The recent general election in Tasmania again has taught me something I have known for a long time: Hare-Clark is an excellent electoral system. I say that because I give talks about elections fairly frequently and I come across attitudes that essentially amount to this: some people are for proportional representation, others against it. For example, Charles Richardson and Guy Rundle are for proportional representation but editorials in The Australian newspaper are against it.
I have a different view. I like the Single Transferable Vote form of PR but I dislike most of the other PR systems. Of the STV systems Hare-Clark is the best but I was recently compelled to tick off a senior journalist in the Canberra press gallery whose printed commentary on Tasmania referred, in passing, to the “dysfunctional Hare-Clark system”. While not using the term Hare-Clark, Ireland and Malta employ what they call PR-STV but their methods are essentially the same as our Hare-Clark system by which the Tasmanian House of Assembly and the ACT Legislative Assembly are elected.
The system for which I have an special dislike is New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional, or MMP. For that reason I am trying to persuade the people of New Zealand to scrap their MMP system and replace it with a better one. I am not hopeful of success but there is no harm in trying.
Anyway, in August 2008 I sought an interview with John Key, then the leader of the Opposition in New Zealand. I suggested to him that the National Party should promise a referendum on MMP and I gave him some details of what I thought to be sensible. He listened politely, made one very interesting comment, and suggested we stay in touch. Consequently I have been in fairly continual touch with his chief of staff, Wayne Eagleson. Each time I send him material he thanks me, says he thinks the material interesting and repeats that “we must stay in touch”.
My proposal to Key (now Prime Minister) was that, in conjunction with their 2011 general election there should be a referendum with a simple choice for voters between STV and the Mixed Member Majoritarian (MMM) system. By STV I meant (and still mean) Hare-Clark, not the Australian Senate system. Then at the following general election in 2014 the winner of 2011 should run off against MMP.
The detail of my Hare-Clark proposal has 18 North Island general electoral divisions and six for the South Island, each electing five, for a total of 120. The seven Maori members would be elected from the Maori roll with New Zealand as whole voting as one electorate. That would mean a total House of Representatives of 127 members.
The MMM system is simple to explain: you would keep the current 122 members of whom 70 are elected from single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post and 52 are party-list members. However, whereas MMP distributes these party-list seats according to what they call “the principle of top-up” MMM would distribute the party-list seats proportionally between the parties. Whereas the present statement “You have two votes” on each ballot paper refers to a de facto two-ticks-one-vote system MMM would be a genuine two-vote system. Under MMM it would be possible for either Labour or National to win a majority of seats — because these parties would then get benefits from constituency wins. By contrast MMP is a contrivance designed to ensure that there is never majority government.
It does that by ensuring that neither Labour nor National ever gets any benefit from constituency wins. By contrast the Maori Party gets the full benefit of its constituency wins and the Maori Party presently has five of the seven single-member Maori seats, with Labour holding the other two.
Late last year Eagleson handed me over to Phil de Joux, chief of staff to the Minister of Justice, Simon Power, who is to have carriage of the referendum. In February Power issued a statement stating that “the referendum, to be held in conjunction with the 2011 general election, will ask voters two questions. First, whether they wish to retain the present MMP voting system, and secondly what alternative voting system they would prefer from a list of options, regardless of how they voted in the first question.” The statement went on: “The options are First-Past-the Post, Preferential Vote, Single Transferable Vote and Supplementary Member … The Bill is expected to be introduced to Parliament in April.” It is worth noting that the term “Supplementary Member” is that which New Zealanders use for what the rest of the world calls MMM.
My reaction to this statement is simply to say that the inclusion of first-past-the-post will muck up the second part of the referendum, the list of options alternative to MMP. There exists no chance of New Zealand returning to the old days. However, first-past-the-post will get a large vote and that will damage the chances of those who wish to replace MMP.
