The federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters holds an inquiry into the conduct of each federal election, and they did so in 2023. I had the opportunity to make a submission, and then appear before the committee. Their final report was published in November 2023.
Amongst other topics of interest, the committee recommended that the number of senators representing the ACT and NT be increased from two to four each, and also recommended a further inquiry to specifically consider expanding the number of state senators (and thus the size of the House).
There’s a chance that this could be the last election before we expand the size of the Parliament, but today’s response from the federal government suggests they will need a nudge in the right direction.
It has taken sixteen months, but the government has today provided their response to JSCEM’s recommendations.
On the topic of the size of parliament, the federal government’s response has been underwhelming, saying that “Whilst the Government does not propose to increase the membership of the House of Representatives, this important issue requires further inquiry and consideration”. Their response to the recommendation to increase the number of territory senators is very similar.
The two responses suggests that an inquiry may take place in the next parliament, but the government is far from committed to reform.
While I think there is value in an inquiry to work out the exact details of reform, Australians deserve to know where their politicians stand on this issue.
There is also some urgency to dealing with this soon. An expansion would trigger a major redistribution of seats in the five mainland states, and this would need to start soon after the election. This isn’t a reform that can be batted around for two years and implemented right before the election. Indeed the AEC has had trouble meeting the timeframe for redistribution in this last parliamentary term, having to undergo reasonably significant changes to the boundaries of about two thirds of seats. A redistribution to expand the parliament would be a much bigger job.
I think our politicians should hear from voters that this is an issue that they are concerned about, and you should ask the candidates in your seat where they stand on this issue.
I previously wrote at length about why it is time to expand the parliament in this blog post, but you could mention some of these points:
- The average population per member of the House of Representatives is now more than 177,000, compared to 105,000 after the last expansion in 1984 and 50,000 at the time of Federation.
- The last expansion of parliament took place in 1984, and the previous expansion was in 1949. More time has passed since 1984 than took place between 1949 and 1984.
- Our parliaments are relatively undersized compared to similar countries. Our House of Representatives is only 44% of the size of the Canadian House of Commons, but our population is 67% of the Canadian population. The average seat in the UK House of Commons has a population of about 105,000.
- A larger parliament would bring members of Parliament closer to the people, and would make the chamber more representative and more diverse.
- A larger parliament would reduce the burden on an individual MP’s office to support their local constituents, and would thus reduce the need to employ extra staff in each office.
I would be very interested to hear what answers you get back from your local candidates!
Expansion of the parliament is something I’ve been arguing since at least 2016. This needs to be taken out of the government’s hands as they make it political.
But this is about the people. Not the Members or Senators and not the AEC. It’s our election, not theirs.
Ultimately, we need to get to 18 Senators per State – the point where Tasmania’s entitlement = 5 members.
Currently that would mean 222 members of the House with an average of around 81,000 electors per Division.
Still, a higher average than after the 1984 Hawke Expansion.
“20 – The Committee recommends that section 184AA of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, application forms for postal votes, be amended or removed, so that postal vote applications can no longer be included with other material.”
“Noted. The Government notes this recommendation.
Section 184AA of the Electoral Act permits a postal vote application form to be physically attached to, or form part of, other written material. This provides a mechanism for a postal voter to receive their official form with any other material they may expect to receive in an election, such as the campaign material from an entity of which the voter is a member. The voter remains free to return their completed form directly to the AEC, rather than via the entity that provided the material.”
“21 – The Committee recommends that section 184 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 be amended to
clarify that postal vote applications must be sent directly to the Australian Electoral Commission’s
nominated addresses.”
“Noted. See response… above.”
***
“campaign material from an entity of which the voter is a member”. Huh? That’s not… never mind.
Very disappointing outcome. Why not just say “does not support”.
Jeff, I don’t understand this.
“Ultimately, we need to get to 18 Senators per State – the point where Tasmania’s entitlement = 5 members.”
Can you explain?
Yes such a change is well and truly justified. Maybe start from the current size of the Tasmanian house of reps and build out from there.
The nexus that the senate must be half the size of the reps is a problem. This will lead to greater fragmentation with no one having a majority. But in practice this happens anyway and is caused by the decreased share of the vote by the major parties.
Peter, each original state is guaranteed 5 seats in the House. Tasmania at the moment has enough population for about 3.3-3.4 quotas, but they get 5 because of that constitutional guarantee. So that’s two more than their entitlement. A lot of people are fixated on expanding the parliament to reduce or eliminate that malapportionment. Jeff is saying 18 senators per state would mean that Tasmania’s five seats would actually be their fair share.
