South Australian politics was dominated by malapportionment until the courageous stand by Steele Hall, who partially amended the electoral boundaries through legislation despite it meaning certain defeat for his government and majority party in the South Australian Assembly. Dis-content with the overly conservative leaning of the Liberal and Country League (LCL), he split off into a separate Liberal faction in the Liberal Movement. Ironically this centre-right faction was absorbed into the Liberal Party at the same time as the Australian Democrats came into being. South Australia has been an important core of support for the Democrats since.

Malapportionment

In 1915, South Australia had malapportioned districts which was tempered by multiple member districts. This frayed the factional outcomes of the malapportionment. In 1932 a system was implemented with thirty-nine single member electorates. These were heavily weighted toward the rural areas. Andrew Parking writes;

thirty-nine single member electorates were instituted, with a guarantee that country seats would out-number city seats on a two-to-one ratio.

It comes as no surprise that after this there was static oscillation of changes in government. The LCL held control of the Executive Council in South Australia from 1933 through to 1965 with Thomas Playford holding the Premier position from 1938 until 1965. A total of twenty-seven years. There were several times that the Playford government was returned to power with a majority of seats, but with a minority of raw votes.

The Legislative Council in South Australia was just as entrenched with malapportionment, long terms and property qualifications which remained until the 1970s. Up until the 1960s descendants of members of the landed gentry from the 1800s were in the Council. It was the closest thing Australia had to a House of Lords.

The Council was weighted toward rural representation and contained an LCL majority for many years even when the Assembly had gone to Labor with a majority. In 1965 Labor won fifty-four percent of the preferred vote but only won four seats in the Legislative Council to the LCLs sixteen.

Raymond Steele Hall

Premier Steele Hall assumed minority government for the LCL in 1968 from the government of Don Dunstan. Hall increased the number in the Assembly to forty-seven and reduced some of the malapportionment inherent in the South Australian system through legislation. He did this knowing it was electoral suicide for his government.

The bill passed the Assembly with unanimous support. There was sufficient popular support that the aristocratic Legislative Council could not oppose or thwart it. Hall unsurprisingly lost the next election to Don Dunstan, who through on-going pressure managed to remove the malapportionment. This did not stop the Labor Government of John Bannon achieving a majority of seats but only forty percent of the first preferential vote.

South Australia today has an independent Electoral Commission which has a mandate by legislation and referendum to draw boundaries that ensure the party with the majority of votes has a majority of seats. The Commission trys to make as many marginal seats as possible which does not always lead to an equitable outcome but is a huge improvement of the malapportionment of 1932.

The malapportionment led to the entrenchment of minority rural interests over majority urban and suburban interests. With the static nature of the Legislative Council in South Australia and the LCLs control of it, this led to a friction between the factions inside the Liberal and Country League. In 1973, several Liberals jumped ship and ran for election as the Liberal Movement. Steele Hall was amongst them.

After the election the LCL renamed itself the Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division), with many of the Liberal Movement members joining the Liberal Party. The friction between the rural and urban members of the LCL remained for many years in the Liberal Party. Meanwhile in the South Australian Assembly the Liberal Movement remained with elected members.

The Australian Democrats

The Australian Democrats formed in 1977. Don Chip was a Liberal member of the House of Representatives when he was approached by members of the Australian Party and the New Liberal Movement. They sought a new party based on a popular caucus and party leadership responsive to the members of the party. The split in 1973 of the Liberal Movement from the LCL handed the Australian Democrats immediate successes. Andrew Parking writes;

... the residue of the Liberal Movement gave the [Australian Democrat] party 'a ready-made constituency in South Australia' which has remained at the core of the party's national strength ever since. The remaining Liberal Movement member (Robin Millhouse) in the House of Assembly relabelled himself a Democrat and was re-elected twice in that capacity.

Millhouse won re-election for the seat in 1977 and 1979, becoming the first Australian Democrat Member of Parliament. The Democrats held on to the seat in 1982 after Millhouse was appointed to the Supreme Court. Like the Metherill-Greiner affair in NSW, Millhouse being appointed to the Supreme Court was a blatant attempt by the Liberal Government of David Tonkin to return the seat to be a safe liberal one. Which it had been before the Liberal Movement split. The Liberals won the seat back from the Democrats in the following general election.

Given the woes of the Australia Democrats in the last election with their either concrete or perceived left-wards lean. It is probably a good time for the Australian Democrats to peer into their own history for their past popularity. The Democrats started their life as a centre faction strongly focused on the integrity of the democratic process. The party's appeal in South Australia in the 1980s is a good example of where the Australian Democrats need to return, not only for the health of their own party, but for the health of pluralist democracy in Australia.

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