"The merits of proportional representation"

AdelaideNow.com:

The Australian Parliament is changing. On August 21, we went to the polls expecting to elect one of the major parties into office. Rather than a clear-cut result, a two-week political deadlock ensued.

Rather than a clear-cut result, a two-week political deadlock ensued.

Yesterday, Julia Gillard's Labor Party won government despite losing the primary vote and the two-party-preferred vote, or securing a majority of seats.

The new Parliament is a hotchpotch of members.

The Coalition is made up of the Nationals, the Liberal Party, the Queensland Liberal National Party, a West Australian National and rural independent Bob Katter.

The Labor Party has struck a deal with the Greens, a Tasmanian urban independent who was formerly both a Liberal and a Green, and two former National Party independents. This will be the Australia's new government.

The murky result has highlighted the limitations of the two-party-preferred, or preferential, system and prompted some to call for its abolition.

As both sides jockeyed for the independents' support, they latched on to both the primary vote and the two-party-preferred vote results to bolster their bid.

But as many analysts have said, the primary vote is largely irrelevant given government is formed based on the number of seats in the House. Queensland independent Bob Katter, who has sided with the Coalition, has slammed the preferential system. "It is a primitive 18th-century form of government," he said on Monday.

"What you are watching here over the last 25 years is a tightening of the tyranny of the majority and I represent the people that are particularly suffering as a result."

Mr Katter said both the major parties were wedded to the system because it benefited them but "it doesn't take into account the feelings of the people".

Our political landscape would look very different if the preferential system was ditched in favour of a different model. If Australia had proportional representation, and people voted as they had in the recent election, the Australian Greens would have 17 seats in the Lower House.

If we followed a first-past-the-post system, the candidate with the most votes in each seat would have won.

Australia's political system is based on the Westminster system of government, but differs in that we also use second preferences to choose a government. But when it comes to the states, each has slightly different rules of engagement.

Tasmania's Lower House has proportional representation and there are currently 10 Labor members, 10 Liberals and 5 Greens. In some states, optional proportional representation is in place in the Lower House, meaning people can choose whether or not to have a second choice.

University of Adelaide head of politics Clem Macintyre says there is obvious disenchantment with the major parties, evidenced by the fact the new parliament will have more crossbenchers than in any other parliament since World War II. "It is clear there are growing levels of support for independents and for minor parties," he said.

"I think there is a degree of frustration and declining faith in the major parties and there is interest in things like environmental-based parties, so the trend is there."

But Dr Macintyre said he did not expect this trend to result in electoral reform.

"There won't be significant reform to our system in the foreseeable future because the major parties benefit from it," he said.

In the UK, the recent alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats resulted in a pledge for a referendum on electoral reform to move to a preferential system.

Dr Macintyre said he could only imagine a referendum on electoral reform in Australia if the Greens, or another minor party, had enough leverage to call for it. "It will become a mainstream issue ... but the only time the Greens have any standing or importance is when the two major parties don't agree with each other," he said.

Australian National University political science lecturer Aaron Martin has researched the voting habits of young Australians and says there is a generational shift away from the two-party system. "There is much less loyalty to a party than there used to be," he said.

"The two-party system doesn't represent young people's interests all that well.

"From the research we have done, young people are more likely to support minor parties. I think there is an interesting generational aspect that is playing itself out."

Mr Martin said there was good cause to debate the merits of proportional representation in the Lower House, which would give minor parties more power.

Independent Rob Oakeshott said he hoped the new government would result in a less combative parliament. "We made a judgment call ... let's see how it goes."