Over the past couple of days there has been a flurry of debate regarding potential changes to the way the Australian Senate is elected.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald claimed the mooted reform, which would allow voters to allocate their own preferences above the line, would guarantee Coalition control of the Senate. This was quickly refuted by a number of seasoned experts including the ABC’s Antony Green and The Tally Room’s Ben Raue.

Analysis and modelling can help inform the debate but it misses the bigger picture. A voting system shouldn’t be supported or rejected because of which parties benefit. The crucial factor is whether the will of voters, expressed at the ballot box, is accurately translated into who gets elected.

That’s where the current system breaks down. The vast, vast majority of voters (95 per cent) cast their Senate vote above the line. This means that their preferences flow in an order decided by the party they voted for. Unlike the voting system used to elect the House of Representatives, in the Senate voters can’t easily allocate their own preferences. Proposed reforms to the system would end the practise of parties controlling preferences and give power back to the voters.

To show how broken the current system is, and how parties manipulate it to confuse voters and create perverse outcomes, I’ve collated five examples of the most bizarre Senate preference deals in recent federal elections.

The Wikileaks Party preferenced the Nationals before Scott Ludlam

There’s no politician in Australia that has more vocally supported Wikileaks, Julian Assange and online civil rights more generally than Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.

So you’d expect The Wikileaks Party, headed up by Assange, to preference him at the last federal election? Wrong. In WA the party actually directed preferences to the right-wing National Party, part of then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s Coalition, before Scott Ludlam and the Greens.

The WA Senate election was actually the closest in history, with Ludlam scraping into the last seat. But due to the narrowness of the margin, a Senate by-election was conducted for the first time in Australian history.

Do you think the 10,000 voters in WA who voted for The Wikileaks Party would have felt happy that their preferences elected a Nationals Senator over Scott Ludlam?

2. In 2004 Labor preferences elected Family First’s Steve Fielding

Yep that’s right. Right-wing, homophobic Senator Steve Fielding who once compared homosexuality to incest was only elected because the Labor Party preferenced him.

Despite only receiving 1.9 per cent of the vote, Fielding received Labor’s preferences and was elected instead of The Greens, who had polled more than 8 per cent.

Fielding went on to support a raft of Howard government legislation, including voluntary student unionism and a ban on gay civil unions in the ACT.

Did Labor voters really expect their preferences to end up electing a right-wing Senator like Steve Fielding?

3. The Greens weird alliance with Clive Palmer in 2013

Despite having been shafted by dodgy preference deals (see above), The Greens are no strangers to orchestrating their own byzantine arrangements.

In 2013 the Greens struck a deal with mining magnate Clive Palmer. They agreed to preference his party ahead of Labor and the Coalition in a number of states, in return for Palmer preferencing the Greens in the ACT and South Australia.

As part of the Senate deal, The Greens also preferenced Clive Palmer before Labor and the Coalition in his own seat of Fairfax, which ultimately helped him get elected into Parliament.

Clive Palmer and his Senators voted to abolish the carbon tax, the key reform of the former Labor-Greens government. Palmer also supported the Coalition’s plan to reintroduce Temporary Protection Visa’s for refugees, which was ironic given the Greens public rationale for preferencing him was his “humane stance on refugees”.

4. A whole bunch of micro parties are actually controlled by one person

An investigation by Crikey in 2013 discovered a whole range of micro parties running for the Senate were actually run by a small group of people all linked to David Leyonhjelm.

The Outdoor Recreation Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Smoker’s Rights Party and the Republican Party were part of a preference cabal controlled by Leyonhjelm and his acolytes.

These parties funnelled preferences to themselves, despite no obvious ideological relationship.

The current system actively promotes these kinds of underhanded tactics.

No one man should have all that power.

5. Left-wing micro parties preferencing far-right fascists in NSW

The 2013 election saw a record number of micro parties registered. Many of these micro parties decided that instead of actually campaigning they would enter into complex difference deals with right-wing parties to try and get elected.

Here are some of the highlights:

If you voted for the Animal Justice Party your preferences went to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.

If you voted for the Wikileaks Party your preferences went to the Shooters and Fishers.

If you voted for the Stable Population Party or the Australian Sex Party your preferences went to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.

If you voted for the Wikileaks Party your preferences went to Australia First.

It goes on and on.

Conclusion

This post isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list of the pros and cons of different Senate voting systems. It simply highlights that under the current system most voters risk having their votes funnelled off to parties that hold opposing ideological views.

The proposed reforms let voters decide where their preferences should go. Compared to what we see in the current system that is obviously a good thing.