Although I do not hold much hope that MMP will be replaced nevertheless I expect to be asked my opinion when the referendum comes next year. I shall advise New Zealanders to vote for change on the first question and for STV on the second.
Whatever your views on Hare-Clark happen to be, it’s obvious Tasmania could benefit from a revised system, if for no other reason than 30 members of the Lower House is too small a pool for the needs of the Ministry, and it isn’t in the State’s interest to have as much likelihood as there is with three parties, that they’ll end up with hung Parliaments. One change, and one which has the advantage of causing as little cost/disruption/room for fiddling boundaries as possible, would be to maintain the current 6 members per Electorate, but have an additional State-wide ballot for the extra five members so many commentators argue the State needs.
This would give a Lower House of 35, and it would be achieved via five members elected State-wide without further increasing the advantage of arithmetical over-representation small parties can often enjoy when proportional representation systems are used. Include members of the Tasmanian State Upper House to the 35, and forming workable Ministries becomes likely.
As for New Zealand, might it not be a good idea to sort out our own problems first, before we start telling Kiwis we know what’s best for them?
Seven 5’s = 35. Just as it was before a major-party fiddle which backfired.
I suppose, John, that we must concede your multiplication skills are, in this day and age anyway, up to scratch; but while my prosal of six times five PLUS a State-wide five also gives 35, I’d argue it is an improvement on your favoured 7 x 5.
I suggest Tasmania would benefit from candidates and their Parties being forced to place more emphasis on policies affecting the whole State, rather than your solution in which candidates go out like feudal barons, each trying to come up with parochial policies that (with seven seats per electorate) will give them an excellent chance of being elected if they poll 6.25% of the State’s total voters.
But perhaps you feel parochial interests are more important than policies helping the State as a whole?
We appear to understand each other, Norman.
You favour a complex system in order to force a solution which, by your estimate, will result in a 35 seat Lower House composed of a mix to suit your predilections.
I, on the other hand, merely suggested going back to the previous status quo which existed before the Libs and Labs joined together to try to ensure that the Greens didn’t get a quota. Unfortunately for the two L’s, the Greens gained electoral share and have left egg on the noses of the conspirators.
As for the Upper House and the notion of drawing ministerial talent from this source, why persist with an Upper House at all? Is there a rational reason for staging each debate twice? Queensland set the precedent years back with apparently acceptable results.
So, how about 5 x 7 = 35?
Or do you want to stick with LH = 6 x 5 + 1 x 5 and UP = No change?
1. The starting point for complexity in the Tassie electoral system is Hare=Clark, which I soon found wasn’t uderstood by most voters, even those actively involved in politics. Having a second State-wide ballot paper is hardly a ‘complex’ problem anyway.
2. You apparently criticise my ‘predilections’ for encouraging less parochial approaches via a State-wide electorate, but WHY this is a bad thing for the State isn’t explained.
3. Feel free, of course, to support your conservative back-to-the past approach, but it would help if you explained the philosophical basis of your belief that it’s such a good idea to have minorities (of whatever stipe) over-represented in terms of the proportion of votes they actually receive.
4. Removing the Upper House is an irrelevant distraction to this debate. It’s there, so surely its members should be used? For example, Brian Miller was an Upper House member at the time he was a Minister (and I refer to him here in the hope of avoiding the emotional claptrap that tends to arise whenever a current politician is used to illustrate a point) but was far more effective than most of his Lower House colleagues. to not have used him would have been gross stupidity — and I’d assume you don’t advocate that?
5. Have you actually looked at what would be needed to remove the Upper House? More likely to be achieved would be a reform of that Chamber — assuming you could come up with feasible reforms — but achieving even that wouldn’t be a cakewalk.
6. Finally, John, in light of your obsession with ‘simplicity’, why not have Parliament limited to one member, elected on a State-wide vote, with power to then choose whichever Ministers he deemed best? Difficult to find a much simpler system than that — although I’m not entirely comfortable with where simplicity can sometimes lead us?