Our decomposing democracy

As Australia’s population expands, citizens are losing their political power and influence. Unelected officials and political party fringe-dwellers are gaining ascendency. Individual Federal Members of Parliament, struggling to meet the demands of their electorates, increasingly are relying on opinion polls, marketing and the campaign management strategies of their party machines.

The reason for this is that our electorates are bloating, as more and more people are crammed into each constituency. The root cause of this deterioration in our Parliamentary democracy is the limits imposed by section 24 of the Australian Constitution. Worse is to come. Australia's booming population is estimated to double by 2066.1

Section 24 restricts the number of Members of the House of Representatives to twice the number of seats in the Senate. This is referred to as the nexus and it can only be changed by referendum.

Already the number of constituents in many electorates is more than 150,000. An Australian 40 years ago lived in an electorate of about 70,000 people, sharing the privilege of voting with about 55,000 others. If there is no reform, forty years hence, a citizen will share the electorate with some 300,000 people and would vote for a single representative alongside at least 200,000 fellow constituents.

Already Australians are losing faith in

Members of Parliament. According to a Centre for Policy Development paper quoted in The Guardian by Anne Davies in December 2017, two-thirds of people surveyed believed that politicians did not seem to be serving their interests.

2 In the past, most MPS recognised that satisfying one individual potentially embraced a circle of neighbours, friends and family. Today those networks are relatively insignificant in an overpopulated electorate. Political strategy now focuses on ‘selling' rather than two-way communication of substance with engaged individuals.

Today, in a moment of excitement, a citizen might express an opinion to the local member in writing or by email. In response a computer-generated reply will imply that the office is being swamped by messages from other correspondents. And forty years hence the value of a citizen's thoughts will be even more negligible. By then, frustrated citizens may well seek other ways to have their voices heard.

History

The villain whittling away the constituents' power is section 24 of the Australian Constitution. This reads:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth, and the number of such members shall be, as nearly as practicable, twice the

number of senators.

This law was the outcome of the six British colonies trying in the 1890s to retain as much of their authority as possible in an emerging nation. By tying the number of MHRS to their State Senate representation, the colonial administrations aimed to limit the transfer of power from their own bailiwick to the unknowable Federal Government.

The founding fathers agreed that each of the newly-created states would be represented by six senators, totalling 36 representatives in the upper house of Federal Parliament. Consequently the number of Members of the House of Representatives was limited to 72.

As post-war immigration began to make an impact, it became clear that 72 members would be insufficient to meet the needs of the growing nation. The Chifley Government increased the number of senators to 10 per state, effective from the 1949 elections, allowing the number of lower house seats to increase from 72 to 121.

This was always going to be a temporary fix. In 1967 the Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt, supported by Labor, asked the people in a referendum to break the nexus so that citizens could retain proper representation in the ‘peoples' house' as the nation's population grew. Australians have an ambivalent attitude to those they elect to represent them.

By tying the number of MHRS to their State Senate representation, the colonial administrations aimed to limit the transfer of power from their own bailiwick to the unknowable Federal Government.

To this, a conservative rump – notably including Senator Reg Wright from Tasmania and former Queensland Premier and DLP Senator Vince Gair – argued that breaking the nexus would ‘seriously exaggerate the difference between the representation of the large and small states'. They claimed that Australia did not need more Parliamentarians and a ‘yes' vote would just increase the cost of government. This populist call

3 won the day. The problem of the nexus was left for future generations to solve.

The next attempt to increase the number of MHRS was in 1975, with the creation of two senators each for the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. This allowed the number of MHRS to increase to 127.

In 1984 the Hawke Government gave each state another two senators allowing the number of lower house seats to increase to 148. This eased the pressure for a while, but again, it was a short-term expedient and electorates continued to bloat. Since then, two more seats have been permitted and another will be created at the next elections. From now on any change will be marginal.

Reluctance to talk about increasing

The designers of Parliament House also anticipated growth to match the population increase. The House of Representatives chamber, which currently accommodates 150 MHRS, has a capacity to seat 240 Members.

the number of MHRS is a fairly new phenomenon. As far back as 1964, in an address to the National Press Club, Prime Minister Robert Menzies, reflecting on the burgeoning workload of MPS over his decades in Parliament, confidently predicted a continuing growth in the number of Members of Parliament.

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The designers of Parliament House also anticipated growth to match the population increase. The House of Representatives chamber, which currently accommodates 150 MHRS, has a capacity to seat 240 Members.

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The need to begin the process of reform is urgent, but change requires two characteristics that many believe are missing from contemporary Australia: leadership and national unity. Time will tell whether such pessimism is justified.

Three Options

Only three options are available to address the issue. One is to again

increase the size of the Senate. The second is to amend the Constitution. The third is to accept continuous bloating of our already over-populated electorates to the ultimate destruction of our Parliamentary democracy.

Even if it could be justified on other grounds, major parties will vigorously resist the creation of more Senate seats. Under the electoral system, the more Senate vacancies there are at each election the lower is the quota necessary for a person to be elected. Normally half of the Senate seats become vacant every three years.

As the 2016 double dissolution election illustrated, by declaring all Senate seats vacant the quota was lowered to the point where fringe parties and independents were able to be elected by swapping preferences. This was a salutary lesson for the major parties.

