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Proportional
Representation analysis 2001
POLLS FOR THE 40TH AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES Estimated
No. of PR (Hare-Clark) Seats in possible
multi-member divisions Copyright
©
Proportional Representation Society of Australia
Inc. 2025 +61429176725 www.prsa.org.au
info@prsa.org.au
Final AEC data, from www.aec.gov.au |
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Summary
Table: Click on
this table,
which shows that the returned Liberal Party
and
National Party
Coalition Government gained only 43.01% of
first preference votes, yet they gained 54.67% of
the single-member seats. The table shows that this
unjust imbalance would not apply under a Hare-Clark
proportional representation electoral system, where
the outcome would be either a Liberal
and National
Party Government with the support of at least four
of the Independents, Greens
and Australian Democrats; or else an ALP
Government with the support of at least eleven of
the Independents,
Greens,
and Australian
Democrats. Graph: Click on
the graph
of the various parties' percentage of the vote,
which illustrates the statement above. 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 26 Multi-member PR Districts: Click on details to see
the PR 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 87 of the 150
single-member districts an absolute majority of
voters cast their first preference vote for a
candidate other than the candidate that was
elected.
This
election 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. The
analysis shows that the only parties to win an
absolute majority of votes in any of the 26
multi-member PR districts were the Liberal
Party in Nos. 2 and 16, and the ALP in
No. 9. No party won an absolute majority of votes in
the remaining 23 multi-member PR districts. Under
Hare-Clark PR in Tasmania a party has often won a
majority of votes in one or more of that State's
five multi-member districts, but only once has a
Tasmanian MHA (Douglas Lowe in 1979) received
an absolute majority of first preference votes,
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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