Current system gives all regions some chance to have a voice. Otherwise only interests of cities will be considered and interests of outback will not be represented at all.
So, it’s obviously a relative thing. Your vote matters a shit tonne more in IRV than in FPTP, of course.
But it’s also a lot less than proportional systems. At the last federal election, over 12% of Australians wanted a Greens representative. Less than 3% actually got one.
A combined 9% wanted One Nation and United Australia Party. They got 0. Labor got 51% of seats, from less than 33% of votes. The LNP is actually the most fairly-represented party, getting 39% of seats from 36% of votes.
My preference is a proportional system. Probably MMP, to keep local representation, as well as to remove the need for party lists. Rather than the proportional seats being done in party order, I’d do them in “nearest loser” order based on their local races. But that’s a very niche aspect. The important thing is that it be some form of proportional representation.
A counter-argument could be that our Senate uses STV, which is quasi-proportional. Which is certainly a good thing, and far better than if we didn’t have it. But it’s still only a rough approximation of proportionality. Labor and the LNP each won 39% of seats, from their 30% and 34% of votes. That equates to 3 or 4 seats too many for Labor, and 1 or 2 too many for the LNP. But even if it did work perfectly, the fact is that all the attention and most of the power is in the House of Representatives. It can be very disheartening and discouraging for someone engaged politically who doesn’t support Labor or the LNP to know that the chances that the candidate they give their vote to will probably not actually get in, and that’s not good for civic engagement.
TheHolm@aussie.zone 8 months ago
Zagorath@aussie.zone 8 months ago
MMP gives people local representation while still making sure a party with 30% of voters’ support doesn’t win 51% of seats, resulting in 100% of power.
youngalfred@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I thought you’d be thinking of MMP - that nearest loser sounds interesting! It does seem to be the road to better representation.
I’m all for change - I think it’d need to be accompanied with plenty of education in the form of AEC ads on tv and online. Not so much the ‘how to vote’ but more the ‘how our system works’. Plenty of people I talk to have no idea about IRV, and consider voting for anything other than libs or Labor “throwing your vote” - which it can totally not be if people are aware of how it works.