Online is a well-written critique of FPTP by the "Dutch Australia Cultural Centre"
What that is and why it is writing on Electoral Reform - I don't know.
Apparenlty though it is saying that FPTP was not good, and its replacement in Australia -- Instant-Runoff Voting (what we call Alternative Voting) -- is not good.
Because it too, like FPTP, has single-member districts.
so the writer says list PR should be tried - a valid proposal.
The Westminster legacy: Single Member Districts.
What that means currently: In many seats the Member does NOT represent the majority – and the minority is often NOT represented by the Opposite party either. It is also incorrect to claim that a local MP represents all voters in an electoral district while the adversity of the major parties is on display daily! Overall, the SMD system inherently results essentially in a two-party adversarial system. Minor parties and Independents usually won’t be elected. Independents mostly emerge by breaking away from a major party – only AFTER they have gained recognition as an effective politician. Even the Greens, receiving between 9% and 14%, only have one MP in the federal Parliament. How fair is that?
[The writer then speaks of the effect of Australia's use of Alternative Voting (IRV) for election of the 125 members of the House of Representatives, saying it does not give PR but it does ensure low level of unrepresented voters:]
Clearly, the desire for the representation of diversity has grown steadily. Since the 1990s the number of seats decided by [back-up] preferences has increased markedly. [He means those not elected in the first count by receiving a majority of first preferences] Thirty-one in 1983, sixty-three in 1993, eighty-seven in 2001, in 2016 an astonishing 102 out of 150 seats. In 2019 only 18 seats out of 151 seats were declared on first preferences!
[voters are using the liberty accorded them by IRV's back-up preferences to give their first-choice preference for whom they want even if that candidate's chances are not good. And by 2019 few leading candidates in the First Count actually received a majority of votes in the First Count.
Not mentioned is fact that in almost all cases the candidates leading in the First Count were elected in the end. (Farrell and McAllister's book The Australian Electoral Systems does not apparently mention how many ultimately-elected members under AV were the first count leaders anyway. But it can be imagined that likely in 90 percent or more of the cases they are the same people.)
The writer sees that the single-winner IRV does not produce proportionality overall nor in the district result. Same as for FPTP, there can be no proportionality when only one member is elected.]
A report on first preference percentages tells a similar story: Coalition 41.44%, ALP 33.34%, Greens 10.40%. Neither major party has an overall mandate. [The dis-proportionality in a chamber elected through IRV is not discussed, but it seems likely that one party or another formed a false-majority government, unless a minority government was elected. Perhaps Australia has no need or has not begun to use CASAs apparently.]
A major political culture change is needed: stimulating co-operation instead of combat.
The principal alternative to the Single-Member-District electoral system is Proportional Representation – Party List, used in 89 countries. It is based on multi-member districts...
[yes, MMDs or some pooling of votes. Most of the 89 list PR countries, plus others that use STV or SNTV, do use MMDs. A few countries actually use party-list PR without delineated districts within the country - Israel and Netherlands for example. Perhaps there are one or two more - Paraguay? ... Denmark, Sweden and Iceland are among the few countries that use both MMDs and at-large seats, and list PR. Like them, South Africa uses a MMP system where each province elects multiple members through list PR and the country allocates seats as per overall party share in compensatory fashion to the members elected in the provinces.] Here is link to that interesting if idiosyncratic online article: https://dacc.net.au/archive/dutch-australian-history/military-political-history/netherlands-political-system-of-proportional-representation/
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