PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF

HAVING AN EFFECTIVE VOTE WOULD MAKE A GREAT DIFFERENCE Supplementary submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters following the election of July 2016 Proportional Representation Society of Australia December 2016 Summary 1 Not a representative House 2 Table 1: Two-party-preferred support for successful candidates 4 Table 2: Two-party-preferred support where seats won in or 5 Unjustifiable requirement that all preferences be marked 5 Improving the performance of the Australian Electoral Commission 7

Summary Voter engagement requires a belief that their efforts are worthwhile and might make a difference. Voters are well aware that most House of Representatives contests are determined once a dominant party’s preselection has been settled. Their instead having an effective vote in most circumstances would make a huge difference to the way that politics is presented to them and to the interest that they show in particular situations or campaigns. Nearly one-quarter of formal votes in the House of Representatives were not for Labor or candidates, compared with just over one-third in the Senate. Just over 3% of the House is drawn from those candidates compared with just over 26% of the Senate. One-third of MHRs, predominantly from the Coalition, were elected on first preferences alone. There were 17 instances where the final two candidates were not from Labor and the Coalition. The national division of 145 seats between the Coalition and Labor nearly followed the cube rule but relativities in the most populous states were more severely distorted by differences in the distribution of individual seat margins or overall two-party- preferred support. In particular, Coalition candidates dominated among the narrowest victors, Labor had a fairly uniform distribution of margins in its successful seats, and the Nationals mainly won by very large margins in New South Wales and Victoria. The final nature of the government’s majority was determined by the donkey vote in Herbert. Robson rotation should be introduced for the House of Representatives so that the conscious

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preference markings of voters in individual seats are never overridden by the luck of the draw for places on the paper. While House of Representatives informal under draconian requirements to indicate all preferences without omission or duplication was about 1.1% greater nationally than for the Senate, that gap was 2% or more in one-fifth of seats, quite a few of which changed hands or did not have the previous MHR standing again. A closer examination of these outliers as well as those seats where House informals were actually lower may offer useful insights into local factors and activity that had pronounced positive or negative effects. The Australian Electoral Commission should give greater priority to ensuring that training of casual polling officials equips them with confidence about accurately stating what constitutes a formal vote and marking off electors’ particulars as quickly as possible, especially when it is obvious queues are lengthening. Concerted efforts at quicker throughput should be made by polling supervisors when voters are waiting as long as half an hour. To assist in grounding analysis of internal and external factors contributing to delays, a record of the number of empty voting compartments should be made by each issuing officer who is handed a half- hourly post-it note by the elector who was recently at the end of the queue, The Joint Standing Committee should call for more details about the costs associated with identity checks and vetting of prospective senior casual polling officials, and any unintended consequences of the requirements to supply detailed documentation or the repeated automated phone calls made daily to those who had not yet submitted all of that material. Summary particulars of officials’ experience presented by the AEC appear implausible. Not a representative House In the House of Representatives, when 23.5% of first preferences were not for the Coalition or Labor in July 2016, candidates from other parties or independents won just five seats of 150 (3.3%) in the winner-take-all environment of single-member electorates, This compared with 20 seats out of 76 (26.3%) in an environment where 7.7% support guaranteed a place in any state, when 35.3% of Senate first preferences were not for the Coalition or Labor. Two of these seats were amongst Victoria’s thirty-seven (5.4%) when first-preference support other than for Labor or the Coalition was 22.7%. One of these seats was in each of (3.3%), (9.1%) and Tasmania (20%) where support for candidates endorsed by neither the Coalition nor Labor was noticeably higher, respectively at 25.9%, 33.4% and 26.7%. There were no such seats in New South Wales or where respectively 20.75% or 18.85% of first preferences were not for Labor or Coalition candidates, nor in either of the territories where such support stood at 21.15% and 26.4% respectively. Such high levels of dissatisfaction with the contenders for government cannot be successfully suppressed indefinitely by the winner-take-all operation of single-member electorates. There were seventeen seats in which either a Labor or Coalition candidate did not figure in final two-candidate calculations, on six occasions involving the Greens and four times the Nick Xenophon Team. If the trend of a weakening aggregate first-preference vote for Labor or the Coalition continues, there is a possibility of an eventual significant breakout driven by dissatisfaction in

