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PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF
AUSTRALIA |
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Tel + 61429176725 |
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BEAUMARIS VIC 3193 |
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20th December 2008 |
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CLICK HERE FOR AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS PAGE
ON OUR NEW WEBSITE
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SOCIETY AND ITS PURPOSE |
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INTRODUCTION: The movement
in Australia began; most strongly in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria;
in the late 1800s, which was the era when the Australian colonies one-by-one
finally abolished the hustings
(the first was South Australia in 1856
and the last was Western Australia in 1895). Vote counting in public elections
then, and up till 1919, was, except for Where there was plurality counting with more
than one vacancy per electoral district, plumping (not voting for
all vacancies), allowed, in a haphazard way, some minority voice, as it still
does in many of the electorates of the world's oldest continuously operating
legislative assembly, the House of Keys on
the Isle of Man. Plumping was, however, often arbitrarily
prohibited in Australian electoral systems, and it was not allowed at pre-1919
Senate elections. Hoag & Hallett's classic 1926 U.S. book "Proportional Representation" has a good account
of the foundation of early PR history in Australia.
The earliest precursor date mentioned is the year
after Governor Phillip's landing at Sydney Cove. See electoral system categories,
and a summary of current systems for public elections in Australia. Australia's electoral history has been generally
progressive despite regressive tendencies in ballot-paper design.
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UNITED KINGDOM : Our fellow society in the UK, under its original name of the
Proportional Representation Society of Great Britain and Ireland, was founded in 1884. It promoted the ideas of John Stuart Mill,
and of Thomas Wright Hill, whose "schoolboy
election" in the 1820s is a classic simple demonstration of
the principles of the Single Transferable Vote or quota-preferential
proportional representation, as it is known in Australia to
distinguish it from Australia's use of STV with majority-preferential
counting, in both single-member districts, and also multi-member districts as
unfortunately used for the Senate from 1919-46, and for a few years after the
Liberal Party Government of Victoria revived it in the early 1990s for
municipal elections. The
PRSGB&I was the first society in the world that promoted the earliest
forms of the quota-preferential system of proportional representation
allowing direct election of individual candidates, which does not
take place under the inferior proportional systems known as party list
systems, which have become the predominant electoral systems for lower houses
in continental Europe. The first two words in its title changed to 'Electoral Reform'
in 1958. It published its history 'The Best System' [1], in 1984.
Its distinguished presidents have included the fourth and the fifth Earls
Grey (see its 1922 Council), and in the
1980s the Hon. Dr Garret FitzGerald while Prime Minister of Eire. Its
president was, until his death in October 2004, Professor the Earl Russell,
a great grandson of the former Whig Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, whose 1832 Reform Bill set the foundation for representation of the
general public in the House of Commons and, by example, in other parliaments
in the then British Empire. It influenced the founding of Australian PR societies and helped them by sending its Secretary, John Humphreys, to Tasmania during World War I where his evidence [1] to a Select Committee of Tasmania's Parliament helped defeat a proposed change from the Hare-Clark system of quota-preferential proportional representation to a party list system, and also led to Tasmania's Electoral Act 1918, which prescribed countback - the filling of casual vacancies in the House of Assembly by the Electoral Office by re-examination of the ballot-papers that formed the vacating member's quota. It ensures that all MPs are directly elected. In 1948 the PRSGB&I advised Australia 's Attorney-General on his Bill for proportional representation for elections for the Australian Senate, which began the Senate's still-prevailing PR system. The ERS works for, as does the PRSA, quota-preferential PR, which they call the Single Transferable Vote. STV now applies in Northern Ireland for its Assembly and for elections to the European Parliament, although sadly, despite strong opposition in the House of Lords, elections in the rest of the United Kingdom to the European Parliament are by a closed party list system. In the mid-1980s, the UK's Social Democrat Party produced an inspirational 10-minute VHS video of John Cleese advocating proportional representation for electing the House of Commons. |
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United Kingdom Local Government: From the first establishment of local government in England, when William the Conqueror granted a charter to the City of London in 1067 until the passage of the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which introduced widespread election by ratepayers, English municipal councils were not elected by the citizens, but were self-perpetuating oligarchies with vacancies filled by the council itself. Quota-preferential PR is still not used for used for local government elections in England , but is used in Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, and is being considered for Scotland and Wales. |
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SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Catherine Helen Spence's 1861 booklet, 'A Plea for Pure Democracy' [2] helped the early formation of a proportional representation group called the 'Effective Voting League of South Australia'. Miss Spence was the first female candidate at a public election in the then British Empire when she stood unsuccessfully at the 1897 election (under the unfair first-past-the-post multiple vote) for the 1897Australasian Federal Convention. |
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A statue in Light
Square in Adelaide, unveiled on 10th March 1986 by Her Majesty the Queen,
commemorates Miss Spence. The PRSA later launched its
reprint of her booklet there. She is remembered by her Autobiography,
and was depicted on the Australian $5 banknote
issued for the Centenary of Federation, in 2001. The PRSA's
SA Branch (the Electoral Reform Society of South Australia)
influenced the replacement of the first party list system
used, briefly, for Australian parliamentary elections, introduced by the
Dunstan Labor Government in 1973, by direct election
using the present quota-preferential form of proportional representation that
the SA Electoral Act 1985
prescribes for elections for SA's Legislative Council. The SA Constitution Act 1934
requires a referendum before either House can be abolished, but it does not
specify or entrench the electoral system, and that oversight should be
remedied. South Australian
Local Government: Catherine Spence
recorded, in Chapter III of her Autobiography, her witnessing, by an early form of PR in
1840, Adelaide City Council's
first election, as her father was the Town Clerk. It was the world's first public election conducted by PR,
and Australia 's first public election, and was preceded by the enactment,
for the first time in the world, of a law for a PR electoral system, a South
Australian Act entitled an Act to Institute a Municipal Corporation for the City of Adelaide. That Act resulted from a recommendation in the
Third Annual Report of the
Colonization Commissioners for South Australia, 1839 that the election of the soon-to-be-created Adelaide City
Council should be by a proportional electoral system. That report was signed
by all nine commissioners, but was almost certainly drafted by the Secretary
of the Commission, Rowland Hill. The PRSA's SA Branch successfully helped persuade the Olsen Liberal Government when it enacted the Local Government (Elections) Act 1999 to make quota-preferential proportional representation the only electoral system to be used in multi-member elections for local government in South Australia. Unfortunately municipalities can be divided into single-member and two-member wards, as in Victoria, and there is no prohibition of an even number of councillors per ward. Two-member wards are rather common, although Adelaide and various rural councils are not divided into wards. Casual vacancies are filled by-election polls (not countback). The same faulty unweighted inclusive Gregory transfer method used for transferring votes, by averaging, as is used in Senate scrutinies, applies. With partial optional preferential voting applying, voters must mark, for a valid vote, as many preferences as there are vacancies - it is optional after that number. General elections are held every four years, with polls being conducted by postal ballot. |
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TASMANIA: Tasmania's Attorney-General, in the 1890s, Hon. Andrew Inglis Clark, who sat on the four-member committee of the 1891 National Australasian Convention (see P. 588 of debates) [3] that, on the S.S. Lucinda, drafted a Bill to Constitute the Commonwealth of Australia, which was adopted by that Convention, spoke about proportional representation (PR) then. Mr Clark did not stand for election to the 1897 Australasian Federal Convention, but a Tasmanian Delegate, Matthew Clarke MHA, spoke there there in support of the Hare system, which Tasmania's Hare-Clark electoral system is based on. Tasmanian PRSA members are members of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia (Victoria-Tasmania) Inc. |
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Start of Hare-Clark:
Andrew Clark achieved legislation for PR elections, with
Hare-Clark's Single Transferable Vote, for part of Tasmania 's House
of Assembly in 1896. Under the Electoral Act
1907 (7 Edw. VI No. 6), Tasmania became
Australia 's first parliament to use quota-preferential proportional
representation to fill all seats in one of its houses, and it has used it continuously since then.
