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QUOTA Newsletter
of the Proportional Representation Society of
Australia
QN2011A
March 2011
www.prsa.org.au
State
Elections in Victoria and NSW Australia’s
two largest States have held their quadrennial
general elections within the last six months. The
Legislative Council results in both States,
where quota-preferential proportional
representation applies, showed a close match
between the votes cast and the seats won. The
results for the Legislative Assemblies, where
MLAs are elected by winner-take-all contests
in single-member electoral districts, showed a
much poorer correspondence between votes and
seats when all parties are considered. In
each State, Liberal MLCs were an absolute
majority of the MLCs elected. That reflected a
widespread loss of support for Australian Labor Party MPs, most
strongly in NSW, after the ALP had held power
for more than a decade in each State. In
the November 2010 Assembly election
in Victoria, the common
“winner’s bonus” or “landslide” exaggeration
of seats for the group that gained
government surprisingly did not occur. The
effect is shown most easily by comparing the
figures achieved by the pair of parties, the
ALP and Greens, that
came closest to having the Coalition lack a
majority in each house. That pair’s results
were, in first preference votes:
As
the table shows, the Coalition’s main
opponents’ joint Legislative Assembly vote was
only 0.1 percentage point above their
Legislative Council vote. However, their seat
total (all won by the ALP) in the Legislative
Assembly was 1.4 percentage points above
that in the Council. Mostly losers do worse in
the non-PR Assembly. In
New South Wales, the elections
on 25 March 2011 resulted
in the more usual pattern in single-member
electorate systems. The incoming Coalition
Government in the Legislative Assembly
received some 74% of the seats for its 51%
of the votes state-wide. The outgoing ALP
Government received some 22% of the seats
for its 26% of the state vote. The
21 Legislative Council seats (half of
the full house of 42 MLCs) that were
subject to election - by the whole of New
South Wales voting as a single electoral
district - were in contrast filled very much
in proportion to the votes cast, as a result
of the proportional system used for that
house. The Coalition, together
with groups that would generally support it
over Labor and
the Greens, won an absolute majority of those
Upper House seats. With 19 seats overall, it
is in a good position to negotiate passage of
legislation through the Upper House, just as
its ALP predecessor did. Restoration
in District Magnitude for Tasmanian Assembly
has been deferred Tasmanian party
leaders have recognized that the 1998 experiment
that reduced the number of members to be
elected for each of the five electoral
districts for its House of Assembly from seven
MHAs to five has not been a success. The
Proportional Representation Society of
Australia supported a number of groups at the
time that campaigned against
the reduction, but a combination of both of
the largest political parties ensured that the
change did occur. In September
2010, the then ALP Premier, David Bartlett,
the Greens Leader, and the Liberal Opposition
Leader signed an agreement
that they would take to their respective party
rooms a recommendation to support a
restoration of the district magnitude to seven
MHAs per Assembly district. Shortly after
David Bartlett stepped aside as Premier and
was replaced by Lara Giddings, the need for
extensive public sector cuts was announced.
The Liberal party room then voted against
proceeding with the proposed restoration at
present even though that had been a campaign
platform. The next day,
the Premier announced that restoration was not
possible without tripartisan
support. The Mercury
regretted that, given the 12-year experience
with the smaller Assembly. The Greens still
support this overdue restoration. The question has also arisen of
what corresponding change, if any, should be
made to the size of the 15-member Legislative
Council. It had consisted of 19 members when
the Legislative Assembly last had a membership
of 35, in 1998. May 2011 Referendum could replace
UK's First-past-the-post with Preferential
Voting Legislation
this year by the UK’s Conservative-Liberal
Democrat Government requires a national
referendum to be held in the United Kingdom on
5 May 2011. The
legislation resulted in a compromise between
the policies of the two Coalition partners.
