What’s wrong with single-member electorates - Part I

The only way of improving the image of politics and politicians is to give voters a real say in who gets elected, something that the winner-take-all single-member-electorate system cannot achieve.

More and more voters are showing dissatisfaction with the way the political system operates. There has been a fall-off in the membership of a number of larger political parties as people have felt incapable of influencing decisions or become disillusioned for various other reasons. New parties are regularly being formed. The combined first-preference vote for the two contenders for government regularly falls below 80 per cent.

One Nation’s brief rise showed that voters may be prepared to embrace any route making their frustration apparent and having a chance of shaking up current arrangements. Independents, once elected, have tended to draw increased support, almost as though there was suddenly great relief about not being taken for granted.

Since 1995, there have been unexpected victories in Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory where voters may have wanted to punish governments without turfing them out, but could not find a way of achieving that.

What are the phenomena bringing about these evident levels of frustration?

Winning is everything

It has become a regular feature of campaigning to allege that the ‘other side’ will say or do anything likely to help get them into power.

Three or four years of initiating legislation and exercising executive power with the assistance of the public service certainly beats hands down the same period in opposition with the most meagre of resources.

What is accepted as the basis for deserving to be in government? Certainly not getting an absolute majority of first preferences because that is extremely rare.

Once upon a time, the Labor Party in particular preached that it was all about the majority of the two-party-preferred vote. In the mid-80s, Mick Young frequently asserted that with electorates of equal size whoever won most votes would win most seats. That has regularly failed to occur.

The Coalition won a majority of the vote after preferences federally in 1990 but fell well short of government in the face of the Richardson second-preference strategy. No apologies for the stroke of fortune, just as there was no real complaint in 1998 when Labor picked up more votes nationwide but was unable to crack a swag of narrowly-held marginal seats.

Bob Carr certainly wasn’t going to apologise for winning a majority of the seats in 1995 even though the Coalition, with huge rural majorities, had received greater overall support in New South Wales. Graham Richardson observed that these days 48.5 per cent is often enough for Labor because of the concentrated conservative vote in rural areas.

And in the Top End in 2001, Labor, so often on the wrong end of the electoral system’s vicissitudes, including not winning a single seat in 1974, went into government for the first time even though it had minority two-party-preferred support.

The only government somewhat contrite in recent years after winning with around 48 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote was in South Australia in 1989. Four years earlier, the Liberals had been so badly mauled by John Bannon in metropolitan areas for supporting privatisation that they didn’t look possibilities for an early return to power. And so it proved in enough of the marginal electorates.

However, the Bannon Government sought to defuse continuing Liberal protests about the unfairness of the outcome by agreeing to a change in the Constitution Act. Henceforth the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission would aim to redraw boundaries after every election so that the party or coalition winning a majority of the votes after distribution of preferences won a majority of seats.

Of course, it can’t be done. A moment’s thought shows that for every close result that has an ‘appropriate’ outcome you can switch a few hundred votes in the tightest seats to obtain the opposite conclusion and balance these off against some further gains in really safe seats. Same two-party-preferred vote, different government.

The change sailed through, with only the Electoral Reform Society of South Australia pointing out that what was proposed was window-dressing for an intrinsically unfair winner-take-all system and that what was needed was an effective vote for individuals in a system of proportional representation.

Curiously, with the effects of the constant boundary changes being felt in factional stoushes and deselected MPs turning Independent, the Labor platform at the February 2002 election included a provision that the Constitution Act be changed again so boundaries be redrawn after only every second election.

Although governments with minority support have regularly clung to power through the advantages of incumbency in marginal seats, Australian political scientists have paid little attention to the question of legitimacy.

A wipeout for the Opposition?

The baleful effect of overwhelming electoral landslides, usually worse than suggested by the cube rule, has also been underplayed. Governments or oppositions losing 5-10 per cent of their previous support and reduced to parliamentary insignificance have often turned to internal brawling during long periods of irrelevance while their opponents have become noticeably more arrogant in government.

After the Wranslide of 1978, the Liberals and Nationals had roughly the same number of members and for a time the former gained most attention for changing leader roughly every twelve months.

The defeat of Jeff Kennett in Victoria in 1999 came as a great shock as for much of the previous seven years Labor had been reduced to bystander status, with barely a Legislative Council presence to boot. Two terms were seen as inevitable when the Kirner Government was swept aside, then three assumed when Labor made minuscule inroads in 1996.

After the Labor Opposition in Queensland was reduced to a cricket team in 1974, well over a decade transpired before it was again a serious contender for government. In the meantime, the Nationals curtailed coalition with the Liberals and only fell after the extensive Fitzgerald Commission evidence about corruption turned off voters.

