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QUOTA
QN2023D
December 2023
www.prsa.org.au
The plurality
seats at the Palestine Legislative
There has been
extensive media reporting of the
ongoing confrontation between Israel
and the Hamas party, which controls
the Gaza Strip abutting Israel’s
southern border. Few media
reports have highlighted the glaring
contrast between the electoral system
for Israel’s Knesset (party-list only) and those the Palestine
Legislative Council has used, nor of
the much greater frequency of
elections for the Knesset. The Palestine
National Authority’s legislature, the
Palestine
Legislative
Council, has only had two
elections in the 27 years from 1996.
A third election, scheduled in 2021 - but to use
party-list PR only - was postponed
indefinitely. By contrast, Israel has had 9 general elections
in those 27 years. 1996: The first elections for
President of the Palestine National
Authority, and for its Legislative
Council, were in January 1996. At those
elections, its 88 seats were filled
from 16 multi-member electoral
districts with varying district magnitudes, as had been finally approved
by Yassar Arafat. Until these 1996
elections, he had been the de
facto President
of
the Palestine National Authority. A report on those 1996 elections by
observers from The Carter Center
- chaired by former U.S. President,
Jimmy Carter - is a good account of
many aspects of those elections. Those problems
of varying district
magnitudes; and widespread civil
disorder, illiteracy, and
substantial malapportionment greatly reduced the fairness
of the elections. The counting in
all electoral districts by a multiple plurality method added greatly to that
marked unfairness. Candidates of
the Fatah party, led by the popular
leader, Yassar Arafat, gained 30.9% of the vote, and 50 of the 88
seats. Fatah’s main rival, the Hamas
party, stood no candidates. The
other 38 seats were filled by
independent candidates. 2006: It is now seventeen
years since the second, and most
recent, general elections were held for the Palestine
Legislative Council, on 25 January
2006, ten years after the first such
elections. In
June
2005, the
Legislative Council changed the electoral
system to
provide for a parallel system, where half of the 132 seats
are filled by the same multiple
plurality system
used for the 1996 polls, and the
other half are filled by a closed
party-list system in a single
Palestine-wide electoral district. As Table 1
below shows, with the 2% exclusionary
threshold in
force, Hamas gained an absolute
majority of seats in the Palestine
Legislative Council, despite its
vote reaching only 44.5%. If the
previous electoral system, which was
entirely a winner-take-all system, had applied its
percentage of the seats could have
reached at least 68%.
*
Asterisk
denotes terrorist groups designated by the U.S. and E.U. Table 1: Palestine
Legislative Council’s 2006 Elections The Hamas
organization’s candidates gained less
than 50% of the vote for either half
of the 132 seats being filled in the
Palestine Legislative Council, whose
territory included the Gaza Strip. Hamas
nevertheless staged a coup in 2007,
which resulted in its becoming the de
facto government of
that densely-populated area abutting
Israel, and the sole body making
decisions on behalf of the Gaza
Strip’s population of over two
million people. Israel blames Hamas
for starting the current war.
The
Final Report by the JSCEM on the An Interim Report in June 2023
by the Federal Parliament’s Joint Standing
Committee on Electoral Matters was commented
on in QN2023C. Its Final
Report was issued
in November 2023. Its 21 Recommendations
began with 1 and 2 below. The other 19
were more detailed and technical. The
Report referred to proportional
representation in its Chapter
1. It was not
included in any of the Recommendations,
but Sections 1.7-1.11, 1.47-1.51, and
1.62-1.63 discussed it as a future option. Recommendation 1:
This was for the Government to seek a
further Inquiry on whether to increase the
number of House of Representatives members.
Table 1.2, which was attributed to Ben Raue
of The
Tally
Room website, helped justify
that. The Final Report’s Section
1.67 suggested
an increase to 175 or 200 MHRs, given the
need for a proportionate increase in the
number of senators. It said the Government
should seek a further Inquiry on the
options, and decide whether House
divisions should be multi-member with PR-STV
counting. Recommendation 2:
This was to increase the number of Territory senators
from 2 to 4. Sections 1.82 to 1.105 give
details. PRSA’s Submission No. 323: This was one of the 1,496
submissions received by the Committee.
