The Victorian Labor government has followed through with their plans to introduce legislation to abolish group voting tickets for the Victorian Legislative Council. If this legislation passes this week, it will end the use of this practice at any state or federal election in Australia.
Group voting tickets allow parties to control how preferences flow when voters cast their votes above the line, which allow for preference deals and have allowed small parties to corral their votes away from the bigger parties and win seats from low primary votes.
This legislation was introduced yesterday and when finally were able to see the legislation today following the second reading in the Legislative Assembly. You can read the legislation here.
There was a general expectation that a post-GVT electoral system would adopt some version of the systems used in other states or for the Senate, but now we have the detail.
It looks like Victoria will largely follow the lead of the Senate by requiring voters to number as many boxes as there are seats to be filled – in this case, five. But, also like the Senate, voters who give a clear ‘1’ but fail to number their top five preferences clearly will still have their votes count as formal. This was an important provision for Senate reform, since it meant that any voter who just voted ‘1’ (as had been formal prior to reform) would cast a formal vote.
Parties will be required to recommend 5 preferences or more on their how-to-vote cards, and we have seen from federal elections that this leads to a very high number of voters following that advice and numbering that minimum number of preferences.
I strongly support this legislation and hope that the Parliament will pass it with no delay.
And not a moment too soon. In fact, almost a moment too late. It’s remarkable that the Labor leadership tumult since the weekend has not derailed the Bill.