House of Representatives PR analysis 1998

Proportional representation analysis

1998 POLLS FOR THE 39TH AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Estimated no. of PR-STV (Hare-Clark) seats in possible multi-member divisions

www.prsa.org.au info@prsa.org.au Final AEC data, from www.aec.gov.au

Summary table: Click on this table, which shows that the percentage of single-member seats won by the parties of the incoming Liberal Party and National Party Coalition Government (54.0%) is well in excess of the percentage of first preference votes they received (39.5%). The table shows that this injustice would not have occurred if a Hare-Clark form of proportional representation had been used as the electoral system.

Under Hare-Clark the percentage of Coalition seats would have been 45.3%, which is much closer to the minority of votes they received than is the result under thedistorting single-member system. The simplest Hare-Clark outcome would be an ALP Government supported by the Australian Democrats, as those two parties would together have gained 51.3% of the seats.

With Hare-Clark casual vacancies filled by countback of general election ballot-papers, as in the Tasmanian and ACT Assemblies, the predictable party continuity usually lets Governments last full term, unless extraordinary circumstances arise.
Also under Hare-Clark at least 2.0% of MHRs would have represented one other distinct body of opinion, that 8.4% of voters that gave their first preference vote to the One Nation Party. The present system excludes that ONP minority entirely, yet awards the smaller 5.3% National Party minority vote 10.8% of the seats - not the fairer 6.1% that Hare-Clark would give.

With Hare-Clark casual vacancies filled by countback of general election ballot-papers, as for the Tasmanian and ACT Assemblies, the predictable party continuity lets Governments last full term.
Details of the 25 multi-member PR-STV districts: Click on details to see the PR-STV districts, the votes in each, and the seats that would be won with that arrangement, compared with the single-member seats actually won. The single-member system reveals that in 98 of the 148 single-member districts (66%) an absolute majority of voters cast their first preference vote for a candidate other than the candidate that was elected.

This election, like many under the single-member, winner-take-all system, shows that the diversity of views of the electorate would have been more faithfully represented, and less distorted, if a Hare-Clark multi-member PR electoral system had been used instead of single-member electoral districts. With Tasmania's Hare-Clark PR-STV, several candidates of a party have often collectively won an absolute majority of votes in one or more of that State's five multi-member districts, but only once under Hare-Clark has any single candidate for Tasmania's House of Assembly received an absolute majority of first preference votes (Douglas Lowe in 1979) .

That is because the diversity of candidates and their support has nearly always let voters express their diverse views with a real chance of their being represented. There is no restrictive "winner-take-all" scheme operating for the Lower House of either Tasmania or the Australian Capital Territory, as there is in all the other Lower Houses in Australia, which still continue to be elected from single-member electorates.

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