The State Franchise in Victoria, 1842-2005
Barbara Kerr,
PSI3000
Academic supervisor: Dr Jennifer Curtin
This report is not an official report of the Victorian Electoral Commission. Professional Intern Reports are prepared by Political and Social Inquiry students as part of the requirements for the Professional Internship Program PSI3000. The Program is coordinated by Monash University. The views expressed in this report are those of the author.
Acknowledgements
The State Franchise in Victoria, 1842-2005
The Franchise in Victoria: How did we get here?
Interest in the affairs of the state
Intellectual and moral capacity
Legal and Practical Considerations
Conclusion
Bibliography
Barbara KerrThe State Franchise in Victoria, 1842-2005
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to profusely thank Dr. Christopher Gribbin for academic and personal support during the compilation of this report. Additionally, Paul Thornton-Smith of the VEC’s Communications, Education and Research branch and the staff of the Parliamentary Library were invaluable sources of information and assistance. I would also like to thank Dr. Jennifer Curtin and Nerillee Miller for setting up the Professional Internship, which is an invaluable resource for those of us who don’t want to become politicians. Finally, I would like to thank the rest of CERB for the seemingly unending supply of cake.
Barbara Kerr
21/10/05
The State Franchise in Victoria, 1842-2005
The history of the right to vote for the Victorian Parliament is not simply a matter of historical interest. Reasons given by lobbyists and legislators for the extension or restriction of the franchise, and the difference in reasoning through time, assists us in forming legislation and setting up an administrative framework to effectively run elections in line with the community’s expectation of democracy. We have moved from a situation in which only a small proportion of adult men could vote, to a situation where almost all adult citizens not only can vote, but are expected to vote. In this environment, exclusions to the franchise must be considered very carefully.
This essay provides a historical overview of the reasoning involved in decisions to enfranchise or disenfranchise certain groups of people at the State level in Victoria. It covers what could be called philosophical reasoning rather than other factors – for instance, I do not include the role of lobby groups, as such, but refer only to the reasoning employed by lobby groups. Nor do I discuss external pressures on politicians – for instance, the political pressure on Premier Thomas Bent in 1908 to persuade him to support women’s suffrage must have been terrific, given his absolute intransigence on the subject up until this time, but that is not my concern in this essay. In general, I only discuss legislation specifically related to the franchise itself, not related Acts or regulations that might assist in realising the right to vote (such as the ability to vote by post). In turn, there is almost no discussion of groups who are or were effectively excluded by practice rather than legislation – for instance, indigenous people were never mentioned in legislation relating to the right to vote at the State level in Victoria, unlike the Commonwealth, which explicitly disenfranchised “aboriginal native[s] of Australia Asia Africa or the Islands of the Pacific except New Zealand”[1]. These topics deserve far greater attention than I can give them in the space of this essay.
What this essay does cover is a factual overview of the legislation relevant to enabling Victorians to vote at the State (or colony) level, followed by further examination of some of the themes found in arguments about extending or restricting the franchise. Of necessity, each theme contains a brief overview, and this essay is not intended to be exhaustive. The reader should come away with a general idea of why people think certain groups should or shouldn’t vote for the legislature of Victoria.
Arguments used in discussing changes to the franchise, whether by opponents or supporters of the change, can be broadly classified into several related themes –
-democratic norms and natural rights;
-the nature of the prospective voter’s interest in the running of the state and formulation of legislation;
-the intellectual and moral features of the voter themselves; and
-legal and practical considerations, such as what other states or even nations are doing about the right to vote.
In order to analyse how these themes emerged, we must establish what these changes were, and when they occurred.
The Franchise in Victoria: How did we get here?
Australia’s first election was held in the colony of NSW, then including what would later become Victoria, in 1843. The 1842 New South Wales Constitution Act (UK) provided for the establishment of a Legislative Council, two-thirds of which would be popularly elected, the remaining one-third to be appointed by the Crown. Men holding £200 freehold property or paying £20 per year were permitted to vote for men who held £2000 freehold property or paid £100 per year.[2]
The legal and philosophical framework in the colonies reflected that of Britain. The 1832 Reform Bill had given British men with an income of £10 per year the right to vote for Members of the House of Commons. Although this swelled the ranks of Britons entitled to vote by about two-thirds, it still meant that only 20% of British men had the right to vote for their parliament.[3] In addition, electorates were horrendously malapportioned, with sparsely populated towns able to elect the same amount of members as big cities, and elections were held publicly, enabling landowners and other powerful interests to use intimidation and bribery to force their residents to vote for particular candidates.[4] Similar problems would later prevail in colonial elections.
