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QUOTA Newsletter of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia QN2006A March
2006 www.prsa.org.au
Conservatives return to government in Canada Almost
thirteen years after the Campbell Progressive Conservative government was
reduced to just two MPs, a re-united right was led back
into minority government in Canada by Stephen Harper on the back of the AdScam scandal within the governing Liberal Party. For nearly ten years, the Liberals under
Jean Chrétien dominated the House of Commons because they swept most of Ambitious long-time Finance Minister Paul
Martin, credited with turning the economy around in the 90s, went to the
backbench before becoming Prime Minister in December 2003. His popularity
started extremely high, but in February 2004 the Auditor General reported
serious irregularities in a program set up to promote the federal government
in Quebec after a secession referendum there was narrowly lost in 1995. Martin called an early election in June
2004 before a united new Conservative Party could integrate two strands of
predecessor policies and ran a fairly effective scare campaign to finish with
135 seats out of 308 (44%: 36.7% of the votes), down 37 on their outcome in
2000. The Conservatives won 99 seats (32%: 29.6%), the single-province Bloc
Québécois 54 (18%: 12.4%) and the New Democratic Party (NDP) 19 (6%: 15.7%). The government’s first Budget survived only
on the casting vote of the Speaker after days of drama and agreement to $C4.6
billion of social spending to win NDP support. A key was the defection of Martin had wound up the promotional
activity in In early November, the interim Gomery Commission report
was released, highly critical of "a blatant abuse of public funds"
marked by "carelessness and incompetence” and “a culture of
entitlement". Financing rules for political parties had already been
changed to limit levels of personal donations and prohibit any by
corporations, and the Conservatives promised to go further, as well as to
prohibit former politicians, staffers and senior public servants from acting
as lobbyists for five years. Both the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois
quickly indicated that a no confidence vote was appropriate, and after being
turned down on health system matters, the NDP agreed to help bring an end to
the government. Following a vote of no confidence on 28 November, elections
were set for 23 January, the eight week campaign period punctuated by
Christmas one of the longest on record. After a founding policy conference in May,
the Conservatives put down a blueprint for government and developed momentum
with regular new policy announcements. They took the lead in polls late in the
year following reports of police investigating whether news about a
government backdown over unit trust taxation
matters was improperly leaked to the stock market, and the fatal shooting in The Liberals sought to limit likely losses
with advertisements again alleging an extreme social agenda of their
opponents. However, these were all released on the one day, and attention
focused on the most outlandish claim. On the other hand, the Conservatives
ran a disciplined campaign free of 2004’s single-issue outbursts by
individual candidates, but their support started to recede from 40% near the
end of the campaign. Overall the turnout was 64.9%, up four
percentage points on 2004, but ten below levels of the 70s and 80s. Just 0.6%
of votes were invalid. The Conservatives increased their vote nationally by
6.6% and won 25 more ridings than in 2004, but did not have a single MP
elected from the three largest cities of Although the advertising scandal revolved
around The Liberals lost nearly 5% support in The Conservatives dominated the prairie
provinces, winning all 28 seats in Alberta (including defeating the Deputy
Prime Minister) on 65% support, 12 of 14 in Saskatchewan on 49% support (the
Liberals gained a seat despite slipping 5% to fall behind overall NDP votes)
and 8 of 14 in Manitoba (43% support). They also again won most seats in
British Columbia where they have been a minor force in provincial politics,
17 of 36, down five even though their support rose slightly to 37%: the NDP
doubled its seats to ten on 2% extra support to nearly 29%, and the Liberals
fell 1% to 28% but picked up a ninth seat. On the other hand, Liberal percentage
support in the four Outgoing Prime Minister Martin announced
his immediate resignation as Liberal leader, and former Defence Minister Bill
Graham was elevated as a stop-gap for most of 2006, until a new leadership
(for which he would not be nominating) convention process could be finalised.
