Democracy is not so much in the voting, but in the counting of the votes.
That holds true not only for third world hell-holes where dictators steal the ballot papers, but also for western democracies where elections are overseen by impartial electoral officials.
The method of counting translates into how power is exercised and how democracy operates.
It is a good week to reflect on that. Today is the 10th anniversary of the approval of the Hare-Clark voting system in the ACT. This week also saw the upshot of the South Australian election and the resumption of Federal Parliament after the November 2001 election.
The Hare-Clark system has matured. You could argue that at the 2001 election it achieved a more democratic result than the Federal election and would have achieved a more democratic result than South Australia, but for a quirk of circumstances.
Democracy is more than majority rules and more than just translating raw voting numbers into a proportional number of seats. To be stable it has to deliver workable outcomes. But the outcomes also have to make the resulting government accountable.
The Hare-Clark system of multi-member electorates was approved by 65 per cent of the voters in an advisory referendum 10 years ago today and entrenched in a referendum three years later by a similar majority.
We have now had three Hare-Clark elections. None delivered majority government, but they therefore delivered accountable government.
Each election delivered a major-party government with one more seat than the other major party, but each relying on one or two minor-party or independent members who promised to support the Government by not supporting no-confidence motions unless there was illegal conduct and by guaranteeing supply.
Those arrangements have allowed independents and minor-party members to keep the Government accountable by joining the Opposition on the floor of the House to: enforce disclosure; veto appointments; and overturn ministerial directions and regulations promulgated by Ministers. They can also join with the Opposition to veto or amend the Government’s legislation (just like the Federal Senate) and also to enact their own (or the Opposition’s) legislation. That rarely happens anywhere else in Australia.
The only time that accountability happens elsewhere is when independents have held the balance of power in the Lower House. It is not happened federally since the war. It has happened in most other states, but effective accountability was only enforced by independents in NSW and this week South Australia. The independents who held the balance in Victoria after the last election were more interested in the Snowy River than reform of government. Besides Labor under Steve Bracks promised and implemented a range of reform-of-governance laws.
In NSW Independents Clover Moore, Peter MacDonald and John Hatton demanded fixed terms, an independent commission against corruption, greater freedom of information and so on. In South Australia, Independent Peter Lewis is demanding similar things. Governments hate reforms that make their conduct more open to scrutiny, but the football-match rivalry between the two parties is so strong they will do anything to stay in power – even promise to enact laws that will reduce their power in the future and require them to behave better.
But the main point is that single-member systems deliver accountability only by a occasional fluke of independents holding the balance. It took decades of disillusion with major parties to get there in just two states. In the ACT we have this accountability all the time. Governance in the ACT is not brilliant, but our lot and the rules that govern them are probably better than the state and territory average.
And as for day-by-day accountability, the defects of the single-member system were highlighted this week. The Coalition got 54 per cent of the seats with just 43 per cent of the vote. Nothing will make them account for the pre-election lies over refugees throwing their children into the water and sewing their children’s lips. The tyranny of the majority only slightly tempered by an upper house.
By comparison, in the ACT the governing Labor Party also got about 43 per cent of the vote (41.7 per cent) but only got 47 per cent of the seats – and its eighth seat was a squeak in by a few votes. If it had not got that seat it would have been 41.7 per cent of the vote for 41.2 per cent of the seats. It will never be exact, but Hare-Clark does not deliver a big majority of seats with a minority of the vote. It does not surrender accountability on the altar of ensuring a majority which rules at will.