Agitation for self-rule in the colonies at this time took place in the context of power struggles between former convicts and free settlers. During the 1830s, the British government began a free settlement scheme, followed by officially ending transportation to New South Wales. Free settlers feared the influence of the ex-convicts, many of whom were wealthy and influential, and easily met property requirements set by the Reform Bill in Britain. Therefore, the settlers opposed having an elected body. Once the free settlers began to outnumber former convicts, it was safe to allow a partially-elected parliament![5]
In 1850, the Australian Constitutions Act created the independent colony of Victoria, and also spelled out the qualifications for the electors of the remaining part of New South Wales. It halved the property qualification to £100 freehold or £10 rent per year, and also permitted eligible men who held squatter’s licences to vote. When elections were held in 1851 in the newly-independent colonies, including Victoria, these qualifications would have applied. When Britain passed the Victoria Constitution Act (UK) in 1855, it created a Parliament with two houses. The following property qualifications applied:
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (LOWER HOUSE)
Own freehold property to the value of £50 (or £5 per year)
or pay £10 rent per year
or have an income of £100 per year
or have paid for the right to occupy “any Portion of the Waste Lands of the Crown” for twelve months or more
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL (UPPER HOUSE)
Own freehold property to the value of £1000 (or £100 per year)
or pay £100 rent per year
or have a professional qualification (such as ministers of religion, officers of the armed forces or university graduates) [6]
The professional qualification allowed educated men who did not own property or have a high income to vote for the Legislative Council. Prospective voters should have lived in the state for one year prior to registering, and be a native-born or naturalised British subject. Electors could vote where they lived, or where they held property of a certain value (effectively giving people who lived in a different electorate to where they owned property plural votes – the ability to do this was abolished in 1899).
Having achieved self-government, Victorians began to express an interest in dropping the property qualifications. In Britain, workers organized themselves to promote the acceptance of The People’s Charter, published in 1838 by the London Working Men’s Association. It demanded full manhood suffrage – that is, the right of all adult men to vote, without qualification. Agitation by “Chartists” took the form of armed protest as well as peaceful petitioning, and several Chartists were transported to the colonies as convicts. Later, when the Chartist movement was dying out in Britain, many came to Victoria to take advantage of the gold rush.[7] Their influence shows in the demands of the Ballarat Reform League, which included very similar wording to The People’s Charter and included manhood suffrage.
In November 1857, property qualifications for the Legislative Assembly were dropped, but remained for the Legislative Council. Raymond Wright attributes the Parliament’s willingness to broaden the franchise to the fact that “since 1855, any colonist holding a £1 miner’s licence could vote” (because they were entitled to occupy “any Portion of the Waste Lands of the Crown”),[8] leading to an imbalance of voters in favour of miners, many of whom had come to Victoria from all over the world, with no intention of staying after they had made their fortune. The debates on this subject are discussed in the section on interest in the affairs of the state.
In 1863, the Electoral Act enfranchised all ratepayers on municipal rolls for Legislative Assembly elections. This had the effect of allowing a small minority of women, who had been permitted to vote in council elections, to vote for the Legislative Assembly, which they did in late 1864. The Electoral Act was hastily reworded to ensure only male ratepayers were enfranchised in 1865[9].
Whereas previous versions of the Constitution specified only that new electors should be able to read or write (that is, electors who enrolled after 1857), the Constitution Act Amendment Act of 1890 forbade anyone receiving “charitable relief as an inmate of any eleemosynary” to vote. This innovation is discussed in the section on the intellectual and moral capacity of voters.
In 1901, Victoria became part of the Commonwealth of Australia, and in 1902, the Commonwealth Franchise Act was passed, which specified that all born or naturalized subjects of the Crown “not under twenty-one years of age whether male or female married or unmarried” who had lived in Australia for 6 months could vote at the Federal level. It explicitly excluded any “aboriginal native of Australia Asia Africa or the Islands of the Pacific except New Zealand” and persons “of unsound mind” or who had been convicted of an offence that would attract a sentence of one year or more[10]. Note that at this stage, women were explicitly excluded from voting in Victoria, but “aboriginal natives” were never explicitly referred to in Victorian legislation (possibly because requirements of literacy and not receiving charity would have excluded them without naming them).
Women gained the vote in Victoria, subject to the same qualifications as men, in 1908 with the passing of the Adult Suffrage Act. In 1910, the requirements for residence in Victoria were eased with the requirement of residence in Victoria halved to six months and the need to have resided in the electorate for at least one month prior to the election introduced. During the 1920s, the Electoral Act tweaked the residence requirements, requiring that voters be resident for 6 months in the Commonwealth and 3 months in Victoria and one month in the subdivision of their electoral district before applying for enrolment.
