By Jonathan Strauss
Paul Keating has opened a campaign against election of the Senate by proportional representation. Although not yet advancing any definite proposal, ALP leaders have floated a move to 12 single-member electorates for each state, elected by preferential voting (the system used to elect the House of Representatives).
On March 2, Keating claimed that the Senate is "not a representative chamber ... what you end up with is people who could never get a majority of public[?] votes holding powerful positions in the Senate as a result". However, an underlying agenda has become apparent — an attack on the defence of social justice and the environment by Greens (WA) senators Christabel Chamarette and Dee Margetts. The interview of ALP Senate leader Gareth Evans, together with Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot and Liberal representative Don Kemp, on the ABC's Lateline on March 17 exemplified this.
Some of the arguments put by Keating and Evans are red herrings, irrelevant to the proposed abandonment of proportional representation. For example, the argument that a person's vote in larger states has less weight than those in smaller states because each state elects 12 senators is correct, but the problem here is one of unequal, not proportional, representation. The proposal being considered by the ALP would not resolve this problem, since each state would simply by divided into 12 electorates.
Similarly, Keating's March 17 complaint that the Senate "is trying to thwart the wishes of a government elected in the House of Representatives" finds its target in the issue of the powers of the Senate, not in the method of its election.
But Keating and Evans have also argued that proportional representation is less democratic than preferential voting:
- "As the House of Representatives gets bigger ... so, too, has the Senate. That means the quota to elect a Senate person, a senator, given that there are more senators coming all the time, is smaller and smaller and smaller. So, if we had a full Senate election and you are talking about senators for a State you are talking about a quota of about 8 per cent" (Keating, Australian, March 18).
- "We now have exceptionally low quotas which usher in people who could not possibly secure a majority in the wide open spaces of the electorate. Hiding behind the proportional representation system, picking up 3 or 4 per cent of the vote, or 2 per cent of the vote, and hoping to pick up part of someone else's quota and then parading as a paragon of democratic virtue is ... nonsense ..." (Keating, Australian, March 4)
- Evans on Lateline frequently referred to "0.3%" as the Greens (WA) senators' vote. The suggestion was that this was a very small vote, disproportionate to their influence in the Senate.
In fact, proportional representation is a more democratic voting system than preferential voting.
In the preferential system, if no candidate wins a majority on first preference, candidates with the lowest votes are eliminated in turn, the votes for those candidates being distributed according to the preference indicated to remaining candidates, until one candidate has a majority.
In proportional representation, the same process of preference distribution occurs until enough candidates have secured the proportion, or quota, of the vote required for election. This quota is vote more than 100% divided by one more than the number to be elected. So, if six senators are to be elected, a quota is one vote more than the total vote divided by seven.
The majority vote of preferential voting, therefore, is only a majority of at-least-second-last preferences of voters, not of their first preferences. The proportional vote of those elected by proportional representation is as close as possible to the first preference of voters, given that not all quotas are met by first preference votes alone.
Of course, under preferential voting a candidate may be elected by an absolute majority of first preference votes. But under proportional representation, a majority of first preference votes also secures at least 50% of representatives elected.
The results of the proportional representation system, therefore, reflect more accurately than those of single-member preferential voting the more freely given higher preferences of voters, especially if there are significant divisions of voter support among three or more parties.
The points made by Keating and Evans do not override this general consideration. Instead, close examination exposes the weaknesses of the ALP argument:
- The number of senators elected from each state has increased twice — to 10 in the 1949 elections and to 12 in the 1984 elections. Two senators were also elected from the ACT and from the Northern Territory from 1975.
The move to 12 senators from each state, introduced by the Hawke ALP government, did reduce the quota percentage required to elect a senator in a full Senate election — which occurs when there is a double dissolution — from 9.1% to 7.7%. But the move was actually designed to eliminate the "minor parties" from the Senate.
Usually only half the Senate positions in a state are elected at any election. The quota percentage in such elections was therefore reduced from 16.7% to 14.3%. This reduction would not necessarily aid the election of minor party candidates, however, because if the ALP and Liberal-National Coalition both picked up 43% of the vote, then all six seats would be split between them, leaving other candidates eliminated.
This move failed, however. Minor party support continued to increase. With the two major players putting their rival last, minor party candidates could continue to be elected.
- The government is not elected by a majority of the national vote but by having a majority in the House of Representatives. Because of variations in voter support across electorates, the government elected has often not won a majority of even the two-party-preferred votes nationally — Liberal-National in 1954, 1961 and 1969, and the ALP in 1990.
Moreover, the Keating government did not win a national majority of first preference votes for the House of Representatives in the 1993 election. Instead both the ALP and Coalition won 44-45%, with other parties and independents winning 10.8%. Yet only two independent candidates, 1.4% of the representatives, were elected. If this vote were accurately reflected then minor parties and independents would also hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
- Under proportional representation candidates who have won low first preference votes can be elected by gathering together preferences from other candidates. The same is true for preferential voting. The difference is that under proportional representation the spread of first or higher preferences of voters is likely to be more accurately reflected.
- Keating's assertion that the minor parties "could never get a majority" of the vote simply helps to confirm his renowned arrogance. These parties have only not won a majority yet.
- Evans' claim of a 0.3% vote for the Greens (WA) senators involves a comparison of their statewide vote with the total national vote.
Assessing the 1993 Senate vote on an all-national basis gives the following result if parties in the green and/or left current are grouped together: ALP 43.50%, Liberal-National 43.04%, Democrats 5.31%, far right 4.12%, Greens/left 3.33%. This would have produced a Senate of 33or 34 Labor, 33 Coalition, 4 Democrats, 3 far right and 2 or 3 Greens/left — i.e., the same "balance of power" situation as now.
The real issue with the influence of the Greens (WA) senators is, then, not that it is disproportionate but that its use is different from that experienced in the past. Thus Kernot also criticised the Greens (WA) senators on the March 17 Lateline program for not seeking quick "possible" gains while allowing "the government to govern".
In fact, Kemp was who was able to pose as the progressive, defending proportional representation as a "fair system". This is because the Liberals have the ALP as a buffer against the greens and the left if they are the government.
But while proportional representation voting is a fairer system for electing representatives, it cannot overcome the separation of representatives both from the represented and from real power, which is found instead in the higher echelons of government departments and authorities, of the armed forces and police, and of business corporations. Far more thoroughgoing changes than in voting systems are required to secure real democracy.