A quotation from it was included in
Section 1.50 of the Final Report, which
read, ‘While
no inquiry Unfortunately, the JSCEM’s
Report did not mention other aspects of the
PRSA Submission, such as mandating Robson
Rotation, or
excluding any above-the-line voting provision. Coalition’s Dissenting
Report: The
JSCEM’s majority view is that of its Labor
majority. In Section 1.33,
the Coalition opposed having more MHRs. It
cited Labor’s lack of a mandate, and
concerns about the current cost of living
crisis. In Section 1.34, it opposed having
more Territory senators on grounds of
worsening malapportionment. Greens’ Comments: In Section 1.6, the Greens Party
said it wanted proportional
representation, but gave no indication of
any details of that. It made no mention of
the PRSA’s call for Robson Rotation, or
for excluding above-the-line
options. In Section 1.7, it sought an extra MHR for each of the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. Bill Hayden,
as Opposition Leader, sought
PR-STV for the House of
Representatives After the
death, at 90, on 21 October
2023, of the former
Governor-General, Hon. Bill Hayden AC, some PRSA members
might recall he succeeded
the Hon. Gough Whitlam AC QC in 1977 as
the Labor Leader, and as
Federal Opposition Leader. In 1981 Bill
Hayden publicly supported
the proposal in a discussion
paper by one of his shadow
ministers, Senator Hon. Arthur
Gietzelt, to replace
the single-member electorate
system for the House of
Representatives with a PR-STV
system. Senator
Gietzelt’s fine 1981 paper
is accessible at www.prsa.org.au/history.htm#CWTH_9_gietzelt. Aware of Bob
Hawke’s much greater public
profile and popularity, the
Labor Caucus elected him as
Opposition Leader in 1983 in
place of Mr Hayden. The
outcome of the imminent
general election due was
that Mr Hawke soon became
Prime Minister. The result was,
that rather than those
proposals for PR-STV being
introduced, the ensuing
electoral change did not
even include partial
optional preferential
Senate voting, as Gough Whitlam had sought in 1974
and again in 1975, but
failed owing to his
Government’s lack of
support in the Senate. The main change
that the new Hawke Labor
Government made was instead
the retrograde 1983 adoption
of Senate Group Voting
Tickets. The PRSA
opposed that
then, as can be seen by
its President’s
letter incorporated in Hansard. The change
persisted until it was
replaced in
2016, with a different
above-the-line
option, and partial
optional voting replacing
full preferential voting below-the-line.
New
Zealand's tenth MMP General Election The general election on Saturday,
14 October 2023, for New Zealand’s unicameral
Parliament, was the tenth election using its Mixed
Member
Proportional
electoral system. It replaced NZ’s former plurality
system in single-member districts, which was
last used for its 1993
elections, where the
National Party gained a one-seat majority
over all the other parties combined. At the elections in
2020, Labour
gained 50.01% of the party vote, which led
unusually to its winning Government alone
with 54.17% of the seats. In 2023, Labour’s party vote fell
very substantially from the 2020 result of
50.01% to just 26.9%, leaving its successful
candidates with only 27.9% of the 122 seats in
the House of Representatives. It could not
gain the support of enough other MHRs to
retain Government in the new Parliament. Instead, a coalition of
Nationals, ACT
(Association of Consumers and Taxpayers),
and New Zealand First was formed. The Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, then appointed as
Prime Minister the Nationals Leader, Rt.
Hon.
Christopher Luxon, and as Deputy Prime
Minister, the New Zealand First Leader, Rt. Hon. Winston Peters. The Coalition agreed that the ACT
Leader, Hon. David
Seymour, will
mid-way through the Parliament’s 3-year term
replace Mr Peters as the Deputy Prime
Minister. A similar arrangement for Eire’s 3-party coalition involved
a change of Prime Minister in mid-term,
which took place in
2022.
