What New Zealand can teach Australia about democracy

The Farrer by-election has exposed the cracks in Australia’s two-party system and reinvigorated the issue of electoral reform, writes Dr Klaas Woldring.

Dramatic result of the last period Farrer by-election He argues that Australia’s two-party system is in deep trouble.

This is the result of this single member district electoral system. This is why previous similar developments in New Zealand are worth examining.

These developments began in the 1980s, when an expert questioned the highly professionally run election systems. Royal Commission. He produced an extraordinarily comprehensive Report on the electoral system: ‘Towards a better democracy?‘ This led to major changes in both parliamentary and local government electoral systems in the 1990s.

Nationally, a mixed-membership proportional system was introduced in 1996 following a referendum in 1993. mixed-member proportional system.

New Zealanders voted to adopt the MMP system, a form of proportional representation that combines the original single-member electorate with proportional representation. This compromise led to an increase in the number of small parties entering parliament, making multi-party governments the norm.

This is an unusual combination that results in a proportional system that puts an end to the old two-party system and creates more diverse representation in the national parliament. It sounds like a compromise that might have been agreed upon to make it easier for the referendum to pass. The truth is that it is essentially a proportional system.

A further referendum was held in 2011, confirming that the public wanted to keep the new system rather than the “previously” system based on single-member districts.

The result was a kind of proportional system in which each voter had two votes. One for the general political party and the other for the constituency. The party vote, together with the difference between the number of voters won and the overall percentage of party votes generated by party members on the party’s selected list, ultimately determines the number of seats each party will win in parliament.

It was the Labor Party that adopted this policy to seriously consider introducing proportional representation. While the resulting changes were delayed, latent support for electoral reform continued and was further strengthened by the commissioning of the Royal Commission in 1985; this Commission ultimately recommended the change to the MMP.

We have now reached a situation that demonstrates the problems of the single district electoral system in Australia like never before. The recent Farrar by-election presents a new situation that raises the issue of revamping the electoral system. The dubious so-called two-party system allegedly associated with effective government no longer exists and is unlikely to be re-established.

As well as a large number of Independents, we now have at least three Opposition parties. There is also an ALP Government with a primary vote of 34.6 per cent, corresponding to 94 seats in Parliament, or 64 per cent of the total 150 seats available. The ALP claims to strive for fair and democratic representation. It’s not clear what this is.

What will AKP do about this? He never brought this issue up Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters At the end of the federal general election. This may be in his own interest, but is it in the country’s interest?

It may seem more or less impossible for the One Nation party to win Farrer. There was strong support for a highly competent woman, even an independent candidate, financially supported by progressive political organization. To wake up!but in vain.

The two-party system continues in the Australian House of Representatives, with the usual polarized, oppositional commentary. The major parties are sitting across from each other to facilitate this mostly negative debate that Australia could certainly do without.

Even in the UK and the US, campaigns are underway to end this essentially Westminster legacy. All campaigns focus on the policies of the major parties. In elections, voters must choose between the two. The system makes it very difficult and costly to establish a new party. This situation can certainly be changed, as the people of New Zealand decided to do and did in the 1990s.

We are now in a situation where a far-right party like One Nation can enter government with a third of the national primary vote. This may seem unlikely right now, but it is not impossible. Isn’t it time to see discussions about this issue in the media? I’ve never seen anything like this before.

I recently watched a three-week program on the ABC on the electoral system in Australia, which claimed that Australia had an excellent electoral system. There was a serious federal investigation into the cause of this situation in 2003/4. Republican Referendum It failed in 1999. The result was a lack of education at all levels of the education system, from high school to college, and in the media.

Has anything been done about this? No, on the contrary, really.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the Prime Minister decided last year that there would be no more referendums. Of course, this is not the solution. But more importantly, which party will adopt a policy that will change the electoral system? An investigation is now overdue, as was the case in New Zealand 40 years ago.