There’s an interesting article in Crikey today by Charles Richardson, reporting that – seemingly unnoticed by the national media – the Tasmanian parliament reached agreement last week to restore the number of members in the lower house to 35. That had been the case prior to 1998, when a deal between Labor and Liberal reduced the number of seats to 25 to make it quotas per seat higher, and thus third party representation less likely. The “no more politicians” argument, which it was sold under, does of course fall down, as Richardson suggests, when it becomes very difficult to have both a Cabinet and a backbench when elections are close.
Richardson makes this point too:
How does this compare with the position in Canberra? Obviously, the Greens are much stronger in Tasmania than nationally; even with their strong result last month, their national vote is only a little over half what it is in Tasmania.
Interestingly, however, that’s because the Tasmanian Greens have mostly soaked up the votes of minor parties and independents. The two major parties don’t do a whole lot better nationally than they do in Tasmania: 75.9% between them in Tasmania; on the latest figures 81.6% federally (even counting the various components of the Coalition together).
So what makes majority government the norm in Canberra but now the exception in Tasmania is basically the difference in voting system. No party (or coalition) has won a majority of the primary vote in a federal election since 1975; no party has even got close since Labor won 49.5% in 1983. If seats won reflected votes cast, the current minority government would not be such a novelty; the major parties would have to adjust to rarely having the numbers in their own right.
During this year’s Tasmanian election, which delivered the Greens the balance of power and ultimately two seats in cabinet, Greens leader Nick McKim eschewed the term “hung parliament”, preferring to talk about a “power-sharing parliament”. Now that power sharing has come to Canberra as well, we need more of a debate about whether our electoral system really reflects what voters want, or whether artificially constructed majorities might do more harm than good.
It’s well worth remembering that all the hair pulling and ranting and raving over “indecision” and a “hung parliament” is an artefact not of the voters’ will, but of how the prevailing electoral system misrepresents that will.
This is a positive change for Tasmania. The reduction in the number of seats was an attempt by Labor and Liberal to lock out the Greens. This signals that the two major parties have accepted the presence of the Greens and the need for a more flexible parliament. Tasmania still needs to reform its anachronistic upper house though.
Good if we could get agreement on an increase in numbers for the ACT House of Assembly – 17 members is just too few to provide for a Ministry, Speaker and proper staffing fo Committees – particularly critical in a unicameral Assembly.
ACT is now well on the way to accepting that a power sharing Assembly is likely to be the norm for the forseeable future.
The difficulty is getting agreement on a formula for representation within the Assembly and then getting it passed by the Federal parliament.
ALP wants 5 electorates with 5 members – Greens want 3 seven member electorates – not sure what the Liberals want
Yet another case of why the mainstream media are next to useless. Isn’t the point of the fourth estate that we aren’t meant to watch everything in order to be informed of important events?
The era of Jim Bacon’s hostility to the Greens is over? Tassie is now in the era of post-Baconian friendliness to the Greens?
Yet AFAICT Tasmanian Labor hasn’t strayed particularly far from the model of politics established by the Great Man.
I think this should be a lesson for all those mainland Laborites who think it’s their sacred duty to stand with the Responsible Centre (aka the MSM and the Coalition) against Bob Brown’s party.