The larger partner, the Conservative Party,
favours the present system of election of
members of the House
of Commons in single-member
electoral districts with the result in each
being determined by first-past-the-post
counting. The smaller
Coalition partner, the Liberal
Democrats, favours introducing
multi-member electoral districts, with the
result in each being determined by
quota-preferential proportional representation
counting, known in the UK as the Single
Transferable Vote (STV). The Parliamentary
Voting System and Constituencies Act
2011 specifies that the
question to be asked is “At present, the UK uses the “first past
the post” system to elect MPs to the House
of Commons. Should the “alternative vote”
system be used instead?” The alternative vote
system is identical to the optional
preferential system used in NSW and
Queensland. The Act
requires the UK Electoral Commission
to provide explanatory material about the
question to be asked, and to encourage public
participation in the referendum. The Victoria-Tasmania
Branch of the PRSA has donated
£500 to each of the UK’s Electoral Reform
Society and Yes
to Fairer Votes! campaign, as the Branch
considers that an electorate’s familiarity
with preferential voting would be a major
asset if ever the UK has to choose between a
crude party list form of PR and the far
superior STV form. New
Zealand’s lack of experience with preferential
voting made it easier for groups that wanted
an end to ongoing first-past-the-post excesses
to pursue an unfortunate mixed member
proportional (MMP) hybrid
system instead of STV. Queensland
Local Government Electoral Inquiry The PRSA
made a written submission in
August 2010 to the Law, Justice
and Safety Committee of the Queensland
Parliament during its review
of election arrangements for all Queensland
councils except for Brisbane City Council,
after the Committee Secretariat drafted an
excellent issues paper. As the
Legislative Assembly motion that initiated the
review required an inquiry into electoral
systems, including proportional
representation, the submission gave examples
of low vote effectiveness under current
arrangements, and outlined how this could best
be rectified under systematic application of
voter-empowering principles and default
procedures for setting boundaries. PRSA
National President, Bogey Musidlak, gave teleconference evidence
to the Committee’s Public Hearing in Brisbane
that focused on arrangements around the
nation, boundary-setting and countback,
and mentioned postal packs of information
about to be dispatched in South Australia. Other
matters examined by the Committee and referred
to in the PRSA submission included the
existing provisions for the popular election
of mayors, which prohibit candidates standing
for positions of mayor and councillor
concurrently. The
PRSA pointed out the merits of Tasmania’s Local
Government Act 1993 in providing fairly
for such popular elections in conjunction with
the proportional representation polls that
apply for all Tasmanian councils. That Act
requires candidates for mayor (and deputy
mayor) to be an existing continuing
councillor, or be elected at the election in
question as a councillor, in order to be
eligible to be elected mayor (or deputy mayor
as the case may be). Despite
evident problems and PR now being the major
system used for municipal elections in most
Australian states, the final report of the
Committee stuck fairly closely to the status
quo, and did not recommend any
introduction of proportional representation
for Queensland local government. The Queensland Government’s
response on 28 February 2011
did not give reformers early cause for
optimism. First PRSA Honorary Life
Members Three PRSA
members were admitted as the first ever Honorary Life Members
of the PRSA earlier this year. Each of those
members had become eligible by having first
been admitted as an Honorary Life Member of a
PRSA branch. The
longest-standing of those members was Mr
Edward Goode, who designed the PRSA logo, and
in many earlier decades worked actively to
spread the PR message. Hon. Neil Robson
AM, whose health unfortunately worsened
earlier this year, is well known in electoral
circles and for his instigation of the Robson Rotation
system used in Hare-Clark elections in
Tasmania and the ACT. The
immediate past Treasurer of Victoria, Mr John
Lenders MLC, was admitted as a PRSA Honorary
Life Member for his fine work in championing
the introduction
and legislative entrenchment of PR for
Victoria’s Legislative Council. © 2011 Proportional Representation Society of Australia National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Cr. NARRABUNDAH ACT 2604 National Secretary: Dr Stephen Morey 4 Sims Street SANDRINGHAM VIC 3191 Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (03) 9598 1122, 04291 76725 quota@prsa.org.au |
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