See the official report of the first state-wide Hare-Clark election in 1909.
That Act also substituted majority-preferential voting for the first-past-the-post
voting used until then for the single-member electorates that have always
been used for the Legislative Council. Tasmania thus also has the longest
record, among Australian parliaments, of continuous use of preferential
voting in single-member electorates. Tasmania's Liberal Government in 1985
enacted the first consolidation of Tasmania 's electoral laws since the Electoral
Act 1907 in the Electoral Act 1985 (No. 46 of 1985) with unanimous
parliamentary support. That Act has now been replaced, again with unanimous
support, by the Electoral Act 2004
(No. 51 of 2004). The Act is administered by the Tasmanian Electoral Commission. Section 231
specifies countback. Countback, and the Defence and Spread of Hare-Clark:
Hare-Clark, improved by countback in 1918, for the filling
of casual vacancies, after the evidence given by John Humphreys in
successfully opposing a retrograde Labor Party proposal to replace Hare-Clark
with a party list
system, (see "UNITED KINGDOM" section above), is
Australia's longest-established electoral system. Hare-Clark so
impressed Sir Gerald (later Lord)
Strickland, Governor of Tasmania from 1904-09, that he later, as
Prime Minister of Malta from 1927-34, successfully promoted it for the
election of Malta's MPs. Tasmania, unlike Malta [66(2)], Eire (Article 16.2),
and the A.C.T, has
unfortunately not yet protected its PR system by constitutional entrenchment. Recognizing that Number of Vacancies to Fill Should be an Odd Number: In 1958, a Tasmanian political scientist, Dr George Howatt, wrote his classic PR paper "Democratic Representation under the Hare-Clark System - The Need for Seven-Member Electorates", which the Government tabled in the House of Assembly in support of its Bill that succeeded in correcting the flaw in the original Hare-Clark system of having an even number of seats per electorate, rather than an uneven number, to ensure a majority outcome in any electorate where a party gained a majority vote, by changing the number of MHAs per electorate from the original number, six, to the recommended uneven number, seven. Avoiding Regimentation of Voters: Dr Howatt's 1979 report, similarly tabled, "Voting - By Party Direction or Free Choice" was another PR classic. Fortunately, Tasmania's Parliament heeded its warning against the regimented ballot-paper style that has developed for Senate elections. Tasmania has never had that legislatively-enabled regimentation, and the results of its freedom from that imposition can be seen by comparing the relatively even concentration of first preference votes on individual candidates in Tasmania's Hare-Clark with the stage-managed skewed concentration on a tiny few evident with Senate outcomes. Tasmania 's unskewed spread ensures that the larger parties do not unfairly reduce their own electoral prospects, as can be seen for elections, like those for each of Australia 's six mainland Upper Houses, where Group Voting Tickets facilitate voters' regimentation. Unlike the Senate system, Tasmanian Hare-Clark has never required voters to mark more preferences than the number of vacancies and, as Dame Enid Lyons pointed out in the 1948 debates on PR for the Senate, that has not resulted in a high or unacceptable incidence of exhausted votes. Group Voting Tickets were introduced for Senate elections ostensibly to reduce the incidence of exhausted votes, but a much more reasonable way to reduce them would be to adopt partial optional preferential voting as Tasmania 's record shows. Tasmania has avoided adopting the Group Voting Tickets that are now used for elections to the Senate, and the SA, NSW, and WA Legislative Councils. That system has managed to persuade a large majority of voters for those houses to take the relatively easy course of abandoning individual consideration of the relative merits of a party's candidates, and instead accepting the preference order for their party's candidates, and all other candidates, decided by their party, which is generally not made very evident to voters, and register an above-the-line vote. Robson Rotation: A key part of Tasmania's Electoral Act 2004, Robson Rotation, is specified in Sections 97 and 98 and Schedule 3. It requires ballot-papers to be printed in different batches, of equal size, so that candidates' names have an equal incidence of appearance in prescribed positions down the columns. Applying also to polls in the single-member Upper House electorates, it disarms organized 'tickets', and neutralizes the unintended effects of 'donkey voting'. Former Tasmanian MHA, Hon. Neil Robson, now a PRSA Honorary Life Member, initiated it in 1979. The 1992 Tasmanian book "Hare-Clark in Tasmania", by Terry Newman, describes Robson Rotation well. Prior to the 1976 Assembly election, the order of candidates' surnames in party columns on the ballot-paper was alphabetical. Tasmania's high incidence of MPs with surnames like Abbott, Adams, Agnew, Amos, Anderson, Batt etc. had started to remind Tasmanians of the ALP's notorious four A's ploy in the 1937 Senate election in NSW, which led to the Menzies Government in 1940 introducing the present listing of Senate candidates' names by mutual consent (effectively by party decision). Tasmania's first change from an alphabetical list of candidates' names in the party columns was fortunately not to adopt that party machine concession, but rather to make the order set by lot, but that was in force for the 1976 and 1979 elections only, as circumstances resulted in the adoption of Robson Rotation in 1979. Unlike the mainland States, where electors in State lower house elections had only one candidate from each party to choose from, the existence of multi-member electorates, with casual vacancies filled by countback since 1918, meant that parties normally stood more candidates than the number of seats they expected to win, thus giving Tasmania's voters a wide choice of candidates within each party. How-to-vote cards listing a party's candidates in a particular recommended order were not used in Tasmanian Assembly elections, and moves to introduce them were nullified by the introduction of Robson Rotation. Constitutional Entrenchment by Referendum Needed: Tasmania's Constitution Act 1934 does not prescribe a method for counting votes, or require a referendum or special majority to alter it, or the electoral system; or even to abolish either House. Hare-Clark, although very popular, could be abolished by ordinary legislation. Tasmania 's Constitution Act 1934 ought to specify key Hare-Clark features and entrench them, so that they can only be removed after a referendum. |
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Tasmanian Local Government: The Groom Liberal Government's Local Government Act 1993 introduced Hare-Clark proportional representation (Section 299) for all Tasmanian municipalities (PR had previously applied just to Hobart City Council), with Section 25 invoking Schedule 3, which specifies the number of councillors in each municipality, and the number of subdivisions in each municipality if there are to be any (Schedule 3 has to date shown no municipalities as being subdivided, but its details may be varied by the Governor on the Minister's recommendation), and with vacancies filled (Section 307), Assembly-style, by countback, for all municipal polls. The Act provided that councillors' terms be for four years, with the term of as near to practicable half the councillors ending every two years. Partial optional preferential voting applies. As a result of requests from MHAs that had been municipal councillors, ballot-papers for election of councillors have, since 2002, been required to be printed using Robson Rotation by Section 288(2) of the Act, which refers to a prescribed order, and that appears in Schedule 1 of the Local Government (General) Regulations 2005. |
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VICTORIA: As named on an early letterhead, the Proportional Representation League of Victoria's Secretary, from the late 1800s, was Edward Nanson, Mathematics Professor at the University of Melbourne from 1875 to 1922. He persuaded the university to adopt PR, but unfortunately the University now uses it only for elections to its Committee of Convocation. Also named is a President of that league, Sir James Barrett, who was Vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 1931-34 and Chancellor from 1934-39. The League's successor, in 1943, was the Proportional Representation Society of Victoria [renamed Proportional Representation Society of Australia (Victoria-Tasmania) in 2000, and incorporated as Proportional Representation Society of Australia (Victoria-Tasmania) Inc. in 2006]. It has successfully promoted proportional representation for elections for the Australian Conservation Foundation, National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, ALP Victorian Branch and other bodies. See details here of some of PRSAV-T Inc's present and former members, and here for some AGM Guest Speakers. |
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150 Years of Winner-take-all
Periodic Upper House Polls Ended in 2006:
That first general election was counted by a multiple,
or bloc, first-past-the-post method, with subsequent elections being the filling
of single vacancies by a first-past-the-post (plurality) method until that was changed to a preferential method in
1921. Victoria 's was the last Australian bicameral parliament to have
neither House elected by proportional representation. The ornate Legislative Council chamber
