There’s no doubt that electoral systems structure party competition - something that will become very obvious to us when we start to focus on the New Zealand election. The American system is one of the great contributors to the anti-democratic lack of choice between the two major parties, and to the inflated emphasis on personalities among the candidates. Continental PR systems consistently develop coalitions and reflect a social fabric which emphasises a degree of consensus you don’t find in adversarial single member systems, and the resulting politics is decried by neoliberals for eschewing “economic reforms”.
Writing in the Centre for Policy Development’s Insight, Bill Bowtell takes a look at our electoral system:
Counter-factual history is entertaining, and no more than guesswork, but at the very least truly fair elections would have resulted in many more occupants of the Prime Ministerial throne over the last six decades. And in four out of five of these elections, the will of the people was to embrace the ALP rather than the conservative alternative.Had the will of the people been implemented at these elections, whether to install governments of the left or the right, these governments would have been more reflective of the contemporary needs, aspirations and opinions of the Australian people who after all have voted for change ten and not just five, times since 1949.
It is therefore deeply wrong to blame the Australian people for the sclerotic timidity and lack of vision that has so often disfigured Australian politics and greatly delayed necessary reform by many post-war governments. Since 1949, the Australian people have voted for political change at almost every other election, yet their will has been denied by a complex system that does not reliably deliver a majority of seats to the side that wins a majority of votes.
This absurd contraption of single member electorates locks up and effectively disenfranchises millions of Australians in safe electorates, while showering largesse on a small number of voters in marginal seats. Over time, this has created a massively distorted imbalance in the national distribution of services and subsidies. This has counted against safe seat voters on both sides of the political spectrum - and especially voters in most rural and regional seats and the inner cities.
It is completely unforgivable to have an electoral system which is so strongly skewed towards one particular side of politics. The federal House of Reps is skewed towards the conservatives (as is the Senate) and Queensland’s Legislative Assembly is skewed towards the ALP. The fact that half of the elections where people voted for change of government didn’t result in a change of government really points out how lacklustre our system is.
Some effort ought to be expended in making our electoral systems fairer by introducing proportional representation in some form. A House of Reps using MMP? More Senators in order to reduce the quota? Fully proportional STV in all local government elections? A nationwide Senate rather than splitting it up into states?
Something needs to be done.
Two words: Hare-Clark
one example, now neutered - Tasmania - in fact so badly hacked that it’s resulted in not enough representatives to have a functional and competent government (we have ministers with 3+ portfolios, it’s insane even if they were competent), and a shame-faced ‘bashful’ admission from senior ALP and Liberal figures down here that the reduction in the number of seats to try and eliminate the Greens has profoundly damaged Tasmania’s governance.
but anyway; we invented the fairest proportional representative system in the world with Hare-Clark, it’s about time we got it operating at the national and state level.
Now I can’t remember if Clark has an ‘e’ on the end…
This is something I’ll be elaborating on in a soon to be published post, but there is a close correlation, and I will argue a causal relationship, between the use of PR electoral systems and the level of female representation in national parliaments. The US Congress, with single member constituencies and first-past-the-post voting, has one of the worst gender balances in the world - just 16% of the Senate and 16.8% of the Congress are women. Reforming this system should surely be the priority for the PUMAs to sink their teeth and claws into.
myriad - Hare Clarke is rather complex to understand though and sometimes you have to wait 2 weeks to work out who won
It does have the advantage that you don’t need bi-elections and just use the next person on the list.
Sam - I’m curious as to why you think that both the Senate and House of Reps is skewed towards the conservative parties, rather than just the large parties?
Chris, Hare-Clark is perfect for computer counting (not computer voting, I hate that). And so what if you have to wait a bit to determine who’s won? The writs aren’t returned the day after the election, the Senate takes a while to work out and parliament doesn’t sit again for at least a few weeks.
Why do I think the two federal houses are skewed towards the conservatives? In the House of Reps there have been five elections since 1949 where the party winning the 2PP hasn’t won the election. In four of these, it has been the ALP that was denied victor. There are a number of strong ALP seats (there tend to be more poor people than rich people) but the Labor votes in these seats don’t carry any extra weight outside the electorate. It’s unfair to tell people their votes don’t matter so much because there are other people nearby who vote the same way they do.
