THE stars a lining up for an increase in the membership of the Legislative Assembly. But there is a political and legal minefield ahead.
Sure, many people feel we do not need to increase the talent pool. We may increase the size of the pool but it will be just as shallow as before – all width and no depth.
But a seriously difficulty has emerged since the 2008 election. Five out of Labor’s seven MLAs are ministers – a backbench of two. It means a Chief Minister might be forced to stick with a miscreant or incompetent or risk replacing such a Minister with an utter novice.
It is worse with the Libs. All their six MLAs are on the frontbench.
There is very little room for committee work, backbench scrutiny and electorate work.
At self-government the ACT’s population of 273,320 had one MLA for every 16,077 people. Now the 346,429 people have one for every 20,378. On the 1989 figures, the population warrants 22 MLAs.
We need not always increase the MLAs with population, but we need a critical mass.
The Northern Territory has 25 MLAs with less than two-thirds the ACT’s population.
But the size of the Assembly can only be increased by federal regulation under the Commonwealth’s ACT Self-Government Act after a motion from the Assembly.
The trouble is that the federal law provides for just the raw number, whereas, the division of those members into electorates is a matter for ACT law.
There would be an impasse if a federal regulation increased the size of the Assembly, say to 21, 23 or 25, after a motion by the Assembly, but the Assembly could not agree on how to divide those members into electorates.
The parties in the Assembly hotly disagree on the size of electorates. Indeed, it is one of the very few things that the Greens will vote against Labor on.
There are no principles here. It is all political selfishness.
Labor likes five-member electorates (or at least has done so up to its poor performance in the 2008 poll). Labor has the potential to do well with five-member electorates. In 2004 it got 60 per cent of the seats in the five-member electorates with just 48 per cent of the vote, and only 42 per cent of the seats with 45 per cent of the vote in the seven-member electorate.
The Greens like seven-member electorates. They can rely on getting at least one seat out of seven, whereas they have often failed to get a seat in the five-member electorates. The Libs, too, have often got more than their fair share of seats in the seven-member electorate.
So an impasse is likely.
The Libs and the Greens can ask the Feds for a bigger Assembly, but Federal Labor will not give it to them if it will disadvantage local Labor.
There has been talk of repatriation, so the ACT Assembly determines its own size. There is merit in that, but it is dangerous to allow a body to determine its own make up on a simple majority. Even a two-thirds or three-quarter majority has its problems because the major parties can gang up on the minors and independents, as happened in Tasmania.
Some elements of the ACT system are entrenched and require a two-thirds majority (or referendum) to change: an odd number of MLAs in total and in each electorate; a minimum of five members in each electorate; no party voting; compulsory preferential voting and the Hare-Clark-Robson proportional voting method.
Labor might be bitterly regretting not increasing the Assembly in the first part of 2008 when it had a majority and Labor was in power federally, but that might have smacked of arrogant misuse of power just before an election.
Perhaps the best way for the Feds to deal with it would be not to set a number, but set a range – say minimum 17 and maximum 27 – and let the Assembly deal with the details. But that would require legislation (with Senate approval) because the present law says the regulation must fix a number, which probably does not mean fix a range.
Getting a Senate majority (39 senators) is more difficult than upholding a regulation against a Senate disallowance (38 senators).
History shows that federal senators will fight tooth and nail over the size, make up and voting system in the ACT. Every bum on every seat and every staffer in every MLA’s office counts towards future local and federal campaigns. Survival and propagation of the species come first.
At present we have 17 members: two five-member electorates – Belconnen-based Ginninderra and Tuggeranong-based Brindabella — and the seven-member Molonglo representing the inner north and south, Woden and chunks of Gungahlin.
Present ACT law requires two five-member electorates and one seven-member electorate. It also requires an odd number of MLAs overall and an odd number in each electorate, which means you must have an odd number of electorates.
That almost narrows the choice to three seven-member electorates (21) or five five-member electorates (25). The trouble is Labor will not accept the former and the Greens and the Libs will not accept the latter.
There may be a way through this. You could have three five-member electorates (north, south and centre) and one ACT-wide 10-member electorate.
You might think that a 10-member electorate would attract fringe loonies, but the quota would be nine percent. Only Labor, the Liberals and the Greens achieved that in the past two elections. The Motorists and Community Alliance did not come near it in 2008.
You would have to override the entrenched provision requiring electorates to have an odd number of MLAs, but that would be easy if the three parties in the Assembly all agreed.
It would be a bit like the German or New Zealand systems of a mix of electorate and “national” or “territory” seats.
On the 2008 figures, it would have probably yielded Labor 11, Liberals 10, Greens 4 – much the same as we have now and a very accurate reflection of the parties’ voting proportions.
In any event, some lateral thinking will be needed to break the impasse or will we be stuck with a 17-member Assembly indefinitely. And that will not be good for government in the ACT.