was used by the Senate from 1901 until the Federal Parliament
was relocated to Canberra in 1927. Efforts for
Hare-Clark in Victoria: The PRSAV held a public meeting in 1999 to
draw attention to the Victorian Government's plan to apply PR to Upper House
polls. The Constitution (Proportional Representation) Bill 2000 was
improved after countback amendments by Independent Gippsland East
MLA, Craig Ingram, were accepted by the Bracks ALP Government, but it still
lacked proper Hare-Clark features such as Robson Rotation and
absence of Group Voting Tickets. That apparent acceptance of countback
then appeared to be a deceptive feint, as the eventual amendment of the Constitution Act 1975
now in force provides, in its Section 27A, for
filling of casual vacancies by a joint sitting of the Parliament by a
candidate that is a member of the vacating member's party. Except for special
provisions for replacing independent MLCs, if any ever get elected, that
effectively amounts to party appointment, as that party can expel any of its
members that would accept such an appointment without the party's approval or
effective nomination. Victoria's
Constitutional Commission: The PRSAV-T made a submission to the
Constitution Commission of Victoria set up to report on the Bill. In 2001 the
PRSAV-T brought Hon. Neil Robson, a former Tasmanian minister administering
Tasmania's Electoral Act, and also the instigator of Tasmania's
excellent Robson Rotation system, to Melbourne for
a meeting the three Commissioners agreed to have with him,
and for a public meeting. Section 11 of the
Commission's Report foreshadowed future benefit in instituting
Robson Rotation for Legislative Council elections and also for dispensing
with above-the-line voting. In 2002 the Bracks ALP Government
constructively transferred legislative detail on its electoral systems from
the obscurely-named The Constitution Act Amendment Act 1958 to the new
Electoral Act 2002. Institution
of PR for the Legislative Council: Proclamation of the Royal
Assent to the Constitution (Parliamentary
Reform) Act 2003, which enabled alteration of Victoria's Constitution Act 1975
and its Electoral Act 2002
to require quota-preferential proportional representation elections for
the Legislative Council, appeared in Special Government Gazette
S57 of 8th April 2003. Victoria 's PR system has impressively
reversed a retrograde trend in Australia, which the Commonwealth began
in 1919, to move towards a requirement that a preference must be indicated
for every candidate in a multi-member electorate in order for a vote to be
deemed valid. Tasmania's Hare-Clark system has always had partial optional
preferential voting. On the day the Legislative Assembly that was elected in
2002 was dissolved, Part 3 of Division 2 of the Constitution (Parliamentary
Reform) Act 2003 became operative and implemented other
provisions needed for the change to PR that also became operative then and
have amended the Constitution Act 1975 and the Electoral Act 2002 to
institute PR for the Legislative Council. Section 36 of the Constitution (Parliamentary
Reform) Act 2003, on that day, operated to insert a Section
93A into the Electoral Act 2002,
which reversed that trend, and cause Victoria's rule on below-the-line
voting to differ markedly from the Senate below-the-line rule, by
deeming a ballot-paper to be valid provided that the number of preferences
indicated is at least equal to the number of candidates to be elected.
Likewise, Section 42 of the Constitution (Parliamentary
Reform) Act 2003, on that day, operated to insert a Schedule 1A
into the Electoral Act 2002,
which provides for the new form of ballot-paper and introduces, in its Section 74(3B)(b),
a novel aspect to the Legislative Council ballot-papers that was specifically
recommended by the Constitution Commission above, viz. the printing, to the
right of each candidate's name on the ballot-paper, after the name of that
candidate's party (if any) the name of the suburb or locality at which that
candidate is enrolled. The PRSAV-T wrote to all MLAs and MLCs advocating countback,
Robson
Rotation, and the omission of the unfortunate Group Voting Tickets
provision, but those aspects did not form part of the Act. The Upper House
Opposition Leader acknowledged the PRSAV-T's advocacy in his speech (Hansard Page
437) in the House. The only entrenchment for the PR system to
be implemented in 2006 will be the requirement that an absolute majority of
both houses approve any change. Other PRSAV-T Inc. Work: Evidence of PRSA
permission to incorporate the Rules for
conducting elections by the quota-preferential method from the Society's PR
Manual in Schedule 1 of the Health Services (Community Health Centre
Elections ) Regulations 2001 appeared as Endnote 1 to those
regulations, until those PRSA rules were superseded by a reference
to the proportional representation rules in Victoria's Local Government
Act 1989. The PRSAV-T Inc. provides a vote-counting service for organizations, which particularly assists those that conduct proportional representation polls. |
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Victoria 's Local Government: As proportional representation elections had not been prescribed for public elections in Victoria at the time, the forerunners of the Victorian Electoral Commission had no experience with counting quota-preferential proportional representation elections then, so the PRSA’s Victorian Branch assisted the officials counting Victoria 's fortuitous (no explicit statute) first PR municipal elections for the then City of Richmond in 1988. When the ALP Government introduced the consolidated Local Government Act 1989, it continued the traditional 3-year term for all councillors, but added the option of triennial general elections to the only option that had previously existed in Victoria , which was periodic elections, where the longest-serving third of the councillors retired annually. Unfortunately, owing to Coalition amendment in the Legislative Council, the ALPs PR option was omitted, so where a municipality used the general election model, with all three seats in each ward being filled as a group, they were filled by the winner-take-all multiple majority-preferential method that had previously been used only by certain municipalities that had chosen not to be divided into wards. That method had been discredited and superseded for Senate elections in 1948 by quota-preferential proportional representation. The method still applies in some municipal elections in the Northern Territory. Victorian Liberal MPs have been slower to support PR than their counterparts in other States and the ACT, but in 1995 the Kennett Liberal Government amended the Local Government Act 1989 to prescribe quota-preferential PR election at large for 5 of the 9 seats on Melbourne City Council, which were filled in 1996. PR in the City of Melbourne has since regressed, as the Bracks Labor Government introduced Senate-style Group Voting Tickets there, although PR casual vacancies are now filled by countback. The Minister for Local Government was empowered to apply the Melbourne model, or PR for all vacancies, to any other Council. For a time that model was used for the Greater Geelong and Nillumbik Councils. The PRSAV-T wrote to all of Victoria's Councils in 2003 advocating Hare-Clark features for the PR system that is now mandatory for all multi-vacancy polls, as, by the Local Government (Democratic Reform) Act 2003, the Bracks Labor Government amended the Local Government Act 1989 resulting in its Section 42, which invokes Schedule 3, Part 4A of which provides, for any poll where more than one councillor is to be elected for a ward or electorate, that quota-preferential proportional representation shall apply, thus completely discontinuing the previous multiple majority-preferential method (identical to the 1919-46 Senate system), which had lingered until its last use at the 2000 municipal elections. See the example of the 2000 Strathbogie Shire elections, where the candidate with the second highest number of first preference votes was not one of the five candidates elected, but where the candidate with the fewest first preference votes - who would have lost his deposit for failing to obtain at least 4% of first preference votes had he not been elected - was the last candidate elected from the nine standing. Unfortunately since then, elections in that municipality have been held in single-councillor wards only, so the benefits of PR have not yet reached it. Section 37A of that Act invokes Schedule 3A, under which countback is to be used to fill casual vacancies following PR polls. The Kennett Government amended Victoria's Local Government Act 1989 in 1997 to allow single-councilllor wards, not just for all of a municipality's wards, but even for just some of them. Single-councillor wards, which can only give winner-take-all results, have never applied in any other Australian jurisdiction, or even in Victoria until then. Their use in a given municipality is now decided by an utterly ad hoc and rather opaque periodic Representation Review conducted under Sections 219A-219G of the Local Government Act 1989, and requires formal ratification by the Minister for Local Government before it can take effect, but a system like the NSW Constitutional Referendum would be much sounder. The Act regrettably does not require such elementary conditions for electoral parity as each ward being required to have an odd number of councillors, and each ward being required to have the same number of councillors. The PRSAV-T Inc. has made submissions to most of those reviews. Of