As for the Senate, there are some states with low populations which elect statistically more conservative than Labor/Green Senators. There’s an element of major party vs minor party, yes, (with a lower quota, the result becomes far more proportional) but states like Western Australia and Queensland are more conservative and will, from time to time, elect a fourth Coalition Senator. It also doesn’t help that preference deals end up catapulting minor parties on to the federal stage because someone took a gamble and messed up.
If you work from a basis where the current system is broken and needs to be replaced with proportional representation, you have two approaches which could be acceptable in Australia. Either Hare-Clark or MMP. MMP has never been used in Australia but the fact that it has been used in both New Zealand (similar culturally) and Germany (a similar federal structure) gives it credibility.
When it comes down to those two I definitely prefer Hare-Clark. First of all, all MPs have a local anchoring. Sure, MMP electorates would be smaller than Hare-Clark electorates, but you would have more local members to cover it. This deals with problems of having ministers not do much electoral work. It also means people are represented by MPs from across the spectrum, almost certainly including one they voted for (or at least their party). It would also massively increase the diversity of MPs within the parties. Imagine if the ALP had some north shore MPs and the Liberal Party had some more western sydney MPs.
This has never been really discussed in electoral reform debates, but I reckon if you had a proportional House of Representatives you should have a single-member Senate. The Tasmanian Legislative Council is probably the only genuine house of review remaining. I reckon that if the pressure of trying to form government was taken away, single-member contests would see a lot more local figures and independents being elected, and the Senate would probably consist of a majority of independents.
Just to clarify my ideal model. You would have about 150 House of Reps seats, as usual, divided amongst the states as is, and these would be elected in 5-member, 6-member or 7-member electorates, depending on practicability. It might not be possible to cross state borders, in which case NT and ACT would have to be 2-member seats.
In return, you would have a Senate, again about the same size, with about 75 Senators elected in Single-member electorates. Imagine every House of Reps seat paired up with its neighbour and merged, electing one person.
I think the result would be single-member electorates decided on local issues, independent of decisions about who forms the government, with very few of those aiming to be ministers running in them, and a large number of independents elected who would dominate the House, outside of the hard-core ALP and Liberal areas which would probably still elect a few ALP and Liberal senators.
The lower house would elect a handful of Greens and religious right and maybe the occasional independent, who would almost always hold the balance of power between the major parties.
Ben, a seven member seat has a quota of 12.5% and you wouldn’t get any minor party representation in these regions unless there’s a sizeable concentration of their supporters such as Greens in inner city areas. This would mean that the minor parties are essentially restricted by geographical concentration as they currently are in the House of Reps. A switch to MMP would mean the minor parties’ members would be available to all voters across the state (assuming the top-ups are done by state).
If the aim is to make the system as proportional as possible, you can’t have a number of multiple member electorates. Proportional election from as large an electorate as possible is the way to guarantee a fair result.
Sam - yes, computer counting definitely helps Hare-Clark, though the bottleneck is not the counting its the entering of data into the computer. I’m quite happy with computer (not internet) voting - we’ve had it in the ACT for the last couple of elections. One advantage of computer voting is that people will only informal vote when they actually want to. And with complex systems like Hare-Clark you can get results much faster.
I see what you mean about the 2PP problem, though it does come down to whether we’re voting for a party or a representative - probably more the former rather than the latter these days. Having multiple representatives for an electorate does dilute responsibility a bit I think though.
The idea that we go out and cast our vote for our local member doesn’t hold much currency these days. Our party system has definitely changed over the last 107 years but there’s been very little reflection in our electoral system of these changes. At least Chifley changed the Senate in 1949 to something that made much more sense.
Nowadays, voters tend to be casting their votes based on whoever is leading the party at the time and what the party’s platform is. If we’re going to vote for parties, we need an electoral system which is based on representation of parties.
Should things change again in the future, there’s nothing to stop us going back to individual electorates with one member each. Of course, we’d need to have far more electorates to have a properly functioning single member based system.
Sure, Chris, Hare-Clark is complex, but if Tasmanians can manage it, after all the tedious Tasmanians-are-stupid-and-inbred jokes I’ve listened to since moving here 20 years ago from mainlanders, I offer you the generosity of thinking you poor north islanders are capable of managing with it as well.
I really don’t think the 2 week wait is an issue - we already do it for close calls and the Senate Federally, and the truth is both in Tas and in the Senate, it’s more awaiting the final seat outcome, not the whole shebang. A little patience, and extended humbleness from all pollies isn’t a bad thing either.
