In the same week as the joint standing committee on electoral matters released its final report on the 2013 federal election, the results of the NSW Legislative Council (the upper house) elections were finalised.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The conjunction is thought-provoking as the final seat was won by a micro party, the Animal Justice Party. The successful candidate was Mark Pearson, executive director of Animal Liberation Australia.
In the final wash-up of the 21 seats up for election, the Liberal-National Coalition won nine, Labor seven, the Greens two, and the Christian Democratic Party, the Shooters and Fishers Party and the Animal Justice Party one each. Overall, the Liberal-National Coalition and the Reverend Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party can form a majority to pass legislation.
The two events should be linked because the JSCEM's stated aim in pursuing reform of the Senate voting system (set out in its first interim report in May 2014) was "to ensure that federal parliament was reflective of the Australian public's vote".
But the wishes of the Australian electorate are extremely diverse, as this election result in Australia's largest state shows, making it challenging to ensure that the composition of any parliament is reflective of the public's vote. There are always different ways of doing so, mainly through adopting different voting systems.
It is difficult to make discussion of electoral and voting matters exciting compared to the issues of the day, like terrorism or mental health.
The JSCEM report shows how many different issues there are to consider, including the management of ballot papers (harking back to the 1370 lost Senate voting papers in Western Australia), electronic voting, enrolment and pre-poll voting, election funding, and the actual counting of the vote. It is, therefore, a report for the smallish number of people who find electoral matters riveting.
But the rules of the game of democracy should be considered as equally important as the party conflicts and policy debates which dominate politics between elections because they determine the composition of parliament and this composition, as the current Senate shows, determines the fate of government legislation.
A "good as possible" voting system should try to do three main things.
First, in the interests of fairness, it should provide a level playing field for all candidates. Second, how to cast a vote should be as clear as possible for all voters. Third, the link between casting a vote and the final outcome should be as understandable as possible.
But even so, there will be alternatives.
These include the choice between first past the post and preferential voting and the choice between single member electorates and proportional representation.
Choosing between these alternatives depends on value judgments as to what sort of parliamentary democracy we want.
In Australia, we have hedged our bets on these value judgments by generally having two parliamentary chambers elected by different means. That is the case for the Commonwealth Parliament.
The current Senate voting system employs both above and below the line voting with full preferential voting. Voters can cast a single vote above the line, leaving their preferences to be determined by the party of their choice, or vote below the line for every candidate in preference order.
Either way causes problems. Above the line voting means the preference distribution is effectively hidden from the voter, and below the line voting is time-consuming and cumbersome given the very large number of candidates standing.
The main JSCEM recommendations to introduce optional preferential voting are sensible. Voters using the above the line method would choose their own preferences and those using below the line would number candidates equivalent to the number of vacant seats, usually six, rather than each candidate.
However, any reform has limitations.
A Sydney Morning Herald editorial lists three factors contributing to the current composition of the Senate: luck, gaming the system and pure voter ignorance. These reforms just tackle "gaming the system" and luck and voter ignorance will remain.
Furthermore, I still believe that some of the momentum for Senate reform is driven by a hankering for the so-called good old days when there were just a limited number of parties in our parliaments. Accompanying this is a dislike for minority government. Yet, both a multitude of parties and minority governments are here to stay, not because of flawed voting systems, but because a substantial number of Australian voters are fed up with the status quo. They have lost faith in the established parties, including the Greens, and want more diversity in our parliaments. That will continue.
Therefore, I am sceptical of another of the committee recommendations, that it should be made more difficult for new parties to register.
Ideally, parties should have a legitimate membership base and not be mere "shell companies", but raising the bar to 1500 members nationally seems unnecessarily high to me even if the requirements in each state and territory are proportionally far fewer. It will only encourage more silent members who just pay their money rather than a genuinely involved membership.
Electoral reform should also apply not just to the Senate but also to the House of Representatives.
Why stop at the Senate? The argument for optional preferential voting applies just as much to the House of Representatives.
To introduce it in both houses would also have the added advantage that it would limit informal voting by using the same voting method. And if we want to eliminate luck as far as possible, why not rotate the order of the candidates on the ballot papers to eliminate the "donkey vote"?
Let's widen voting reform beyond the currently perceived problems with the Senate system.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