@Jeff Waddell;
18 Seantor/State plus 4 in the Territories would add up to 116 Senators, so the House vwould need around 232 Seats to maintain the nexus.
Long overdue, imo, more seats means more representation, though 4 Senators from the NT seems excessive. If they’re going to do that, perhaps increase the Senators from each State to 20 and the House to 256.
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For comparison, America has 435 House members for a population of 340.1 million for an average electorate size of 770,000.
The USA isn’t a great comparison because the country is so vastly bigger. No-one is saying that the ratio should be the same in every jurisdiction – bigger populations should have bigger ratios. That’s why it’s more relevant to compare Australia to similar countries. Canada is about 50% bigger than Australia in population but their House of Commons has 338 seats. For us to be proportionate with them, we’d be roughly in line with what Jeff said.
Also there is an active campaign to significantly increase the size of the US House. So it’s not a great example.
Ben – “A larger parliament… would thus reduce the need to employ extra staff in each office.”
The counter argument it’s likely cheaper just to hire extra staff in the exisiting office given you’d have to hire new / more staff in any expansion; cancelling out any benefit.
Ben – “A larger parliament… would make the chamber more representative and more diverse.”
By more represenative and more diverse, do you mean simply more numbers or better or likely better? You’re somewhat equating quantity with quality. More representatives isn’t the same as more (or better) representation. Assuming voters, vote in a similar fashion as to now, you’re going to end up with a broadly similar elected candidate mix as to now, regardless of how many people sit in the chamber – even in a theoretical scenario of a reduction in members. If you moved to multi-member electorates, you’d get genuine diversity and representation within an electorate of any size. Maybe citizen juries give you better or different policy avenues. If you wanted to go all the way, you’d start of levels of government. Given the structural system we are in, I think an expansion is probably necessary but alone, I would suggest more parliamentarians aren’t necessarily going to change any outcome other than having more parliamentarians.
“Whilst the Government does not propose to increase the membership of the House of Representatives…” tells you everything you need to know, for at least the short-medium term. If you want to get this through, the approach will need to be through current members for a slight reduction to their constituent workloads and to candidates to give more opportunites.
If we’re going to increase the total staffing budget for the parliament, it is far more democratic to do that by adding more MPs rather than having a smaller number of MPs commanding more and more staff. So yeah it doesn’t reduce the costs of staff, I’m not saying that. But it’s a better way to increase resources.
I am sayin gthat a bigger parliament would produce better representation. Perhaps not as well as a new electoral system would, but if you click through to my previous blog post (last link in the post) I explain about the Seat Product Model, which finds that a bigger assembly size, even without a higher district magnitude, leads to more proportionality and an increase in the effective number of parties. It creates potential for different people to sit in parliament, not just more of the same. And there is an immediate short-term benefit in creating a bunch of open seats. A big barrier to increasing diversity in parliament is the fact that existing MPs stick around for a long time, but an expanded parliament would make that less of an issue.
And yes, clearly the government is getting cold feet. Hence why I’m asking people to write to their candidates.
18 × 6 =108;+ 4 …..112
Times 2. ….. 224 house of reps that is another 60 house of reps?
Usa has 2 senators per state irrespective of their size and none for dc.
770000 electorate is too large.
Just done a quick calculation based on salaries of back bench MPs and electorate staff (5 per MP). If you were keep the salary cost neutral with an extra 12 senators and 24 MHRs – the number of staff would reduce from 5 to 4. That doesn’t include extra costs such as real estate, travel and various allowances. The cost of the change would not necessarily be excessive if it is acceptable to reduce staffing numbers.
Apologies if I have missed this elsewhere, but, is there analysis of voter engagement with MP by seat and Senators?
I would imagine areas that have high migration levels might have more enquiries etc
There’s little doubt that parliament should be expanded, although it will be a tough sell to the general public who already believe we are oversaturated with politicians.
I support the idea of making the quota effectively a fifth of Tasmania’s enrolment, with expansion locked in for every 25 years proceeding the last increase in the House of Representatives. So, if expansion happens by 2028, the next time it expands will be 2053. Unless Tasmania experiences a massive population boom, they will always have their five representatives, and the size of the house will rise or (almost certainly not) fall in relation to these representatives.
The nexus is a constitutional issue and won’t be changed. I doubt four states would vote in favour in a referendum of its abolishment, so for the time being we are locked into having half as many senators for the states as we do for the states’ representatives (territory representation is of course a different issue).
Ideally, an expansion of parliament would go hand-in-hand with fixed four year terms, but I think the appetite for further referendums in the short to medium term has been exhausted.
