Thursday, May 19, 2022

Party Games 18/38 Kim for Canberra

Kim for Canberra is another single candidate party vying for one of Canberra's two senate seats (a mathematically challenging proposition). Despite this challenge, Kim Rubenstein has a decent mix of policies, going strong on climate change, making sure an ICAC has teeth, and gender equality.

The one policy I've not yet seen elsewhere, and probably won't, is her proposal to increase the ACT's senate representation from 2 senators to 4. This is primarily on the basis of population, as the ACT with a population of 450k gets 2 senators, while Tasmania gets 12 senators for its 530k. This discrepancy definitely shows the advantage of being a state rather than a territory. A larger senate cohort would also make electing independent senators easier (the quota would drop from 33% to 20%), but would result in the odd case of the ACT having more senators than MPs (although that's long been the case for Tasmania).

If I lived in Canberra, I'd probably put Kim ahead of both the majors.

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