Australian PR elections

[IH Farrow]

DEMOREP suggested that I post the following information on Australian elections to this discussion group.

Australia has Hare Clark PR for only some elections, these are:

Senate (upper house) at the Federal level [12 Senators per State; 6 elected statewide every 3 years]
Legislative Council (upper house) of New South Wales [42 members: 21 elected statewide every 4 years]
Legislative Council (upper house) of South Australia [22 members: 11 elected statewide every 4 years]
Legislative Council (upper house) of Western Australia [5 multi member districts: 3x5, 2x7, electing 34 members every 4 years]
House of Assembly (lower house) of Tasmania [5 multi member districts of 7 members, elected every 4 years]
Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory [3 multi member electorates: 2x5, 1x7, electing 17 members every 4 years]

There are also some States in which local government is elected using Hare Clark.  Predominantly PR is used to elect non-governing Upper Houses, with the exception of Tasmania and the ACT.  

Every other Australian election is conducted using single member electorates where the voting is preferential (i.e. STV with a quota of 50%).  Preferential voting was introduced in Australia in 1918 following circumstances in which Labor candidates with a plurality of votes were being elected in conservative electorates due to the entry of a new rural-based political party which split the conservative vote.  As far as I am aware, Australia is the only country which has this system for single member electorates (although the Irish President is also elected in this way).  

The Australian Capital Territory decided upon its electoral systems by referendum and interestingly some 60% of  ACT voters endorsed Hare Clark multi member PR against the alternative of (the more usual) single member preferential electorates.  So it is interesting to see what happens when electors are given the opportunity to choose.  

I suspect, however, that the most interesting developments before the end of this millennium are likely to occur in the United Kingdom where Prime Minister Blair has placed reform of the Parliament and the electoral system firmly on the political agenda.  My suspicion is that the UK will be closely examining the ordinal voting systems extant in its' former colonies of Australia, Ireland and Malta - either on a single or multi member basis.   It will be interesting to see if this has any impact in the other Anglophone democracies.

Regards

Ian Farrow	
e-mail: 	ifarrow at aip.com.au
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