Upside down thinking

Re: Lessons from Down Under, Kelly Mcparland, Aug. 8

Kelly Mcparland’s piece confuses Australia’s preferential ballot system for electing its parliament with the internal process its parties use to choose (and remove) leaders. The two are unrelated, yet he uses his opposition to the latter to argue against the former.

In Australia, leaders are chosen by the party caucus in what’s called a “leadership spill” and leaders can similarly be removed by a simple vote of the party caucus.

In Canada, by contrast, the leader isn’t chosen by caucus, but by a vote of party members, and leadership reviews are done at party convention.

As B.C. is not proposing to tell parties how to choose or remove their leaders, I am at a loss at how Australia’s party leader selection system is at all relevant. Andy Lehrer, Toronto

It is pretty clear that proportional representation encourages the fragmentation of big tent mainstream parties, which was why the Trudeau Liberals wanted ranked ballots; when they couldn’t have it, they walked away from their commitment to change our voting system.

PR encourages the formation of single-issue extremist fringe parties and drives politics to the fringe. Whatever its supposed faults of non-inclusiveness, first-past-the-post (FPTP) encourages moderate parties and excludes the radical fringe.

We keep being told Canada is the best, most stable place in the world over the last 150 years. Isn’t it somewhat likely that FPTP has something to do with that? Patrick Robinson, Calgary