THE community and the voters can be put before the self-interest of political parties in the new era of Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten. It sounds like flying, purple pigs! But there just might be a slim chance.
Michael Moore.
However, his intention to seek changes to the Senate voting system might be a real opportunity to illustrate that politics has really changed. The problem is not as much the intentions of Brough but rather the fears of crossbench members who have benefitted by being elected through the work of Glen Druery, the preference whisperer.
Before Druery, working out how to stem the advantage going for major parties and move the advantage of preferences to favour the smaller or “micro-parties” no-one was making a fuss.
Suddenly, a problem has been recognised. Guess why? It no longer benefits the major parties. The system is now being manipulated in favour of the micro-parties.
The system does not need to provide advantage to any group. But neither should it disadvantage major, minor, micro parties or independents. And there is a way.
Turnbull’s Liberals and Shorten’s Labor now have the chance to demonstrate they can put the people before the politics. The same is true for the Greens, the micro-parties and the independents in the Senate. They must give away their current prerogative of dictating how their preferences will be distributed for voter-driven, optional preferential, above-the-line voting.
The principle is simple. Hand the preference distribution back to the voters.
Currently, 96.5 per cent of voters place their single vote above the line in a Senate election. Once the vote lands on the selected party it is the party that then determines how to distribute the preferences.
As the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Matters, chaired by Tony Smith, unanimously recommended in its “First Interim Report”, there should be “optional preferential voting” above the line.
No-one will hold their breath waiting for voters to get a simpler, fairer system. However, there is already cross-party agreement at the committee level.
Our politicians should not be persuaded by party apparatchiks that some modification or other will improve their chances. It is simple. Placing preferential numbers across the line at the top of the ballot paper should simply deliver the below-the-line names in the order that the parties were identified. (See detailed diagram and explanation below)
This change would mean backdoor preference deals that favour particular parties, invariably without the knowledge of the voters, will give way to voters determining the order of the political party or independents they prefer.
Within the ACT (and Tasmanian) Hare-Clark system there is one more level of sophistication. So that no particular candidate receives an advantage from the order in which the party has placed them, there is a randomly assigned order. This provides an incentive to vote below the line to really have an impact.
However, on the Senate ballot paper the 3.5 per cent of people who have voted below the line have done so in the brave knowledge that they might have to put consecutive numbers against more than a hundred candidates without making a mistake. A mistake means a paper discarded as invalid. It is a ridiculous situation that does not have to be the case.
The second change that Mal Brough should implement is to apply
optional preferential voting below-the-line as well as above-the-line.
The vote either above or below-the-line being optional means a person does not have to put a number against every candidate.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee recommended for below-the-line vote “partial optional preferential” seeking to have voters place a tick against at least six senators in a half-Senate election if they are voting below the line and 12 in a full Senate election. It is not a bad compromise.
The ideal, as applied in the ACT is to always recognise voter intention where at all possible – even if, for example, only three votes can be counted.
The last word belongs with ABC election analyst Antony Green who explained the political drivers to the Joint Parliamentary Committee: “The system, if changed, should advantage parties which campaign, not parties which arrange preference deals… I do not see why a party should get control over its preferences simply by putting its name on the ballot paper”.
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