Agree on expanding the house to the magnitude that gives Tasmania a fair 5 lower house seats – last time I ran the numbers that was 9 senators per state per half election.
Should also be odd numbers in each senate race
While I strongly desire a minimal expansion to the Senate and House of Representatives, I don’t anticipate it will occur soon. Labor is aware that any expansion will be quite unpopular, and the Coalition is currently opposed to any increase, as stated in their reply to the ‘Conduct of the 2022 federal election and other matters’ final report.
“The Coalition members of the Committee notes that the Government had no mandate to increase the size of the Parliament and have concerns about increasing the size of the House of Representatives, and the Senate, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.”
However, if the Coalition ever determines an expansion would increase their proportion of Senate seats, they may offer support…
I assume Referendums might never become successful again given all but two of the successful referendums are above 70% (which has a non-existent or very weak offical No Campaign) with the two successful referendums is because it positively benefited the majority of Australians in a majority of states. It also doesn’t help that the crossbench is now much stronger so good luck trying to convince both the Greens and One Nation to support the same referendum as only if one party opposes the referendum, it will trigger an offical No campaign which history shows that it can defeat Lib-Lab supported Referendums.
I would have thought the Nationals might be in favour as they would be one of the big benificiaries of an expanded parliament. Otherwise their seats will inexorably slide into unfavourable territory. I imagine Greens wouldn’t mind either as inner city seats would be more concentrated. One reason parties don’t like expansions is that there end up being a lot of seats without sitting MPs and the MPs in marginal seats seek out the safer parts. Labor probably found this out the hard way in both 1949 and 1984. In a volatile political environment, add uncertainty would not be something they would look for.
Well made points I hadn’t considered before. If both major parties are reticent to make these basic changes then I think it highlights it probably should have been done yesterday! Further proves we need a stronger and more independent AEC.
even if they are able to agree on something the change wont be in effect until at least 2031 or 2034 elections as a redistribution takes at least 1 year to complete and given parliament only sits for around 3 theres no way it would be debated legislated and implemented in time for a redistribution of the whole country in time for the 2028 election.
@real talk that would be impossible to implement as the house can only expand when the senate does and therefore youd have to have a constant increase to the senate in order to implement that. the states would never agree to abolish the constitutional clause as the smaller states tas, sa and wa would make sure of that.
In 1984, it was done in about 18 months. It would probably effect only the 5 mainland states as Tasmania and the Territories will not need an increase under an extra 2 senators proposal. Why are the circumstances so different now? More consultation? Fewer resources? On the other hand there is a lot more computer grunt available.
Yes but how long did it take the debate legislation etc
The House of Representatives could get 164 MPs by 2028
The circs are different because the coalition are bloody minded and will not agree.
Royal Assent was given on 22 December 1983 so under a year to the next election and actually a lot less as 1984 was a 7 week campaign.
@Mick and why not? Even if they don’t the govt doesn’t need them to pass the law
That’s a good point John, I hadn’t considered that.
I don’t see the disproportionate level of Tasmania representation as a problem. I see it like the little brother who can make a disproportional amount of noise and so unfairly gets his way, it doesn’t really impact the family dynamic. I live in Bradfield and I know that Bradfield (with 1 representative) contributes about the same amount of income tax as Tasmania (17 representatives). Adding a significant number of politicians just to diminish the Tasmanian influence seems overkill. Cheaper and more productive to upgrade a hospital or airport every 3 years.
What should be avoided is unstable government, I look around the world and see where systems have tried to be representative and resulted in multi party coalitions that are inherently unstable when involving more than two parties.
At last election we saw a surge in independents but I think this will swing back. If you look back at the time when the Democrats were at their peak, the “Independent” electorates had a high level of Democrat vote in the senate. Lets face it, the Teals are Dems reborn.
I am not convinced that multi representative electorates are a good idea, I would prefer to have a single person responsible as THE local representative.
The senate quota system currently gives a place to any candidate that reaches a quota (about 14%). In practice this generally gives 5 places to those with a quota and the last candidate standing which is usually significantly lower than the 14%.
With this in mind, I would say that one house of parliament (the governing house) should be designed to produce stabile government with single member representation and the second house (the approving house) be open to represent as many points of view/parties as possible.
I would increase the senate to 14 being 7 at each election. Having an odd number creates a greater chance of a casting vote like we had when there was 5. This would mean the quota would be about 12% but as we know, the final spots are filled by the last candidate left so would have the effect of giving voice to a group that might have started with 6-8% of the vote but was boosted by left-over preferences from the major parties.