Former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner came to Canberra this week with the laudable aim of redressing the gender balance in at the ACT Legislative Assembly. She came equipped with some money from a fund called Emily’s List to support female Labor candidate for the October 20 election. Alas, she also came with a sad ignorance about the ACT electoral system.
Mrs Kirner described the ACT’s Hare-Clark system of voting as “an amazing system” as if it were some sort of biological freak. She admitted that she was still trying to understand it. Moreover, she gave ridiculous advice to the very voters whose hearts and minds she was hoping to influence. She told them to vote 1 with no preferences. Besides offending the requirement to express five or seven preferences (one fore each seat), it is through the full expression of preferences that voters can best influence gender balance.
Mrs Kirner’s basic premise was sound. The ACT Parliament has an unhealthy gender imbalance. Only two of the 17 MLAs are women. In previous Assemblies there were more than double that and at one stage the ACT was unique among state federal and territory parliaments when at the Leaders of the Government and Opposition and the Speaker were all female
A reasonable gender balance in a democratic parliament is a worthwhile aim. Parliaments need not have exact representations of the various groups in society but they can only perform their job as representative bodies if their is a reasonably proportionate voice for the various elements of society. But it has long been the case that women have suffered substantial disadvantages in getting into Parliament. Often they face old-boy networks that prevent selection on merit.
In this climate, Mrs Kirner is mistaken if she thinks that the Hare-Clark system conspires against women. Just because the ACT at present it has an under-representation of women and has the Hare-Clark system, it does not mean the two go logically hand in hand. It was more the result of fluke circumstances. In fact, the Hare-Clark system provides a much better opportunity for women to break through old-boy and factional networks in traditional party structures. Under single member systems, such as in the House of Representatives, or proportional systems with party-line tickets, such as in the Senate, candidates have to get pre-selected into winnable electorates or winnable positions on a Senate ticket. To do this, they have to get the nod from the party the machine, which is often male-dominated.
Under Hare-Clark, however, there is no party ticket and no safe or unsafe electorate. The electorate has either five or seven members, which means each major party has a chance at two or three seats. Moreover, there is no party order of candidates on the ballot paper. Rather, some ballot papers have one candidate at the top of a particular party’s column and an equal number of ballot papers have a different candidate at the top. It means that each female candidate appears at the top of the party’s column in an equal number of ballot papers as a male candidate. So it is always possible for a committed Labor voter to vote for a female Labor candidate. Similarly for the Liberals or any other party.
Also, a voter can put all female candidates of whatever party before all of the male candidates. And it given that there is often an over quota of votes from each of the major parties it is possible for the committed Labor voter to express preferences for the Liberal women over Liberal men, and vice versa.
The fate of female candidates is in the hands of voters not in the hands of often male-dominated party machines. It is therefore up to those who seek a better gender balance to appeal to the public at large. In this respect Mrs Kirner is on the right track. All she has to realise is that it is a better track for her horse than she imagines.