Paul Keating wants to get rid of the turbulent minorities in the Senate. Just as Henry hated his executive power being interfered with the turbulent priest Archbishop Thomas a’Becket in the 12th century, Keating hates the exercise of his executive power being questioned by the Senate. Just as Henry sent a few knightly thugs to murder a’Becket, Keating is musing with changing the Senate election system to rid himself of the turbulent Kernot.
His scheme, however, has some very high constitutional and practical hurdles.
At present the Senate is elected by proportional representation with each state as one electorate. In a half-Senate election for six senators, a candidate needs 14.3 per cent of the vote to get a seat, or a lot less if it is the last seat and preferences are counted. If it is a double-dissolution election for 12 senators a candidate needs only 7.7 per cent. It means minor parties are able to get seats.
Keating and the Government leader in the Senate, Gareth Evans, have mused about electing the Senate like the House of Representatives, on a single-member electorate basis. Essentially, only major parties win single-member seats. An alternative is to keep each state as a single electorate but change the voting system from preferential to first-past the post. Under that plan voters would mark six crosses and the six candidates with the most crosses would get seats, instead of marking them 1, 2, 3, etc as now. Once again only major party candidates would win seats.
The first-past-the-post system applied up to 1949. It was unworkable because of the clean-sweep effect. Each of the six candidates from the party with support of 51 per cent of the voters would get more crosses than any candidate from any other party, so that party would get all six seats. This used to happen before 1949. Now, I cannot imagine the party hacks, bosses and machine workers surrendering the present cosy job-for-life at the head of a Senate ticket of a major party. Under the present system the first two candidates of the major parties in each state are assured election. The fight is only over the last two seats.
People like Graham Richardson and Gareth Evans, assured of constant re-election under the present system, will not argue for a new system under which they might lose their seats.
What about single-member seats? At present each state has 12 senators, but only six are elected at each ordinary three-yearly election because each has a six-year term. Question: is each state to be carved into six electorates (one for each senator being elected) or 12 (one for each serving senator).
Having 12 electorates might offend the Constitution because at a normal half-senate election, half of the people of the state would not get to vote in the Senate election. The Constitution provides for senators to be directly chosen by “”the people of the state”.
Thus we are left with the six-electorates option. This would be workable for half-Senate elections, but what about double dissolutions which require the election of 12 senators? That would mean electing two senators from each electorate. In that case, it would result in a senator from each of the major parties in each seat. Two decades of territory senate elections have shown this to be the case. The result is an evenly split Senate and worse mayhem than now.
Perhaps the only way to do it is to have six electorates for half-Senate elections and 12 electorates for double dissolutions. Very messy.
Another factor against single-member Senate electorates is the population distribution. In Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia five out of the six seats would be totally or partially made up of capital-city electors. In NSW it would be four and in Queensland and Tasmania three. It would spell trouble for the National Party.
Further, with such large seats (a sixth of the population of a state) few if any would be safe for any party because all seats would tend to have a large mix of population: working class, yuppies, rich and poor. Each seat would be similar to the state average. The result would be that a party obtaining, say, 52 or 53 per cent of the total vote after preferences, would get perhaps five or all six of the seats. Once again, the comfortable life of sitting major-party senators would be at risk.
My guess is that self-interest by key figures in the major parties will prevent the change. As T. S. Eliot wrote in Murder in the Cathedral: “”The right deed for the wrong reason.”