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areas essentially too long taken for granted or the emergence of strong third forces that take many votes away locally from either one or both of the alternative governments. The emphasis on the need for localised support in the House of Representatives is also highlighted by the fact that the secured 10.2% of first preferences nationally and won a single seat, while the National Party won 7.5% of the vote in New South Wales and Victoria and emerged with ten seats out of eighty-four (11.4%) in those two states, nominating just seven unsuccessful candidates there compared with the Greens’ eighty-three. Independents obtained 2.8% first-preference support nationally and retained the two seats (1.3%) they held in the previous parliament. The Nick Xenophon Team achieved 21.2% of first preferences in South Australia but won just one of the eleven seats there. There is nothing fair to voters about current arrangements that leave one party or another dominant in regional blocs and the other without representation or sometimes even a credible local presence there. Quite often such areas continue to be taken for granted with little serious local policy debate or limited access to additional facilities in campaign promises unless a strong independent or third-force candidate emerges. All victories have the same effect irrespective of the margin. Just under one-third of all seats (48) were determined on first preferences, one-third of them being won by Labor candidates. Of the 145 seats won by Labor or the Coalition, forty-four have two-party-preferred support under 56% and sixty-five would require a swing of more than 10% to be lost to the alternative government. Disproportionate effort and largesse are poured into the small number of marginal electorates upon which government is expected to depend. Campaign attention and strategy are driven by assessments of whether there is a serious challenge or contest. Green inner-city hopes were dashed in New South Wales, and bolstered in Victoria although no further seats were won. All areas should have a serious contest of ideas and personalities. Much fewer than half the electorates fall into this category, especially in rural areas. National Party victories were huge except in Page and some Queensland seats. Voters in the ACT who experienced little federal activity concentrated mostly on the Senate contest found much more material in their letterboxes and extensive local candidate presence during the subsequent Hare-Clark election for the Legislative Assembly through five five- member electorates using the . The Coalition’s two-party-preferred majority in NSW did not translate into a seat majority there, while improvement in two-party-preferred support in Victoria for Labor was accompanied by the loss of one seat. A 4.6% swing against Liberal in South Australia did lead to a switch from a previous majority to a minority of seats. Winner-take-all propensities on display in Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and the territories where two-party- preferred support for one party or another was in each case above 54% ended up broadly determining the nature of the government that was formed. The overall national swing of 3.13% against the Coalition was comprised of swings of 1.62% in inner metropolitan electorates, 3.85% in outer metropolitan seats, 3.78% in provincial electorates and 4.07% in rural constituencies. While swings of 10% occurred in some new

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seats or where boundaries significantly changed, most seats that changed hands experienced swings of less than 6%. There were twenty-four seats with two-party-preferred anti-government swings of more than 6%: five had swings beyond 10%, including Kennedy and three changing hands; five seats changed hands after swings of between 6 and 10%. In eighteen seats there was a swing to the government, with Chisholm at 2.8% won from Labor, and Murray. where a National and Liberal were the last two continuing candidates, improving for it by just above 4%. There were ten such seats in Victoria, four in Queensland including the hard-fought seats of Petrie, Griffith and Brisbane, three in New South Wales including the marginal electorate of Reid, and Curtin in Western Australia. As shown in the table below, the Coalition had more narrow victories (20 of 33 with a margin of no more than 4%), especially in Queensland and NSW, and more seats beyond 60% two- party-preferred support (36 of 65): there were noticeable concentrations of its support in the ranges 50-54% and 58-62%. Labor had a much more even spread of winning support through to 70%, except for a spike in the range 58-60% and a trough at 64-66%. With the conditions for a normal distribution of margins not met, there is no particular reason to expect the 145 seats to break in the ratio of the cube of the two-party-preferred vote there: in fact the Coalition won one more seat than in accordance with that ratio, Table 1: Two-party-preferred support for successful candidates Two-party ALP Coalition Liberal LNP National 50-52 6 11 6 5 52-54 7 9 5 3 1 54-56 7 4 3 1 56-58 8 6 5 1 58-60 12 10 5 5 60-62 5 12 7 3 2 62-64 8 5 4 1 64-66 2 7 4 2 1 66-68 6 6 3 1 2 68-70 5 1 1 70-72 2 4 3 1 72-74 1 74-76 1 1

