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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In 2003 South Australia held a constitutional convention to look into improving the state's parliamentary system. The convention went for just over two days and included "Deliberators". These were citizens chosen by sortition from the South Australian voting age population.

The final report [pdf] has some interesting observations;

• A better understanding of the parliamentary process improved the sortitionists impression of parliaments effectiveness.
• Opinion amongst the sortitionists for a bicameral parliament with the capability for either house to block legislation firmed. The endorsement of bicameral parliament increased from 65% prior to deliberation and 80% afterwards.
• A majority supported shorter terms for Legislative Councilors, from eight years to four. Attitude and support for proportional representation in the upper house firmed to a majority.
• After deliberations 50% wanted more Assembly representatives, while 47% thought 47 Assembly Representatives was enough and 7% thought less. The sortitionists had no problem with the Executive Cabinet being drawn from both houses with 75% agreeing with it.
• The sortitionists wanted an independent speaker who is not involved with their party. A significant minority even agreed that the speaker should resign from their party and be an independent MP.
• Citizen Initiated Referenda [CIR] had support amongst 65% of sortitionists, and this dropped to 64% after deliberations with 35% opting for specialists to fulfill that role and against CIR. After deliberations 70% of the sortitionists believed that CIR should apply to existing and new laws. There was no consensus on the type of CIR.
• The three most popular reforms ordered by the sortitionists were; Optional preferential voting, Citizen Initiated Referenda and Four Year Terms for the Upper House.

Even though the convention only went for two and half days, the sortitionists involved became active citizens taking their duty seriously and trying to discover all they could on the issues. For such a short period of deliberation they also learnt a great deal about the system of government of South Australia.

The convention is a very cheap cost for civic involvement and education. For instance prior to the convention on the question of; Do all states [not including territories] have bicameral parliaments with only Queensland being unicameral? Prior to deliberation 29% answered this correctly, afterwards 96% did.

The sortitionists became engaged because of direct involvement;

Consistent with the observation from previous Deliberative Polls that committed delegates do indeed prepare for their deliberations. Most of the Representative South Australians (93%) who attended the Constitutional Convention had read at least half of the Discussion Papers they were sent prior to their attendance at the Convention.

A majority (57%) had read most or all of those materials. Further, when asked about the extra research activities they did in preparation for their deliberations, around half the delegates engaged in additional research activities than their usual pattern of behaviour.

The sortitionists also found the experience valuable, informative and worthwhile;

when asked about their overall level of satisfaction with the group process, an overwhelming 95% said they were satisfied, with almost 85% citing "very satisfied" or "extremely satisfied."

In my opinion people do want to be involved, but on their own terms and not through parties or the media. The explosion of the Australian political blogosphere is a good example of this. Sortition processes allow a citizen and individual to engage themselves in politics without the normal organisational mechanisms that have probably led to the perception of political alienation in the first place.

Senator Annette Hurley has an interesting speech on geothermal energy [pdf] in South Australia. She argues that a responsible greenhouse gas policy will lead to new industries and jobs, an opinion which has been discussed on this site in the past, and that South Australian leadership in geothermal energy investment is one such example.

From the speech;

I would like to explain a little bit about what geothermal energy is, because often people bandy around these terms, and I do not necessarily think it is well understood. Geothermal energy is not new. It has been known about since the early 1900s. It is currently used in over 20 countries, where it is mostly based on heat sources that use water reservoirs--for example, in New Zealand and in Queensland, where there is currently an energy source that uses water reservoirs. But the area that is opening up in Australia and the area I want to talk about is the use of hot fractured rocks. These are rocks deep in the earth that maintain a high level of heat but that are overlain with insulating rocks which trap the heat.

The process that can be used relies on very well-known processes in the mining industry to produce energy from that heat. The process is that water is circulated through the hot rocks up to the surface and that the heat is captured by a heat exchanger using groundwater cooling. Once the heat passes through the heat exchanger, it is transferred into another closed cycle system that has an ammonia-water working fluid which has a lower boiling point than water. It is this system that generates the vapour to spin turbines to create power generation. The beauty of it--especially in South Australia, which has few water resources--is that the water used in the process is continually under pressure and never turns to steam. This means that the water in the system is continually recycled.

Interesting technology to harness the natural rhythms of the earth but as Hurley notes it is currently not economically competitive with coal as it costs about $50 AUD per megawatt hour. Another issue is the costs of transmission are high as many of the geothermal locations are far from the high density population centres.

This is the same issue that water faces, many of our largest cities are not in water rich areas. There was a time when cities were founded on rich arable land when agriculture was the dominant economic form. Australia as a post industrial country, sort of skipped those steps, since it used industrial technology to bring water and energy to where people were, not the other other way round. Consequently our cities are reliant upon the fossil fuel era of heavily centralised infrastructure to bring water and energy to us.

This is not unique to Australia; Phoenix, Arizona would not exist without such a system of support, just as the resort at the Uluru is not viable without industrial era technologies and cheap energy.

