Talk:South Australian Liberal Party

The current single-member system and the 2PP

Libs outspent Labor 50 to 1 in safe seats, caucus told: InDaily 23 February 2016 - very interesting article covering various aspects, especially InDaily revealed yesterday that some members of a 1990 parliamentary inquiry – which also included senior Liberals Stephen Baker and Bruce Eastick – had serious misgivings about the “fairness clause” they nonetheless recommended, even urging a semi-proportional “top-up” system to be reconsidered after the 1993 election; it never was... Dean Brown, who became premier in the 1993 landslide, rejected responsibility for ignoring the top-up option, saying “it had already been rejected” before the poll. “The issue was dealt with by the parliament at the time, and it was agreed back in ’91 that they wouldn’t pursue the top-ups… I was not in the parliament at the time,” he said. Though Brown starts to waffle about pro-Lib top-up reform after that... he and the Libs seem to think SA isn't unique, when in fact SA has the most highly centralised population out of all of the states, and the metropolitan area 2PP has been won by Labor at every election since 1993 and is very rarely won by the Liberals, while the outer rural areas are very heavily Liberal. 2014, on a state-wide 47.0% ALP v 53.0% LIB 2PP, saw an average 50.3% ALP v 49.7% LIB 2PP in the 34 metropolitan seats, compared to the 13 rural seats on an average 33.3% ALP v 66.7% LIB 2PP. Average was worked out by adding 2PP vote % of each seat and dividing by number of seats. As 2014 metro came out so close on 50.3% ALP 2PP, I did a more thorough calculation - I used the ECSA 2014 stats ref to add up the number of Labor 2PP votes in all 34 metro seats which gave a total of 380662 formal metro Labor 2PP votes, added the number of Liberal 2PP votes in all 34 metro seats which gave a total of 357861 formal metro Liberal 2PP votes, added them together to get a total of 738523 formal metro 2PP votes, then divided 380662 by 738523 to get the true metropolitan 2PP percentage - 51.5% ALP v 48.5% LIB 2PP in the 34 metro seats for 2014. Now, given that more than 75% of South Australians live in the metropolitan area now (1.3mil metro, 1.7mil total), it's completely fair and balanced for the party that wins Adelaide wins government. Since the post-1989 electoral reforms, when Labor has won government, they have also won the metropolitan 2PP, while when the Libs have won government, they have also won the metropolitan 2PP, the sole exception being 1997 and the Lib minority govt where Labor won the metro 2PP vote. Far better than the state-wide 2PP as an indicator. This is not a coincidence. You can't argue with more than three-quarters of the population. The state-wide 2PP seems quite meaningless and distorted now if Labor is spending money only in marginal seats while the Liberals continue state-wide campaigns. If Labor isn't spending money in any safe seats on either side, they are not winning a substantial number of votes they could have otherwise received. Labor campaigns to the current single-member system while the Liberals seem to campaign to a multi-member or top-up system which doesn't exist. The Libs are moving in early on pro-Lib top-up reform in attempts to ensure neutral multi-member reform doesn't get off the ground. The Libs don't want to reform the electoral system out of good intentions, they selfishly want a pro-Lib top-up system. They are hoping to unlock the concentrated Liberal rural areas again through a top-up as they know multi-member would not work as well to unlock them - multi-member would still recognise the metropolitan area is 75% of SA's population which almost always votes Labor, while an artificial top-up would not and conveniently ignores this unique situation. SA used only one system, multi-member, from the inaugural 1857 election right up until when? The introduction of the Playmander in 1936. Single-member since... the one remaining vestige. The change to single-member rendered a state-wide 2PP meaningless and distorted throughout during the Playmander, times after, and in the 21st century - for various reasons. Go back to multi-member like we used to have, and we'll rightly get state-wide campaigns, a real and meaningful state-wide 2PP, and a system that could not be perceived as advantaging either side. Lastly, it is an "impossible challenge" for the ECSA's current-day redistributions to comply with the Lib-instigated post-1989 electoral changes, per Clem MacIntyre. One vote, one value is democratic and not a malapportionment, unlike the Playmander. We have some information about the history and modern effects of the 2PP in article sections such as here and here but a lot of the above would be noteworthy in this and/or other articles, however the issue is that most of the above could be considered subjective and all sentences would need their own WP:RS, which is a big task. Timeshift (talk) 15:33, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

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