Major political parties would worry about the instability and confusion that a further increase in the size of the Senate could create. The majority of Australians would probably agree with the proposition that an expanded Senate would be untenable. Besides, this would again just push the nexus problem to a later generation.

In April last year the three options were put by way of private submission to the two Parliamentary committees responsible for Legal and Constitutional matters, one of them being a committee of the Senate and the other a committee of the House of Representatives. The Senate Committee did not think the matter worthy of a response.

The House of Representatives Committee, chaired by the Member for Chisholm, Julia Banks, replied that the Attorney-general's Department was responsible for advising the government on Constitutional matters and the submission should therefore be referred to the Attorney-general – by the author. So much for the independence of the legislature.

Looking ahead

The Australian population is expected to double in the next 40 years. The following chart shows the trend in sample electorates since the last serious attempt, in 1984, to increase the number of MHRS. It reveals the

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situation at the last election in 2016 and then speculates on the impact of population growth in each electorate by 2066, unless, of course, section 24 of the Constitution is amended.

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Taking as an example the electorate where the author lives: in 1984 Eden Monaro had 58,044 active voters. By 2016 the number of people entitled to vote was close to 108,000 while the actual number of people who voted (including informal) was 100,868. By 2066 the electorate is expected to have more than 200,000 active voters, with the Member for Eden Monaro expected to service about 300,000 constituents. Clearly an MP could not provide a satisfactory service to the electorate with this number of constituents.

Our political leaders talk of

referendums on the question of a republic, amending section 44(i) or about constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians. They do not talk of removing the 16 redundant clauses which clog our Constitution, or of the need to review the many other flawed sections, including the 58 which embed Queen Victoria's heirs and successors in the Constitution.

Nor do they talk of giving some recognition to Australian citizens, let alone consider whether specific rights should be protected. So what is the government's attitude to amending section 24?

The Attorney-general's View

My submission was forwarded to Attorney-general Christian Porter ,who replied in August 2018. Porter noted that the Commonwealth Parliament had already increased the number of Senators and Members of the House of Representatives from 36 and 75 respectively in 1901, to 76 senators and 150 MHRS now. This repeated stated facts.

He claimed that any increase in the number of federal politicians would have financial and other implications that would need to be carefully considered. That is beyond dispute. However, his response failed to acknowledge that one of those implications was the cost to our democracy of doing nothing.

Arguments opposing the need for reform are easy to predict. Opponents will argue Australia has too many politicians already. Too many with their snouts in the trough.

The Attorney-general wrote that the government had no plans to legislate at this point of time. He added that constitutional change had proven difficult. Finally he pointed out that removal of the nexus requirement in section 24 would have an impact on the Senate that would likely be contested.

Some of Porter's comments state the obvious. The fact that reform is difficult is hardly a reason for ignoring the problem. Had the Attorney-general accepted the need to act immediately, the lead time to an actual referendum would be at least a year or two. So if we do not start now, when will we start?

The Debate

Arguments opposing the need for reform are easy to predict. Opponents will argue Australia has too many politicians already. Too many with their snouts in the trough. Too many in a political class that does not listen and does not understand the reality of the ordinary person's struggle.

No more politicians is an easy, populist call. And probably some senators and State politicians will argue that reform would somehow impinge on ‘State's rights'.

These arguments can be countered. If there were more politicians each one would be close enough to be

accountable to the people. Each individual and cohort of people would have direct access and more influence. Politicians would not be able to hide behind the numbers of a bloated electorate. The population of their electorates should not be so huge that MPS can afford to be remote. It should be obvious that the way to deal with inadequately performing and remote politicians is to have more Members of the House of Representatives.

We need to generate a groundswell of opinion that tells the leaders of the Liberal Party, the ALP, the National Party, the Greens and any other responsible political leader who wants our democracy to survive, to act now. However, as political machines will not see advantage, it may well fall to independent MPS to put reform of section 24 on the national political agenda. It really is time for leaders to unite in the national interest, to urge voters to agree to break the nexus between the Senate and the House of Representatives.

While the catch cry of ‘ We have a right to be heard' may not be the best words for a support-the-change campaign, certainly electors would likely understand the sentiment. They could be persuaded that they need effective representation and the only way to get it is to have more MHRS.

To paraphrase JF Kennedy in 1962, those who make peaceful evolution impossible make the destruction of our democracy inevitable. Why? Because the genius of a representative democracy is that it is an ongoing peaceful revolution. As community values change, as circumstances change, as different issues emerge and old issues disappear, the representative of the people either accommodates the shifting imperatives through leadership or through adjustment, or the people get a new member more attuned to their demands.

For a representative democracy to work, each Member of the House of Representatives must have genuine contact with the people

Political machines will not see advantage, it may well fall to independent MPS to put reform of section 24 on the national political agenda.

of the electorate, and a sizeable number of people in the electorate need to believe their views are taken into account by a person willing and able to advocate in the Parliament on their behalf or on behalf of their community.

Perhaps Australians do not yet realise it, but we have reached a crisis point. Our Parliamentary democracy will not survive unless the nexus between the Senate and the House of Representatives is severed.