There would have to be great energy pressures to have populations move in this day and age to where the energy and water is; pressure such as complete collapse. Which I doubt will happen. Then again some smart companies got me to pay $4 USD for a CLF light bulb when a normal one is under a dollar. And last night we lined up a landscape designer friend of ours to buy rain barrels for us - when our spouts and town tap water work perfectly well. It is question of maximising efficiency and resources within economic bounds.

It may be that geothermal energy producers will get the cost down enough to be able to market it to me that I will pay more for it as an energy supplier - in part or as a full energy solution.

Hurley finishes the speech with:

Recently the 2006 annual report of the Australian Geothermal Implementing Agreement was released. That is a group consisting of most of the companies involved in this process looking at how they go forward. I am certainly hopeful that they get strong support from the government and that next time around we have a Labor government in place that is willing to look seriously at a carbon pricing regime and how companies in this form of energy, where carbon emissions are very low, will be properly supported and encouraged by the federal government.

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South Australia has been a very competitive state between Labor and the Liberals.

Other than one period of Liberal Country League dominance for over thirty years, South Australia has seen the frequent switch between governments of differing parties.

Andrew Parkin divides the history of South Australian Government into four periods. The first period is the post-federation period where no party managed to dominate politics. Parkin argues that this represents "a state whose social, political and economic profile was uncertain."

The next one is the Playford Period. The dominant component of this period was government led industrialisation. To complement this policy a Housing Trust was established to help house low cost workers that would fill the factories of the new industrialisation.

After the Playford Period came one of Labor dominance where Liberal Governments were short in length. Don Dunstan was the most public figure of this period and the policies were more focused on cultural and social outcomes - something that had been neglected under Playford's industrialisation and paternalism.

Parkin was writing in 2003 and he labeled the final period the 'period of uncertainty'. This is after the bank collapses under Bannon.

It should also be noted that South Australia produced the base for the Australian Democrats as the various flavours of Liberal parties in the state led to the New Liberals and the Liberal Movement which were the precursor for the Democrats.

Tim Dunlop has an article on Alexander Downer mentioning that he might go into state politics. I think that would be a good thing. Australia does not have enough vertical movement, up or down, between state and national politics. The other issue is that the Liberal party is electorally moribund at the state level and Downer would add instant authority to any state election.

Australian state politics has seen three Premiers leave while firmly entrenched in power. ICAC kind of followed Carr out, but Bracks and Beattie left with most of their reputations intact.

In American politics a successful Governorship is the first step in a Presidential run. The current presidential candidates includes former Governors such as Romney, Huckabee and Richardson, as well as a former city mayor. This is a good method of gaining executive experience in state politics before transitioning to the national executive.

I have always been surprised that Australia, or more accurately Westminster Government, has so little vertical movement between the state/provinces and national parliament. There was Joh's attempt at federal politics but he was a disgraced entity by then.

I recall former NSW Premier, John Fahey, joining national politics, but I can recall feeling that his authority was compromised and diminished as he had to follow the talking points of the national party leader. I think this is why it is seen more in the US system as the former Governors don't have to come under legislative or shadow-cabinet party discipline. Their executive authority remains intact.

I suspect Downer will have an easier run of it if he does go from the national stage to the state stage. Especially if he leaves national politics willingly or through a lost election where he leaves as a cabinet minister.

I hope it happens as I would like to see more vertical political movement in Australian politics.

More illiberalism from the Westminster system, this time in South Australia. At least under a Bill of Rights an individual can appeal directly to the Judicial to have their grievances heard. Via Gary Sauer-Thompson:

My understanding is that under the legislation---Serious and Organised Crime Control Act 2008-- the Attorney-General has right to call an organisation, which could be anything from an informal group of people who meet at the local pub for a weekly drink through to a football club or a business, a Declared Organisation. The Attorney-General can use secret and untested evidence in making that declaration, and his decision can't be challenged in the courts.

Secondly, the substantive issue of motorcycle gang criminality, namely, a criminal conspiracy to commit serious offences using violence or otherwise, is not dealt with by the accepted process of adducing evidence at trial. Rather it is dealt with by a quasi judicial process of prohibition of an organisation by declaration and the imposition of control orders on its members. Severe penalties are then visited upon controlled members who continue some form of contact, even remote contact by post, fax, phone or e-mail - two years imprisonment for a first offence, five years for a second or subsequent offence.

The Cronulla Rioting visited similar types of emergency and arbitrary laws on NSW and remain on the books. Executive power in the Westminster system is directly co-mingled with Legislative power. Coupled with a lack of constitutionally entrenched individual or political rights, this allows the executive to over step their bounds and make illiberal laws with ease.

More: John Barrdear comments on the bikie laws and wonders:

It seems obvious that the legislature has a political incentive to be seen doing something, as time in the media's spotlight is currency to a politician. It's common, although not universally accepted, to suggest that the sharp end of the executive (i.e. those charged with enforcing the law) generally wish for more options in carrying out that enforcement. In a Westminster system of the executive having a controlling influence in the legislature, that would imply inexorable movement towards illiberalism over time as exogenously-sourced crises occur.

So how has liberalism survived for so long in the Westminster tradition? What, if you'll excuse the pun, arrests the movement to a sort of democratic dictatorship?

Which is a good question.