Victoria 's 79 councils, 18 still have winner-take-all single-councillor wards only, but 40 councils (51%) now use PR in all polls, and the remaining 21 councils have some PR wards. It would be far sounder if a system, for each municipality, of multi-councillor electoral districts, each with an uneven number of councillors and the same number of councillors per electoral district (for parity of the quota throughout the municipality), were made standard, without the implausible hotchpotch of inequitable, confusing and shifting arrangements for municipal elections that are now allowed. A PRSAV-T submission supported a draft of what are now Victoria ’s Local Government (Electoral) Regulations 2005 which, had it been adopted, would have discontinued the circulation, with postal ballot-papers, of indications of candidates’ preferences. That circulation, at public expense, encourages in Victoria’s municipal elections a confusing proliferation of 'dummy candidates', who are people nominated simply to appeal to groups of uninformed voters, so that their ballots are then transferred to the intended principal beneficiaries. That tactic is far less profitable in PR polls, as papers are first transferred for surpluses of elected candidates, who are generally the highest-polling candidates, whereas if only a single position is being filled, all transfers are from the lowest-polling candidates. Victoria lacks even partial optional preferential voting as Section 20 of those Regulations requires that ballot-papers are not valid unless all consecutive preferences, or all but the last such preferences, are marked. The City of Melbourne Act 2001 for the City of Melbourne regrettably provides for indirect election of the Lord Mayor and of the Deputy Lord Mayor, and segregates candidates for that election from those standing for the remaining Council positions, which are filled with the undesirable Group Voting Ticket system. See the PRSAV-T Inc. submission to a 2007 Elections Process Forum. |
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NEW SOUTH WALES : A New South Wales Proportional Representation Society began in 1913. Proportional Representation, promoted by that forerunner of the present NSW Branch of the PRSA, was used for Legislative Assembly polls in 1920 (won by Labor), 1922 (won by a non-Labor Coalition), and 1925 (won by Labor). The first Lang Labor Government repealed the proportional representation provisions in its first term (1925-27), but lost the ensuing 1927 election, which was held on the system of single-member electorates with preferential voting that it had restored. Criticisms of that proportional representation system included its lack of satisfactory provision such as countback for filling casual vacancies, and a high percentage of exhausted votes attributed to the fully optional marking of preferences. |
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Legislative Council of NSW: The first NSW Legislative Council had all of its members appointed by the Governor-in-Council. It became part of a bicameral NSW Parliament, from 1856 to 1933, which was reconstituted, by a 1933 referendum, to be indirectly elected by an electoral college of MPs, whereby the third of that Council's seats that became vacant at each Assembly election were elected by PR by an electoral college of all MLAs and the continuing MLCs. The Heffron ALP Government's proposed abolition of the Legislative Council, and proposed prohibition of its restoration, was soundly defeated at a 1961 referendum. The PRSA's NSW Branch influenced the Wran Government away from [4] a party list system of PR towards the present direct election by a quota-preferential system (albeit marred by the imposition of a Group Voting Tickets provision) when that Government introduced a Bill for direct popular voting for the Legislative Council, which was approved at a 1978 referendum. The NSW Parliamentary Elections and Electorates Act 1912 governs NSW State elections. The NSW Constitution Act 1902 entrenches a referendum requirement before a bill or bills that the Legislative Council fails to pass can, notwithstanding such a failure to pass the bill or bills, become law; and also before prescribed changes to either or both of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly, including abolition, can become law. Other PRSA( NSW) Work: Since 1984, the Branch has assisted in the incorporation of quota-preferential PR (the Single Transferable Vote) in Schedule 2 to the Constitution of the University of Sydney Students' Representative Council. As a result of the Branch's advice a By-law of Macquarie University (See Clause 9(7) of Schedule 1 of By-law 2005 of Macquarie University) specifies the use of the Society's PR Manual for PR elections to the Council of that University. PRSA(NSW) Vice-Presidents, Andrew Gunter and Ed Haber, were 2 of the 20 elected for NSW at a national PR poll, to Australia's 1998 Constitutional Convention, and raised proportional representation as an issue of importance for inclusion in the Australian Constitution at that forum. |
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New South Wales Local Government: In 1928 the Council of the then City of Armidale in north-eastern NSW became the first municipal council in NSW to be elected by quota-preferential proportional representation as a result of a local referendum to adopt it. What is now the PRSA's NSW Branch helped NSW to become the first State in Australia to have PR as its predominant electoral system for Local Government, which the Cahill ALP Government began in 1953. PR is now enacted in the Local Government Act 1993, except that the Askin Liberal Government reverted to a "winner-take-all" system in 1968, but PR was restored by the Wran ALP Government in 1976. The system, set out in NSW Local Government (Elections) Regulation 1998, Schedule 2, is primitive compared with PR systems used in other States, in that it uses surplus transfer by random selection instead of the Gregory fractional transfer used in Tasmania 's Hare-Clark system since 1907, and does not fill casual vacancies by countback. Some electoral matters are determined by the Local Government (General) Regulations 2005. NSW regressed when it introduced Group Voting Tickets into local government in Australia. A flexible and democratic feature in NSW is requirement for a council to hold a municipal Constitutional Referendum, under Sections 15, 16 and 17 of the Act, to enable key aspects of a municipality, such as the number of councillors or wards, or the electoral system, to be changed. Partial optional preferential voting applies. |
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WESTERN AUSTRALIA : The PRSA's WA Branch (Electoral Reform Society of Western Australia Inc.) promoted the 1987 law for Senate-style PR for the Legislative Council. An ERS member, Hon. Ed Dermer MLC, spoke of its work in his inaugural speech on 12th March 1997 to the WA Legislative Council. The Electoral Act 1907 of Western Australia now provides that a variant of countback fills casual vacancies, as an excellent amendment of Western Australia's Constitution Act 1889 by the Government of Sir Charles Court in 1978, Part VII Section 73(2)(c), alterable only by referendum, requires all WA MPs to be directly chosen by the people. Australia 's other States and Territories lack such a provision and, unlike Sections 7 and 24 of the Commonwealth Constitution, it also applies to the filling of casual vacancies. Mr Jack Wright, PRSA National President, was keynote speaker at the WA Government's 1984 Parliament Week seminar. The unfortunate Unweighted Inclusive Gregory Transfer provision for the Legislative Council, which replicated the present Senate system, has now been replaced with the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Transfer provision in Schedule 1 of Western Australia’s Electoral Act 1907. |
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Western Australian Local Government: Richard Court's Liberal Government retreated from the preferential system used for local government, and substituted the primitive first-past-the-post procedure, in both its single and multiple form, which ran counter to enlightened electoral systems for Australian local government that began in South Australia in 1840. The Act did not prohibit "plumping", nor did Regulation 35 of Part 7 of Local Government (Elections) Regulations 1997. The PRSA's WA Branch campaigned for the replacement of this anomalous first-past-the-post throwback by a quota-preferential proportional representation system. In 2006 the WA Government introduced a Bill for that purpose. A hostile and negative campaign by the Western Australian Local Government Association resulted in that bill being referred to a parliamentary committee for scrutiny, but the bill has now been enacted. Regulation 35 of WA’s Local Government (Elections) Regulations 1997 requires the full marking of preferences for a vote to be valid. |
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QUEENSLAND: Queensland, the first State to change from the defective relative majority procedure, (in 1892 it adopted a procedure called 'contingent voting'), reverted to it from 1944 till 1960, when the present majority-preferential method was first used. In the late 1980s, a major judicial inquiry (FitzGerald), led to malapportionment of electoral districts being greatly reduced, but the PRSA's former Queensland Branch had steadfastly warned that equal enrolments will, by definition, stop malapportionment, but will not prevent gerrymanders, either accidental or intentional. |
