Women, minorities, and proportional representation in Parliament : a proposal for voting reform

The right to vote permits the voices of the electorate to be heard in democracies. However, voting is often insufficient for minorities to obtain representation by their preferred candidates. For traditional political ‘minorities’ including women, self-representation is essential to political equality and social equity. Despite holding roughly 50% of the electoral vote in Australia for 100 years, women comprise only 22% of the Commonwealth Members and 29% of Senators. This paper proposes a new vote counting system, STV with Borda elimination or STV-B. STV-B retains proportional representation but much greater voter control over selection of candidates. STV-B would provide women with a mechanism that yields proportional representation for women without undermining party representation.

No smoke without fire : Benedict XVI and true liturgical reform

I read the recent comments on Pope Paul VI and the 'smoke of Satan' (July AD2000) with interest not long after I had finished re-reading the massive work by the late Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, generally considered to be the main architect of the liturgical reforms prior to, during, and after Vatican II.