By Tony Iltis
HOBART — Tasmania's parliament voted last week to cut the size of the lower house from 35 to 25, by reducing the number of members elected by each electorate from 7 to 5. This will make it harder for minor parties and independents to win seats.
The change comes on top of government moves to decrease representation in local government through council mergers. Also, in move widely seen as irrelevant, the Tasmanian upper house will be reduced from 19 to 15 seats.
Both Liberal and Labor have been advocating cutting the lower house for some time, arguing that by allowing smaller parties such as the Greens to hold the balance of power in parliament, Tasmania's system of proportional representation has led to instability. On July 21, more than 600 people, who packed Town Hall and overflowed on to the street, heard these arguments refuted by leaders of the Tasmanian Greens, including Senator Bob Brown.
On July 22, the public gallery at parliament house was packed with opponents of the changes. ALP opposition leader Jim Bacon opened the debate with a long speech in which he referred to the unpopular 40% pay increase which Tasmanian politicians gave themselves two years ago and said that cutting the number of parliamentary seats would satisfy community anger on this issue.
Interjections from the public gallery suggested that politicians taking a pay cut would be a more appropriate response. Several of the interjectors were evicted. A small group of activists managed to find their way on to the House floor, from where they read a statement before being removed by security guards.
Meanwhile, about 60 rural people were rallying outside Parliament House to protest against the council mergers. The rally was organised by the right-wing populist Tasmania First Party. Some of these protesters also carried placards opposing the sale or lease of the Hydro Electric Corporation.
Despite the connection between the cuts to representation at the local and State levels, the Tasmania First protesters refused to see any common ground.
Student activist Mathew Munro, a Democratic Socialist candidate in the state election, attended the protest in the public gallery and told Green Left Weekly, "When [Liberal premier] Rundle and Bacon talk about stability, they're talking about stability for their friends in big business. Unfettered rule by Liberals or ALP would mean more instability for ordinary people because big business's agenda means more jobs lost, more hospitals closed, and having to pay more for things like electricity so the beneficiaries of privatisation can increase profits. The local council mergers are also about cost cutting and will lead to job losses and declining services."
Munro said that the Democratic Socialists believe the changes to parliament are a move towards a first-past-the-post system, which he described as utterly unrepresentative. "You only have to look at federal parliament, where the Liberals have an overwhelming majority despite receiving less than 50% of the vote, to see that", he said.
Munro added, however, that the Greens' argument in the parliament "reform" debate has "centred on the parochial and totally false characterisation of Tasmania as the world's best democracy. Well, it isn't. It would be difficult to explain how the current changes are being rammed through without a referendum if it was.
"The parliamentary model of democracy allows no scope for ordinary people to take part in decision making. This is left to a handful of representatives who are not recallable by the electorate and are therefore unaccountable.
"Even these representatives have no decision-making control over the production and distribution of things, that is to say the economy remains undemocratic. This is why when governments privatise utilities or hand over vast areas of wilderness to resource companies, they claim that economic factors allow them no choice."
Munro argues that, if the whole lower house was elected from a single electorate, even with only 25 members it would be more representative than the old Tasmanian system. "Abolishing the upper house and having a 40- or 50-member parliament elected by proportional representation in a single electorate would better reflect the spectrum of viewpoints in the population."