In New South Wales, twenty-eight of the forty-seven seats had winning two-party-preferred support of at least 60%: over two-thirds of the Coalition’s seats fell into this category compared with exactly half of Labor’s seats. These relatively higher Coalition margins were a significant factor in why its greater overall support did not translate into a majority of the seats in that state. Labor had five seats each requiring a swing of 8-10% or 12-14% to change hands. In Victoria, Labor improved its two-party-preferred support by 1.6% but lost the seat of Chisholm and did not gain any. Setting aside Indi and Melbourne, just under half of the remaining thirty-five seats had two-party-preferred support levels at 60% or more: ten of

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Labor’s eighteen seats fell into that category while just seven of the Coalition’s seventeen seats did. The other major two-party-preferred support distributional difference was that three Coalition victories fell into the 50-52% band whereas three of Labor’s would need swings of 4-6% to fall. These characteristics are set out in greater detail in the table below. Table 2: Two-party-preferred support where seats won in New South Wales or Victoria Two-party NSW VIC ALP Coalition ALP Coalition 50-52 1 3 3 52-54 3 1 1 1 54-56 1 1 3 1 56-58 2 3 3 58-60 5 2 1 2 60-62 1 4 2 62-64 5 2 2 2 64-66 1 3 1 66-68 2 5 3 68-70 2 2 1 70-72 2 2 1 72-74 1 74-76 1

In Queensland, Labor’s relatively poor showing in seats with narrow margins saw it win just eight of twenty-nine seats (setting aside Kennedy) whereas application of the cube rule would have seen it expect eleven: it won only three of the eleven seats where a swing of less than 4% would reverse the result. While Labor won the new seat of Burt in Western Australia and captured Cowan, its two- party-preferred support a little above 45% meant that a lopsided distribution of seats persisted there. The Coalition did not win any seats in Tasmania or the territories. Unjustifiable requirement that all preferences be marked Turnout was 1-2% less than in 2013 in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania, and fell by more than 2% in the other states and both territories. There were 994 House of Representatives candidates, an average of 6.6 per seat, ranging in the states from 5.4 in Western Australia through to 6.7 in New South Wales, 6.8 in Queensland and 7.0 in Victoria. There were just eleven electorates in which both a Liberal and a National Party candidate nominated, five of them in each of Western Australia and Victoria, and one in New South Wales. The national 0.86% reduction in informal voting to 5.05% was due primarily to reductions of 1.4% in each of New South Wales and Western Australia, to a state high and equal low of 6.2% and 4.0% respectively. There were sixty-three electorates with informal voting at 5% or more, seventeen in the range 6-7% and seventeen higher still. Nine of the eleven electorates with informal voting above

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8% were in New South Wales where the Wran government brought in optional preferential voting decades ago: the others were Murray and Longman. Four seats, three changing hands and two with the last two continuing candidates not being nominated by Labor and the Coalition, had an increase in informal votes of more than 2%. Thirteen seats had an increase of 1-2%, including four involving independents or a Green or One Nation candidate among the last two continuing candidates, five where the sitting member did not stand again and two that changed hands. Sixteen others had increases of 0- 1%. At the other end of the spectrum, twenty-four seats had decreases of at least 2%, fifteen of them in NSW (including the five highest nationally between 3.5% and 5%), four in Victoria, three in WA and two in Queensland. Currently, declining support for larger parties is masked by and marking of preferences which gives them a leg-up at the cost of a significantly higher rate of informal voting. Most votes set aside as informal that have a first preference indicated probably would not have been transferred in the course of the scrutiny. Each elector has a single transferable vote through which to indicate the order in which those nominated may be assisted. In many electorates, fewer than one-quarter of ballot papers will have to be transferred and yet all are checked and any without a complete numbering (one square is allowed to be left blank if the others have been numbered sequentially) rejected as informal. It is perverse for a vote to be discarded when otherwise it would not have moved beyond the first preference indicated. The Joint Standing Committee should establish what proportion of informal votes with numbering fall into this category. That understanding may lead to a recommendation that voters’ wishes be respected as much as is possible in these winner-take-all circumstances, instead of so often being arbitrarily rejected on spurious grounds at the outset. In particular, further preferences were sought on the ballot papers of just under 172,000 Labor voters in twelve electorates where first-preference support ranged between 7.0% and 24.5%, and just over 90,000 Liberal voters in five electorates where first-preference support ranged from 18.6% to 23.3%, because the last two continuing candidates were from other parties or independents. There were 72,000 National supporters in ten electorates, including all five contested in Western Australia, where the Liberal contestant was among the last two continuing candidates. Large gaps between House and Senate informals, compared with the national average of 1.1%, were found in around two dozen electorates, some of which changed hands or did not have the sitting member renominating. Closer study of outlier electorates at both the low and high ends might enable the Australian Electoral Commission to draw lessons about making future publicity more effective. There were thirty-two electorates where the House of Representatives informals were at least 2% greater than those for the Senate, namely Gippsland, La Trobe, Indi, Dunkley, Batman, Murray, Boothby, Blair, Maranoa, Fairfax, Fisher, Herbert, Flynn, Leichhardt, Longman, North Sydney, Fowler, Blaxland, Watson, Eden-Monaro, Wentworth, Greenway. Macquarie,

