The Proportional Representation Society of Australia has just done an analysis of the 1993 election. Labor won 55.2 per cent of the House of Representatives seats with only 51.4 per cent of the two-party preferred vote and only 44.9 per cent of the first-preference vote. It got 80 seats out of 147. Proportionately, its first-preference vote should have given it only 66 seats and its two-party-preferred vote should have given it 75. That makes between five and 14 seats of unrepresentative swill in the House of Representatives.
In the Senate, on the other hand, Labor got 43.5 per cent of the votes and 42.5 per cent of the seats. That is not even one seat’s worth of unrepresentative swill.
The society hypothetically converted the 1993 results to a Hare-Clark system of mainly seven-member seats with some five- or three-member seats to make up state quotas. You might expect a raft of greens, Democrats, moralists, independents and New Age loonies to have made the grade. No so. Only one Democrat made it; in a seven-member South Australian seat. All the rest were Labor, Liberal or National. The two existing Independents would not have made it.
So there was no destabilising minority government projected. Labor still would have won, but with a smaller majority _ one without the addition of unrepresentative swill who got seats unearned by the vote count.
However, in the unlikely event that Hare-Clark were introduced nationwide, more people might be likely vote for minor parties and independents because they would be a more realistic proposition, especially in, for example, places near the present Independent-held Wills and North Sydney, and thus the prospect of a minority government would be more likely.
The biggest aberrations were in the smallest states. Labor got 100 per cent of the ACT seats with 55 per cent of the vote and 80 per cent of the Tasmanian seats with about the same amount. Conversely, it won 47 per cent of the South Australian vote and only 33. 3 per cent of South Australian seats.
Only 51.6 of first preferences went to someone who went to Parliament in 1993 and only 48.5 in 1990, when the Government got re-elected with less than half the two-party preferred vote.
In the Senate, which is now giving Labor such trouble, Labor won more votes than the Coalition, but got fewer seats. But both parties got a more accurate reflection of seats for their vote than in the House of Representatives.
But let’s be realistic. The single-member House of Representatives system with its unrepresentative swill is here to stay. More realistic is the society’s call for a change to the system of ordering candidates on the ballot paper.
At present, they are drawn out of a hat. This is fairly grim for candidates in close seats. About 1 per cent of voters in Australia are donkeys who vote straight down the ticket. Before changes made a decade ago, candidates were listed in alphabetical order. The Democratic Labor Party was notorious for selecting candidates with names like Anthony Aardvark and Alphone Abalone. So in fairness, they are now drawn out of a hat.
But is it fair? The defeated Members for Bass and McMillan might not think so. The society thought that the donkey-vote advantage which went to the winning candidate was probably worth more than the 296-vote margin in McMillan and certainly more than the few votes which determined Bass.
Last election nine seats were determined by less than 0.5 per cent. Of those, the outcome was affected in only the two mentioned. In the other seven the donkey-vote advantage went to the losing candidate. Usually you would expect the donkey-vote advantage to split about 50-50, not 7-2 like last election. That means in a close election with, say, 15 seats under 1 per cent, the result could easily be determined by the draw from the hat, even allowing for an even chance of each main party getting the advantage in each seat.
The society argues for rotation of candidates’ names in each electorate so on some voters’ ballot papers the Liberal is first, on others Labor is first and on others the Democrat. That way, no-one would get a donkey-vote advantage.
The single-member system is here to stay. Indeed there is a half-baked threat to extend it to the Senate. Even so, at least the donkey-vote trough should be cleaned out before the next election.