Proportional Representation Society of Australia

The Proportional Representation Society of Australia is an electoral reform organisation in Australia. It has branches in South Australia, Victoria-Tasmania, New South Wales, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. Its membership includes people that have successfully promoted electoral reform.

The Society regularly reviews and makes submissions on electoral reform within Australia with a focus on multi-member single transferable vote - proportional representation voting systems. It has made submissions to international organizations including the United Nations and the New Zealand Parliament.

The Society's began before the commencement of Australia as a Federation with Catherine Helen Spence as one of its founding members. See details of the growth and success of quota-preferential proportional representation in Australia, particularly at the national level.

Catherine Helen Spence's 1861 booklet, 'A Plea for Pure Democracy', helped the early formation of a proportional representation group called the 'Effective Voting League of South Australia'. Miss Catherine Spence was the first female candidate at a public election in the then British Empire when she stood unsuccessfully at the 1897 election (under the multiple vote ) for the 1897 Australasian Federal Convention.

A statue in Light Square in Adelaide, unveiled on 10 March 1986 by Her Majesty the Queen, commemorates Spence. The PRSA later launched its reprint of her booklet there. She is remembered by her autobiography, and was depicted on the Australian $5 banknote issued for the Centenary of Federation, in 2001. The PRSA's SA Branch (the Electoral Reform Society of South Australia) influenced the replacement of the first party list system used, briefly, for Australian parliamentary elections, introduced by the Dunstan Labor Government in 1973, by direct election using the present quota-preferential form of proportional representation that the SA Electoral Act 1985 prescribes for elections for SA's Legislative Council. The SA Constitution Act 1934 requires a referendum before either House can be abolished, but does not specify or entrench the electoral system.

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