Ben, I am mildly astonished to see the Tasmanian Legislative Council referred to as a ‘genuine house of review’ - if only! In contrast to even the bastardised H-C system in the lower house, it has completely diferent electoral boundaries to the Tasmanian lower house, has only 1/3 up for election each time and the term is an unbelievable 8 years, parties are supposedly frowned upon which means its full of covert shills for the ALP and Libs, who happily vote largely on party lines, and is generally a house of dinosaurs in desparate need of system reform.
Computer voting is OK if and only if there is a paper confirmation printed and given to the voter for checking and that paper is then lodged in a ballot box. It’s the only way to do audits for accuracy of the machine results. Which then leads to the problem of people not putting their confirmations in the ballot box so the computer count is different to the paper count…
d
I should probably point out that the Party List vote in MMP is incredibly easy to count (given that voters just tick one box) and gives a pretty good indication of which party or parties are likely to be forming government. It gives the parties a chance to start negotiating almost straight away and the Electorate (local) vote sorts out who’s actually going to be sitting there.
Also, we could really use another increase in the numbers of MPs. We have 150 lower house MPs. Canada has 308. Canada has about 50% more population, and on that basis we could have 200. We should increase the number of Senators per state to 14. That would increase the number elected per election to 7, thus reducing the problem of even splits. It would also then result in a lower Senate quota and about 175 members of the House of Representatives.
When you consider that the UK has over 600 Members of the House of Commons, 175 doesn’t sound outrageous. Although this is a short-term idea.
Sam, you’re right that 12.5% quota is still quite a feat to achieve, but I think you would have a sizeable number of seats where the Greens would win.
In Victoria the upper house has 5 seats per district and the Greens managed to win 3. Likewise 12.5% is a much lower quota than the WA upper house and the Tasmanian lower house. I reckon, if you had 21 seats of 7 covering the mainland and 1 of 5 covering Tasmania, the Greens would win one in Tasmania, at least three or four each in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as at least one each in Perth and Adelaide. That’s a lot better then the current situation.
I’m not suggesting that we would adopt eight-year terms or the silly rotating election cycle used by the Tasmanian LC. I don’t see a way around the two sets of electoral boundaries. I’m just saying that single-member electorates would make a lot more sense if they were used in the Senate rather than the House of Representatives.
Also, in Hare Clark you can usually decide the vast majority of seats on primary votes. You should be able to have an idea of who has won government on the night unless it’s really close. And really close elections can take a while to decide in single-member electorates as well.
Sam - I agree with you that its mostly about voting for parties than people these days. And its a good excuse to save a bit of money and do away with bi-elections and just allow the party to appoint someone between elections.
I think Hare-Clark is doable, though I also think its important that the general population actually understands how their voting system works. Note that in the ACT with Hare-Clark we still get majority governments (which are I think bad without a senate as a check) and there aren’t a significant number of minor party or independents elected.
The ACT has only had one majority government and it looks like that will be reversed in October.
Also both the ACT and Tasmania are relatively small and homogenous. I would expect minor party MPs elected in a House of Representatives elected by Hare Clark to be much more numerous. Also the ACT only has 17 seats, whereas there is 226 MPs in the federal Parliament, so obviously there would be less minor party MPs elected.
Does the problem that the Senate is an incredibly unrepresentative body bother anybody? The Tasmanian quota is about 35,000 whilst in NSW the quota is in the order of 750,000.
That would seem to be the egregious problem that needs to be rectified.
Jabberwock, great idea, but it’s difficult to envisage a more difficult one to get up in a referendum, for obvious reasons.
BBB
Actually, Jabberwock, not particularly, and not just because I’m Tasmanian!
I think the idea of the Senate as a house of review is an important one, and on that basis population representation is not the key objective for me at least, in an upper house. In terms of making sound decisions for a country, particularly a federation, geography is also important. Having worked now for several years in the federal bureaucracy, the thought of people on the mainland routinely able to make ‘national’ decisions based on consistently incorrect knowledge of Tasmania (eg “it’s really wet there”) makes me shudder. Colleagues of mine based in the NT and WA heartily agree. How ridiculous would it be to have the NT basically voiceless at the federal level with people who live on the utterly alien eastern seaboard making all the decisions about its future at the federal level?
In essence for me the lower house does the proportional-to-population-and -beliefs thing, the upper house does the work-much-more-together-for-balance-and-decent-legislation thing.
If you go to a purely by-population model of represenation in the Upper House, the rest of the country other than QLD, NSW and VIC, and maybe WA, may as well go home, as those states would dominate the numbers, and dominate the review, which would match the lower house. Then it’s just another partisan roll-over, and the intent of an upper house is lost.
