Martin Ferguson’s move to the “”feral govment in Cambra”, the plight of the “fat bloke from WA” (as he was so succinctly identified in a recent opinion poll), the Queensland election and the fate of Janine Haines show how poorly we are served by the electoral system.
Kim Beazley is much more likely to lose his seat in the next election than a dozen or more drones in the Labor and Liberal Parties.
Members with talent often find themselves in marginal seats and get swept aside with the slightest swing against their party, while drones in safe seats get returned. Aside from being unfair, it means that an incoming Opposition has to regroup from the drones in safe seats while its best talent has been voted out.
The single-seat Westminster system evolved in a time of no instantaneous national communication. Voters (usually property owners) voted for someone they knew to go to London. They neither knew nor cared about people being elected in other constituencies. Now it is different. Apparently a large number of Australians are quite impressed with the “”fat bloke from WA” even if they are much less impressed with his leader, but they will get no say in whether he returns to Parliament. Beazley himself has seen the difficulty and moved to better electorate, but it is only slightly better and it still does not embrace any national goodwill towards him.
In 1975 much of the better talent of the Labor Party got wiped out and it had to plod on with Cairns, Connor, Cameron and Crean _ the very people who created the debacle _ because they had safe seats.
Similarly Janine Haines, who had widespread national support and recognition, stood as a Democrat for a seat in a South Australia electorate but was beaten by Gordon Bilney, who could hardly be described as one of Labor’s shining lights.
The Democrats, of course, would like proportional representation. Minor parties and independents got about 15 per cent of the vote in Queensland but got just 1 per cent of the seats _ and were lucky to get that.
The trouble with proportional representation _ aside from rarely producing majority governments _ is that the political parties pick the order of candidates on the list and many drones still get seats. Moreover, the virtues of local representation would be lost _ MPs elected on a national stage would not care about the drains in Gulargambone.
Multi-member constituencies, like the Senate, might provide a fairer representation of the voters’ views. Some localism would be preserved, but in an national system, stable government would be threatened by an over-representation of minor parties and single-issue independents, even though the system works well in small states and territories where candidates are better known. (Memo, Proportional Representation Society: please keep your vehemently opposing Letter to the Editor to under 250 words.)
The mixed single-member and national-party-list system in Germany is an attractive possibility. They have the same single-member electorates as us, but add a swag of party seats which are awarded according to the number of votes each party gets. The trouble is the party determines the order of individuals on the list, so you can get a list of party-faithful drones.
A workable hybrid might see, say, 30 to 50 of the 150 House of Representatives seats as national seats. Individuals could stand for these (with Robson rotation and no party-designated order on the ballot paper). People could stand for both sorts of seat. If they win a constituency seat their votes in the national list go to the next preference.
And why would the major parties agree to such nonsense. Well, it would mean people like Beazley could stay in or get into the Parliament on national sentiment irrespective of uneven local party loyalty and it would avoid the unseemly squabbles caused by Ferguson, Gareth Evans and Robert Hill who would no longer need to scramble for a safe seat. Some independent and minor-party voices would be heard without too great an impact on the formation of the Government, though the seats would partly counter-balance the marginal-seat effect which allows parties with 48.5 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote to win government. If Liz Cunnigham get the balance of power in Queensland, perhaps she could bargain for electoral reform as a price of support.