Legislative Councils
2009 July 17
I know it’s tempting to want to get rid of your upper houses because they’re an inconvenient check on executive power. Don’t do it, it’s not worth it, you’ll end up with Premiers like Bjelke-Petersen and Beattie who will, in the absence of strong opposition (in the form of either a party opposite or a second chamber), run the state into the ground.
Love,
Queensland
Four years is an appropriate length of time for MLCs to serve – two-period tier upper houses (Federal, NSW, SA and previously Victoria) suffer from having a membership reflecting election results of up to 8 years previously.
Having 16 members elected to the SA Legislative Council each election makes it less likely a party will hold a majority or half of the Legislative Council seats than presently (11 members are elected each election at the moment). However, a smaller number of members may mean that the LC is less effective than presently as the workload is spread amongst fewer members.
Electing a small number of MLCs from a number of regions may be reasonable – e.g. 3 regions each returning 7 members.
I don’t see how electing a Legislative Council 11 at a time makes it any easier for a party to control the chamber.
Any sort of proportional representation would make it difficult for a single party to have control, to similar degrees. However, having the Parliament elected in two stages would make it harder to control the chamber.
Don’t get me wrong, I support electing an entire chamber for a four-year term, but your argument doesn’t make any sense.
Purely on the numbers, a party needs 50% of the vote to secure 6 of 11 seats while needing about 53% to secure 9 of 16 seats. I feel it’s a bit of an overly simplistic view, though, given that even the major parties will struggle to get higher than 45% in a proportional system with a number of minor parties.
The Liberals almost won a majority in the SA Upper House in the 90s.
But you don’t need 50% to win 6 of 11 seats – you can win 6 seats with less than 6 quotes of primary votes through exhausted votes and preferences.
The Senate is a practical demonstration of my point – although with reference to winning half the Senate – which is actually quite good as you can block any vote.
The Senate is elected using even numbers, hence you can get 3/6 with only 43%, so to get a majority in the Senate you need to get 43% in every state for two elections in a row and get 4/6 in one state once.
If you have 16 seats then you only need something like 47% to get 8 seats.
You’ll never convince Labor Inc. They own the cops now.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25819503-601,00.html