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Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016 Submission 85

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Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016 Submission 85 SUBMISSION TO JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON ELECTORAL MATTERS CONCERNING CERTAIN ONEROUS PROVISIONS OF THE COMMONWEALTH ELECTORAL AMENDMENT BILL 2016 by Peter Breen The autumn sitting of the federal parliament in 2016 got off to a frosty start for independent and minor party candidates thinking about a tilt at a seat in the Senate later in the year. There were mutterings from the political pundits about legislation to freeze out the small players, but it seemed to be too late in the election cycle to do anything serious about the voting system. The Senate would just have to live with interlopers such as the motoring enthusiast party‟s Ricky Muir. And then last week the government introduced the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016 into Parliament. Legislators confirmed the worst fears of potential independent and minor party candidates: the proposed new law unashamedly promotes the political interests of the Liberal Party of Australia. Above the line voting The problem with asking voters to write „at least the numbers 1 to 6‟ in the boxes above the line is that the vast majority of voters will place the number 1 in one box only and it will be a valid vote. In this way the compulsory preferential voting system that has served us well for 30 years will effectively be turned into first past- the-post or winner-take-all voting. This means the major parties – the Coalition, Labor, the Greens and the occasional Xenophon – will dominate the ballot paper. Furthermore, as the dominant Coalition party and recipient of the largest number of primary votes, the Liberal Party of Australia will be the major beneficiary of this provision. Supporters of independents and minor party candidates will be sidelined. A sizeable proportion of electors which has been growing consistently for ten years and now stands at almost 25 per cent of the Senate vote will be disenfranchised. In the same vein, allowing a tick or cross in a box above the line to be treated „as having written the number 1‟ in the box will further consolidate the Liberal Party‟s primary vote. An obvious solution to this problem – and a much fairer reform – would be to require voters to write „at least the numbers 1 to 6‟ in the boxes above the line and leave it at that. There should be no exceptions to this requirement. Anything less such as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 or a tick or cross should be an informal vote. Consistent with this provision which is based on the number of senators to be elected in a half Senate election there ought to be a further provision requiring voters to write „at least the numbers 1 to 12‟ in the boxes above the line in a full Senate or double dissolution election. For most of us deliberative democracy types, a one-in-the-box vote for independents and minor party candidates for the Senate (outside South Australia) will finish up in the rubbish bin. A similar vote for the Nationals in Western Australia will suffer the same fate as there is no joint Coalition ticket in the west. Over there, Liberals are already saying to the Nationals: “It will be better for the Coalition if you don‟t run.” The next thing Liberals will be saying is: “Let‟s have optional preferential voting in the lower house as well.” Even a casual observer of the electoral system will be aware that optional preferential voting in the upper house is the thin end of the wedge to changing the lower house voting system in favour of the party receiving the largest primary vote. Below the line voting Changes to the Senate voting system should be introduced gradually as esteemed psephologist Malcolm Mackerras often argues. Indeed, Mackerras points out that all party list voting systems in the Senate are probably in breach of section 7 of the Commonwealth Constitution which demands that elections be candidate based. An obvious and straightforward change to the Senate voting system is to encourage preference voting below the line by requiring voters to write „at least the numbers 1 to 6‟ in the boxes below the line and leave it at that. Apart from being a simple change, an opportunity would exist over the ensuing three years to educate voters on further changes such as abolishing altogether the horizontal ballot paper line. The „line‟ is given a status it does not deserve in the proposed legislation. It is really an artificial construct of the 1984 amendments to the Senate voting system – what Mackerras calls a contrivance. A fair question is what purpose does the line serve on the ballot paper if the Parliament intends allowing voters to record a valid vote by marking just one box above the line or a seemingly endless list of candidates below the line? Far reaching changes to the voting system should be introduced slowly after politically objective due diligence and proper analysis of their implications. At 2 the moment, the government‟s proposed reforms assist voters who are Liberal Party supporters while those of us who would prefer to see wider representation of independent and minor party candidates in the Senate are placed at a serious disadvantage. Optional preferential voting Soon after the 1999 New South Wales state election, the Greens and Labor got together to scrap the Legislative Council group voting ticket. You can always have too much of a good thing, they said, and the tablecloth ballot paper was democracy on steroids. In 2003 the compulsory preferential voting system was replaced by a party list system or optional preferential voting (read „de facto first-past-the-post‟) which is what we have today in New South Wales. Now the Greens in co-operation with the government want to import the New South Wales optional preferential voting system into the Senate. But there are a couple of serious problems with this idea. The first is that the New South Wales quota of 4.45 per cent of the vote for an upper house seat does not transfer to the Senate (quota 14.3 per cent) in a way that allows a party like the Animal Justice Party for example to succeed at the federal level. The primary vote of 6 or 7 per cent which is the minimum required to have even a remote chance of federal success is a bridge too far for most independent and minor party candidates. The second problem with importing the New South Wales upper house voting system into the Senate is a political one which is why the Labor Party no longer supports the recommendations of the joint parliamentary committee into the conduct of the 2013 federal election. What Sussex Street is now apprised of is the harsh reality that in any three-cornered contest between the Greens, Labor and the Coalition for the last Senate seat in each of the six states there will be an inbuilt and unavoidable advantage to the Coalition of up to 4 per cent. Within two or three half Senate elections (or one full Senate or double dissolution election) the Coalition could be expected to control the Senate. Attempting to follow the modelling as to how the Coalition gets up to a 4 per cent advantage over Labor and the Greens in the proposed new Senate voting system in a three-cornered contest for the last seat in each state is difficult. But if the committee is interested, here are the figures as compiled by Graham Askey of the Renewable Energy Party. Let‟s assume a primary vote for the 3 Coalition is 53.26%, Labor is 37.64% and the Greens is 9.1%. After five Senators are elected, the remaining votes for the last seat produce the following results: Coalition 10.4%; Greens 9.1%; and Labor 9.08%. Then, assuming an exhaustion rate of 85% and a „leakage‟ of 7% of shown preferences after Labor is excluded, the result is: Coalition 10.4 + 0.1 (leakage) = 10.5% Greens 9.1 - 0.1 (leakage) + (0.15 x 9.08) = 10.36% So, the Labor/Greens combined total of 18.2% (which with the group voting ticket easily elects the sixth senator) does not get in front of the Coalition‟s 10.4%. That represents a swing to the Coalition of almost 4%, an outcome that could occur in any state. Traditionally, it has been the third Coalition candidate likely to lose any contest for the last place in a state‟s Senate (witness Helen Kroger in Victoria and Sally Chandler in Tasmania in 2013) due to a preponderance of minor parties. But if the voting system is changed as proposed it will be the Greens in the firing line – the party most at risk of missing out in a three-cornered contest for the last Senate seat in each state. For the Greens and Labor, competing against the Coalition on a level playing field in a Senate ballot will be possible if – and only if – they have their own coalition and field a joint party ticket just like the Liberal Party and the Nationals. This may be seen as a splendid prospect for the Greens because rusted on to Labor they get to share ministerial portfolios in a Labor government just as the Nationals do in a Coalition government. Without a joint party ticket or group voting ticket, however, the 85 per cent of electors who vote one-in-the-box above the line for Labor or the Greens may find their exhausted vote in the rubbish bin as it does not transfer to their second or third party or candidate of choice.
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