[AA - from another thread]
What sort of reform are we seeking? If we're talking about some form of
parliament, I imagine something as democratic as possible. Off the top
of
my head, I'd say abolish states, have electoral regions in which groups
of
people get elected (similar to Hare-Clark), and a national senate... we
all
know that one Tasmanian's Senate vote = 6-8 NSW Senate votes, after all.
[AL] What sort of electoral reform we are seeking is something we need
to get clear with careful analysis and widespread discussion.
(Definately not off the top of anyone's head :-)
I believe the electoral reform we insist on should be explicitly limited
to PR for the
House of Representatives. Linking that to changes to the Federal
structure would only
give opponents an opportunity to reduce support for that in the smaller
states.
Consistent application of that principle would also mean keeping
Tasmania's
small overepresentation in the House of Representatives arising from the
minimum
of 5 seats for each State specified in the Constitution.
In drafting the "Democracy Act" above I have proposed a single
electorate for the
entire House of Representatives which is a lot simpler to explain and
understand than
1 electorate for Tasmania and 1 for all the rest, as would be necessary
to meet that
current Constitutional requirement. My guess is that there would not be
much hostility from Tasmanians on that issue.
The biggest danger of derailment would be establishing PR on the basis
of small 5 or 7
member electoral divisions. This would still leave the two party system
essentially intact
with room for occasional Democrats etc.
Once we start getting any support that will be the fallback position of
our opponents and
we need to be clear on a strategy for preventing that.
Major problems with advocating a single national electorate are:
a) It could require a change to the Consitution which currently
specifies that
an electoral division shall not be formed from parts of different
states. (Whereas
an electoral division for each state would not require this). However I
don't believe
we will get far until the defeat of the Republic referendum and
widespread interest
in REAL constitutional change anyway. If State based PR is established
it would break
the two party monopoly but would not open political debate much wider
than including the existing smaller parties. That would be useful to
allow them to discredit themselves as
deeply as the ALP and Coalition have, but could then be frozen in place
for many years.
b) A system of ticket voting would be necessary for a House of
Representatives with 150
members (and even for State based electorates such as NSW and VIC). This
could be based
on any small group being able to register any ticket they like. And
ballot papers with
just space to write down a ticket number. Also there could be provision
for tickets with say the 20 largest numbers of signatories having their
own boxes on the ballot paper. But working out and explaining such
details will be difficult.
The idea behind the preliminary draft Bill for a Democracy Act is to
start discussion on
such issues here, then take a final draft Bill out for wide discussion
and final amendments in a "Parliament of the Net" (combined with trial
run signature campaigns in the course of discussing amendments) then run
a serious mass signature campaign during the lead up to the Republic
referendum. At that stage it would not be a Neither campaign but a
Democracy Act campaign
involving much wider forces (including supporters of One Nation, Greens,
Democrats, ALP and Coalition).
Of course there is no chance of getting a majority of electors to sign -
if we got anywhere near that, they would rush to introduce either State
wide or smaller Hare-Clark regions to head it off.
But proposing direct enactment of a change to the Constitution could of
itself introduce a refreshing new aspect to Australian politics and make
a lot of people think about things in a different way.
In the current climate I think we could get tens of thousands of
signatures fairly quickly.
The key thing would be getting to the point of wide discussion and
formal voting on the net.
