This may sound far-fetched, but it is possible.
An adviser to independent, maverick, no-self-government coalition of one Dennis Stevenson has proposed a cunning new below-the-line party voting system.
A couple of months ago the Follett Government backed down on an above-the-line party vote system. It was to have been grafted on to the Hare-Clark system. A tick in the party box would be deemed to be a vote for the party list lodged in the Electoral Commission before the election.
The Liberals and Independents squealed foul.
They said it would be a breach of the 1992 referendum result. Independent Michael Moore threatened a no-confidence motion in Chief Minister Rosemary Follett.
The Labor Party has never liked Robson rotation because it lessens the power of the party machine. If you have Robson rotation, there can be no effective party ticket. Robson rotation means that each party’s column of candidates would not appear in a set order. Rather some ballot papers would be printed with one candidate first, others with another candidate first and so on. So voters would have to make a conscious decision about which candidates should get which preference rather than relying on a party determination of order of candidate.
Under this system Ministers who make unpopular decisions or MPs who are not well liked can find life difficult. People can still vote Labor but put the Labor Planning Minister who permitted the horrific dual occupancy next door last.
Similarly a popular MLA could jump the party list. Last election for example, Bill Stefaniak was given the unwinnable No 8 spot on the Liberal ticket. That election, under d’Hondt, had both party and individual voting. Stefaniak ran a law-and-order campaign which gave him a lot of Liberal No 1 votes. Under Robson rotation he would have had a good chance of being elected despite the party’s wishes to have others elected before him.
It makes for more interesting politics. Ministers losing to new faces. Mavericks beating the party pre-selection process without having to leave the party and stand as an independent as elsewhere in Australia.
But it does not make for good party discipline, so any way to circumvent it would be welcome.
If Mr Stevenson puts his amendments the Government could easily vote for them and they would go through 9-8 _ the eight opposing being the Liberals and Independents Michael Moore and Helen Szuty. The Stevenson amendments are that a tick or T in any box of any candidate is deemed to be a vote along the party list as registered in the Electoral Commission. Stevenson is not committed to it yet. He proposes to do more shopping-centre polling this weekend.
It may be, however, that the Stevenson amendments are part of an even more cunning ploy. They get accepted by the Government, but when the whole electoral Bills goes for a final vote, Stevenson could change his mind and vote against the whole Bill on the ground, for example, that there should be more public funding or more referendums or that water in polling booths should not contain fluoride. The Liberals and other Independents, also finding the whole Bill odious for other reasons would vote with him and the electoral Bill would be defeated.
That would leave us with a bizarre combination of a d’Hondt counting method in three electorates, because the dividing of the ACT into three electorates passed the Assembly a year ago.
Surely, this is too far-fetched to be considered a possibility. Then I recall being called lunatic for suggesting the ACT’s second election would be under d’Hondt. Couldn’t happen, I was assured, not after the fiasco of the first election.
Can one MLA out of 17 manage it? It is in his interest.
All this higgery-pokery about electoral system has led the ACT Liberal Party to seek a binding referendum to entrench the three-electorate Hare-Clark electoral system with Robson rotation. The 1992 election was advisory only.
A referendum under the Self-Government Act (in effect the ACT’s Constitution) proposed by Mr Humphries would be binding and that any law passed by the Assembly in contradiction to it would be invalid and subject to challenge in the ACT Supreme Courts, in a similar way that some Federal and State laws that contravene the Constitution can be challenged in the High Court.
The Liberal Party is worried that if Labor gets a majority in next February’s election it will force through party-line voting.
The proposal is supported by two of the three Independents. That leaves the proposal’s fate in the hands of the other Independent, Dennis Stevenson, and ascertaining his view is a bit like catching a mosquito with a butterfly net.
The referendum proposal has been delayed till later this year until after machinery proposals are passed.
The cynical view is that a politician can only be relied upon for one thing: to act in the best interests of that politician retaining power. Under the Hare-Clark system this means having above-the-line party voting, not because it will help a particular party get more votes (to the contrary) but because it favours sitting politicians. In particular, it helps Ministers.
NSW ALP brawling and Bill Wood’s precarious non-alignment aside, the general rule is that sitting Ministers and MPs get party pre-selection. If you have a party box in multi-member electorates like the ACT Legislative Assembly and the Senate, those at the top of the ticket get elected.
The non-cynical view is that the Labor Party has genuinely taken on board the message of the electorate and even if it gets a majority will not even think of forcing through party-line voting in any way shape or form, and that it is now a dead issue.
It is now two years since the referendum and still the people’s will is not law. It makes you see the appeal of the system under the Commonwealth Constitution: that after the votes are counted the proposal becomes law without any action needed by any politicians.