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New England, Sydney, Warringah, Hunter, Grayndler, Parramatta, Lindsay, Solomon and Lingiari. House of Representatives informals were lower than those for the Senate in Richmond, Page, Denison and the following nineteen Victorian seats: Wannon, Gellibrand, Hotham, Isaacs, Mallee, Maribyrnong, Jagajaga, Gorton, Chisholm, Deakin, Flinders, Calwell, Goldstein, Kooyong, Aston, Scullin, Casey, Bruce and Holt. The tightest seat was Herbert, going to a recount, and with its final declared margin of thirty- seven votes, the exact nature of the government’s majority was established. In retrospect, it was determined by the luck of the draw for places on the ballot-paper as the Labor candidate appeared higher and therefore benefited from the donkey vote. It is cruel to expose hard- working MPs to such potential capricious effects. Robson rotation should be introduced to ensure that even in winner-take-all situations the conscious preference markings of a majority of electors are not overridden by the fortune associated with the order in which names are set out on the ballot paper. Improving the performance of the Australian Electoral Commission Our earlier submission focused on the Australian Electoral Commission’s missed opportunity to encourage voters to mark as many preferences as possible in pursuit of a fully effective Senate vote. Its media advertising focused in such a misleading manner on the ballot-paper instructions that in some states extensive publicity ensued about the savings provisions and the Commission was made to look evasive when direct questions about what constitutes a formal Senate vote were put to its representatives. These false steps would not occur if the Commission made its focus the interests of voters, a by-product of which would be fewer informal votes as more electors understood the mechanics of preferential voting and engaged with their particular electoral contests: nevertheless compulsory attendance means that we cannot realistically aspire to the very low levels of deliberately-spoilt or blank ballot papers experienced in many other countries with much lower purely voluntary turnouts. Members of the Society’s branches reported a range of experience when being issued with their ballot papers. Some were given helpful instructions about marking at least six party boxes or twelve individual candidates’ names to make the most of their Senate vote and an accurate statement that all preferences were required for a formal House of Representatives vote. Others were falsely told that only six party boxes or twelve candidates’ names were necessary in the Senate, or that a single preference was enough in the House of Representatives. Instead of attempting to rely on some narrow or selective interpretation of a maze of formality provisions and coming a cropper because of poor choice of language in its advertising, the Commission should proudly set its goal as informing electors about how to make the most of their vote and dare to be helpful in that regard under its general legislated power (“to promote public awareness of electoral and Parliamentary matters by means of the conduct of education and information programs and by other means”) of seeking to contribute to having an informed electorate. The parliament would make this task easier by deciding that far more votes should be counted as formal where a clear first preference has been indicated.

