A Pretty Good System

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
15 Aug 2010

Someone recently claimed that most Australians believed their country was the best in the world, while they often criticised it as though it was one of the worst.  These two characteristics are connected.  We have the freedom and self-confidence to complain and the optimism to expect that the situation can often improve.

One of the oldest democracies, Australia has a system which is well devised, based on British precedents and mindful of North American experience.  But it only works well because of the integrity of participants and officials.

In the Federal Parliament, the Senate with equal representation from each state, provides protection for the smaller states and because legislation has to pass both houses, it is much harder for a bad government to damage things quickly or introduce radical change overnight.

All adults over 18 years now have the vote, not just property holders and women have been able to vote since 1902.

We take all these developments for granted, as well as the fact that our vote is made in secret.  This was introduced for the first time in Victoria in 1856 and was known as "the Australian ballot".  Until then each person had to declare his choice publicly, making it possible for landowners, bosses and political parties to pressurise voters.

In Australia, unlike Britain and the U.S.A., voting has been compulsory since 1924.

In the Federal elections we also have preferential voting, so that when an absolute majority of votes is not obtained by any candidate the preferences of the less successful are distributed until a majority is obtained.

Preferential and compulsory voting encourages moderate policies in a moderate national electorate, because everyone votes and parties do not have to whip up enthusiasm with extremism or scare tactics to induce voting.

In the U.K. they have a first past the post voting system, so that a member often only represents the largest minority.  In the U.K. now we also find a vast imbalance in the size of some electorates (which presently advantages the Labour party there).  In Australia the Electoral Commission regularly changes the boundaries of House of Representative seats to follow the shifts in population numbers.

In the Westminster system we follow, unlike the U.S.A., our chief executive (P.M.) has to answer her critics in Parliament.  And we have no Federal Bill of Rights which has handed legislative powers to the courts.

We should count our blessings.  It could easily be much worse.