Last year the Coalition was comprehensively stripped of seats in Queensland when the whirlwind of its dealings with One Nation left Peter Beattie’s Government with three-quarters of the seats for just under half the first preferences. A year earlier the Coalition in NSW was severely pummelled.

Safe seats throughout regions

Look at any map of the parties winning seats and you inevitably find extensive regions coloured pretty much the same.

How can representative government have meaning when neither the government nor the opposition ends up with a geographical cross-section of its support base in the Parliament? Frequently some regions are neglected because seats can’t be won there and others get taken for granted because of the huge margins available as a buffer.

Such geographical determinism brings with it two major problems, the lack of any real political contest about policies and programs in vast parts of any jurisdiction, and the obsessive concentration on a relative handful of electorates where government will be determined.

In the safe seats, political life is not entirely quiet, at least within the dominant party when an open preselection occurs. As the Shepherdson Inquiry pursued in Queensland, branch stacking and false enrolment have sometimes become part of normal political culture when ten or twenty years of parliamentary service is the likely prize.

Of course the professionals have reserved such enthusiasm for the safest of seats because they understand the rewards and know how slim are the risks of an adverse redistribution or other upheaval once such seats have been captured.

Occasionally there is a falling out, either when a targetted incumbent decides not to just step aside, or where residual bitterness results in the person narrowly losing a preselection leaving the party and standing as an independent. Voters seem to sense that this might be their only chance in decades to have some local influence and often turf out the dominant party in such unusual circumstances.

In too many cases, the prison system has been more adept at prising holders of safe seats from their fiefdoms than have any concerns within the local branch membership.

Marginal electorates dominate campaigning

While the concentration between elections is largely on securing preselection in safe seats, during any campaigning the focus is even more narrowly on the seats that will make the difference between government and opposition – the marginals held by the smallest numbers of votes.

This is entirely rational. No advantage is to be gained from increasing the vote where there is already 60 per cent support, or in seeking swings that might occur once in a lifetime. A token pamphlet will do nicely, usually towards the end of the campaign period, as much as anything to encourage voting for the Upper House.

Except where something very unusual has occurred, the real action focuses on the small number of seats requiring swings less than 6 per cent to change hands.

Good government is hardly consistent with such distortions of political concentration. When by-elections occur in marginal electorates, often everything else virtually comes to a standstill for weeks.

Primaries as remedies?

A number of remedies have been proposed to generate greater voter involvement in the political process.

First there is the possibility of holding primaries, either by having all party members and not a small panel determine local preselections, or by having voting open to registered supporters, along United States lines.

Certainly, having more people involved would make branch stacking a less certain route to political office in the latter case. But would it change local political behaviour very much? Arrogant local members might find it a bit harder no longer just having to cultivate just a small handful of influential members. Falling out over preselection would usually be seen as sour grapes.

But this is all largely about conduct within the dominant party. As little would change for others, not much could be expected in the way of improved local political debate. Safe seats would continue to hold a magnetic attraction for the ambitious and the additional involvement possible within the dominant party would amount to little more than window-dressing. The winner-take-all mentality and inequitable regional relationships between votes and representatives would continue.

Voluntary or optional preferential voting?

Voluntary voting is sometimes put forward as another way of keeping MPs more in touch with their constituencies. Some of those putting such views appear to have a genuine belief that compulsion in such matters is inherently undemocratic, while others give the suspicion that the likely political effects might weigh most on their minds.

Of course, no-one seriously believes that anything would change in safe seats. Incumbents with large margins wouldn’t suddenly be putting enormous energy into getting out the vote. The others would know their place.

However, in marginal electorates the extent of turnout of various demographics would be important so campaigning would be even more intense, taking up proportionally more effort and resources than currently occurs.

Optional preferential voting has had its supporters on philosophical or practical grounds.

The Labor Party once used to campaign for it actively and eventually succeeded in instituting it in New South Wales and Queensland Legislative Assembly polls. Cynics point out its support for fully preferential voting during the 90s coincided with a change in flow of advantage from preferences.

Taking away someone’s vote for not filling in all preferences is certainly authoritarian. Some have seen in this a conspiracy by the major parties to maintain their positions. However, the real impacts are again felt only in the smallish numbers of marginal seats.

Whatever tinkering is done at the edges, the major distortions inherent in the winner-take-all nature of single-member electorates remain. While voter involvement can be increased somewhat, patterns of geographic dominance are still widely present and a handful of marginal seats will always attract an unhealthy preponderance of attention.