At the last ACT election in February, the people voted (nearly 70-30) for the Hare-Clark system and the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, quite rightly says she will give effect to the choice.
More technically, the people voted for “”a proportional representation (subs round brackets are correct) (Hare-Clark) system (as outlined in the Commonwealth’s Referendum Options Description Sheet”.
The description sheet provided for the Robson rotation which hacks into party factional power. It provides that the order of a party’s candidates be changed on different voters’ ballot papers. Voter 1 get a paper with Berry at Labor’s No 1 spot. Voter 2 gets a paper with Connolly’s name at the No 1 spot and so on. Thus voters have to think about the order they want to place the candidates in, rather than just accepting the party line. More of this later.
Of more importance here, the description sheet provided: “”The ACT will be divided into 3 separate electorates, of which two will elect 5 members each, and one will elect 7 members, to the Legislative Assembly.”
Herein lies the absurdity. Before the next ACT election which must be held on the third Saturday in February, 1995, the ACT will have three seats in the Federal Parliament.
Under Commonwealth law, those electorates must be drawn with equal numbers of voters, subject to some qualifications. The variation is not allowed to be greater than 10 per cent, and variations must be justified according to population trends.
So, there is no way you could fairly use the federal boundaries for ACT elections.
Just say there are 150,000 voters in the ACT. A federal division, at its most skewed permitted under the law would have electorates of 53,000, 48,500 and 48,500. Applying that to an ACT election, the large seat of seven members would have the equivalent of 7571 voters per member and the smaller seats of five members would have the equivalent of 9700 voters per member. The disparity is obvious and unfair. Besides, the referendum description sheet provided that the electorates must yield one vote one value.
Any greater skew in the federal seats would invite a court challenge. And in any event it is unthinkable that the Australian Electoral Commission would draw unequal boundaries in the ACT for the convenience of a local election.
The referendum, therefore, has locked the ACT into drawing separate electoral boundaries, unlike Tasmania. Tasmania uses its five federal electorates in state elections, at which each electorate returns seven members to the Tasmanian Lower House.
Logic and practical administration tell us it would be sensible to follow the Tasmanian pattern. However, the 5, 5, 7 split and the requirement of “”one vote, one value” dictate otherwise.
One solution would be to reduce the number of MLAs to 15 so we can have three electorates of five members, following federal boundaries. However, the Self-Government Act requires that the Federal Government (not the Federal Parliament) make a regulation to this effect and that the Assembly approve it. It is unlikely the Assembly will vote for this. Politicians do not vote for measures which might terminate their political life.
The absurdity of not having the ACT use the Federal boundaries can lead to one or more of several conclusions, none of which will be very popular:
The first is an argument that some elements of the referendum have produced a silly result, therefore the ACT Government would not be bound to enact the whole of the referendum options description sheet. It would therefore introduce a basic Hare-Clark model as best it could and the Robson rotation would tragically fall by the wayside.
The second is that the given the need for separate ACT boundaries, a separate ACT electoral commission is clearly needed to draw them up. It is essential, of course, that the Labor Government choose the “”independent” electoral commissioner to ensure the boundaries are not unfair.
It may well be that that “”independent” commissioner finds a community of interest in the huge Tuggeranong-Woden area which demands that it be the base for the seven-member electorate. The five-member electorates would be Belconnen and Old Canberra. Michael Moore, independent MLA with a base in Old Canberra, would suddenly find himself in a five-member electorate. The difference, of course, is that you need 16.6 per cent of the vote to win in a five-member electorate and only 12.5 per cent in a seven-member one. Bye-bye, Michael.
The third is that the only solution is to have three equal electorates of seven each by increasing the Assembly to 21 members, with its attendant costs, hangers-on, advisers, bureaucracies and paper-generation.
The ACT Government will not get away with the first argument. Very simply, the Independents and the Liberals will block it. They are determined upon the Robson rotation. There is some irony in that. Superficially, it seems that Labor would be against Robson rotation more than anyone else. The factions would not like it if individual voters were forced to determine their preference for candidates rather than having the party factions do it for them. However, Labor might find Robson rotation a godsend. All of the divisive effort that goes into faction-fighting and positioning candidates on a ballot paper would instead go to more sensible things, like policy generation.
Perhaps Ms Follett secretly likes Robson rotation, but never dared to say so. Perhaps she thinks the voters will provide her with a better list of elected candidates than the party machine.
The second argument about an ACT electoral commission carries some weight. Ms Follett’s argument is that the ACT fought long and hard to gain control of its own electoral system and should not hand it over to a Commonwealth body over which the ACT has no control or influence.
But the danger is that ACT control means executive control. How can one ensure the commissioner is independent? At present the Auditor-General and the Ombudsman are independent, and report only to the Assembly. However, independence can be jeopardised in any position if one owes one’s re-appointment to the Executive, rather than to the Parliament. Perhaps the ACT could lead the way in Australia by having the Assembly, rather than the Executive, make the appointment.
It may be that the Liberals and independents join to provide that the Australian Electoral Commission runs ACT elections. One could easily question whether the ACT needed a separate electoral commission at all given the standing of the federal body.
However, that was not the recommendation of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters which brought down its report on federal-state co-operation. It recommended the continuation of state and territory bodies and made dozens of (no doubt costly) recommendations about how the two levels can co-operate.
As is the way of things, the depressing conclusion (by politicians) will be more politicians and another layer of bureaucracy to make sure they are elected fairly.
The more sensible option has no chance: fewer politicians and fewer elections _ say one election on the first Saturday in December every three years for all federal, state and territory parliaments and all local councils to be run by one Australian Electoral Commission.