Responding to my praise of the Senate’s democratic credentials, Stephen Darley (comments, Monday) made a very important point: that the fact that each state gets the same number of senators is a seriously undemocratic feature. It takes almost 13 times as many votes to elect a senator in NSW as it does in Tasmania.

In terms of process, that’s clearly an affront to democracy. But there’s an interesting question of whether it actually makes a difference to the results.

Here’s the result again of last November’s half-Senate election, with each state electing six senators:

Labor

Coalition

Greens

Ind.

NSW

3

3

 

 

Vic

3

3

 

 

Qld

3

3

 

 

WA

2

3

1

 

SA

2

2

1

1

Tas

3

2

1

 

Total

16

16

3

1

If the states were represented in proportion to population, New South Wales would get 12, Victoria 9, Queensland 7, Western Australia 4, South Australia 3 and Tasmania just one. It’s a relatively straightforward exercise to redo the Senate count with those numbers; this is how it comes out:

Labor

Coalition

Greens

Ind.

Christian Dems

NSW

5

5

1

 

1

Vic

4

4

1

 

 

Qld

3

3

1

 

 

WA

2

2

 

 

 

SA

1

1

 

1

 

Tas

1

 

 

 

 

Total

16

15

3

1

1

The detail is very different, but the totals are almost identical. And that’s fairly typical; it’s not always that close, but in recent times there’s rarely much of a difference, because our states just don’t vote all that differently. (Note that I’ve ignored the territories here, because their representation is set by parliament, not the constitution.)

That doesn’t mean equal state representation has no effect. For one thing, it changes the internal balance within the parties: the Liberal party room might behave differently if it had fewer Tasmanians and more from NSW and Victoria (then again, it might not). Irony of ironies, one effect of greater democracy would probably be to increase the National Party’s share of the Coalition total.

As an argument for reform, the similarity of outcome probably cuts both ways. On the one hand, if equal state representation isn’t making much difference, why bother trying to change it? On the other hand, the very lack of difference undercuts the argument for state representation in the first place. If the small states really aren’t very different from the rest, why do they need extra senators?