With much tighter limits on donations and personal expenditure, campaigning
for delegates was expected to be harder and quite a few prominent Liberals
quickly announced that they would not be candidates. Prime Minister Harper representing The following table summarises the
relationship between House of Commons votes (% in the first line) and initial
seats (number and % in the second line) by province in both 2006 and 2004.
Source:
Elections Under the current system, unbalanced
representation for the larger parties around the nation will continue to be a
serious obstacle to good government and any sense of national unity. Some of
the distortions would be worsened by preferential voting unless part of a
move to proportional representation. Prince Edward Island MMP plebiscite fails It has had first-past-the-post elections
since 1773, becoming unicameral with a dual assemblyman/councillor structure
in 1893 (a property franchise applied for the latter until 1965) until the
level of rural weighting (boundaries barely changed in 100 years) was struck
down as unconstitutional in 1993. Since 1994, it has had 27 Assembly
electorates with typically 3-4,000 enrolled voters in each. Turnouts above
80% are the norm. There has been a long history of unbalanced
parliaments with government alternating at intervals between the Liberals and
Progressive Conservatives. A small third party existed briefly towards the
end of World War II and for a few further years, and the New Democratic Party
has had limited support since the 1970s, including having one MP elected
briefly. The governing party’s support has usually been 50-60% but the vote
for both large parties was in the 40s when the Liberals lost office in 1996. Only four elections since 1900 have had
close outcomes. In the past sixty years, all but two have seen the opposition
presence reduced to around one-third or less. On four of the past five
occasions, that has been between one (1993 and 2000) and four (2003) MPs,
prompting a significant degree of persistent public disquiet. When the sole
opposition MP has been ill in sitting periods, at times the media have been
allowed to submit questions. In 2001, a Special Assembly Committee on
the Electoral Act asked the Electoral Commission to review systems of
proportional representation in use around the world. The Speaker received a
report in April 2002 outlining electoral arrangements in small jurisdictions
and focusing largely on list and mixed systems: the level of understanding of
the single transferable vote can be gauged from an assertion that it was in
use in France and an alleged detriment
that the vote is counted several times. The report outlined several
top-up options to limit imbalances between votes and seats and stated that
Prince Edward Islanders should be involved in the development of any new
arrangements. At the start of 2003, a retired Chief
Justice was appointed to head a Commission on Electoral Reform and reported
at year’s end after taking submissions and hearing evidence. While he thought
that a mixed member proportional (MMP) system had greatest chance of being
adopted as it involved less change than a quota-preferential approach, he
recommended that more public meetings be held and there be a process of
public education and debate. He presented four models for allocating list
seats in parallel with mainly single-member contests. Instead, at the end of 2004, the Assembly
called for an eight-person Commission on Prince Edward Island’s Electoral
Future (one from each of the registered parties and five from respondents to
newspaper advertising) to develop a public education program and a plebiscite
question on whether the current system was preferred to a mixed member
proportional alternative it was to specify. The system finalised in
mid-October for a plebiscite on 28 November 2005 involved the outcome in 17
single-member electorates being gradually tempered by applying a d’Hondt “highest average” province-wide allocation to
determine 10 additional seats from set party lists (see www.electionspei.ca/electoralfuture/finalreport.pdf) Premier Binns announced
the twin success hurdles of 60% of votes and majorities in at least 16
electorates in late October. Only one-fifth of the usual polling places would
be open and the previous list of voters would be set aside. As a result, the
customary information about where they could vote was not sent to individual
voters and they were required to answer five standard questions before
signing the poll book and being issued with a ballot paper. The turnout was around one-third and the
MMP option won just 36% public support, carrying only two electorates in the
capital Many voters were suspicious that they would
lose their current close links with local members and the parties would
control the additional list component. Nearly all Assembly members opposed
this change along with some party activists and former politicians. While the Premier, who had once expressed
sympathy for proportional representation, initially indicated the plebiscite
