A better parliament, not bigger
Letting MPs assess if we need more MPs is like putting them in charge of voting for their pay increases, says Mike Lester
IT’S doubtful restoring the House of Assembly to 35 members by itself will fix the perceived problems with Tasmania’s parliament, and it will do nothing to restore public confidence in our governance.
It’s also unpopular with voters and, more importantly, would miss the opportunity to design a new parliament better suited to meet our needs for the 21st century.
The report by a House of Assembly Select Committee which recommended restoration of the number of House of Assembly members from 25 back to 35 was inevitable. Putting MPs in charge of assessing whether we need more MPs, is like putting MPs in charge of voting for their own pay increases — of course the answer is going to be yes.
In fact, as the Select Committee pointed out, it was this power to give themselves a massive 40 per cent pay rise back in 1993 where all the problems started.
At that time premier Ray Groom linked the controversial pay rise to a plan to cut parliament from 35 to 30. Surprise, surprise, the pay rise went through but the cut in MPs got shelved. This was so unpopular that it arguably cost the Liberal Party majority government at the 1996 election.
As the Select Committee also notes, from 1993 to 1998 there were two key reports — the Morling Report and the Nixon Report — which recommended ways to reconfigure the Tasmanian Parliament, and numerous different models were put forward by various political interests, including proposals for a unicameral parliament.
In 1998 premier Tony Rundle — in an attempt to defuse the pay rise as an issue — proposed a cut from 35 to 28 members from four electorates, each returning seven members using the Hare-Clark voting system, and to reduce the Upper House from 19 to 12 members.
This was accepted by Greens leader Christine Milne but was unacceptable to members in the upper house, some of Rundle’s own backbench, who threatened a rebellion, and the Labor Party. Labor counter-proposed a reduction in the Assembly to 25 (five electorates of five members) and the Legislative Council to 15 (single-member electorates). This model won support of the parliament and increased the required quota for election of each House of Assembly member from 12.5 per cent to 16.7 per cent.
Interviews with former MPs for my PhD thesis on minority government leave no doubt that the sub-plot of this debate was a desire by the two major parties to make it more difficult for the Greens to win seats. It’s true the Greens subsequently lost seats, but that was due as much to the fact that their vote had dropped in successive elections from 1992 to 1998 as to anything else.
Importantly, the smaller parliament didn’t prevent the Greens again winning a balance of power in 2010 with five seats — proving, perhaps, that winning 16.7 per cent in each electorate is not such a high bar to jump at all.
One argument in favour of restoring the House of Assembly to 35 is that it will somehow improve backbench scrutiny of the government.
It won’t necessarily, and here’s why. History shows that whether in a
25 or 35-member house, under Hare-Clark, a cabinet of nine or 10 ministers is almost always bigger than the backbench of the governing party. A premier usually controls cabinet. Cabinet convention means that once a decision is made, they vote as a bloc in the party room. Therefore, the premier effectively controls the party. In a majority government, the party controls the House. Therefore, in effect, the premier controls the House. Ignoring this is simply ignoring reality.
Another claim is that an increase in MPs will somehow improve the talent pool for the ministry. In my experience the Hare-Clark voting system rarely results in more talent, even in a bigger parliament.
The reason is that under Hare-Clark, popular, highprofile candidates drag lesser known candidates into the parliament on their coat tails. Arguably the low bar to win a seat, coupled with the coat-tail effect, delivers mediocrity rather than talent.
Defenders of our current system surely don’t claim that its 19th and early 20th century designers were the font of all wisdom. Women didn’t get full voting rights in both houses until the mid-1950s and HareClark has been changed several times over the years at the whim of those seeking some political advantage.
What we need is a modern democratic system designed to
get the best possible governance outcomes for a small state with limited resources and where the demands on ministers have changed dramatically over the past century.
That might include a unicameral house, a new electoral system, Aboriginal representation or a state bill of rights — anything. At a minimum it should include constraints on the ability of current MPs to change the constitution and our electoral system, or their own pay, by a simple vote in both houses of parliament without a referendum.
History shows that if we first restore numbers back to pre-1998 we will do nothing else.