I think it’s obvious that the Senate’s disproportion between the states is a problem. I don’t think there’s any more logic to giving greater representation to small states than any other minority group in the population.
Sure, NSW, Victoria and Queensland would dominate, but that’s because they are dominant. It reflects reality. They make up over 2/3s of Australians.
It’s ridiculous that Tasmania gets the same number of Senators as NSW, although it would be very difficult to change. I’m thinking more of options that are achievable with minor constitutional change or none at all.
Also, Myriad, lack of understanding of Tasmania amongst mainlanders is not an argument to give Tasmanians disproportionate power over the mainland, it’s a good reason for more decentralisation to the states and local councils. But the decisions that are made federally need to be made with all people represented equally. Tasmania is a minor part of Australia, environmentally, population-wise, historically, economically, and doesn’t warrant almost 1/6 of the Senate seats.
I think it’s obvious that the Senate’s disproportion between the states is a problem.
Obvious to you perhaps. It’s not for me.
Also, Myriad, lack of understanding of Tasmania amongst mainlanders is not an argument to give Tasmanians disproportionate power over the mainland, it’s a good reason for more decentralisation to the states and local councils. But the decisions that are made federally need to be made with all people represented equally. Tasmania is a minor part of Australia, environmentally, population-wise, historically, economically, and doesn’t warrant almost 1/6 of the Senate seats.
Ben - are you trying for arrogance, or does it just come naturally? You’re making a very strong case for myriad’s “people on the mainland routinely able to make ‘national’ decisions based on consistently incorrect knowledge of Tasmania” argument all by your lonesome.
Also, Myriad, lack of understanding of Tasmania amongst mainlanders is not an argument to give Tasmanians disproportionate power over the mainland, it’s a good reason for more decentralisation to the states and local councils. But the decisions that are made federally need to be made with all people represented equally.
There are major national decisions made from the budget to policy settings across the whole of government that even in a federation like Australia, are centralised and a good argument can be made for why. This is why the lower house, which creates the vast majority of legislation, should be a Hare-Clark system or similar of proportional represenation. It’s also why it’s equally important that this is balanced by an alternative perspective of the country in the upper house to ensure it does act to review, refine and balance legislation and policy. It does not exist to create, it exists to balance. You can’t get balance when 3 states dominate.
Tasmania is a minor part of Australia, environmentally, population-wise, historically, economically, and doesn’t warrant almost 1/6 of the Senate seats.
But we don’t have “disproportionate power” Ben, we have exactly the same amount of power as the large states in a house of review. The whole point of a house of review is to make sure one lot don’t shaft another, which is clearly what would happen if the Senate was a proportional -by -population model of representation.
And yes, your ignorance is showing. Tasmania isn’t minor certainly not in environmental terms, and not historically either. Economically it’s almost certainly more important than you think, and is set to potentially become very significant if we actually stopped logging the native forests and managed them as carbon sinks, or get into renewable energy in a serious way. It’s also our gateway to Antarctica where we manage the single largest slice at 42%. That’s just off the top of my head in terms of showing how silly your statement is.
Your suggestion that the three big states get to dominate simply means that small states would become untenable to live in, because as is necessary in a large continent with a spread population, there is a redistribution of resources to ensure equity across the society. A cursory glance of COAG negotiations will show that if the big 3 states dominated, the small states would not receive enough funding to survive in terms of providing adequate services - yet presumably the Australian economy wants the $180million rock lobster industry in Tasmania to continue, to pick just one example, and that isn’t possible if there isn’t adequate infrastructure, and as is Tasmania’s services are not equitable with those on the mainland.
Your argument also falls completely flat on its face when one considers the Northern Territory - its size, economic and environmental significance and vastly different culture and environment make it essential that it has an equal voice. Which is why I’d argue the only real reform needed IMO is to give the NT in particular a full quota of seats, and to consider what the ACT needs as well.
The Senate necessarily has the model it does to balance the tyranny of the majority. How else would you do it?
“But we don’t have “disproportionate power” Ben, we have exactly the same amount of power as the large states in a house of review. The whole point of a house of review is to make sure one lot don’t shaft another, which is clearly what would happen if the Senate was a proportional -by -population model of representation.”
Let’s not kid ourselves about the extent of state-based legislative review in the Senate. As many others have noted, it has largely given way to realities of the two-party system and national politicking.