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Electoral Legislation: The electoral provisions for Queensland 's unicameral Parliament are in Queensland 's Electoral Act 1922. The former Branch sought the re-introduction of an Upper House, elected by PR. The former Upper House was abolished by the Constitution Act Amendment Act 1922. It was not until twelve years later that the Constitution Act Amendment Act 1934 amended the Constitution Act 1867 (which still operates concurrently with the Constitution of Queensland 2001) to require approval at a referendum before any Bill to restore an Upper House, or to extend the term of the Legislative Assembly beyond three years, could take effect. |
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Queensland Local Government: The Local Government Act 1993 provides two methods for counting. In single-member divisions, optional preferential counting applies. For multi-member divisions, the unsatisfactory multiple first-past-the-post procedure, with plumping not allowed, that was abandoned for Senate elections in 1919 applies, except that under the Queensland system there are rather unusual and deceptive provisions that allow the voter's marks in ballot-paper squares to include certain numbers, but the number of squares marked must nevertheless be equal to the number of vacancies to be filled. |
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AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY: The electoral system used for the first self-government election, in 1989, instituted by the then Labor Federal Government, was a modified party list form of proportional representation called the Modified d'Hondt system. It was a highly unsatisfactory system that was widely ridiculed and regarded as unfair. Its last use was at the 1992 election, as the Federal Government had acknowledged its failure, and had decided to hold a plebiscite in conjunction with the election to enable ACT electors to indicate which of two alternative replacement systems they preferred for future ACT polls. That 1992 Australian Capital Territory plebiscite had 65% of voters favouring a Hare-Clark form of PR over the alternative of 17 single-member electorates. The PRSA's ACT Branch campaigned vigorously for that poll, and then later to successfully encourage inclusion of major unalloyed Hare-Clark provisions (Robson Rotation, countback, absence of Group Voting Tickets), as opposed to the inferior stage-managed Senate-style provisions that the ACT Government initially proposed, in the ACT Electoral Act 1992 amended in April 1994. A 16-1 Assembly vote in December then passed the Proportional Representation (Hare-Clark) Entrenchment Bill 1994. Approved by 65% of ACT voters at a 1995 referendum, the resulting Act now prohibits changes to the major Hare-Clark aspects of the electoral law without a two-thirds Assembly majority or a referendum. |
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ACT Local Government: As there is no separate system of local government in the ACT, the functions of local government are carried out by the ACT Assembly and the ACT Government. |
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NORTHERN TERRITORY OF AUSTRALIA: The Electoral Act 2004 of the Northern Territory specifies preferential voting in the single-member districts prescribed by Section 13(4) of the Commonwealth's Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act 1978 (which is effectively the Territory's Constitution), and also specifies a requirement for voters to indicate all preferences. The ballot-papers have, for Australia, the novel requirement that a photograph of the candidate must be printed against the name of each candidate, and a requirement, superseded elsewhere in Australia , that names be listed in alphabetical order on the ballot-paper. At the first NT election after self-government, the Australian Labor Party won no seats, despite gaining over 30% of the first preference vote. As NT Electoral Commission figures show, a huge imbalance between seats and votes still occurred at the 2005 NT elections. |
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Northern Territory Local Government: Local government elections in the Northern Territory are held under the Local Government (Electoral) Regulations , which prescribe a winner-take-all majority-preferential system if there is only one seat per electorate, but the multiple majority-preferential system, which became discredited, and was abandoned for Senate elections in 1948, where there is more than one seat per electorate (See Sections 3 and 4 of Schedule 2). Following the abandonment of that system for multiple vacancies in Victoria, the Northern Territory now has the only extant use of this system in Australia. |
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TERRITORY OF NORFOLK ISLAND: Section 20 of the Legislative Assembly Act 1979 of Norfolk Island now prescribes, for the election of the Territory's 9-member Legislative Assembly by a single Territory-wide electoral district, cumulative voting, which is a crude, inferior procedure that was used in Cape Colony (South Africa) in the 19th Century, and by the U.S. State of Illinois from 1870 to 1980, until Illinois's only constitutional change ever effected by a citizen-initiated referendum replaced it with the even worse 'first-past-the-post' system that all the other U.S. States use. Unfortunately a 1982 Norfolk Island referendum substituted cumulative voting for the earlier Hare-Clark PR used for the first two elections under that Act. Each voter must mark 9 crosses on the ballot-paper, each of equal value, and can mark an arbitrarily prescribed maximum of 4 for any one candidate. As it uses non-preferential, non-transferable ballots, votes are wasted by some candidates receiving more than a Single Transferable Vote PR quota, and others receiving less, with no procedure for transferring such votes to contribute to a quota. The Government's Web site sometimes shows voting figures, such as the 2001 results, which showed that at that poll (at others it could be worse), 36.5% of the 9,243 votes on the 1,027 valid ballot-papers completed by the Territory's voters made no contribution to electing anybody, but with STV (quota-preferential) PR, in this case of 9 vacancies being filled by the votes of one electorate, the wasted fraction of the votes would be only 9.9%, and never more. |
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COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA: Members in both Houses of the first Commonwealth Parliament (1901-03) were elected by the systems for the Lower Houses of the Parliament in their State (Sections 9, 10 & 31 of the Australian Constitution). Quick and Garran's "Anotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth" gives background on the Constitution. Thus Tasmania 's first 5 MHRs and 6 senators were elected by Hare-Clark from a single state-wide electorate. All other States used relative majority voting; MHRs from single electorates with boundaries fixed by the State Governments (except South Australia, which used a single State-wide electorate to elect its 7 MHRs as a group), and its 6 senators as a group with the whole State as one electorate. Tasmania's first federal by-election, to replace an MHR, had the whole State as a single electorate, as the Federal Parliament had not yet used Section 31 to pass an Electoral Act. The House of Representatives passed the Barton Government's Commonwealth Electoral Act 1902, which specified quota-preferential PR for Senate elections. That was the only form of PR that would satisfy the requirement of Section 7 of the Constitution that senators "be directly chosen by the people", but the Senate, which had, except for the senators for Tasmania, been elected by a first past the post multiple vote, amended the Bill to substitute that system, with plumping being made unavailable. See the Australian Electoral Commission's summary of the history of the federal electoral system. |
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1. Full Marking of All Preferences, Partial Optional Preference Marking, or Fully Optional Preference Marking: The 1901 election of the six senators for NSW gave a dramatic early warning about the need to make ballot-papers and their use comfortably manageable by a wide range of voters, as 38,674 voters (up to 17.5% of the ballots cast) cast informal (invalid) ballots because, with 50 candidates, and with only 6 senators to be elected, many voters failed to strike out at least 44 names of the candidates they did not want, as was the law for NSW colonial polls in small single-member electorates, which law applied for the first NSW Senate poll, but not later polls. The unavailability of plumping, under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1902, required that a voter had to indicate a vote for the same number of candidates as there were vacancies in order for the completed ballot-paper to be accepted as valid. Plumping, in which voters in multi-member electorates could, under earlier first past the post multiple votes systems, which are still the common law voting system, vote for fewer candidates than there were vacancies, and hence concentrate their vote on fewer candidates, even just one, had in certain earlier colonial and, as has recently been reverted to on the Isle of Man, allowed some rudimentary proportionality, as did the 1925-94 Japanese Lower House system of multi-member districts with a Single Non-transferable Vote. The method of indicating an Australian Senate vote from 1902-17 was, unlike the 1901 poll, the placing of a cross (X) against the name of each candidate voted