Comment on Australia 2025 – Wrap-up of the night
MisterFrog@aussie.zone 1 week ago
I reckon we ought to increase the number lower house seats to 225 seats by combining electorates in groups of 2, and sending 3 candidates from each.
That ought to fix the representation issues we currently have in the lower house, without entirely removing the local nature of lower house electorates.
Say what you will about any party, but when you see a party routinely get 10-13% of the vote, but only manage to get 0.66 to 1.33% of the seats, it’s kinda hard to argue we couldn’t improve the system any further.
Even taking preferences into account, I think our current system favours larger parties too much because of single-member electorates.
Though, I am very grateful for the system we already have. Thank Christ we are not the US or UK (or Canada).
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 week ago
3 is such an awkward number though. It would basically lock in 1 Labor 1 LNP all over the country, with the third being the only variable one. I’m not a huge fan of STV with 3. 5 is really where I’d like to see it start. Merging 3s to return 5 would work, and because of how STV works, you could still adapt for regions where that’s not viable, like the NT and rural WA.
MisterFrog@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Unless Australians are comfortable with sending a much larger number of lower house members, that would make the electorates get much bigger than they currently are, and I would guess removing local representatives would not be a popular move.
I’m not entirely convinced that 1 liberal and 1 Labor would be locked in everywhere. I think the change in electoral system would produce governments much more representative of how people vote. It would change us to a system where forming a coalition is practically expected.
5 does seem like a reasonable working number of members to send as a combined “delegation” from an electorate, but that’d be the maximum desirable, in my view.
With 225 members and sending 5 from each electorate, that would reduce the number to only 45 electorates in the whole country.
Something, I’m totally fine with, I think federal electorates ought to be much larger than state or local electorates, but it would probably be a hard sell to many people.
Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this :)
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Your idea would result in a 225 seat house. Mine would be 250. Not a significant difference IMO.
I actually most of all would like to see a move to MMP, the system used (with some minor differences) in NZ and Germany. Where you elect 1 per division locally, and also vote for a party, with the party vote being roughly 50% of the total seats in Parliament, and used to make the total Parliament proportional to the will of the people. The biggest differences I would like compared to the Kiwi & German system is to let you give a second preference for the party vote, used only if your first choice doesn’t reach the 5% minimum threshold to get any seats, and to choose MPs in the proportional system based on nearest loser, rather than by a party-provided list, so if a party deserves 1 extra seat based on its party vote, the candidate from that party that gets the seat is the one that got 49% of the seat vote, rather than being the person who was pre-selected by the party to get the highest priority.