The biggest hurdle Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has with his proposal to increase the Legislative Assembly to 23 Members with three six-member and one five-member electorates is the law that entrenches the Hare-Clark system in the ACT.
That Act – which was approved by 65 percent of the electorate at a referendum in 1995 — states that at a general election, “”an odd number of members of the Legislative Assembly shall be elected from each electorate”. It said there must be a minimum of five in each electorate. To overturn that, Labor would need a two thirds vote of the Assembly or a simple majority in a referendum.
Neither is very likely. The Liberal Party on its own would be able to defeat the 23-Member proposition. The Greens are also against it. If it went to the vote, voters would rightly see it as a fiddle. How the Labor Party can put up such a doomed proposition beggars belief.
It is a fiddle. With seven members, the quota goes down to 12.5 per cent. The likelihood is that two minor or independent candidates would get seats; the winning major party would get three and the losing major would get two. Last year’s election in which both majors got three was an aberration, unlikely to be repeated.
So Labor fears two minors in each of three electorates, making six out of 21. The fear is that the Liberals are adept at chucking principle to the wind and doing deals with minors and independents of any complexion, as the 1995-2001 situation illustrates.
Under Labor’s 23-Member plan, on the 2001 figures, Labor could get three Members in each of the six-Member electorates and two or even three in the five-Member electorates – that is, 11 or 12 seats out of 23. It could do that with just 42.6 per cent of the vote (three quotas of 14.2 per cent). Compare that to nine at best out of 21 Members in the three-by-seven plan. Labor would need 50 per cent of the (first-preference vote, four quotas of 12.5 per cent) to do better than nine seats out of 21 – it won’t happen.
Under the three-by-seven plan Labor would always be short of a majority. With the 23-Member plan, there is a chance of a majority in its own right, or a majority with only having to work with just one minor or independent candidate.
That is what the 23-Member proposal is about. All the talk of electoral representation, pressure on committees and the Executive is self-serving tosh. This is a hard numbers game about getting a majority of bums on seats in the Parliament.
The report called also for a four-year term. There is little merit in the idea. Because the ACT has fixed terms there is no provision for early elections and terms shorter that three years (other than in the case of federal intervention). Three years is a reasonable balance between giving a government time to do a job and the need for accountability to the electorate. In case of doubt, the latter is more important.
Arguments about cost both against increasing the Assembly and for increasing its term are of little import. It is a false economy to save a million or so in the overall task of selecting people to administer a billion or so. It is more important to get an Assembly that can do the job accountable at suitable periods than risk allowing too few MLAs too much power for too long.