Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
Electoral systems and party systems
Victorian electoral laws were amended in 2002. They now require voter equality
across all districts and provide for re-districting to occur after every second
election, thus finally laying to rest that venerable controversy of rural malapportionment.
The Legislative Assembly continues to utilise single-member districts
and the alternative vote (known colloquially as ‘preferential voting’). As the upper
house requirements clearly involve multi-member electorates given the changes
to the constitution, the single transferrable vote (STV) method of proportional
representation favoured in Australian upper house electoral systems now applies in
Victoria.
This has had consequences for the Victorian party system (see Tables 2 and 3).
Between 1955 and 2006 – the first state election to be held under the auspices of
the new constitution – Victorian election outcomes in both parliamentary houses
were monopolised by the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National (formerly
Country) Party with the occasional independent securing a seat or two in the
lower house. 20 The new electoral arrangements for the Legislative Council were
predicatedontheunderstandingthattheupperhousecouldonlybeeffectiveasa
houseofreviewprovideditwasnotdominatedbyeitherLaborortheCoalition.
This objective has been achieved; since 2006 neither Labor nor the Coalition have
had an upper house majority, with the balance of power being exercised by an
increasingly diverse number of minor parties.
Of the parties that have held seats in the upper house since 2006, the Australian
Greenshavebeenthemostconsistentperformer.TheriseoftheGreenshasbeen
another significant development in Victorian politics and has been reflected not
just in the party’s ability to win seats in the upper house but also its success in
winning seats in the Legislative Assembly. In 2010, the Greens won the lower house
seat of Melbourne and since then have secured other inner urban seats. The greatest
challenge from the Greens occurs in what used to be very safe Labor seats, but it
has also been the case that the Greens have won inner urban seats from the Liberal
Party as well.
The correlation between lower house districting and demographics indicate
that the Greens’ lower house success reflects changes to the population of inner
Melbourne. For much of the city’s history the inner north and west were dominated
by blue-collar electors voting for the Labor Party. In the post–Second World War
period this constituency was augmented by waves of migrants, many of whom were
housed in high-rise public housing blocks constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. By
the 1980s, the inner city was highly sought after by well-educated professionals
attracted to the employment opportunities arising from the transition of inner
Melbourne from industrial suburbs to hubs of post-industrial economic activity.
The rise of post-secondary education as a major component of the Victorian
20 Economou, Costar and Strangio 2003, 162–7.
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