WAS the election result (as far as we know it at the moment) fair? The Liberal Party won a clear majority of both first preference and two-party votes, but it did not win a majority of the seats.

In 1989, a similar result happened, and both Labor and Liberal in the Parliament agreed this was not a fair and democratic result.

They inserted a unique “fairness clause” into the Constitution, under which the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission would redistribute the boundaries after every election to ensure a party that won more than 50 per cent of the votes would win a majority of the seats in the House of Assembly, and hence win government.

The problem is that it has failed. In three elections – 2002, 2010, and now 2014 – the Liberal Party has won a majority of votes, but not a majority of seats.

This is simply not good enough.

I make no criticism of the commission. Its members are a senior Justice, the Electoral Commissioner and the Surveyor-General.

If any people can be trusted to be members of a permanent and independent statutory body, they can.

I make no criticism of the processes under the commission. Its work on redistributions rests on a team of professionals, who always produce a rigorous and well-argued report.

The commission holds public sittings that offer the opportunity for a range of views to be put and, having read all of the reports, I can attest that the submissions are carefully assessed and considered.

So what is the fault in the system that has led to what is essentially a failure of the “fairness clause”? The fault lies in the politicians in the Parliament who set up an objectove that is simply not attainable.

The process followed in a redistribution analyses the voting pattern in the previous election, then adjusts the boundaries so that an election held on the new electoral geography will result in the party that wins more than 50 per cent of the two-party votes winning a majority of the seats.

The fatal fault is in that process. It assumes the voters in the previous election will cast their votes in the same direction in the next election. If they do, the fairness clause will actually work as it is designed to do.

But many voters do not act that way. They react to different political and personal circumstances, and change their votes.

The true “welded-on” party loyalists say “I have always voted for the same party and I always will”.

The “fairness clause” would work perfectly if (and only if) all voters were like that. But a substantial proportion are “swinging voters”.

Hence, if the “fairness clause” does work, it is a result of luck, not design.

What the new Parliament and the new government should do is finally admit that fairness cannot be guaranteed under the existing system.

The should then turn their minds to trying to find a system that does work. New Zealand’s electoral system may be a good place to start.

jaenschdh@bigpond.com