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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The Parliamentary Library has released a research brief on compulsory voting. Australia has been using compulsory voting since 1924, when it was introduced as a private members bill after some parliamentarians were shocked at the lack of turnout to an election. Compulsory voting is a bit of a misnomer though, it is more accurately compulsory attendance at an electoral booth on election day. Due to the amazing Australian innovation of the secret ballot, informal votes are impossible to punish. Informal voting tends to make up about five percent of the voting population. Despite there being Compulsory Voting, turnout is never one hundred percent anyway, the Northern Territory just gets over the ninety percent hump.

Floating Electoral Change

After the 2004 election, and with a Liberal Senate majority, there began to be mention of electoral changes. Senator Nick Minchin;

Well, that the Government will decide to take to the people a policy of having voluntary voting in this country, and that if we win the next election that we would then seek to remove compulsion from the Australian Electoral Act.

Minchin claimed Howard approves of voluntary voting, but Minchin is an old voluntary voting warrior, calling compulsory voting, "the blight of compulsion". He also tried to get legislation through South Australian parliament on voluntary voting in 1994, which was unsuccessful, being blocked by Labor and Democrats in the Legislative Council. South Australia had a longer history of voluntary voting than the rest of Australia, not adopting compulsory voting in the Legislative Council until 1985. Minchin may remember fondly that time prior, which also included a horribly malapportioned and warped South Australian Legislative Council.

I am immediately suspicious of politicians changing the electoral system, as I can only think of one altruistic act in this area, in the entire history of Australian politics. That was Steele Hall, who removed malapportionment in South Australia, despite the knowledge that it would cost him his government.

The best example of electoral change to try and maintain incumbency was Labor changing the Senate system from First Past the Post [FPTP] to proportional representation. This was done because Chifley believed that Labor would lose the Senate in an upcoming election under a FPTP system. This back-fired on Labor, they have not had a majority in the Senate since. However, there have been unexpected benefits, namely with the rise of the Australian Democrats in the late 1970s who helped the Senate become a genuine house of review, until their dismal showing in 2004.

Compulsory Voting

In Australia this was first introduced in Queensland in 1918. An interesting effect of this was that people in Queensland got used to voting, and their turn-out in voluntary federal elections increased above the national average. At the federal level, voluntary voting had produced between 78% and 55%, and Senator Herbert Payne introduced a private members bill which quickly passed both houses. After this other states quickly followed, Victoria in 1926, NSW and Tasmania in 1928 and Western Australia in 1936. South Australia added compulsory voting for its House of Assembly in 1942.

Source: Compulsory voting in Australian national elections - Parliamentary Library Research Brief

Australia is not alone in using voluntary voting, numerous European, South American, Central American nations do as well. In our region, Singapore, Thailand, Fiji and Nauru use compulsory voting. There are differences in how compulsory voting is enforced, in Australia there is strong enforcement, though the fine for not voting is $20 AUD. Peru will not honour some social services, unless the citizen has a stamped voter card. Greeks can face difficulty getting a passport or drivers license unless they have voted. However, in nations such as Costa Rica and Thailand, there is no enforcement of compulsory voting.

The Cons of Compulsory Voting

The research paper lists the pros and cons, that commonly circulate in the argument over compulsory vs voluntary voting. The Cons;

• It is not democratic to force people to cast their vote.
• It causes over-government.
• It represents a failure of democracy.
• Most voting people do is voluntary, why should national and state elections be the exception?
• It is unfair to a voter who is not attracted to a candidate.
• It rewards dishonest electors who turn up and vote informal to get their names marked off the roll.
• Compulsory voting has made life easier for the parties.
• Parties don't need mass memberships as people vote for/against them anyway. Less need to convince the electorate of their policies.
• It trivialises campaigns, making them more celebrity run-offs than policy campaigns.
• Parties ignore safe electorates.
• It allows the idiots to vote.
• People resent being dragged to the voting booth.
• Donkey voting is an outcome of making people vote who don't want to.
• Quality of MP representation would be closer to their electorate as they would have to be more sensitive locally to ensure re-election.
• Australia is "out of step with the world" by requiring citizens to vote.

The Parliamentary Library is to be congratulated in compiling such a complete resource of con arguments, however many fall under the category, which in internet slang, is known as "LOL What?". Most of the issues can be solved through de-criminalising informal voting, not that it can be policed anyway. The problem with donkey voting, and party-line voting has been largely solved in Tasmania by the Robson Rotation and no by-elections.

Parties will always be a problem, as they are a special interest group who often works against the common good to enact their ideology through the coercion of state. The media has enabled parties to get away with celebrity driven elections that are devoid of policy and are defined by a singular wedge issue. Oppositions all run on small-target campaigns.

I find the objection that is allows idiots to vote the most repugnant. Their is more wisdom in the people than in government, and it is a natural right for an individual, who has agreed to consent to the laws and taxation of a government, to have a say in its running and make-up.

The Pros of Compulsory Voting

The paper mentions that many of the pros take a view of it giving benefits to Australian society. Some of the advantages of compulsory voting;

• Voting is another obligation that the state has a right to expect from citizens (like taxes, juries and sending children to school)
• critics are not opposed to compulsory enrolment, compulsory allocation of preferences yet are opposed to compulsory attendance at an electoral booth.
• Compulsory voting increases turnout, voluntary voting decreases turnout.
• Higher sample of public opinion with higher turnout.
• Legitimacy of government is more accepted by a high turnout.
• Compulsory enrolment requires compulsory voting
• Equalises participation and removes bias from less-privileged citizens
• Increases citizen interest in politics and government
• Forces the silent majority to think about elections which safeguards from extremism.
• Voluntary voting makes election more expensive as parties have to spend money on "getting out the vote".
• High turnout produces a reduction in the incentive for negative advertising.
• There is familiarity with the system, Australia has a high public turnout for it.
• It has become the Australian Way.
• It is an integral part of Australian political culture.

Many of these are pretty weak, and are sentimental and conservative in argument. For instance the "we are used to it" argument is a conservative one as is the "Australian Way" argument. I don't believe those are valid. The legitimacy argument is the best one in my opinion.

Bugger The Politicians

I have no problem with compulsory voting and see it as preferable to voluntary voting. However, there are several areas I would like to see improved in the electoral system rather than the ones put forward by Eric Abetz and Nick Minchin. These are the electoral changes that I see as necessary to ensure the individuals political rights, and to protect democracy from parties, incumbency and corruption;

• Fixed term elections every three years. This would remove the incumbent calling the election date. This still leaves a hole for double-dissolution elections, but hopefully they will become politically on the nose.
• Term limiting the head of the Executive Cabinet. Six years is enough, after that time to hand over to a successor.
• Universal suffrage. No kicking the Australian Diaspora off the rolls after three years. No stopping those incarcerated from voting, they remain citizens despite their crimes against society. Any individual above the age of reason should be able to vote. It can be compulsory for citizens, and voluntary for non-citizens, leaving them with an option to choose by their conscience if they want to join the citizenry in picking their government.

The ideas that Eric Abetz and Frank Minchin floated after the 2004 elections are more motivated by the perception of party advantage through rigging the electoral system than by any altruistic view of democratic process. As the Research Paper noted, for parties, electoral reform tends to be personal. Too personal for my liking.

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