Gender Parity in Parliament? Not with Preferential Ballot (aka Alternative Vote)
The lessons of Australia are very informative. With the same people voting in Proportional and Winner-Take-All elections at the same time, it’s a perfect petrie dish for studying the difference between STV and AV.
Without its Proportional Senate, there wouldn’t have been any women at all elected between 1951 and 1965. And look how few women are elected to the House of Representatives.
This graph (based on Australian government data) demonstrates the truth of Fair Vote Canada’s maxim that “fair voting elects more women naturally.”
Countries electing the truly representative Parliaments possible with Proporttional Representation don’t need to rely on quotas, or Prime Ministerial largesse in order to include women’s voices in democratic governance.
Gender Parity in Parliament? Not with Preferential Ballot (aka Alternative Vote)
The lessons of Australia are very informative. With the same people voting in Proportional and Winner-Take-All elections at the same time, it’s a perfect petrie dish for studying the difference between STV and AV.
Without its Proportional Senate, there wouldn’t have been any women at all elected between 1951 and 1965. And look how few women are elected to the House of Representatives.
This graph (based on Australian government data) demonstrates the truth of Fair Vote Canada’s maxim that “fair voting elects more women naturally.”
Countries electing the truly representative Parliaments possible with Proporttional Representation don’t need to rely on quotas, or Prime Ministerial largesse in order to include women’s voices in democratic governance.
In 1907, Charles Morgan of Broome Station sent this telegram to Henry Prinsep, the Chief Protector of Aborigines for Western Australia, in Perth: “Send cask arsenic exterminate aborigines letter will follow.”
Australia’s program of genocide was based on the official doctrine of terra nullius, in whose name the first people of Australia were slaughtered and subjected to humiliations, depredations, and worse.
As terrible as the Australian genocide was, its very existence has been widely agreed-upon for quite some time – in this regard, the Australians are significantly ahead of Canada, which admitted its own genocide less than a year ago.
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA POSTMASTER-GENERAL’S DEPARTMENT, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
20 JUL 07
TELEGRAM from Broome Station Addressed to H. Princep Esq, prot. of aborigines
Send cask arsenic exterminate aborigines letter will follow
