from the introduction of PR. In the approach to the 1949 election, the Labor
government had a massive majority in the Senate owing to previous victories
under a voting scheme that amounted to a‘winner takes (nearly) all’system
(see Lijphart 1997). But the government was doubtful of its popular support,
and suspected that, under the existing system, the 1949 election would prod-
uce an anti-Labor majority in the Senate. A PR system would also do this,
seemingly. But a twist lay in the fact that senators were elected for six years,
with half of the Senate up for election every three years. It was guessed that the
massive Labor preponderance in the 1946 Senate cohort would overbalance
any modest anti-Labor majority that PR would produce in the 1949 cohort,
with the upshot being the preservation of an overall Labor majority. And so it
was that PR came to Australia’s powerful second chamber. This occurred at
the nadir of minority parties in Australia; as one later commentator noted,
‘the debate on that legislation was remarkable for not one parliamentarian of
the day recognised the potential of the new arrangements in attracting smaller
parties...our majority parties in 1948 surrendered much more than they
recognised—that is the prospect of controlling the Senate when they con-
trolled the Treasury Benches’(Reid 1972, p. 20). Since 1963 such a control has
occurred in only three years. The sudden importunate embrace of PR has had
‘a profound influence on Australian government’(Reid 1972, p. 21).
Chance, surprise, and paradox seem to be masters of the passage of PR in
Australian political experience. It is hard to see Tasmania introducing PR
without Inglis Clark; and it is hard to see the Senate embracing it without
the Tasmanian precedent. It is plain to see a high-minded wish to preserve the
minority voice ultimately ending in the partisan manoeuvre of a mass party to
secure its majority, but producing no majority; and, eventually, having elected
to the Senate, in 2013, an Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party candidate on
the basis of 0.12 per cent of the totalfirst-preference vote. It is a great distance
from Dr Priestley’s Sunday School to the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts
Party, but the journey seems to have been travelled.
8.3 Preferential Voting
The Australian Commonwealth, and all mainland states, either permit or
require PV for their Lower Houses of parliament.^10 Outside Australia, PV is
only infrequently found beyond the level of local government. It is not
unique to Australia, and has been episodically instituted elsewhere; thus, in
(^10) The law governing preference voting has been strictly upheld; in 1996 a self-described
‘anarcho-Stalinist’was jailed for three weeks for urging the public to vote‘contrary’to the
preferencing stipulations of the Commonwealth Electoral Act.
William O. Coleman