It might be noted that
(1) the Australian Democrats had ceased by 1991 to be an open, tolerant
vehicle for non-major-party opinion and policy, a betrayal led and
engineered by the party's oberstompenfuehrers in South Australia;
(2) it still requires an Upper House majority for a government's legislation
to be defeated or amended and, therefore, it would be more appropriate for
the bone to be pointed at the major opposition party - as WA premier Richard
Court is always careful to do. (This also has the calculated effect of
marginalising small parties and independents);
(3) a reduction in Upper House seats is of itself a lesser problem than an
electoral system rigged to favour a 2-party system. Good independent
candidates could be elected in PR regions with an odd number of seats if the
Tasmanian 'Robson Rotation' method were used to sanitise party lists;
(4) I predict that, within 5 years, public hostility to rigged,
pro-corporate governance will become a bigger problem to the LibLabs even
than their perennial charade of taking turns at the tiller. Worldwide moves
for establishment of a "civil agenda", citizens' multilateral treaties, etc,
show that there is already a major crisis of legitimacy which could spawn a
great deal of sophisticated outlawry as well as 'legitimate protest action'.
In the bigger picture, the arrangement of South Australian deckchairs
doesn't matter very much at all,
Brian Jenkins
Bill Kerr wrote on Saturday, 2 January 1999 15:47
|from today's (Sat. 2/1/99) Advertiser
|
|"Support is growing among frustrated Liberal MPs for reforms to the Upper
|House of State Parliament that would decimate the power of the Australian
|Democrats and No Pokies' MLC Mr. Nick Xenophon."
|
|"Under the plan - to reduce the number of Legislative Councillors from 22
to
|18 and divide the State into broad Upper House "electorates" - Independent
|candidates would be doomed and the Democrats reduced to a maximum of one."
<etc>
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