In his retirement, Paul Keating might like to reassess exactly what “”unrepresentative swill” is in the Australian electoral scene.
Keating referred to the Senate as “”unrepresentative swill”, a phrase he must have picked up when he owned the piggery. But Saturday’s election shows that he was wrong. The tables show the picture.
In the House of Representatives the Coalition got 46.7 per cent of the vote and was rewarded with 67 per cent of the seats. Surely, 20 percentage points of those seats are “”unrepresentative swill” … about 30 MPs’ worth of unrepresentative swill.
In the Senate, however, the Coalition got 50 per cent of the vote (49.97 to be precise) and exactly 50 per cent of the seats contested … no left over unrepresentative swill.
Labor, on the other hand, got nearly 40 per cent of the vote and only 32 per cent of the seats. That is 8 percentage points or 12 seats of (ital) representatives (end ital) treated as swill.
Interestingly, the Coalition got more votes in the Senate than in Reps, but the other way around for Labor.
Notice how the Democrats got reasonable representation in the Senate for their vote, but were denied in the Reps.
There is value in geographic concentration. The Nats did better than they deserved for their 8 per cent of the Reps vote. And the Greens, now a palaeolithic Tasmanian oddity in the face of the Democrat onslaught, got a generous result for their Senate vote.
The imbalance between votes and seats gets very large in a single-member system like Australia’s when the difference in first-preference votes between the two major parties approaches 10 per cent.
It is not good for democracy on a couple of counts.
Don’t imagine that the Coalition will be bustling with new talent. Most of the 30 MPs making up the Coalition’s unrepresentative swill are likely to be eager ideologues sent into safe Labor seats to wave the flag as a token gesture. They are more likely to be a damn nuisance or embarrassment to John Howard rather than an asset.
Secondly, the disparity between votes and seats means that the Labor side is minus 12 people, among their best, would otherwise be keeping Howard on his toes. Some, like Michael Lavarch and possibly Kim Beazley, will be a loss to public life.
Exact proportional representation is not the answer. (Incidentally, in Europe or New Zealand Howard would now be seeking Democrat or independents’ support to form a government.) PR allows too many single-issue representatives and prevents stable government.
But there would be nothing wrong with partial PR. Say, 25 to 50 seats could be decided according party lists, either after aggregating the local-member vote or on a separate vote. Key party figures would missed a single-member seat … like Lavarch and Beazley … would be saved and it would be a bulwark against gross and unfair imbalances thrown up by a result such as Saturday’s. And similarly in a swing the other way.
Electorate systems should get the mood of the people right. The past three elections have been portrayed as gladiatorial contests between two vastly different forces with one side or other utterly crushed or utterly triumphant. But on each occasion the people have only marginally and begrudgingly put one ahead of the other. Despite the huge majority in seats, that’s what happened at the weekend.