“[Critics of P.R.] are unable to reconcile themselves to the loss of what they term the local character of the representation. A nation does not seem to them to consist of persons, but of artificial units, the creation of geography and statistics. Parliament must represent towns and counties, not human beings.

But I cannot see why the feelings and interests which arrange mankind according to localities, should be the only ones thought worthy of being represented; or why people who have other feelings and interests, which they value more than they do their geographical ones, should be restricted to these as the sole principle of their political classification.”                                        John Stuart Mill^#

Keeping the Quota as High as Possible

In states where petitioners have campaigned so tirelessly that electoral reform away from single member voting has finally succeeded, it is often the case that those who profited and achieved power from the original pluralist system will still be fighting a rear guard action to maintain as much legislative occupancy as they possibly can.

One method of this foot-dragging is to keep the representation as unproportional as possible in their favour, despite proclaiming they now accept the principle of proportional representation (PR). So, for example, if a house of parliament containing 76 seats is to change its electoral system to PR (perhaps to create a balance with the other house which still maintains single member representation) then one would think that with that new system, a group of party supporters totalling one seventy-sixth, 1.315% of the voting population, (known as the ‘quota’) would thus be able to elect their candidate to parliament.

Unfortunately, in reality that is rarely the case. If micro parties representing less than 2% of the voters could be elected then that would mean that the major parties at elections could only accrue votes from those who actually supported them and no more. One way to get around this impediment to electoral advantage is to arrange the electoral system so as to maintain the quota higher than its natural state. The more creative one can be, the higher the quota and thus the greater number of micro parties knocked out of the election. So far, the three reasons given to perpetuate high quotas in Australia are the “need” for both multiple zoning and rotating electoral periods, and to maintain necessary constitutional requirements.

Rotating Electoral Periods

A rotation system, as exists in most Australian PR electorates, is when at every election only half the seats are up of election, but for twice the electoral period, followed by at the next election, the remaining seats which would at that stage have completed their double electoral term.

The Need for Stability

The alleged justification for this system is the stability it offers to the parliamentary house it is attached to. “An upper house elected by rotation, with only half of the members facing re-election each time, provides greater continuity of experience and stability. Elections [only] every three years can lead to short-term thinking and planning which may not be in the best interests of the nation”

There are a number of problems with this theory:

• The premise the argument is based upon is that the public are a fickle lot who are forever changing their representatives at the first whim of displeasure. But history has shown that this is not the case. Even for the Australian House of Representatives which does not have extended terms, well in excess of 50% of incumbents at every election, unless retiring after a long period in Parliament, retain their seats. In fact in some democracies the opposite often appears to be the case. In the United States (where it is not rare for at least 75% of standing incumbents to retain their seats) constitutional amendments known as term limit initiatives have been attempted, with some success, to specifically limit, rather than extend, the tenure of democratic representatives.
• If indeed the voters are fickle and dismiss an incumbent due to their  “short term thinking”, cannot those same voters at another time be equally fickle and appoint, for a double period, a representative who quickly turns out to be quite unacceptable? In that case the solution to the first problem undeniably becomes the cause of the second.
• Stability is very important with regards to executive government: the Prime Minister and cabinet and senior public service. It is not a good sign for foreign investment, domestic business or foreign relations to have the occupants of senior government offices regularly changing hands. However to claim that the seats of the legislature possibly changing political texture every three years should be a problem, does seem to be pushing the envelope. Compared to the executive, the actions of Parliament have quite less a direct effect, where often enacted legislation will take a year or more before coming into effect, and then only after being approved by the crown as well as being consistent with the constitution.

Whether or not Parliament attains greater “needed” stability, one thing without doubt is that having only half the seats available at every election doubles the quota needed to win a seat.

First and Second Class Senators

As bad as this is, there seems to be even further attacks on democracy in the way this rotation practice is maintained.

After a normal, so called ‘half-senate’ election, Senators have either three years remaining on their six-year term or are just beginning their six years. However following a Double Dissolution election (where the tenures of all the senators are dissolved), the new senators are still divided into the same separate ‘classes’ (as described by the Constitution) receiving either three or six year terms, despite the fact that there is nothing about any of them that makes them more or less deserving than their peers. Why should some get the plum six-year term while others up with the short straw of only three years? All represent a quota of Australian voters. Senators are merely the representatives of those who voted for them either with their first or later preferences. To divide the Senate into fortunate and unfortunate classes is also to similarly divide their supporters. At the following election, the ‘unfortunate’ voters must vote to return their representative into parliament while the fortunate ones already have that guaranteed, and now get to elect a second representative to act for them in the Senate.

