Preference system’s subtle policy effect

EVERY electoral system has its faults and its strengths. And every electoral system has its influence on the way politicians create policy.

We are getting a fairly clear example of that in Australian now.

The Australian system, on the whole is fairly good. In 110 years it has produced stable government and with only one exception has enabled smooth changes of government when the voters decide they have had enough.

But it has some drawbacks, as we are seeing. Some are quite evident, others more subtle.

Let’s start with preferential voting. It has the distinct advantage of fairness. People who prefer minority parties do not risk wasting their vote.

However, preferential voting has a subtle effect on policy.

Many of the million or so people who opinion polls suggest turned away from the Rudd Government did not embrace the Coalition whose primary vote remained constant. Rather they went to minor parties, particularly the Greens. These people were annoyed with Kevin Rudd for abandoning action on climate change, his “big Australia” position on population, his hardening position on refugees, and his continued support for the war in Afghanistan. Some were also displeased about his position on gay marriage, internet censorship and government advertising.

In short it was a disillusionment from the left. It was certainly not a sudden outbreak of environmental consciousness that caused people to embrace the Greens.

When Julia Gillard took the prime ministership from Rudd, Labor got back nearly all of the primary vote it had lost to minor parties, according to the polls.

But those voters who deserted Labor under Rudd are coming in for a slow rude shock.

Gillard’s views on the policy matters that offended the left are little or no different from Rudd’s. She has put off internet censorship and added the word “sustainable” to the Population Minister’s title and ended the advertising misspend, but there is no sign of withdrawal from Afghanistan and on social issues her policy positions are no different from Rudd’s, whatever her personal views.

The one reason she can ignore those million or so voters is preferential voting. They have nowhere else to go. Whatever minor party or independent they give their first preference to, they will ultimately give a preference (2, 3, 4 or 5) to Labor ahead of the Coalition. And that’s all that matters.

In Australia, preferential voting tends to push policy to the conservative side. This is because people with lower incomes and lower education – traditional Labor people who became Howard battlers and then supported Rudd – are deeply suspicious of change and are socially conservative. They are easily wooed by the Coalition, even if the Coalition’s economic and social welfare policies are not in their best interests.

Labor cannot afford to alienate them. It can afford to alienate the social left because of preferential voting.

It is not a reason for getting rid of preferential voting because the fairness argument outweighs the policy influence. But it helps to know why Gillard will have as hard a refugee and social policy as Rudd.

A more obvious drawback in the electoral system is that the Prime Minister chooses the election date. She (or he) does this not on a whim but on a cold calculation based on when it will be most advantageous.

The Constitution provides a limit: the House of Representatives cannot sit beyond three years from its first sitting after the previous election. So it can be three years and several months between elections.

There is a practical limit. A Prime Minister cannot stretch the three-year term too much or it will look like desperation. This is why Gillard has ruled out an election in 2011.

Changing to a fixed term would have the advantage of fairness. It would also give certainty to public servants, political staff, journalists and many others whose work arrangements depend on the election date. Not to mention their families.

We now have a silly guessing game: Guess the election date.

Some argue that the three-year term is too short for a government to deliver on major policy commitments. That appears to be the case with the Rudd-Gillard Government, though that might be less to do with the length of the term than with Senate obstruction and general tardiness.

The system of single-member electorates has some major drawbacks, but changing it would come at the cost of less stability.

Most Australian elections are remarkably close. They are usually decided by a few thousand votes in a dozen or so marginal electorates. This has led governments of both complexions concentrating policies, programs, spending and campaigning on those marginal seats, particularly ones they hold. The rest of the country does not get the attention it deserves.

It often results in poor decision-making. A classic example was the placing of the Defence Headquarters Joint Operations Command in the marginal electorate of Eden-Monaro.

Candidate selection suffers. Sometimes good candidates capture marginal seats and lose them a couple of elections later. With single-member electorates, it is more difficult to draft the best national talent into the Parliament and the Government.

The single-member system denies representation to a significant portion of minority opinion. The Greens, and until recently the Australian Democrats, often achieved around 10 per cent of the vote but got no seats. Electoral justice suggests 10 per cent of the vote deserves 15 seats.

But electoral justice would come at the price of majority government. Some might welcome that as a way of prevent extreme positions in government and force governments to compromise. However, the Senate already has that role.

Some of the above drawbacks might be overcome by adding some national seats to the House of Representatives without the disadvantage of a totally proportional system.

But that would not overcome a major, perhaps insurmountable, flaw in our system: electoral funding. The High Court has held that the Constitution grants an implied freedom of political communication. That might prevent constraints on the huge advertising campaigns by political parties or big corporations. Unfortunately, slick, shallow misleading advertising campaigns (as we have just seen with the miners) work wonders on the politically apathetic and through them the policy makers. If they didn’t people wouldn’t waste their money on them.

The Churchillian profundity, which has now become a cliché, will hold true this election as it has in the past: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 17 July 2010.