The political leaders campaigning for the March 20 Tasmanian election — Premier David Bartlett, Opposition leader Will Hodgman and Greens leader Nick McKim — have yet to commit to the most obvious reform needed in the state.
In a parliamentary system in which the Upper House is largely independent and the Lower House is sparse in terms of its number of MPs, it means there are insufficient members in any elected government to form a legitimate ministry.
There are 25 MPs in the Tasmanian House of Assembly, elected by proportional representation, five in each of the five electorates: Bass, Braddon, Denison, Franklin and Lyons. Under the Hare-Clark voting system, which is similar to the Senate’s, the most MPs a government can expect is 15. The present Bartlett government has 14. Of those 14, one is speaker and seven are ministers.
On March 20, it appears unlikely that either Labor or the Liberals will win the 13 seats necessary to govern in their own right, but one of them will surely govern, with the Tasmanian Greens holding the balance of power.
Neither party will give the Greens a seat in Cabinet and the Greens don’t expect one. Therefore, of the 10, 11 or 12 people elected to form the new government of Tasmania, the great majority will walk straight into Cabinet, no matter their experience, leaving a backbench the size of the back seat of my Subaru.
This latest parliament has shown the poor performance by inexperienced and ill-equipped ministers who have to handle their own issues as well as those that involve negotiations with their counterparts in Canberra and the other states.
Tasmania cannot be governed by 25 Lower House MPs. It has to be 35 at least, as it was up until 1998 when, in their wisdom, Liberal premier Tony Rundle and Labor leader Jim Bacon conspired to reduce the numbers to try to rid Tasmania of the Greens.
The Hare-Clark system was not designed to give independents or minority parties the balance of power but that is how it has evolved, with the rise and staying power of environment-based political parties in Tasmania, who have found an electoral system tailor-made for their purposes.
In 1989 it delivered the Greens the balance of power for the first time and, inter alia, triggered Edmund Rouse’s attempt to buy off Labor MP Jim Cox to defect to the Robin Gray Liberals to restore Gray’s defeated government. Cox, who retires at this election, blew the whistle.
The Rundle-Bacon rationale nine years later was to get rid of the Greens by increasing the size of the vote, the quota, that a candidate needed to get elected. With seven members in each electorate, the quota was 12.5% of the vote plus one. With five members in each electorate, the quota rose to 16.66% of the vote plus one. The trouble is that the Greens can now achieve 16.66% and more in most electorates, or get so close to it that they win the final seat.
It seems that no matter what the two major parties decide about the future size of the House, the Greens will for ever be a thorn in their side. If they go to 35 seats, the Greens may well win two seats in each of the southern electorates of Denison and Franklin, where environmentalism and a sense of the perverse and of mischief prevail.
So if, in a 35-seat House, the Greens can expect to win seven seats it means that one of the major parties has to win 18-10 to secure majority government. That looks highly unlikely.
The conclusion: a stalemate, unless the Greens are included in the gene pool of any Cabinet.
If Labor and the Liberals want to get rid of the Greens, form government in their own right and have a healthy backbench, they are going to have to change the electoral system to single-member constituencies. They would kill off Hare-Clark.
But what do they say?
Why on earth would anyone want to dismantle a more democratic form of voting just to be rid of a small party that over 16% of the people want to represent them? Oh… I guess you might if democracy doesn’t mean a lot to you. If you really are just interested in power and domination, not representation.
Tasmania has one of the best and fairest democratic structures for a state government in the country. Of course the big players tried and failed already, (to be rid of the 3rd party). They should have learnt their lesson, go back to 35 reps and work with the Greens.
Hare-Clark in Tasmania works well. The only problem is that the lower house just does not have enough members. Almost all members of the governing party in the lower house will have a cabinet spot. When members resign or their place becomes vacant countback is the best and most democratic way of filling the vacancy, and some very good members are elected in this way, but that is not the problem. There needs to be a greater pool of talent, and more members will help achieve this. The Liberals reduced the numbers from 35 to 25 with the support of the ALP to get rid of the Greens. This worked once. Tasmania has had relatively stable government under Hare-Clark. The voting system should not be criticised when on some occasions no party gets a majority of seats. That is the will of the voters. Single member systems can produce a majority of members for a governing party with a minority of votes. Is this a good thing?
Also remember that before 1952 under single member electorates the Victorian Legislative Assembly rarely produced majority governments, and governments were frequently voted down on the floor of the house. Even Victoria’s first Labor government with a majority of seats in the Assembly, the Cain government elected in 1952, was defeated when 12 members (later to become the DLP) voted against it on a no-confidece motion. Tasmanian governments during the last century were rarely defeated on a motion of confidence in the House of Assembly. Keep Hare-Clark.
Maybe I’m being dense this afternoon (don’t agree so quickly!) – but why do you need more than 10 MPs to govern? It isn’t a huge island, it does have a local government layer[1], and there’s no good reason you couldn’t give the Greens a position. Minister for the Environment would seem to be appropriate.
[1] and wiki tells me there’s an upper house. Appoint some ministers from there.
Except most members of the Upper House are at least nominally independents (split roughtly 50-50 between lib and labour aligned), and the electorate quite likes it that way so there are few options for ministers there.
And there’s another problem with your logic. You see, although 15-20% of the population (particularly in the south) quite like the Greens, the major parties hate them. As do many others within the electorate. So putting any of the Greens in cabinet (especially as Minister for the Environment!), regardless of their talents, would be at complete odds with the narrative that both major parties have been running for around 2 decades now and would upset many within their base. In fact, at the moment the Greens have no desire to be in cabinet.
I suspect that a move to single member electorates would spell political suicide for the liberals in the long term as well, but I’ll let cleverer people like Antony Green and Possum answer that one.
The Republican Party in New York City advocated a return to single member districts in about 1946. NYC’s Council was elected by proportional representation and sensible Republicans like La Guardia favoured that. But 1946 was the beginning of the Cold War and Communists actually got elected to the New York City Council. The Republican argument was also used by the right wing of the ALP in Victoria in the early 1950s, that pr would lead to Communists on local councils. There was no pr in Victoria then.
The Republicans got what they wanted. The abolition of pr. They were completely annihilated in New York City and it served them right.
The right wing of the ALP in Victoria largely became the DLP in 1955. There were no communists but there was no DLP either. Had there been pr they would have won some seats.
Of course some DLP members got elected. Bert Jones stood as a DLP in South Melbourne and lost. He stood as an independent and won. He was quite a good councillor too. A Communist named Fred Farrell got elected in Prahran, and even became Mayor. The local Libs supported him, incredible as it may seem. They preferred Fred to the local ALP!
The Libs in Tasmania could be decimated under a single member system. No Greens, but no Libs either. In a year the Libs do well the ALP could also lose almost all seats. The equivalent is in Canada where in some Provinces one party wins almost all seats in provincial elections. It’s not good for democracy.