Beware politicians meddling with electoral matters. Invariably they change the rules to suit their own side.
Chief Minister Jon Stanhope wants to do exactly that in his attempt to increase the size of the Legislative Assembly.
He makes some solid arguments about why the size should be increased, but on the configuration of the electorates and seats his arguments happen to suit the Labor Party.
At present we have two electorates of five members and one of seven, making 17. Stanhope wants five five-member electorates, making 25.
On the voting patterns of the last election, this would very much favour Labor. In the two five-member electorates, Labor averaged 48 per cent of the vote and got 60 per cent of the seats. In the seven-member electorate it got 45.5 per cent of vote and 42 per cent of the seats.
It would be appalling for the Greens. In the five-member electorates they got 7.5 per cent of the votes and zero seats.
(Incidentally, I am rounding to the nearest half a percent for ease of reading).
The Liberals and the Greens want three seven-member electorates – for equally self-serving reasons. In the seven-member electorate the Greens got 11.5 per cent of the vote and 14 per cent of the seats. The Libs got just 32.5 per cent of the vote and 42 per cent of the seats – a richly undeserved result.
Several factors go to getting an optimum result: fairness in the way votes translate to seats; having electorates with a community of interests; an overall odd number of seats so the Assembly is never deadlocked; an Assembly size that can deliver an effective Executive, committee system, Speaker and backbench; and a reasonable workload for MLAs in dealing with electors (bearing in mind they are local councillors as well as state-level MPs.
On the last two points Stanhope is right and the Greens and the Libs agree: the present Assembly is too small. Even with majority Government, by the time you have five Ministers and a Speaker, there are just three MLAs doing committee work. Ministers should not sit on committees because committees are there to scrutinise the ministry.
The population has increased making the workload harder for MLAs. But by how much?
In 1989 the ACT’s population was 273,320 – 16,077 per MLA. It is now 330,000 or 19,412 per MLA. To bring it back to 1989 levels we would need 20.5 members. Oh dear, that does not quite make 25. Indeed, it is much closer to 21.
With 11 Government MLAs, that makes a ministry of five or six and speaker and four or five backbenchers to chair and serve on committees – ample really.
As to fairness, seven-member seats would provide a better correlation between votes and seats won. Going back to our earlier figures, in the five-member electorates 23 percentage points of vote went astray: 12 to Labor; 3.5 to the Libs and 7.5 away from the Greens. In the seven-member seat it was just 15.5 per cent.
Of course, we could give up Hare-Clark and have single-member electorates. But that would have produced at least 15 Labor MLAs out of 17 at the last election and at least 15 Liberals in the 1998 election won by Kate Carnell – all that power with no Opposition. It would happen because Canberra does not have the diversity of other States and the Commonwealth as a whole.
Hare-Clark’s multi-member system has two other advantages.
We do not get the regional pork-barrelling in marginal seats that comes in other jurisdictions. There is no point putting a new police station in Belconnen for political reasons when it is represented by MLAs from both sides. Secondly, constituents can see an MLA of the political persuasion of their choosing, with whom they will feel more comfortable and better represented.
Stanhope cannot steamroll his choice, despite having a majority in the Assembly. The Assembly was created by the Federal ACT Self-Government Act which demands that only the Commonwealth Minister can determine the size of the Assembly.
It would be better if all parties represented in the Assembly could agree to some formula which could be repatriated in an entrenched form so it could only be tampered with by referendum or two-thirds majority – as, indeed, the basics of the Hare-Clark system are. Things like the electoral system and structure of government should not be in the hands of a transient simple majority. The only thing that gets entrenched that way is the party in power.
The Libs federally are not going to agree to five five-member seats no matter how many inquiries and motions Stanhope has. But the debate is worth having because the size of the Assembly will have to increase eventually.
It may be that Labor is too fearful of minor parties getting seats with the lower quota in the seven-member seats. Since self-government, minor parties have lost votes at every election. These days the Democrats are a spent force and the Greens Deb Foskey is not a Kerrie Tucker. A minor party still has to get 12.5 per cent of the vote after preferences in a seven-member seat. Last election after preferences, the Greens got only 9.6 per cent in Brindabella and 9.2 per cent in Ginninderra — not enough to stay in the race in a seven-member seat.