Just before every ACT election there are calls for a council-style government or some fundamental change to the system. Usually, it is someone making political capital out of what they think is a residual no-self-government feeling.
This time, Chief Minister Gary Humphries said he wanted a council system with a separate election for a mayor. And Independent MLA Paul Osborne called for an end to the formal recognition of the Opposition.
In 1978, 63.8 per cent of population voted for no self-government. That amounted to 69,893 votes, or 32 per cent of the present electorate, presuming they are all alive and still living here. It is a stale mandate.
It has been superceded by the 1992 and 1995 referendums which gave 65 per cent approval to installing and then entrenching the Hare-Clark proportional voting system. True, the 1992 and 1995 votes did not include a no-self-government or council option, but the informal vote was a remarkably low 5 and 4 per cent respectively, indicating no protest vote.
Our politicians would do better to accept that we have a Parliament that embraces both local and state functions. If the place is to have only a council and mayor do we hand up education, health and police to the Feds or NSW? Imagine the priority Prime Minister John Howard or Premier Bob Carr would give to Canberra health, education and police. Ziltch.
There is no going back to the glory days of extravagant Federal governments lavishing on Canberra whether it is ruled with no, some or all self-government. Just because there was a lot of money about for Canberra in no-self-government days, it does not mean it was a better form of government. These days, if we were ruled by federal bureaucrats we would be squeezed to bits.
Incidentally, most of Osborne’s other proposals for better government were first rate. They were similar to the ones he put up and did not follow through in 1998. they included better freedom of information laws, better scrutiny of executive appointments and a stronger arrangement for public accounts and estimates committees and arrangements for the Auditor-General. But the one about eliminating perks for the Opposition was a bit thick coming from a bloke who drives around in a people mover courtesy of the ACT taxpayer to suit his personal family arrangements. That he wants to split the money among other MLAs is a bit of worry, too.
Also, he wants a Lobbyists Registration Act. Presumably the first name would be that of Richard Farmer. At least the Eros Foundation (the Democrats’ Richard Farmer) would have to be a close second.
But hacking the formal Opposition will not help democracy. The ACT Opposition is a frugal affair. In the interests of democracy it needs to be beefed up. We have been wearing the hair shirt for too long in the ACT. Did you notice, for example, in the reports about the dreadful shooting in the Assembly of the Swiss canton of Zug that they had 80 members for a population of 90,000. Tasmania has a tad more people than up (and falling) but its economy is smaller. It has 30 members of the Lower House and half that again in the Upper House and a swag of local councils to boot. We do not need that many, but we have had too much frugality.
At self-government we had 169,493 electors and a population of 277,100. We elected 17 members to look after state and local matters. Now we have 218,615 people and a population of XXXX and still only 17 members. People complain that they cannot get to see their local members, or that they cannot get responses and they expect their elected representatives to work miracles. Just extrapolating the 1989 ratio (which was under-representation then) we should have 28 members. Perhaps that is too many. But certainly we should go to at least 21 with three electorates of seven seats each.
That will raise immediate squeals that we would get too many independents and minor parties. Not so. Seven-seat electorates are in fact better for the major parties. In the three Hare-Clark elections the seven-seat Molonglo has always produced a more representative result than the five-seat electorates. In the latter there have always been two each for the majors irrespective of large differences (sometimes more than 10 percentage points) in their vote. In Molonglo, the major parties get differentiated by a three-two outcome with the other two seats going to independents and minors. In the five-seat electorates, the single seat left for minors and independents has given one class of independent too much power (at present rightish but in the futre maybe the other way). If, however, all three electorates were seven-seat you would typically get a 3-2-2 result with the better major party getting three, the other major getting two, with two going to minors and independents often of different outlook – one leftish and one rightish. It would mean that you would always get one or other of majors decisively in front and never get a coterie of rightish or a coterie of leftish independents holding a government to ransom on political outcomes – but together they could still hold a government to account that had broken the law or utterly gone off the rails.
Humphries should give up wanting to be mayor and with Labor join to make the present system work better with an increase in the number of MLAs and proper resourcing for research and serving the electorate.
Off with the hair shirt.