for. The 1917 periodic Senate election, in which W.M. Hughes's Nationalist Party won all Senate seats in all States, was the last time the first past the post multiple vote was used for Senate elections. NSW Senator Hon. Albert Gardiner was an advocate of proportional representation for Senate elections. As the prevailing winner-take-all electoral system had resulted in the Nationalist Party gaining all the18 Senate seats to be filled in 1917 and, 17 of the 18 seats (Albert Gardiner was the only Labor candidate elected) in 1919, for the whole of Australia, he was the only Labor senator in the 36-member Senate from 1920 until 1923. He held the position of Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, even though he had no party colleagues to lead. His solitary position, despite Labor's having gained 43.7% of the national Senate vote in 1917, and 42.8% in 1919, was a stark testament for the need for proportional representation. He made a 12 hour speech in the Senate in the debate on the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 introduced by W.M.Hughes's Nationalist Government. It remains the longest speech ever made there, as time limits requiring shorter speeches were imposed in 1919. That consolidated Act, which is still the Principal Act for federal elections, changed the electoral system for MHRs from a first past the post to its present majority-preferential system, but the Senate system was not changed until the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1919 replaced the previous multiple first past the post system (see 1917 NSW example) with a multiple majority-preferential system (see 1919 NSW example). It also provided that, to cast a valid vote, voters had to indicate preferences for a number of candidates equal to one more than twice the number of vacancies to be filled. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1934 introduced by the Lyons United Australia Party Government began what many now see to be an oppressive and ridiculously unnecessary requirement that, to cast a valid vote, a voter in an election in a multi-member electorate must indicate a preference for each of the candidates, regardless of how many there might be. When the Chifley ALP Government introduced the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1948 to change the Senate electoral system from a multiple majority-preferential system to a quota-preferential system, it insisted on continuing that provision despite it being imposed on a PR system, which is a very different system from the multiple majority-preferential system to which the provision was originally applied, and despite the proven success of Hare-Clark's partial optional preferential voting Tasmania-wide since 1907. The Menzies Coalition Opposition unsuccessfully moved to amend the Bill to provide instead for partial optional indication of preferences, and the Government insisted that a voter must indicate all preferences on the ballot-paper for it to be valid. The Whitlam Labor Government proposed partial optional indication of preferences in 1974, but its lack of a Senate majority prevented it legislating for that. It is ironic that the PR system in the Commonwealth Electoral Bill 1902 introduced by the Barton Government and rejected by the Senate provided for fully optional marking of preferences. 2. Senate's 2 former Winner-take-all Electoral Systems (1903-17 & 1919-46) & Proportional Representation (1949- ):
The 1929 Royal Commission on the Constitution [5], whose members were appointed on the advice of S.M.Bruce's Nationalist Government, recommended inclusion of PR in the Constitution, but that was not implemented. The Proportional Representation Society of Victoria held a Melbourne Town Hall meeting in 1943, which resolved to press the Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. John Curtin MHR, to introduce PR for the Senate. Copies of that Society's letter to the Prime Minister and the reply are attached. A 1948 Hansard [6] records the Attorney-General, Rt. Hon. H.V. Evatt KC, introducing his Bill that amended the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to provide for PR for the Senate, and acknowledging the help of ‘the Proportional Representation Society of England’. A 1948 letter from the Proportional Representation Society of Victoria congratulated the Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. J. B. Chifley, on the Bill that introduced PR. Since then, the PRSA has monitored the Senate system - the world's largest scale quota-preferential PR election. PR is the longest operating electoral system used for Senate elections. The PRSA has monitored other Australian elections also. Regrettably there is no constitutional or other entrenchment requiring approval at a referendum, or even an absolute majority vote in both houses of Parliament, before the Senate's PR system can be weakened or abolished. 3. Casual Vacancies Setback: Senator Peter Rae, and some other Tasmanian Liberal senators that had a good understanding of the Hare-Clark system and its countback procedure for filling casual vacancies in a PR system, agreed with the PRSA that the Constitution Alteration (Senate Casual Vacancies) Bill 1977, in ostensibly seeking to modify the original form of Section 15 of the Constitution, which provided for the filling of Senate casual vacancies, to make it consistent with the PR system used since 1949, should have used countback, rather than the system of nomination on a party basis that replaced that original 1901 provision. They advocated that replacement senators should be elected by the people via countback, and not, as proposed in the Bill, by the Constitution requiring State Parliaments to endorse the nominees of political parties, during the debate on the Bill. Countback would have ensured direct election of all replacement senators, but those senators' advocacy failed to change the Bill, so senators filling casual vacancies since 1977 have been, regrettably, indirectly elected since approval of the Bill at a 1977 referendum produced an alteration resulting in the present form of Section 15 of the Constitution. From the adoption of the original Constitution until that change in 1977, Section 15 had simply prescribed that casual vacancies had to be filled, until the next periodic or general federal election, by a person appointed as the relevant State Parliament, or until it sat, the State Governor, saw fit. Since then senators directly elected by the people, such as Senator Michael Tate (ALP, TAS) and Senator John Herron (Liberal, QLD), have resigned after serving only a month or so of their 6-year term, and their places have been filled for nearly 6 years by persons unelected by the people. The looseness of the present form of Section 15 of the Constitution has allowed other anomalies such as:
In 1997 the Senate consisted of senators over 20% of whom had not been elected by the people of Australia! The 1977 change was motivated by the breach in 1975, by the NSW and Queensland Governments, of the convention that a person appointed to replace a senator would always be a person that belonged to the party of that vacating senator. The practical importance of that convention had increased greatly since proportional representation the two previous winner-take-all electoral systems in 1948, but the convention was originally accepted after a 1907 High Court decision that voided the purported appointment, under Section 15 of the Constitution, by the South Australian Parliament in 1907 of the Hon. James O'Loghlin, a Labour Party member, as a senator to replace Mr Joseph Vardon, an endorsed Anti-Socialist Party member, whose election at the 1906 periodic election of senators was, in 1907 after a recount, declared void by the High Court acting as the Court of Disputed Returns. That High Court decision led to the 1908 Special Election in South Australia, at which Messrs O'Loghlin and Vardon were the only candidates. A separate 1907 High Court action, the King versus the Governor of South Australia, also touches on this matter. Mr Vardon was elected to fill the vacancy that had not been filled at the 1906 periodic election, and that the High Court had declared was not a casual vacancy subject to being filled under Section 15 of the Constitution, as had been attempted by the Parliament. 