Letter To The Editors of the Comment News and the Sunday Times, 02 October 2008

The full text of the Letter to the Editors of the Comment News and the Sunday Times, sent on 02 October, 2008, is below.

Neither published any of the letter.

.............................................

With the recent bodgy state election outcome, it appears that time has
come for a complete overhaul of the state parliamentary and state
electoral systems, in WA.

The followingsuggestion was sent to recently elected members of the
state parliament, who, as usual for members of parliaments, have not
acknowledged the suggestions.

My suggestion, is that the WA parliamentary two-house, and parliamentary
election, systems, be changed to the same as the New Zealand single
house MMP (Mixed Member Preferential) system, to deal with the issues
that are perceived, regarding the WA state election system and resultant
representation.

Information about the reasoning behind the NZ MMP system, is at
http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/mmp/history-mmp.html ,
and about how the voting is done, is at
http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/mmp/two-ticks-too-easy.html .

Now, the reasoning in the text of the article explaining MMP, for the
MMP system, in its justification, and, the complaint against FFP, that
caused the replacement of the FFP system, with the MMP system, was that
the number of MP's elected by MMP, better reflected the percentage of
votes won by each political party, in elections, and, that complaint of
the number of seats won, not reflecting the number of votes won, as used
in the replacement of the FFP election system by the MMP election
system,equally applies to the WA state election system.

What I suggest, is an MMP system, based on the NZ model, but, as with
the proposal of the NZ First Party, and, with some other NZ political
parties, limiting the number of MP's to 99.

Also, another variance from the New Zealand system, is that I believe that the
awarding of list seats, where the party wins a single parliamentary seat, but
less than the 5% threshold, should not apply.

Thus, where a registered political party, wins at least 5% of the total vote for all
electorates, the party should win list seats for as many of its list candidates,
as would make up that percentage of seats to be occupied by the party,
in the parliament.

If this was done, and, retaining 59 electorate seats, to relate to the
current, existing, 59 lower house seats of the WA state parliament, and
using the percentages of "party votes, for "List MP's", as used in NZ
elections, to make up the numbers, to a maximum of 99 MP's, I get the
following (with a "guesstimate" of the resultant MMP seats counts, below).

From the results as published as at 1730 on Friday 19 September 2008,
the following statistics were stated.

Number of seats won:

Total number of seats: 95

Percentage of vote:

MMP total number of seats: 95

I note and I emphasise, that the result would have differed
significantly from the outcome of the recent state election, in terms of
the forming of a state government, which may have been able to have been
done by an agreement between the ALP, the Greens, and an independent
MP,as can be done in NZ, with MMP.

This could also, then, have resulted in Greens MP's being appointed as
ministers in the government, as has happened in NZ, in portfolios
relevant to their interests.

This would have meant that the Liberal-National Party would not have the
number of seats that it currently has, but, the result would be far more
representative of the voters' wishes, and, the "National Party" did
betray the voters that voted for them on their primary policy, which the
National Party promptly abandoned after the election,when it dishonoured
is election promises, and rejoined its master, the Liberal Party, as
part of that party, having conned the voters into voting for it as an
independent party.

So, I believe that the number of seats, in such a unicameral parliament,
using MMP, could be kept sufficiently close to the current total number
of seats in both houses of the state parliament, and, the
representation, in terms of the relationship between the number of seats
won, and, the percentage of votes won, bit each party (and by
independents), would be truer than the existing system.

Now, this proposal is quite a significant change from the existing WA
form of state government and election; both in replacing the existing
bicameral system with a unicameral system, and, in replacing the
current, complicated voting system, with a far simpler voting system
(see
http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/votingsub/sample-ballot-paper.html
and http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/mmp/two-ticks-too-easy.html ),
but, it would give an electoral outcome, that should make most, if not
all, happy, (apart from possibly, the National Party of WA, which would
lose some of the seats that it clearly should not have in the state
parliament) as the apparently most democratic form of parliamentary
election, that would most accurately give the number of seats in
parliament, relative to the number of votes won.

As an aside, out of interest, for any expatriate New Zealanders over the
age of 18, in WA, they may be able to register to vote in the current NZ
parliamentary election; more information is at
http://www.everyvotecounts.co.nz/ .

....................................................