-TAS,
and NSW. Nominations
- for President,
Vice-President, Secretary and
Treasurer - need be signed
by the candidate only, as consent to
nomination, and must be with Mr Deane
Crabb, at 11 Yapinga Street, SOUTH
PLYMPTON SA 5038, or at nretoff@prsa.org.au by Friday, 03
November 2023. Nominations received
should be viewable on the PRSA Elections page. Moves
currently underway at the instigation of
the National President could result in
the present unincorporated PRSA being
wound up later this year provided that
the necessary conditions for that are met,
when it would be replaced by an
incorporated body with the same name. As such a change is not
yet assured, it is still necessary for
nominations to be received for the above
positions, even though they might soon
cease to exist.
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