This analysis is based on examining the South Australian Labor Platform 2009.

The Electoral Reform Society of SA is impressed with the detail provided in the ALP Platform, under Chapter 9 “A responsibly governed South Australia” (see http://www.sa.alp.org.au/images/stories/Policies/sa_labor_platform_2009.pdf ).

While much of this Chapter contain well meaning statements, underneath this padding there are some commitments, such as Labor will continue to support proportional preferential voting in the Upper House [30] which this Society fully supports

Unfortunately Labor will continue to support preferential voting in the Lower House in single-member constituencies [30]. This is despite Labor stating that governments should be “democratically elected” [10] and each citizen should have “a vote of equal value to the vote of each other citizen” [11]. The Society argues that neither of these fine ideals can be achieved with single-member electorates.

Labor has some plans for their next term which the Society welcomes and looks forward to being involved with – this includes the following:

• allow the people to choose four year terms for the Legislative Council with a reduced number of Members [26]
• investigate provision of public funding based on the federal system [33]
• consider lowering the voting age to 16 years [282 in Chapter 4].

The Society notes that there is no direct mention of the Constitutional Convention held in 2003, the major event of the first Rann Labor State Government. However the Labor Platform does consider some of the outcomes from the Convention such as four year terms for the Legislative Council, and Citizen Initiated Referenda (Labor opposes this in any form [16]). And there is mention of the need for all to be involved in constitutional reform.

Interestingly at the last State election, not only did the Premier announce that he wanted to abolish the Upper House, but Labor also made some other important commitments which are now no longer mentioned such as entrenching proportional representation for the Legislative Council, keeping proportional representation as the method of voting for local government elections, investigating optional preferential voting for ballots for both houses, and investigating preferential ‘above the line’ voting for upper house ballots in addition to current preferential ‘below the line’ voting. It is very disappointing that these have been omitted in the 2009 Platform, and the question must be asked “Why?”

While the Society is pleased with the amount of detail in the ALP Electoral Reform Policy, it would appear that with the Government’s bid to hold a referendum on reforming the Upper House thwarted in the Upper House, the Government has lost its zest for any electoral reform if it is re-elected.

ASSESSMENT - 6/10