There were some noises at the weekend about increasing the size of the ACT Legislative Assembly from thepresent 17 to 21.
The instant public reaction would be howls of derision, hoots and boos.
Politicians are fairly fearful of the idea. The Liberals say they will do it if Labor supports it. Labor says it would like to see someone else other than MLAs make the decision. Perhaps the Electoral Commission or the Remuneration Tribunal.
Obviously minor parties would agree because, at least notionally it would increase their chances. The Greens are formally in favour.
All that is needed is a motion by the Assembly to the Federal Parliament and it would happen. But should it happen? And if so where and how should the new members be placed in the ACT’s multi-member electorate system.
At self-government in 1989 we had one MLA for every 10,000 people. If that ratio were meaintained we would now have more than 21.
There is no need to increase the Assembly with population indefinitely because there are economies of scale. We are not going to be bundled back to NSW nor are the states going to be abolished, so we should get to a workable size reasonably quickly. In the ACT, we need a Chief Minister and four or five other Ministers, simply to have a voice in the 20-odd ministerial councils and to keep up with legislative and governmental developments elsewhere. We need a leader of the Opposition and a deputy. That does not leave many MLAs leftover for policy development, committee work and electorate office work.
Electorate work brings the voice of voters to the Assembly floor and ministerial offices. Committee work enables public input into legislation. One way to strengthen that input is to have some more members. With only 17, there is frequent public criticism of not getting responses from MLAs.
There is no guarantee of a deeper talent pool for the ministry. The puddle might just become wider and be just as shallow. But at least sharing the volume of work should improve governance.
Labor has at least not ruled out increasing the size of the Assembly. It should look beyond the knee-jerk public opposition which is unlikely to last long.
The question of where the extra members should go is tricky. At present we have one seven-member electorate and two five-member electorates. Do we go for three electorates of seven members, or some other combination, like four electorates of 5, 5, 5 and six. Any combination other than 7, 7, 7 will require at two-thirds majority vote in the Assembly because of the 1994 Hare Clark Entrenchment Act which followed the referendum approval of the hare Clark system. The Act requires at least five members per electorate and an odd number of members in each electorate. You could have 5, 5, 5 and 7 but that would total 22, an even number in the Assembly as a whole which could result in unstable deadlock. To avoid that you would have to go 5,5,5,5,5 to 25 members, which would cause justifiable outrage, even though the Northern territory has 25 members on about half the ACT’s population (and it has local government as well).
The Pettit inquiry into self-government thought that seven-member electorates would provide too many independents because the quota for election was only 12.5 per cent of the vote, against the higher bar of 16.6 per cent in five-member electorates.
But that is first blush. There are good grounds for the major parties to prefer seven- rather than five- member electorates. In a five-member electorate each major party is always destined to get two seats, no more and no less. This is because to get a third quota would require 50 per cent of the vote, which they never get. So the Liberals get two and Labor gets two and an independent or minor gets the other. The major parties can have more than 10 percentage points difference in their respective vote but they get exactly the same number of seats.
In a seven-member electorate, on the other hand, there is a real contest. Typically, one major party will get three and the other two. Seven-member electorates distinguish the major parties and splits independents into one left and one right.
With three seven-member electorates, the better of the two major parties is likely to get three seats in each electorate – nine out of 21. Then it just needs two of the six independents to get a majority. Under the present system, where each major party gets two out of five in Ginninderra and Brindabella, the contest comes down to which one gets a third seat in Molonglo. The governing party typically has seven out of 17 seats and needs two out of four independents to get a majority.
Leave aside all the hype about a major party getting a majority in its own right. Better for them to face reality. You are more likely to get more stable government relying less on independents with a 7, 7, 7 combination than you are with electorates with fewer members. The 7, 7, 7 combination also reflects the voting pattern more accurately and still allows a check if the Government goes over the top.