Table
2: Results of New Zealand’s 2023 General
Election The closest result for the
electoral district seats, which are each
filled by plurality counting, was for a Maori seat in
which the Te Pati Maori candidate beat the Labour incumbent by 42
votes. As for Israel and the PLC above,
a major weakness in New Zealand’s electoral
system is its failure, in either of MMP’s
hybrid parts, to provide for the single transferable vote to empower its voters.
UK
Labour's 2023 Annual Conference did not
adopt a PR policy for the Commons Trade union support is
growing in Britain for a policy for
proportional representation - not
necessarily PR-STV - for the House of
Commons. Such a policy would replace the
Labour Party’s long-standing acceptance of
the present election of MPs in single-member
electoral districts with plurality counting. Despite that growing
support, the 2023 Conference of
the British Labour Party did not appear to
adopt such a policy. Labour’s parliamentary Leader,
the Opposition Leader, Sir
Keir Starmer KCB KC, succeeded Jeremy
Corbyn in those positions in 2020. Mr
Corbyn now sits as an Independent MP. Sir
Keir has been reported as supporting the status quo, and
is said to have had a long-term view against
PR.
Dr Kevin Bonham
warns of an adverse move for
Tasmania's Hare-Clark system
A warning of a threat to
Tasmania’s Hare-Clark electoral system by a
bill from its House of Assembly had appeared
on the website of a leading
electoral commentator in that State, Dr
Kevin Bonham. It was accompanied with an
update to report that the threat had been
averted by an amendment carried in the
Legislative Council. That website article
gives details of that threat, and how its
formulation was said to be based on false
information about the ACT’s Hare-Clark
system that Tasmania’s then
Attorney-General, Ms Elise Archer MHA, had
apparently relied upon.
Tasmania: In the month
after a report in QN2023C on the
Tasmanian Premier’s concerns about his
former Attorney-General, Ms Elise Archer
MHA, she decided to resign from the House
of Assembly. The countback
to fill her seat decisively
elected Mr Simon Behrakis. He was one of the two
unelected Liberal candidates for the
division of Clark at the 2021 general
election that were not elected. The two
Liberals elected there in 2021 were women,
but the three unelected Liberals were men. The ACT: The sole Greens MLA for
Brindabella, 31-year-old Mr Johnathan Davis, resigned his Assembly seat
on 12 November 2023, after the Greens
Leader, Mr Shane Rattenbury, had told him
to stand down as an MLA, owing to
allegations of a sexual relationship with
a 17-year-old boy. PRSA
Office-bearers elected The unincorporated PRSA:
The Returning Officer for the
elections of PRSA National Office-bearers
- Mr Deane Crabb, of the PRSA’s South
Australia Branch - declared the candidates below elected unopposed
for the term 01 January 2024 to 31
December 2025: National
President:
Dr Jeremy Lawrence National
Vice-President: Mr
John Pyke National
Secretary:
Assoc. Prof. Stephen Morey National
Treasurer: Mr
Bruce
Errol PRSA Inc: Since
that declaration above, Proportional
Representation Society of Australia Inc.
has been established with a Constitution since approved by
Consumer Affairs Victoria. It provides
for a Society without State or Territory
Branches that is intended to supersede
the unincorporated PRSA. PRSA Inc. is
now governed by a Council of five
members elected by PRSA Inc’s members,
which then elects its four officers. In December 2023, the
newly-elected Council of PRSA Inc. elected
the candidates below unopposed for
the term 2023-24: National
President:
Dr
Jeremy Lawrence National
Vice-President:
Mr Geoffrey Goode OAM National
Secretary:
Assoc. Prof. Stephen Morey National
Treasurer:
Mr Bruce Errol John
Pyke, of Brisbane, who had served as the PRSA
Vice-President since 2008, did not stand
for election to the 2023-24 PRSA Inc.
Council, so he was therefore not
eligible to stand for any of the officer
positions. The five
members of the PRSA Inc. Council will
henceforth be elected by a postal ballot
of all PRSA Inc. members before the Annual
General Meeting in each even-numbered
year, and its four officers will be
elected at each new Council’s first
meeting after that Annual General Meeting.
ABN 31 010 090 247
A0048538N Victoria
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