disposed of the matter comprehensively, the Opposition Leader reserved the
possibility of revisiting it. Expanding Vote-counting Role for PRSAV-T Since 1994, the PRSA’s Victoria-Tasmania
Branch has encouraged the use of the quota-preferential system of
proportional representation by offering a vote-counting service to
organisations that use, or wish to use, the Society’s PR counting rules, as
specified in the PRSA’s Proportional
Representation Manual. After instruction and testing, six of the
Branch’s members have become Accredited PR Vote-counting Officers and are
available to undertake PR counts. Their particulars as well as the conditions
applying to the Branch’s conduct of counts appear on the PRSA Web site
(follow links from www.prsa.org.au/software.htm). PR counts are undertaken either by
calculations on the paper form of the PRSA’s Quota-preferential Counting Sheet,
or using software that PRSAV-T possesses. Most clients prefer PRSAV-T’s
Vote-counting Officers to use the software, as the time taken, which is
largely for just data entry, is usually much less, and a prior estimate of
the time and cost is far more easily given. The use of the software alternative also
has the benefit of providing an electronic and printable record of the
preference order on each individual ballot. That record can be readily checked
against the ballot-papers by those conducting the scrutiny and others. PRSAV-T’s counting service has been used on
16 occasions since 1994, including in every year since 2000, by as diverse a range of organisations as the Australian
Conservation Foundation, The basic charge is presently a modest $40 per person hour. Separate surcharges of $10 per person
hour can apply if the written call for nominations, the printed ballot-papers
or the written notice of the poll result, posted to all members, do not all
clearly indicate the counting of the votes as being by the quota-preferential
method of proportional representation. Another such surcharge applies if the
detailed counting sheet of each scrutiny involved does not appear for at
least one month in a reasonably accessible place on the organisation's Web
site, headed by the name of the Society and with an interactive link to its Web
address. In both 2002 and 2004, Oxfam Book Review: Ever Yours, C.H. Spence This book, edited by Susan Magarey, is
reviewed here by the PRSA National Vice-President, Deane Crabb. It is
published by Wakefield Press, 392 pages, 2001, pp xv +256, ISBN 1 86254 656
8, $39.95, Hard Cover. Over the past couple of years, there has
been increasing interest in Catherine Helen Spence, perhaps one of the most
remarkable women to have lived in Miss Spence was a journalist, social
reformer and a novelist. In the vanguard of first-wave feminism seeking
equality of opportunity for women in Electoral reform was Miss Spence’s primary
political interest, and she campaigned tirelessly for proportional
representation (or “effective voting” as she preferred to call it) from 1859
to her death in 1910. In promoting electoral reform, she stood in the public
election for members of the 1897 Australasian Federal Convention, which was
established to frame the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, thus
becoming the first Australian woman to be a political candidate. This latest publication is a re-issue of Catherine Helen Spence An Autobiography
supplemented with extensive footnotes, together with Miss Spence’s diary for
1894 and some of her correspondence. Even for those that have previously read
Miss Spence’s autobiography, the additional footnotes add a new dimension
particularly on the people, places and issues she was so intimately involved
with. The footnotes were painstakingly prepared by Barbara Wall, who also
compiled the extensive bibliography of Catherine Spence (see the State
Library of From her late twenties, Miss Spence kept a
diary every year of her long life. It was thought that all of those diaries
had been destroyed but, miraculously, Susan Magarey has tracked down Miss
Spence’s diary for 1894, and for the first time this has been published. This was one of the more momentous years
for Miss Spence. She attended the Chicago World Fair in 1893, and stayed in
the She then travelled to A bonus is the inclusion of Miss Spence’s
letters to two of her many correspondents during the last ten years of her
life when, despite her advancing age, she still continued her campaign for
effective voting. Supporters of proportional representation
will be keen on this new book, but Miss Spence’s wide range of other
interests should ensure that all readers will find this detailed account of
the issues and the people in the nineteenth century to be most fascinating. © 2006 Proportional Representation Society of National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Cr. NARRABUNDAH 2604 National Secretary: Dr Stephen
Morey 4 Sims Street Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (03) 9598 1122 info@prsa.org.au Printed by Prestige Copying & Printing, 97 Pirie Street ADELAIDE SA 5000 |
