You’ll probably have heard about the idea to increase the size of the ACT Assembly from 17 to 25 MLAs (in five electorates), with an outside chance of 35 MLAs (from seven electorates) somewhere in the distant future. There’s also a proposal to increase all their salaries now.
The snouts are well and truly in the trough, and now they all want a bigger trough with more swill.
Labor supports it because it will almost certainly entrench their power forever, as if they haven’t already dug in for the long term. Liberal supports it because they foolishly believe they have an outside chance at grabbing government when the ballot paper suddenly expands to include a whole lot of new names that aren’t already established through Labor’s born-to-rule place on the front pages of the Canberra Times. The Green (there’s only one) says his party will do well whatever.
Is that what we really want? More politicians?
We can play ‘pretend’ with the results of the last ACT election. It’s a flawed game for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the likely change to electorate boundaries and size, but it can give us an idea of voting intentions.
If we take the 25 MLAs and assume we have the same three electorates with more pollies in each, we could have ended up with the following (primary vote and party affiliation in brackets):
Brindabella (8 seats)
1. Zed SESELJA (18566) (Lib)
2. Joy BURCH (9031) (ALP)
3. Andrew WALL (2477) (Lib)
4. Brendan SMYTH (3954) (Lib)
5. Mick GENTLEMAN (5105) (ALP)
6. Amanda BRESNAN (3515) (Grn)
7. Nicole LAWDER (2086) (Lib)
8. Rebecca CODY (3561) (ALP)
Ginninderra (8 seats)
1. Alistair COE (10017) (Lib)
2. Vicki DUNNE (5167) (Lib)
3. Mary PORTER (9423) (ALP)
4. Chris BOURKE (5048) (ALP)
5. Yvette BERRY (4917) (ALP)
6. Meredith HUNTER (4462) (Grn)
7. Chic HENRY (4360) (Motorists)
8. Glen McCREA (4153) (ALP)
Molonglo (9 seats)
1. Katy GALLAGHER (23996) (ALP)
2. Jeremy HANSON (10235) (Lib)
3. Andrew BARR (3880) (ALP)
4. Simon CORBELL (1909) (ALP)
5. Shane RATTENBURY (4966) (Grn)
6. Giulia JONES (5754) (Lib)
7. Steve DOSZPOT (5245) (Lib)
8. Caroline LE COUTEUR (4531) (Grn)
9. Meegan FITZHARRIS (2626) (ALP)
Overall result
Labor: 11 seats
Liberal: 9 seats
Green: 4 seats (Labor aligned)
Motorists: 1 seat (Liberal aligned)
The more things change, and the more it costs to change them, the more they stay the same.