Originally in drafting our constitution classifying the senators was supposed be, as with the US senate, by “lot”, that is, drawing straws. However, Alfred Deakin thought it was a “blot on the face” to leave it to chance, and naively arranged that instead the Senate itself should devise a system which would obviously be fair and not self-serving. Since Federation the what was called ‘Order Elected’ method was used to decide the classes depending on the order of candidates winning their quotas. However in 1984 a bipartisan government review was undertaken which realised that a fairer system, known as the ‘Recount’ method should be used, and entrenched such into law under Section 282 of the Commonwealth Act. Unfortunately, constitutional law always trumps legislative law, and the majority of newly elected Senators from the 1987 DD election simply decided that they would ignore the new legislation and instead use the traditional method as it gave their parties more seats.

To quote renown Australian psephologist Antony Green from his blog,

The reason was self-interest by Labor and Democrat Senators, who found themselves allocated more long-term positions at the expense of the Coalition. It meant that at the next election in 1990, the Coalition had more Senators than normal facing election while Labor and the Democrats had fewer seats to defend. Since 1987 the Senate has several times passed resolutions stating its intention to use the re-count method to allocate seats at any future double dissolution. However, what the Senate will do after the 2 July [2016] double dissolution will be up to the Senators elected. And as in 1987, the majority of Senators present may choose to ignore the fairer re-count method if there is an advantage in sticking to the old order elected method.

Multiple Electoral Zones

The reason for not having the whole state, or even country, as a single zone for proportional representation, but instead dividing the area up into multiple member electorates, (apart from where commentators and politicians actually come out and openly declare it is to raise the quota so as to deny “extremist” and single issue parties representation) is allegedly to give the voter a compromise between PR and maintaining a local member.

[It is interesting to note that the Proportional Representation house is always the one set aside for compromise and not the other. No major-party politician has ever suggested that the upper house should have pure, one-zone proportional representation, while the lower house should use a compromise system of local member representation, but instead of one member per local electorate there should be, perhaps three, to accommodate differing points of view.]

But why do we need this compromise here? The very meaning of compromise is to accommodate the interests of both parties. Are not the interests of single member voting and local area representation already fully accommodated in those lower houses anyway? In fact doubly accounted for in the Australian federal parliament (as well as many state parliaments) considering lower houses generally entertain twice as many representatives as upper houses.
 

Constitutional Requirements

In fairness to the above mentioned members of Parliament of major parties, abolishing rotation electoral periods and multiple zones would not be as simple as passing normal legislation. Both of these facets of our Senate electoral system are entrenched by the constitution. But the constitution can be, and is sometimes changed, and abolishing these two sections (Sections #7 and #13) might well be supported by many sections of the Australian community.

In 1992 then Prime Minister Paul Keating described Senators as “unrepresentative swill”. Whether or not they were swill, he was certainly correct in describing them as unrepresentative. Allegedly to prevent the more populous states dominating the others, Section 7 of the constitution was included to ensure all states shall have equal numbers of Senators. In practice what this has meant is that a state such as Tasmania with a population of 500,000 has as many Senators as NSW with a population 14 times larger. This blatant violation of the tradition democratic concept of one-person-one-vote was meant to allow more members of parliament in the so called house of review to specifically act for and defend the smaller states. However in practice this has simply not happened. Politically alignment in the Senate for approximately the last 100 years has strictly been with the nationally established political  parties whether from both small state and large. In name or in policy platform, there has never been a “Small States Defender Party” represented in Australia’s house of review.

So if the constitution were to be changed to rid us of these undemocratic sections we could have an electoral system for the Senate which not only granted every Australian citizen equal voting power, but also granted truly proportional and fair representation to both large parties and small. This done at the moderate cost of removing a constitutional attribute that has never been utilised anyway.