4. Gregory Fractional Transfer variant replaces Random Selection Transfer: The Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform of the Federal Parliament in 1983 appeared to have been concerned about potential difficulties with the procedure for transfer of surplus votes by random selection that had applied at Senate scrutinies since the changes made by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1948. The narrow margin of 560 votes (0.089% of the total formal vote) between Jack Evans (Australian Democrats) and the final senator elected, Noel Crichton-Browne (Liberal), in the 22nd and final count in the October 1980 Senate poll for Western Australia and the potential problems that Mr Evans's appeal to the Court of Disputed Returns might have raised if it had been successful and the Court had had to consider ordering a recount of the poll. With a random element in the scrutiny, there is no guarantee that a recount would resolve the doubt in a close finish. The Committee's recommendation led to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 being amended in 1983 so that an Unweighted Inclusive Gregory fractional transfer is now prescribed in Section 273(9-12), replacing the original Senate procedure of random selection of the number of surplus ballots for transfer at full value. The original Gregory fractional transfer, which Hare-Clark has always used, is the transfer of all ballot-papers showing a particular first preference, but at a fractional value appropriate to the level of the surplus. When it is applied to transfers of surpluses other than those arising from first preferences, it applies only to the last parcel of votes received, whereas the inclusive variants apply to all parcels. Victorian Liberal Senator Alan Missen had Hansard in 1983 [7] incorporate a PRSA letter expressing concern about the disadvantages of the Unweighted Inclusive Gregory fractional transfer introduced then, which still applies. The PRSA notes that the standard computer counting at Senate scrutinies would allow the substitution of a Weighted Inclusive Gregory fractional transfer, as discussed in a paper by Professor David Farrell, with advantage. Schedule 1 of the Western Australian Electoral Act 1907 prescribes a Weighted Inclusive Gregory fractional transfer. See in particular Clause 5 of that Act's Schedule 1. Submissions in 2008 to the federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters by the South Australian Branch of the PRSA, and by a Victoria-Tasmania Branch member, Mr Anthony van der Craats, (Submission No. 51), have each proposed that Senate counts should use a Weighted Inclusive Gregory fractional transfer instead of the present unweighted transfer. Mr van der Craats has called his re-iterative system the Wright System. 5. Group Voting Tickets Setback: Changes in 1983 to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 introduced the unfortunate Group Voting Tickets provision in Section 211. In his 1983 Senate speech, in which he included the letter from the PRSA President referred to above, Victorian Liberal Senator Alan Missen referred to his concerns about the ALP Government’s Group Voting Ticket proposal, as did NSW Liberal Senator Sir John Carrick, NSW Nationals Senate Leader Senator Douglas Scott, and Tasmanian Independent Senator Brian Harradine. The above-the-line Group Voting Tickets are the latest in a history of ballot-paper designs beginning in 1940 that have led to nearly all the voters at Senate elections endorsing their party's ticket rather than having to be persuaded of the virtues of the various candidates and choosing them explicitly, as fortunately still occurs with Hare-Clark. That hyperlink shows how Tasmania’s Parliament rejected Group Voting Tickets, with the result that first preference votes at Tasmanian Assembly elections are not highly concentrated on just two candidates, as occurs at Senate elections, leaving nearly all elected senators receiving only a tiny number of first preference votes. That concentration of first preference votes on a single candidate of a party, which Dr H V Evatt called regimentation of the vote, preceded Group Voting Tickets and even the Senate’s proportional representation, perversely increases minor party representation at the expense of that of the major parties, as described in a 1988 article in The Canberra Times, but this seems either not to be understood by the parties, or their operatives prefer instead to sacrifice some representation in order to retain their power of controlling the order in which candidates appear on Group Voting Tickets. Group Voting Tickets have also led to candidates of very small parties being elected as a result of several larger parties all placing them on relatively high positions on their tickets and thus having them elected, when it is clear that their total vote without that help would have left them unelected. Challenges in the High Court, to one aspect of Group Voting Tickets in the 1984 McKenzie case, and the 1999 Ditchburn case, failed. Above-the-line voters have a far less onerous task, and far less chance of voting informally, than below-the-line voters, as formal above-the-line votes require just a single mark, whereas below-the-line votes must have nearly every box marked correctly, although partial optional preferential voting below-the-line has now been introduced for elections to the Legislative Council in Victoria. The percentage of below-the-line Senate voters in NSW and Victoria is now only about 4%, but in the two Senate electorates where Hare-Clark is used for Assembly elections, Tasmania and the A.C.T, the awareness of the voters of the merits of an untramelled quota-preferential PR with Robson Rotation keeps the below-the-line vote at about 20%. The leader of the Greens Party, Senator Bob Brown, introduced his Commonwealth Electoral (Above-the-Line Voting) Amendment Bill 2008 into the Senate in a proposal to have the above style of above-the-line voting replaced with a system where above-the-line voters would, for a valid vote, have to indicate their preference between groups by numbers in the squares above-the-line. Each square would relate to its party’s candidates only, in an order lodged by the party, and no party or group could lodge an order of preferences to be given effect to except for the candidates of that party, which is a significant improvement on the complete ordering a a voter’s ballot that Group Voting Tickets presently entail. The marking of later preferences among parties would not be fully optional, as a minimum number of party squares would be prescribed to be marked for an above-the-line vote to be a formal vote. In election campaigns, parties would still urge voters to vote above-the-line, and that pressure would still be re-inforced by the existing and daunting unnecessary requirement for voters below-the-line to mark a preference for virtually every individual candidate, regardless of how many there are (there were 78 candidates at the NSW Senate poll in 2004). Senator Brown’s Bill would not abolish the political parties’ self-serving party-oriented above-the-line device in respect of any particular party’s block of candidates, and would also fail to remove the existing daunting and unjustifiable requirement for below-the-line voters to mark virtually every square in order to be able to cast a valid vote, and thus be at least even-handed, by making the workloads of both categories of voter able to be more equal. 6. Failed Campaign to Stop Transfers to Candidates whose First Preference Vote or Party Total is below a ‘Threshold’: In 1998-9, a Liberal NSW senator, Helen Coonan, campaigned for a change to the Senate's electoral system that would have required the exclusion from the count of any candidate that failed to gain a prescribed fractional part of a quota, which she termed a 'threshold', or whose party failed to gain such a part. The aim of her proposal was to prevent candidates of parties with a low level of first preference vote support from accruing votes transferred from other less successful candidates, and ultimately achieving a quota of votes and being elected. The effect of the proposal would be to reduce the proportionality of the counting system. The weakness in her failed plan (see Endnotes No. 50, which refers to a 1999 letter to The Age), is its arbitrary redirection of voters' ballot preferences away from one or more of their higher preferences to one of their lower preferences, which is manifestly against the plainly expressed wishes of such voters. 7. Why the Number of Senators to be Elected should be an Odd Number: From 1984 six senators were to be elected from every State at a periodic election of senators, instead of the previous five. Until 1948 there were three to be elected, and then that number was increased to five, both of those numbers being an odd number. The disadvantage and inadvisability, with a proportional representation electoral system, of setting the number of places to be filled as an even number were not unknown, as the 1951, 1974 and 1975 "double dissolution" elections, at which it is unavoidable that an even number of senators is to be elected in each State, were held after the adoption of PR for Senate elections. The advantage of setting an odd number is that an absolute majority of votes for a given party, however slight, produces an absolute majority of seats for that party whereas, with an even number of places, an absolute majority of votes for a party does not, unless it is high enough, produce an absolute majority of seats for that party. If the absolute majority is not large enough to produce an absolute majority of an even number of seats, the party gaining such an absolute majority of votes will only gain half the number of available seats, and the party, or parties, that jointly gain only a minority of the seats, will gain the other half of the seats, which is unsatisfactory. The remedy for this problem is to arrange matters so that the number of places to be filled is an odd number, but the requirement of the nexus provision in the first sentence of Section 24 of the Constitution has made that onerous and expensive as the size of the Parliament has increased. The greatly increased difficulty, with there no longer being an odd number of places to be filled in each State at periodic elections of senators, for either major party to obtain a majority of seats in any State has led to increased demands for a relaxation of the careful safeguards of Section 57 of the Constitution, which provides for procedures that can ensue following a disagreement between the two Houses of the Parliament. There is also the fact that, with an even number of places to be filled in each State, a party that gains half of the quotas of Senate votes in all States at two successive periodic elections (42.9% of the vote), or a single election after a dissolution of the Senate (46.2% of the vote), can thereby gain half the seats in the Senate, and thus deprive an opposing party that might have gained Government by the vagaries of the single-member electorate system used for elections to the Lower House of a majority of Senate seats, thus enabling it to reject any Government Bill it chooses. A change to the law to set the numbers for periodic Senate elections to be odd numbers would be desirable, but a further change to provide for PR for the House of Representatives would be better still. 