Victoria’s upper house electoral system has a fatal flaw.
It funnels voters’ preferences towards parties they never would support and has been exploited to produce unfair and undemocratic outcomes.
Victoria, where early voting for the state election opens on Monday, is the only Australian state still using the discredited “group voting ticket” system. GVTs were first used for the federal Senate in the 1980s to allow voters to cast an easy formal vote. The system was adopted for upper houses in New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia but all of these parliaments have now scrapped it.
When you place a “1” beside a party’s name above the line on Victoria’s upper house ballot paper, your vote flows according to the preference order decreed by that party. Even if you number more than one box above the line, your subsequent preferences are ignored.
Under any other democratic electoral system, parties are free to give recommendations to voters – by handing them a how-to-vote flyer or advertising to them – and voters are free to take that advice or ignore it.
Under GVTs this process is automated. It’s a great privilege for parties to be able to control preferences, and it’s one they have abused.
Minor parties have learnt to use GVTs to win seats off low primary votes. Deals are done across the eight regions in Victoria’s upper house; minor parties will concentrate their preferences on a handful of parties in one region and the favour will be returned in others. These bloc preference flows make it easier for a party to snowball from a tiny primary vote to a winning position.
The results can bear little relationship to how people voted. In 2018 a candidate from the Transport Matters party was elected in the Eastern Metropolitan region off a primary vote of 0.6%, and a candidate of the Sustainable Australia party was elected in Southern Metropolitan off a primary vote of 1.3%. Both overtook rivals with much larger votes.
And Derryn Hinch’s Justice party won three seats, compared with just one for the Greens – despite the latter polling more than twice the votes.
All of this could be OK if it reflected voters’ intentions. But minor parties tend to prioritise each other and lock out the major parties and the Greens.
It’s not just the minor parties who misuse GVTs. In the federal Senate in 2004, Labor preferences gave the rightwing Family First candidate Steve Fielding victory over the Greens, despite Labor voters generally preferring the Greens when they mark their own preferences.
But Victorian voters don’t have to go along with the deals.
Voting below the line is easy and it ensures that your vote only goes to the candidates you mark on your ballot paper.
You just need to ensure you number at least one to five below the line. If you don’t choose five your vote won’t be counted. And feel free to select more than five – the more numbers the better.
Below-the-line voting increased from 4% in 2010 to almost 9% in 2018, and has unpicked preference deals that would have elected less popular candidates. If it climbs further, the results will bear a closer resemblance to voters’ intentions.
Ultimately Victoria will have to do away with GVTs in favour of something closer to the system now used to elect the Senate.
But Victorian voters don’t need to wait. Just vote below the line and decide your preferences yourself.
