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QUOTA
QN2024D
December 2024
www.prsa.org.au
Queensland’s
2024 general election for
its Legislative Assembly
Following the general
election in Queensland
for its 93-member unicameral
parliament on 26 October 2024,
once again voters have a
parliament where most peple
are represented by an MLA they
didn't vote for. Defenders of ‘single-member
district’ electoral systems sometimes
point to the ‘two-party-preferred vote’
and suggest that the LNP with 54.1% of the
‘two-party-preferred vote’ should have a
majority. In the 2024 election, a majority
of Queenslanders did prefer an LNP
government to the ALP, which had governed
for nearly 10 years. However, especially
in Queensland with its unicameral
Parliament, voters are once again
presented with a situation where
legislation can be passed by a party that
received only a minority of votes.
Perhaps an even
greater problem with the single- member
electoral system is that there is no
diversity of representation for voters in
particular areas of the state. Consider
the region from Mackay to Rockhampton,
where five seats, Keppel, Mackay, Mirani,
Rockhampton and Whitsunday, were all won
by the LNP, but the total LNP vote share
in those five seats was 39.95%. Although
60% of voters in that region did not cast
ballots for the LNP, all their
‘representatives’ in Parliament are LNP. Contrast that with the situation in
South West Brisbane and Ipswich. There
Labor holds all seven seats: Algester,
Bundamba, Inala, Ipswich, Ipswich West,
Jordan and Logan, but its candidates won
just 43.9% of the votes in those seven
districts. Again, 56% of voters did not
vote for Labor candidates yet all are
‘represented’ by Labor MLAs only. The Society’s PR-STV
analysis of the election divided
Queensland into 15 regions, 6 in the
north and west each with 5 MLAs, and 9
in the South East each with 7 MLAs. That
was done in order to reach 93 MLAs,
which is the number of MLAs in the
current Legislative Assembly. See
hyperlinks to the full spreadsheet
containing all the details of the
analysis, and to notes
on it. Table 1 below shows a summary of
a likely result of a 2024 Queensland
election using PR-STV.
As shown, the main difference
between a PR-STV
result and the actual single-member result
is that the 18% of voters that supported
Greens and One Nation candidates would be
represented according to the levels of
their support, and LNP candidates would
not win a majority of seats in the
Assembly, since they failed to win a
majority of votes state-wide. Every one of the 15 proposed
regions would have elected both LNP and
Labor members to Parliament, and every one
of them would have elected at least one
MLA from a smaller party (Greens, One
Nation or Katter). If PR-STV
had applied at the Queensland election,
more that 80% of voters would now be
represented by an MLA from a party they
voted for. Every one of the 15 proposed
regions would have been a contest, with
the last one or two positions dependent on
preferences. Consider, for example, the
Gold Coast Region consisting of Burleigh,
Currumbin, Mermaid Beach, Mudgeeraba,
Scenic Rim, Southport and Surfers
Paradise. At present those seats are all
held by the LNP and it is one of the LNP’s
strongest areas of support in the State,
with 52% of the vote there.
Most
of Victoria’s 2024 municipal elections
used single-councillor wards, not the
former PR-STV As a result of Victoria’s Local Government Act
2020,
which was introduced by the Labor
Government’s then Minister for Local
Government, Hon. Adem Somyurek, all
metropolitan municipalities, except the City
of Melbourne, with multi-councillor
electoral districts - for which PR-STV
was
the
prescribed electoral system - were
required,
by 18 Orders-in-Council,
to be changed so they consisted entirely of
single-councillor wards. The previous elections had mostly
been held with multi-councillor electoral
districts, The results of the 2024 municipal
elections showed a decrease in the variety
and diversity of the interest groups
reflected.
Growing
dissatisfaction with
Melbourne
City Council's
GVT electoral system Disgruntled candidates,
and local citizens’
groups, are
calling for
reforms to the City of
Melbourne Act 2001, which prescribes the electoral
system for Melbourne City Council. That law imposes some
undesirable features for the MCC’s
elections that are not imposed on other
Victorian municipal elections, which are
governed by the Local
Government Act 2020. Those features include
ballot papers with both an above-the-line
option and a below-the-line
option. The above-the-line option
includes the notorious Group
Voting
Ticket contrivance, which began
with New South Wales Upper House
elections in 1978. That
contrivance has since been discontinued
for the great majority of PR-STV electoral
systems in Australia, but not yet for
Victoria’s Upper House or Melbourne City
Council elections.
Donald Trump received a minority
of the Various mainstream media reports have
quite incorrectly described the
President-elect of the United States, Donald
Trump, as having won the election in a
‘landslide’. He won only 49.83% of the popular
vote nation-wide, although that gave him
58.00% of the Electoral College vote. The Wikipedia
and the BBC
analyses of the popular vote shows that the
49.83% of the popular vote that Mr Trump’s
Electors gained was very close to reaching an
absolute majority. It would therefore seem
fairly likely, although not necessarily so,
that a direct election with transferable
voting would have resulted in enough
preference transfers to give him a distinct
absolute majority of the popular vote, as a
FairVote opinion poll
has suggested. PRSA
Inc’s 2024 Annual General Meeting, postal
ballot The Society’s 2024 AGM
was held online, as the Society had earlier in 2023
converted from its former structure of an
unincorporated body with Branches in certain
States and Territories to an association
incorporated in Victoria with an
Australia-wide membership. The Returning Officer’s
declaration of the election of the PRSA Inc.
Council was reported to the 2024 AGM. As there
were five candidates for the five Council
positions, Ms De Palma declared all five of
those; Bruce Errol, Geoffrey Goode, Travis
Jordan, Jeremy Lawrence, and Stephen Morey; to
have been elected to the 2024-26 Council, as a
ballot was not needed. At its first meeting after the
AGM, the Council elected each of the following
officers unopposed: President:
Dr Jeremy Lawrence Vice-President:
Geoffrey Goode Secretary:
Assoc. Professor Stephen Morey Treasurer:
Bruce Errol The
2024 general election in Eire
Lower House: A general
election for the Dail
Eireann, the Lower House of
the parliament of the Irish
Republic, was held on Friday, 29
November 2024, nearly four months
earlier than required. The Dail was
increased to consist of 174 MPs,
elected from a total of 43
multi-member electoral districts. The previous
Dail had consisted of 160
MPs, elected from 39 multi-member
electoral districts. Table 2 below
shows that the MPs in the new Dail
were 158 candidates elected from ten
different political parties, and
also 16 independent candidates. Table
2:
Comparison of percentages of votes
and seats won
A Government was formed by the two most
strongly-supported parties, Fianna
Fail and Fine Gael, forming a
coalition with several independents.
One of other of those two parties
had always governed Eire since its
formation, until they had to form a
coalition
with the Greens after the 2020
election.
What type of
electoral system might Syria The electoral system
for Syria’s parliament last used in
July
2024
resulted in Bashar al-Assad’s Ba’ath
Party winning 68% of the seats in
the ‘People’s Assembly’, but no
details of the votes cast are
available.
Since then, the toppling of his regime has led to an interim government that it is to be hoped will gain acceptance for a new constitution and electoral system. Unfortunately, that part of the world has few examples of the use and success of PR-STV, with the nearest example being that of Malta, which has specifed its use in its Constitution, and has used it continually, with striking success, since its adoption in 1921. An
Australian federal government could
use its influence to commend to
Syria the Australian Capital
Territory’s use of the Hare-Clark
system and its entrenchment of its
basic principles, much as the commendation
to the then Maltese government by a
former Governor of Tasmania, who had
been born in Malta, and had returned
to live there, helped raise the
long-term standing of PR-STV
there.
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