BBB
Myriad ased - “The Senate necessarily has the model it does to balance the tyranny of the majority. How else would you do it?”
Get rid of it.
Sounds like you lot want us to end up runnoing the country by committee rather than leadership. The Italian parliamentary experince springs to mind. Brilliant!
Preferrential voting might not mean you get the candidate you want, but it does mean that you get the candidate the majority wants.
For what it’s worth - reformign the State/Federal system by getting rid of the States, getting rid of local councils, having larger regional governments, and getting rid of the Senate, are much better reforms than reforming the voting system.
To weigh in from NZ: MMP has absolutely changed our politics, and for the better IMHO. We have a much more consensual style, policy debates which used to happen in secret inside party caucuses are now done out in the open between parties, and we obviously have much better representation. Our Parliament is beginning to actually look like New Zealand, which is a Good Thing.
While there were early fears from FPP absolutists about government instability and minor parties wielding disproportionate power, these generally haven’t eventuated. They’re a matter of political culture, and we’ve made it clear we want our politicians to try and get along. Meanwhile, we’ve protected ourselves from 90’s-style government betrayal by ensuring permanent minority government. What’s not to like?
Given Australia’s federal system, there’s always the option of one of the states experimenting and acting as a model for the rest. But the problem is getting electoral reform on the agenda - for some reaosn, politicians don’t like it. We only got it after being systematically betrayed by our “representatives”, while in the UK it seems to have been driven by party politics (more on this here [PDF]). And the latter is not a good reason to reform the electoral system, IMHO.
Interestingly, the National Party is proposing a referendum to replace MMP with another unspecified (as far as I know) system of proportional representation.
WMMBB: Yes; unfortunately we have some good old-fashioned reactionaries who dislike our new democracy. There’s also a hefty dolop of partisan self-interest there as well - they have no friends in the House (they’re currently engaged in their usual pe-election bridge-burning exercise), which combined with a domineering “born to rule” attitude means they find it difficult to form coalitions (as evinced by their utter failure to drive any substantial amendments to legislation or pass their own member’s bills over the past three terms - something smaller parties have been able to do). So their answer is to change the system and make it unequal and less democatic in order to make it easier for them to govern alone.
Let’s not kid ourselves about the extent of state-based legislative review in the Senate. As many others have noted, it has largely given way to realities of the two-party system and national politicking.
While it’s not perfect BBB, I think the fact that the Senate voting system is bsaed on a quota that allows for minor party representation, and also Australians’ long-standing habit of ensuring that the government doesn’t hold the balance of power in the Senate has allowed for far more nuanced and in-depth debate in the upper house than it is given credit for. And having been a haphazard hansard -nerd for quite some time, I would argue that state views and considerations do get raised and seriously debated in the Senate far more so than in the lower house.
Razor, geting rid of the Senate is a truly terrible idea. The reality is that legislation passed in our lower house is usually at best a ‘final draft’ in much need of reform, and the Senate plays a vital role in this. Senate enquiries, for all they are often maligned in cynical terms, have also contributed significantly to the democratic and legislative functioning of this country. Even when we have the rare situation of a government controlling both houses, the Senate offers another forum for the public etc. to object or request reforms to policy and legislation. Without the Senate there is no other check on the government of the day, and we are left with a rubber stamp and a queen. no thanks.
I do however largely agree that Australia is much better suited to a system of regional governments to replace state and local.
I’m not meaning to be insulting to Tasmania. I know that its environment is important. But my point remains that it is a very small part of Australia, whatever way you cut it. Geographically, economically, historically, politically, environmentally, socially. The VAST majority of Australians live on the east coast. Environmental issues are more evenly spread across the country, but still Tasmania is a small portion of Australia’s landmass.
And Tasmania does have disproportionate influence. Tasmania elects as 12 Senators and 5 MHRs, compared to NSW that elects 12 Senators and 49 MHRs. That translates to about 29000 people for every Tasmanian MP and almost 113000 for every NSW MP. That is disproportionate. It’s the very definition of the word. We could just as easily break New South Wales up into a bunch of smaller states and make an argument for why each of those individually is important enough to be given more seats than its number of people warrants. You can make those arguments for any group of people. But the only objective way to distribute seats in a democratic parliamentary system is by POPULATION. No-one has given any good reason why Tasmanian voices should be heard more loudly than those in Sydney or Melbourne or the country in between.