Reducing our MPs per Capita

The Nexus: The less than honourable reason for decreasing representation

Upon Federation in 1901, the drafters of the constitution declared that initially, the number of members of the House of Representatives will be 75, but shall be increased at the discretion of Parliament, as Australia’s population increased. With regards to Senators, Section 24 stipulates that as the House increased in numbers there would be a nexus whereby the Senate must also increase such that it shall always have approximately half the number of the House. As the population at the time was just below four million, this meant that in the House of Representatives, Australians were allocated one representative for approximately every 50,000 people.

Even though not being as good a ratio as New Zealand, which currently grant an MP for every 40,000 citizens, the ratio actually decreased over the decades until 1984 when it became one lower house MP for every 104,000 people. Compared to other Commonwealth countries such as the UK (99,246) and Canada (also 104,000) this representation was not that bad, however what becomes interesting is that in the almost 40 years since then, there has been no further increase in MP numbers. Thus, when starting off in 1901, where every Australian had to share a MHR with 50,000 others, we are now in the invidious position of sharing him/her with 170,459 others, or 341,000 in the case of a Senator, more than three times the original number.
Good luck at getting through the door and spending serious time with your local member or Senator if you have something you believe to be vitally important to discuss .

So why have we not had an increase in MPs commensurate with our population increase? The answer does not display our major political parties at their best. More House members mean, by law, there must also be more Senate numbers, and that’s where ‘the problem’ lies.
It is all about Senate quotas:

• the more senators’ seats up for election, the lower the quota;
• the lower the quota the fewer exhausted votes and the less naive preference votes play in who finally wins a seat;
• the less preferences play, the greater chance for minor parties and independents winning, and thus denying the major parties their duopoly.

In the 2019 Australian federal election for the Senate, what are known as the micro parties and independents won 24% of the vote which, due to the high quota of 14.28%, translated into winning only 5% of the seats. The remaining 95% of the seats eventually ending up with the major parties due to preference choices or exhausted votes.
   
In 1967 during an address to the nation, then Prime Minister Harold Holt implied that 85,000 people should be the optimum size of a lower house electorate^#. Now if that suggestion, which was still well above what our founders envisioned, was followed through today, considering we are now 170,000 it would mean we would have to double our number of electorates. And following through because of section 24, we would also have to double the number of Senators representing each state, from 12 to 24.  The quota then for a half-senate election would drop from 14.3% be 7.7%, and for an occasional full senate election to  4%, a figure to absolutely terrify the major parties.

Solving the ‘Problem’

So have our hard working politicians ever initiated anything to solve this problem of decreasing representation?
They certainly have.
 In 1967 major party bipartisan legislation was passed to authorise a referendum to change the constitution so as to remove that ‘troubling’ nexus of Senate / H.O.R. numbers, Section 24, whereby House numbers could then increase while Senate numbers remain frozen. 

Reasons given against an increased Senate were that “…so that the House may have a flexible future.” and that otherwise the Senate would be “perpetually deadlocked”^. Another reason, given by P.M. Harold Holt, was that “ [the Senate’s] powers are defined and established in the Constitution and its effectiveness does not depend upon increased numbers.^#”
One wonders why that argument should not also apply for the House? Unsurprisingly, one reason they did not give was that in future double dissolutions an unexpanded Senate would give little opposition to passage of House bills which it would have previously opposed.
Perhaps they suspected that this attack upon the Senate would not be an easy thing to sell, considering many Australians, especially of the smaller states, liked their house of review, otherwise known as their ‘states’ house and believing it should also be amply occupied.
So what would one do to give it some momentum for acceptance? Simple, see if you can give it traction by tying it to a popular issue being put to the people at the same time, namely the referendum to include “aboriginal natives” being counted in the national census, and to remove the words “other than the aboriginal race in any State” from Section 51(xxvi).

 According to the website Collaborating for Indigenous Rights*:

The government [in 1967] hoped that support for the other constitutional alteration being proposed at this referendum, the breaking of the nexus between the number of seats in the House of Representatives and the number of Senators, would increase by its association with the more popular alteration of clauses relating to Aboriginal people.

Fortunately for Australian democracy, the voters did not get carried away as much as their pollies hoped, and while the Aboriginal question easily passed, the nexus question didn’t, due to  ingloriously failing in five of the six states.

# Public address by Prime Minister Harold Holt

^ https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/pops/Papers_on_Parliament_68/The_Defeated_1967_Nexus_Referendum

* Collaborating for Indigenous Rights 1957–1973, www.indigenousrights.net.au.  Website hosted by the National Museum of Australia.