8. A Sounder Basis for Dividing Senators into Two Classes after a Dissolution of the Senate: Section 13 of the Australian Constitution requires the Senate, at its first meeting after its dissolution, to divide the newly-elected senators into two classes of equal numbers, with one class to be long-term senators, with a six-year term, and the other class to be short-term senators, with a three-year term. From the first election onwards that division has been effected by a resolution of the Senate that had the first class consist of the half of the senators first declared elected in each Senate electorate made long-term senators, with the rest of the senators being made short-term senators. That long-standing practice was examined by the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters, which reported to the Parliament that the practice had been appropriate under the Senate's previous two winner-take-all electoral systems, but was inequitable under the current system of proportional representation. It therefore recommended that the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 should be amended to include a new section that required the Australian Electoral Commission to conduct, after each election after a dissolution of the Senate, a recount of the vote to determine, in each Senate electorate, which candidates would have been elected if only half the number of vacancies were to be filled, and to report that to the Parliament. That new section, Section 282, was added to the Act. At the first opportunity to implement the new system, the Hawke Labor Government, which had supported it at the Joint Select Committee, and had supported the introduction of the necessary Section 282 of the Act, failed to support it in the Senate. The chairman of that Committee, ALP Senator Robert Ray, spoke in favour of the new section as Page 3220 of the Senate Hansard of 2nd December 1983 shows. The Coalition Opposition supported the new approach that the Hawke Government had developed but, at the first opportunity to implement it, when the Senate met on 15th September 1987 and proceeded to its task of dividing the newly-elected senators into two classes, the Australian Democrats senators joined with the Hawke Labor Government senators to defeat an Opposition motion to implement the new procedure that the Hawke Government had developed, which reversal in attitude appears to have resulted from an assessment that avoiding implementing the reform would result in fewer long-term senators for the Coalition Opposition than would occur if the reformed procedure was adopted. Liberal Senator Jim Short's speech advocating the use of the reformed procedure appears on Page 96 of the Senate Hansard of 15th September 1987 and continues on Page 155 of the Senate Hansard of 16th September 1987. The speech by the Australian Democrats spokesman, Senator Michael Macklin, shown on Page 156 of the Senate Hansard of 16th September 1987, reveals, quite frankly, that the Australian Democrats' vote against implementing the new system was based on a consideration of which system would yield more long-term senators for them. Until the Senate's carte blanche to decide which senators after a dissolution of the Senate will gain the benefit of the longer term has been superseded by an alteration of Section 13 of the Constitution along the lines of the reform that the Hawke Government had originally advocated, it would seem that party political advantage will continue to override considerations of electoral propriety. Mr Michael Organ MHR, a Greens Party member elected at a by-election in the division of Cunningham, introduced in the House of Representatives, on 1st December 2003, his Royal Commission (House of Representatives Elections) Bill 2003, which provided for the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the implementation of a system of proportional representation for the House of Representatives but, without support by any other political party in that House, it did not proceed beyond its first reading, and has now lapsed. 10. Forestalling a 1988 Constitution Alteration Blunder: Insistent PRSA representations to the Australian Democrats, and discerning support by their Senator John Coulter, led the Senate [8], even though the House of Representatives had to be recalled just to pass the amended bill, to omit from Clause 5 of the Hawke ALP Government's Constitution Alteration (Fair Elections) 1988, a proposed, and potentially disastrous, Section 29(2) of the Constitution, 'Electoral divisions: The number of members shall be the same for each division of a particular State', that would, had the ensuing referendum unfortunately passed without that omission having been made, have, for no good or discernable reason, removed quota-preferential PR as a practicable constitutional option for House of Representatives elections. The referendum was one of four alterations proposed, and each failed to achieve a majority in any State. 11. PRSA Member Successfully Suggested Improvement to Commonwealth Electoral Act: Section 213 (1) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 owes, since 1984, its present wording to a recommendation by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters made after a PRSA member and statistician, Mrs Alison Harcourt, proposed in evidence to that Committee that the existing legislative provision for achieving the random ordering of candidates' names on House of Representatives ballot-papers, and the random ordering party columns from left to right on Senate ballot-papers, was insufficiently rigorous, and should be replaced by the double randomization method that she proposed, and that is now provided for in Section 213(1). 12. PR for 1997 Constitutional Convention Election: PRSA advice to the Government on its use of a quota-preferential proportional representation system for electing members of a Constitutional Convention at a 1997 national postal ballot was acknowledged in Hansard [Ref. 10]. Two PRSA(NSW) officers were among the 20 people elected to represent NSW. This was only the second popular election for a federal Constitutional Convention in Australia's history, the first such election soon before Federation being conducted using a multiple first-past-the-post counting system, and without women being allowed to vote. 13. Representation and Institutional Change Conference: PRSA representatives attended this August 1999 Conference , to commemorate 50 years of PR for the Senate, in Parliament House, Canberra, run by the Department of the Senate (see Item 34) and the Australian National University. 14. Formation of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia: State bodies promoting quota-preferential electoral systems have varied their names occasionally, and once operated informally as PRSA Branches. The PRSA Constitution took effect on 1st January 1982 . The PRSA's quarterly newsletter, Quota Notes, begun in December 1975 as the NSW Branch newsletter, became the national society's newsletter in September 1983 with its Issue No. 31. The PRSA's first National President, Mr J.F.H. Wright, wrote the informative book, 'Mirror of the Nation's Mind - Australia's Electoral Experiments' (available from PRSA), and had earlier been recognized for his international contributions by being elected a Vice-President of the Electoral Reform Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He died on 13th May 1988. See the table of PRSA National Officers since the PRSA's inception. PRSA Presidents to date have been: Mr Jack Wright (NSW) 1982-85 Mr Geoffrey Goode (Victoria ) 1986-93 Mr Bogey Musidlak (ACT) 1994- |
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CANADA : A 2005 referendum in British Columbia demonstrated 57% support for Hare-Clark type PR to replace the existing single-member electorate system still used throughout Canada. There are similar moves federally, and in other provinces, but unfortunately some of those moves are for systems that, unlike Hare-Clark, do not fully allow direct election, such as party list or mixed systems like New Zealand's MMP system. |
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1. Electoral Reform Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 'The Best System - An account of the first hundred years of the Electoral Reform Society', ISBN 0 903278 09 X. 2 Catherine Spence, 'A Plea for Pure Democracy', 1861, Reprinted by the PRSA ISBN 0 9599728 7 0. 3. Quick, J. & Garran, R.R., 'The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth', 1901, Part IV (7). 4. New South Wales, Proof Hansard No. 61 of 2nd June 1977, Page 6563. 5. Commonwealth of Australia, 'Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution', 1929, Page 267. 6. Hansard: House of Representatives 16th April 1948 Page 965, and 29th April 1948 Page 1300 7. Hansard: Senate 30th November 1983 Pages 3054-3055 8. Hansard: Senate 1st June 1988 Pages 3324-3335 9. Hansard (Proof): Senate 19th August 1993 Pages 308-309 10. Hansard: 24th June 1997 Page 5026 11. Transcript and audio tape of Address by New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister, Hon Winston Peters MP, is available from PRSAV-T Inc. |
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