Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman, Laurie Brereton, has again raised the topic of reserved Aboriginal seats in Parliament. This week, former Labor Premier of Victoria Joan Kirner called for a quota of female Labor candidates for safe seats.
The two calls are well-meaning, no doubt. Aborigines and women have been under-represented in the Federal Parliament. Since the 1970s there has been at best one Aboriginal member of parliament, amount to about half of one percent, whereas Aborigines comprise 1.5 per cent of the population. Women, who comprise half the population, are lucky to get a quarter of the seats. As for higher levels of Government, there is only one woman in Cabinet.
It is interesting that the calls come from the Labor side of politics. Labor is strong on espousing the causes of minorities and the disadvantaged, such as the causes of women and Aborigines, but when it comes to filling its own ranks, words rate higher than action. Labor is still dominated by men. Aborigines do not get a show. And when it comes to grabbing safe seats, men tend to dominate. More significantly, seat allocations is determined by factional alliance rather than merit or gender.
Perhaps because factions and deals are so prevalent in Labor, that some Labor politicians feel that it is necessary to have quotas to overcome them to ensure more equitable representation. But these well-meaning calls are no substitute for rearranging party and electoral structures so that selection on merit on its own accord ensures selection of an acceptable number of Aboriginal and women representatives.
Labor leaders should think long and hard before embracing quotas and special seats. Merit and equality are too important to be suborned by quotas. The quota brands people as second-class. If someone gets into Parliament through a quota – whether for pre-selection of through reserved seats, they are open to the charge of being second-rate because they did not stack up on merit. Mr Brereton, fortunately, has been qualified in his call for Aboriginal seats. He wants the matter considered if the existing system fails to improve Aboriginal representation. That leaves plenty of room for both major parties to work harder on encouraging more Aboriginal and women members and to clean up their demonstrably unfair pre-selection procedures to ensure a fair share of those members get pre-selection – without quotas.
One of the most significant reasons for low representation by woman and Aborigines in the Federal Parliament is the domination of the major parties and the single-member electorate system.
The ACT election next October will see the Labor Party field a significant number of women. Because there are multi-member electorates, there are no “”safe seats”. Even candidate is standing in a winnable seat. Seven candidates will contest Molonglo and five each in Ginninderra and Brindabella. There will be no party ticket and because the names will be rotated on the ballot paper under Robson rotation there will be no preferred spot. Some voters will get a male Labor candidate at the top of the Labor column and some will get a female. Labor is standing seven women candidates and one Aboriginal candidate out of 17 which is a fair reflection of numbers in society given that merit should never produce a precise correlation. In that sort of system where backroom a factional deals are limited, the merit principle should have more chance of producing results.
Mr Brereton and Mrs Kirner are long practitioners of factional Labor politics – from opposite ends of Labor’s political spectrum. Perhaps they view political life through these glasses. Perhaps they see quotas and special arrangements as the best method of getting a result. Or worse, they see that factional politics and pre-selection deals do not deliver for women and Aborigines, but rather than eliminate them they want a special arrangement for women and Aborigines so they can continue on their merry way.