Property requirements for the Legislative Council were dropped in 1950 when the Legislative Council Reform Act was passed. The last explicit extension of the franchise occurred in 1973, when the Constitution Act Amendment (Qualifications) Act lowered the voting age for Victorians to 18, coinciding with similar legislation at the Federal level. Further amendments to voting procedures since that time have dealt with administrative procedures which, whilst not explicitly enfranchising (or excluding) any particular group, have facilitated the realisation of people’s existing right to vote (such as provisions to allow homeless people to enrol in an electorate where they have a connection). The 1986 Constitution Act Amendment (British Subjects) Act preserved the right of residents who were British in nationality and already on the electoral roll to vote, but no new inclusions to the franchise have been made.
The current franchise encompasses Australian citizens and those British subjects covered by the above act, over the age of 18, who have lived at their primary place of residence for at least one month. Voters who normally live in Victoria but are staying interstate or overseas may remain enrolled at their primary place of residence provided that they intend to return within a reasonable time. They must not be serving a sentence of more than five years imprisonment, they must not have been convicted of treason without being pardoned, and they must not be “of unsound mind”[11].
Democratic norms and natural rights
Graeme Orr, in arguing against the disenfranchisement of prisoners, highlights the very powerful normative ideology of democracy – “today we all claim to be democrats… it is our central, even axiomatic, political value”.[12] The franchise is the pre-eminent symbol of democracy, and today, “the franchise is generally conceived as the universal right of all adults to a single, equal vote”.[13]
Conceptions of the right to vote as being natural have been used from the very beginning of Victoria’s political history. At this stage, democracy was by no means axiomatic, and activists seeking its promotion often had to distance themselves from the label “democrat”, which had associations with “Chartism, Communism or Republicanism” and violent agitation.[14] Nevertheless, in 1856 several members of Victoria’s Parliament were elected on the basis of their espousal of democratic principles such as manhood suffrage, and even those who were not felt compelled to pay lip service to at least some of the more palatable democratic concerns. Statements by the candidates include the nominee’s thoughts on property qualifications for electors, protection of the new secret ballot, universal education and the use of Crown lands.[15]
In the Parliamentary debates surrounding the Electoral Act Amendment Bill in 1856, a Mr. Fyfe contended that
…man had an inherent right which was above any acquired one, to political privileges. He [i.e. Mr. Fyfe] believed in the law of nature which is anterior to all written law; he believed in moral right which is or ought to be the foundation of all social or political law; and by the express provision of the great charter of English liberty, every thing that a man possessed was absolutely his own, and to take away any thing from him without his consent, is a violation of this great original law of nature, and of the rights of man; and it was for the protection of this great natural and moral right that the elective franchise was conferred, and a representative form of government created. If a man were deprived of those rights, and yet compelled to pay towards the public revenue, an injustice was perpetrated on him.[16]
No-one in this debate objects to manhood suffrage – in fact, almost every member of the Assembly falls over himself to assert his support for it. The objections to the one-man-one-vote concept centre around the right of property to a vote, and the desirability of plural voting. In other words, every man should have a vote, but those with property should have more votes. A Mr. Blair stated that
… let property find it’s [sic] own natural action. (Hear.) If they must have the two principles enunciated in this bill, let wealth be represented in the Upper House, and high intelligence in the Lower.[17] (VPD, Dec 1856: 104)
It is worth noting that in that particular debate, very few speakers openly espoused this notion. Even so, Victoria did not end plural voting at the state level until 1899.
The suffrage movement also invoked natural rights, quoting extensively from J. S. Mill and even calling on Biblical authority:
In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female but all are one. Women as well as men are commanded ‘to call no man master.’ Nowhere is it said in the Bible to women “Thou shalt not vote.”[18]
Audrey Oldfield highlights the relationship between natural rights and more practical issues for the suffragists, with natural rights acting as a backdrop to practical issues that needed to be raised to counter the arguments of anti-suffragists, who tended to argue that women were an exception to the democratic principle because of their nature.[19] These arguments will be dealt with in the next section.
By the time the final property qualifications were being dropped for the Legislative Council in 1950, no one was questioning the concept of universal adult suffrage. The Liberal Party countered the alliance of the Country Party and ALP by suggesting that universal franchise for the Upper House should be accompanied by a system of proportional representation similar to that which had just been introduced for the Commonwealth Senate, but were very careful to preface their remarks by stating that of course they supported adult suffrage. The ALP, in turn, accused the Liberals of trying to “preserve this institution of property and privilege”,[20] and remarked