Readers of my articles probably associate my name with making political predictions – my name is not normally associated with advocacy. However, those of you who have read my six most recent articles here (May 2014 to October 2015) may have thought that my thinking has become dominated by an obsession.
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That obsession has caused me to visit the parliaments of NSW, Victoria and the Commonwealth with remarkable frequency. The purpose of those visits has been to lobby politicians about my obsession. The visits will continue until I have achieved my objective.
To federal politicians and to those state politicians in Victoria my message has been simple: Don't allow the NSW disease to be imported into your parliaments.
The well-known term "NSW disease" has different meanings to different people. I now describe what it means to me.
In respect of the 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015 NSW state elections the method of electing the Legislative Council has been proportional representation by means of party list. For every other house of parliament in Australia where PR applies the system is pedantically described as "proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote", or PR-STV for short.
In September 2013 40 senators were elected, one of whom came from a micro-party which gamed the system to get their candidate (Ricky Muir in Victoria) elected a senator.
In November 2014, 40 members were elected to the Victorian Legislative Council. Five of the 40 were candidates (three men and two women) from micro-parties which successfully gamed the system in a like manner.
So, in what way does the Victorian upper house system differ from the federal to produce five odd results where the federal produced only one (out of 40 in both cases)? Actually the situation is somewhat counterintuitive, as I explain below.
My reaction to these pieces of election news was to say to myself: "My rivals in psephology will press the politicians from the big parties to install party-list systems designed to benefit the machines of their big parties. I must thwart them."
Sure enough, in 2014 we had a report from the federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters doing exactly as I had privately predicted. They determined, unanimously: gaming the system by micro-parties must be stopped by legislating for a Senate party-list system suitably loaded in favour of big parties.
In The Canberra Times I expressed my hostility to that report on Monday, May 11, 2015, in my article titled "A cynical fix that won't last" to which the editor added this brief description: "Electoral reform report belongs in the rubbish bin".
So why does the idea of party-list systems excite my hostility? Simple really: section 7 of the Australian constitution commands that "The Senate shall be composed of senators for each state, directly chosen by the people of the state, voting as one electorate". Therefore a party-list system is unconstitutional because the constitution commands that all our federal electoral systems must be candidate-based.
To that my critics say: "Rubbish. The present Senate method is a party-list system and its constitutional validity was upheld by the High Court in 1984". To that my retort is to say: "If I cannot rely on the High Court then I must lobby the politicians to do the right thing, namely convert the present camel of a system into a proper STV system."
I mentioned above the difference between the Senate and Victorian systems. Actually there is only one difference, a more voter-friendly ballot paper. In September 2013 Victorian voters were given this below-the-line option for the Senate: "OR by placing the numbers 1 to 97 in these squares in the order of your preference." In November 2014 this was the option" "OR place the numbers 1 to at least 5 in these squares to indicate your choice."
Intuition would predict a big rise in the number of below-the-line votes. They did rise – from 90,215 (2.7 per cent) in September 2013 to 208,875 in November 2014, but this latter figure was still only 6.1 per cent of the formal Legislative Council vote. Given that Victoria chanced to be the only state to elect a micro-party senator it is worth noting that the Victorian "preference whisperers" had a success rate of one in six for the Senate but five in 40 for the state upper house.
So what will happen? I advocate and predict the following. Some time in the autumn next year the Federal Parliament will do the easy and right thing and bring the Senate system into line with the Victorian. Those of us who live in Queanbeyan will have this below-the-line option: "OR place the numbers one to at least six in these squares" and we Canberrans shall need go only one and two below the line.
The parliament we elect in September next year will have enough time to do the job which really needs to be done – convert the present half-STV system into a PROPER STV system. Victoria will follow suit.
Since this procedure might excessively alienate the Senate crossbench I recommend and predict something further – an increase in the size of the Federal Parliament. Its numbers will go from 76 senators to 88 and from 150 members of the House of Representatives to 175.
In the long run the crossbench senators would have no ground to cry "unfair" when seven senators are elected from each state.
And the ACT will be glad to get back its third lower house seat.
Malcolm Mackerras is a visiting fellow at the Australian Catholic University's Canberra campus.