Also, why should the NT be given the same number of Senators as well? Its large landmass makes it more of an issue for the federal government than its population would suggest, but the point remains that very few people live there. If Australian citizens are to be considered equal, their votes should have the same or very similar weight. It doesn’t really matter that the “States’ House” has become dominated by parties, the disproportionate influence of the smaller states influences the Parliament in a number of ways, including within the major parties.
State boundaries are arbitrary lines drawn on a map. We could just as easily break up the east coast in 500,000-person units and make them all independent states, but there is no reason why that should result in a greater influence in the federal Parliament.
Also, the solution to tyranny of the majority is not tyranny of the minority. That’s what the Senate does at the moment. The states representing 70% of the population have a minority of seats in the Senate. How is that even remotely considered fair? Only recently conservative parties tried to argue that large rural electorates should have disproportionate influence. Just because a place is sparsely populated doesn’t justify a greater weight for their votes.
Ben, the Senate was an olive branch of sorts to the states to get them on board with this whole “federal parliament” idea. The composition based upon statehood is arbitrary and the equal number of Senators for each state flies in the face of representative democracy and any notion of “one vote, one value”. However, the government consists of the party or group which can command support in the House of Representatives.
As long as the House of Reps adheres to the idea of “one vote, one value” (and I believe it could go a lot further towards that with the introduction of MMP) then I don’t have such a huge problem. The Senate may be unproportional on the issue of populations of each state but it’s much closer in its composition to the will of the nation. The Australian people mainly vote for Labor and the Liberals but neither of these parties have 50% of the nation fully behind them and the minor parties and independents hold the balance of power. The House of Reps on the other hand excludes minor parties and produces majorities where only pluralities exist.
Each of our two Houses have their flaws but some of these flaws counterbalance others. House of Reps has “one vote, one value” but it is the Senate which better reflects the wishes of the Australian population as a whole.
I don’t think scrapping the Senate, redrawing the Senate boundaries on population or electing from across the entire nation at once is going to make Australian democracy all that much better. It’s an archaically constituted chamber but it can still do an alright job.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a priority for me, but the issue got running and I think that it is a clear-cut case of an undemocratic aspect of our system, but it’s unlikely to be changed, regardless of the arguments. PR in the House of Reps is much more important.
And Tasmania does have disproportionate influence. Tasmania elects as 12 Senators and 5 MHRs, compared to NSW that elects 12 Senators and 49 MHRs. That translates to about 29000 people for every Tasmanian MP and almost 113000 for every NSW MP. That is disproportionate.
It’s not disproportionate Ben because the Senate wasn’t formed and seats aren’t allocated in terms of population, that’s my point. I like that we don’t have two houses drawing from a single model, ie population, for representation. Geo-political entities like states are also important.
And the proof lies in the practical reality of how it has operated. No one state or party has been able to dominate, except on rare occasions with regard to the latter.
So when you say: -
Also, the solution to tyranny of the majority is not tyranny of the minority. That’s what the Senate does at the moment. The states representing 70% of the population have a minority of seats in the Senate. How is that even remotely considered fair?
I go back to my reality check in a previous post - under the current model with the small states having an equal voice to the large, the result has been a relatively equitable distribution of economic and other resources, giving reasonable parity in terms of quality of life for all Australians (Aboriginal Australians being a glaring exception of course, hence my interest in the NT getting the same number of senate seats). There has been no tyranny of the minority. You would be hard-pressed to point to many if any decisions which have blatantly favoured small states at the expense of the big 3.
In contrast, if you look at COAG negotiations it’s quite plain that if the small states did not have the same represenative power as the large states, the result would be a tyranny of the majority. NSW in particular lobbies excessively and ruthlessly on it’s “first state” status, and in fact already frequently scuttles major reforms for the whole country. There is very little diminishment of power for the large states under the current arrangements, except they do not have the power to completely dominate.
I’m not interested in a parliamentary model that favours 3 states on the basis of population alone. It ignores the geographic and other realities of living on a continent with a spread population. I don’t favour the disproportionate vote of rural seats in the lower house, but think that the Senate must provide a necessary counter-balance, otherwise the basic result is 3 eastern seaboard largely urban states dictating to the rest of the country which is manifestly vastly different in geography, environment, infrastructure and demographic needs. That’s a recipe for disaster.
Yes, its doubtful federation would have happened without that compromise. Imagine a UN system where countries got a number of votes based on their population. Its more democratic, but the smaller countries would never sign up to that deal.