Electoral Malapportionment: Partisanship, Rhetoric and Reform in the Shadow of the Agrarian Strong-Man

Abstract:     
This article revisits the zonal malapportionment endemic in Queensland’s electoral system before the Fitzgerald Inquiry and examines how reform was won. The process is found to be one of liberalising but not ground-breaking catch-up. Viewing Queensland’s zonal system in the larger perspective of manipulation of electoral maps, this article compares Premier Bjelke-Petersen with populist strongmen in South Australia (Playford) and Québec (Duplessis), who employed similar rhetoric to entrench themselves. Ultimately, as others had, Queensland’s agrarian chauvinism proved long-running but brittle. The Queensland example is intriguing for the paradoxes it presented. An important rhetorical component of it was the signalling of anti-democratic values inherent in the zonal system. The electoral manipulations merged pretence with openness. The pointed rejection of democratic pluralism married with the projection of an image of leadership by right. Bjelke-Petersen was proud to govern over, rather than through, democracy.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 29

Accepted Paper Series