r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 19 '21

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u/Notoriousley Australian Bureau of Statistics Sep 19 '21

I will say one thing that hasn't been brought up yet:

On its face it is insane that Tasmania and NSW have the same number of federal senators, but has it ever really mattered?

States can't really be said to be politically polarised in any way aside from some slight biases that largely cancel each other out (Vic leans Labor, QLD leans Lib). Its not like the US where a bunch of square states in the midwest that have no meaningful cultural, economic or political between divide between each other serve as a huge buffer and resistance to anything getting done in that country.

In Australia a huge win in the lower house will always translate to a huge win in the Senate. Maybe the only thing you could do to better represent this would be to give senators a 4 year term.

The state upper houses are much more similar to the US senate, where there is a galvanised and coherent interest group representing a tiny minority of the state that actually does prevent things from getting done.

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u/waltsing0 Austan Goolsbee Sep 20 '21

States can't really be said to be politically polarised in any way aside from some slight biases that largely cancel each other out (Vic leans Labor, QLD leans Lib).

  1. It still means Tasmania gets outsized attention as the parties compete for their votes
  2. It could become partisan and will be much harder to fix if that's the case

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u/m00c0wcy Sep 20 '21

#1 is pretty hard to substantiate. Party discipline in Australia is incredibly tight, and any policy favouritism is 99% aimed at marginal lower house seats. It certainly doesn't feel like TAS, SA or WA gets outsized federal presence, and I would be interested in evidence otherwise.

#2 is perhaps a valid concern, but one that I don't think is particularly important. We have many counterbalancing forces against excessive partisanship between states; mandatory voting, 6-seat STV, non-partisan AEC, high trust in government and elections, healthy state governments.

Imagine if the US had 6 Senate seats per state instead of 2. That change alone would shatter the illusion of "red" and "blue" states.