Two major parties say overhaul of the voting system should be considered to prevent the manipulation of group voting tickets

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The Labor and Liberal parties have both thrown their weight behind an optional preferential voting system for Senate elections in order to crack down on “opportunistic” micro-parties who get elected on a tiny number of primary votes.



In separate submissions to a parliamentary committee looking at issues posed by last year’s federal election, the two major parties said an overhaul of the voting system should be considered to prevent the manipulation of group voting tickets.



The Liberal party’s submission said it was “timely to move to optional preferential voting above the line and abolish group voting tickets for Senate elections”.

“This would retain a relatively simple, straightforward voting system, removing avenues for possible abuse, and allowing the voter to preference further candidates if they wish.”

Labor’s submission was less forthright in its support for optional preferential voting, which both parties previously opposed, but it said it should be considered as a “possible option to address the specific undemocratic issues that have emerged in the current Senate voting system”.

This optional system would allow voters, if they wished, to mark an order of Senate preferences above the line, rather than rely on the group voting tickets of their chosen party.

At present, voters can only mark one box above the line, after which the chosen party’s preferences take over.

The Nationals told the committee these preferences could be numbered from one to 15, although the party said it preferred a compulsory, rather than optional, system.

The inquiry was formed following the 2013 election, which saw a number of micro-party candidates elected to the Senate, including David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democrats in New South Wales and Ricky Muir, of the Motoring Enthusiasts Party, in Victoria.

The botched Senate election in Western Australia saw Wayne Dropulich of the Australian Sports Party elected with just 0.23% of the vote before an election rerun was held this month.

A record number of minor parties contested last year’s election, leading to huge ballot papers and accusations that complex preference deals meant that voters’ intentions were not represented.

Both the Labor and Liberal parties told the committee that rules regarding the formation of parties and the fielding of candidates should be toughened, to prevent obscure micro- parties from opportunistically seizing Senate seats.

George Wright, Labor’s national secretary, said some micro-parties with primary votes of less than 1% were “abusing” group voting tickets, which allocate preference flows between candidates.

“The ALP doesn’t want to discourage genuine small parties from the democratic process,” he said, “but there should be a rigorous process to discourage opportunistic micro-parties motivated by the opportunity to harvest preferences.

“Voting has to be practical, and we support compulsory voting. But when casting a vote, a voter should do it in a way that’s understandable, in a way that expresses their will. Metre-long ballot papers make that very difficult.”

Wright said the fee for registering a party should be raised to $2,000, with parties required to have a minimum number of members in each state they wish to contest. He added that there should be rules requiring candidates to live in the state in which they are standing.

Brian Loughnane, the federal director of the Liberal party, echoed Wright’s call for change to party registration requirements, saying there should be a requirement that before preferences from any party are distributed, that party must have received a primary vote of at least 10% of the value of a Senate quota.

In other words, a party must get more than about 1.4% of the primary vote before its preferences are distributed to other parties.

Loughnane said the Liberals were also “deeply concerned” about the fact that more than 18,000 people voted multiple times in the last election, and he proposed that photographic ID should be required by those wishing to vote.

“Voting is an important communal exercise, it shouldn’t be made so complex that the average voter is completely baffled by it,” he said. “People are looking to form parties for preference harvesting, to distort the intention of someone’s vote. It’s a gross distortion, and a loophole in the current act, where your vote ends up going to someone on the other side of the fence.”

Loughnane said the Liberals were unhappy with the way the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) handled the WA Senate election, where 1,370 ballot papers were lost, and suggested it was time to review the organisation.

In his own submission, Clive Palmer said it was time to move to electronic voting.

“A modern electronic voting system would save the taxpayer millions of dollars,” the Queensland MP and businessman said.

“It would revolutionise AEC processes and would also almost completely eliminate informal votes and put an end to party scrutineers arguing with each other and AEC officials over the pencil-marked numbers of hundreds of thousands of ballot papers across Australia – delaying declaration of results in closely contested electorates.

“JFK challenged America to get to the moon – and they did. I challenge Australia to get an electronic voting system in place for the next federal election.”