Australian electoral system: Difference between revisions

The '''Australian electoral system''' is a system of parliamentary democracy, largely based on the [[W:Westminster system |Westminster system]]. Since 1920, [[Australia]] has used [[Preferential voting | preferential voting systems]] (PV):

* [[Single-member district | Single-winner]] [[Instant-runoff voting | Instant Run-off voting]] (IRV) in the House

* [[Multi-member system | Multi-winner]] [[Single transferable vote | Single Transferable vote]] (STV) in the Senate

All 6 Australian states and territories have compulsory voting and preferential voting, the ACT and Tasmania however use a proportional representation method of PV for the lower house called Hare-Clark. All states use PR-STV for their upper houses (senate equivalent) except Tasmania which I'm not sure of and Queensland which has abolished it's upper house. Minor parties do much better in these parliaments, often gaining seats in both houses and occasionally holding the balance of power. This is largely due to smaller electorates and the structure of revenue raising and service delivery in the Australian federation. The Federal government does the vast bulk of revenue raising, income tax, company and consumption taxes such as the GST, and the states are left to spend, once the money comes back to them from the federal government. Thus some people consider minor parties to be capable and wise spenders, but bad revenue raising and economic managers.

Although Australia has a system where unlike in the U.S. and Britain a vote for a minor party isn't wasted, theThe two party duopoly reigns supreme and had never been threatened. Minor parties are rarely if ever elected to the lower house (HoR), although strong independent candidates much more frequently are. The noteworthy parties in Australian politics today are the Australian Labor Party (ALP) which isfollows similarthe inprogressive ideology to both the British Labour Party and the U.S. Democratic party; The Liberal Party arewhich similarfollow toa theLiberal Tories in Britain and the Republican party in the U.S.ideology and together with the National party, who represent rural and regional interests, they form a coalition to become the second major party. Left-wing minor parties include the Greens and the Democrats and right-wing minor parties include One Nation and Family First. All other minor parties are so insignificant that they won't be covered here, typically receivingreceive less than 1% of the overall first preference vote.

Some argue that the reason that the major party duopoly is still apparent in Australia is because strategic voting still widely occurs in the PV system, that is that people frequently have to sacrifice their true preference in order to pick 'the lesser of two evils'. However very high votes for fringe candidates are often recorded without unintended repercussions and thereThis is absolutelyknown no evidence that strategic voting occurs on any scale in Australia. The reasons whyas the duopoly[[Center exists is for other reasons, partly because the minor parties provide a moderatelysqueeze]] effect on the extremes of the major parties. For instance the Australian Labor Party (ALP) wouldn't be so environmentally friendly if it weren't for the threat of voters deserting for the Australian Greens (Greens) and its policies on the mandatory detention of refugees would probably be stronger as well.