At 00:11 24/11/99 +1100, rtechow wrote:
>Technically it is possible for 5% of the Australian Electors to kick out
>of office 84 labor and liberal MHRs (based on the last election
>results). That is a high degree of vulnerability. It is a lot of
>leverage for 5% of the votes. It is a lot of power for 5% - forget the
>Senate. Sure they would be replaced with a new batch of 84 labor and
>liberal MPs and the liberal/labor parties would still be supreme but the
>laberals would be badly hurt and destabilished.
It's certainly possible, however, it does not resolve the structural
problems in the electoral system, nor does it resolve control over
government by one of two parties.
>As a for instance take One Nation. You may not like One Nation's ideas
>but the liberal and labor parties declared war on One Nation so it
>possibly does not feel kindly disposed to either of them. Perhaps One
>Nation could be persuaded to direct the preferences of its votes against
>the sitting labor/liberal member in order to deliberately unseat them and
>damage it's enemies.
One Nation is a political irrelevance. It is gleefully ripping itself
apart in a Stalinesque series of purges and show-trials of party
members. It was registered as a party fraudulently, and its members got
tired of being drones. It has one largely ignored Senator, one largely
ignored NSW Upper House representative, and a handful of Queensland
parliamentarians - most of whom won't survive the next election. It
certainly does not retain 4-5% (leaving aside the fact that the ALP and
Coalition will preference each other before they preference One Nation).
Your idea has some merit, in that it would cause some degree of instability
in the lower house, and governments would be changing every
election. However, the minor parties could be betraying their constituency
by doing this. As an example, the Greens almost always preference the ALP,
because it's obvious the ALP have a better series of environmental policies
than the Coalition. Note I didn't say good policies - merely better. If
the Greens were to mix their preferences like this, the ALP won't
preference the Greens and so they might lose their NSW Upper House seats.
Preference deals benefit the minors. The Democrats are a great example of
this - they hold the balance of power because they enter into preference
deals. They very nearly took Alexander Downer's seat due to a deal with
the ALP.
Personally, I don't think electoral reform will come from Parliament in
this or any other way. They've too much at stake in the present system,
with the possible exception of the smaller minors, such as the Greens, but
also One Nation (who, based on their primary vote, should have more federal
representation than they do).
Alister
--
"Let us not fool ourselves, half a century after the adoption
of this Declaration (of Human Rights) and supposedly under its
protection, millions of people have died in the world without
reaching the age of 50 and without even knowing that there was
a universal document that should have protected them."
Roberto Robaina, Cuba's Foreign Minister
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