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While polling officials were in many cases enthusiastic, in some they were clearly out of their depth and had not been trained properly. It is insufficient to hope that a hurried briefing in the thirty minutes before polling places open will engender the energetic confidence that is necessary for success. Messages about what constitutes a formal vote and how voters can make the most of their opportunity should be accurately conveyed to officials in earlier on- line and/or face-to-face training. Handy hints about how to make the issuing of ballot papers an enjoyable process that is carried out efficiently should also not be left to the last minute or perhaps not even brought to officials’ attention: for instance, there are ways of systematically edging a paper-based roll towards the right surname to be marked off from the moment each new elector is greeted; blank sheets of paper should also be available in case, in the absence of photographic identification that some electors flourish, it is easiest for someone to write down a family name rather than try to articulate individual letters in a language that wasn’t their first. Officials should be challenged to seek to issue ballot papers as quickly as possible in a way that has voters smiling. Supervisors should not stand by haplessly as queues lengthen. Their instructions must include the need to inculcate confidence about best practice in their casual staff, and the importance of opening up at least an additional issuing point if there appears to be a slowing in voter flow or a sudden increase in time spent queuing. People who are elderly or infirm should be brought to the front of the queue or offered a seat as a matter of course. Supervisors should be confident about which insignia can be worn inside the by particular groups of individuals and for how long anyone voting can remain after marking his or her ballot papers. In the Australian Capital Territory in October much simpler instructions were conveyed to voters in circumstances where there are no party boxes, the ballot paper asks for at least as many preferences as there are vacancies, and a single first preference is enough for a formal vote. Voters’ names were marked off the roll much more quickly on hand-held electronic devices which greatly narrowed the possibilities once three letters each of the family and given name were entered, and that information was immediately conveyed to all polling places throughout the territory over a secure network, making undetected multiple-voting attempts impossible. Members of the public are generally not aware that at federal elections on the hour and half- hour the person at the end of any queue at a polling place is issued with a post-it note for presentation to their issuing official so that the waiting time at that part of the day can be recorded. Supervisors should be told to make concerted special efforts to ease congestion once the waiting time gets as long as thirty minutes: summary statistics on the period for which people were waiting longer than half an hour should be made public shortly after an election so that inevitable anecdotal evidence about the extent of queuing at particular booths can be placed into broader regional and national context. Issuing officials should also record how many voting compartments are not occupied at the time they are handed the waiting-time slip by a person who was recently at the end of the queue. That additional information would make it easier to disentangle internal and external factors contributing to any lengthening of queues at particular polling places and make it possible to devise better national and regional strategies to make voters’ experience better.

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While the submission of the Australian Electoral Commission indicated that 66 potential senior casual staff were ruled out on character grounds after vetting through police and other checks, no costs were given for that exercise for which an external provider was contracted, or how many potential staff fell by the wayside because of the comprehensive documentation and disclosure required, especially from those who have moved regularly in recent years or do not have photographic identification. Disturbingly, part of the service provided appeared to be a daily series of automated calls drawing someone’s attention to the fact that not all documentation had yet been submitted: it seems these continued at least once hourly, without any consideration of the hours at which such phone calls would be acceptable at a particular residence, for instance where there were shift workers or someone was ill, until the receiver was lifted and part of the call was listened to. It is not clear whether intrusive phone calls were specifically signed off on by senior Commission personnel or just form part of the usual service provided by Veda. The Joint Standing Committee would do well to obtain more detailed information on the contractual arrangements and the costs and attrition experienced, especially if this activity had any discernible effect on loss of long-term polling-day staff in some areas: it should also establish what modifications to this year’s procedures are expected for the next general election if a similar exercise is to be carried out again. The high overall levels of new polling staff in 2016 (just over half) and low levels of officials with more than one federal election’s experience (less than 10%) presented in the Commission’s submission seem implausible and should be investigated further by the Committee until those proportions appear to align with experienced reality. Although there are aspects of the Australian Electoral Commission’s performance that can do with significant improvement, it is also important to acknowledge the quality of its solution to the significant challenge of having to enter the particulars of each Senate ballot’s numbering individually rather than just those instances where voting was below the line. This was a major undertaking that had to be organised in a short period of time, although the experience of Elections ACT had led some to optimism about what could most likely be achieved in larger jurisdictions through scanning. A notable post-election feature was the gradual reduction in the numbers of Senate ballot papers being reported on the Commission’s website as informal as those that had been set aside as uncertain or in need of manual processing because not all numbers were within squares that would be scanned were processed and committed to the electronic database. The Society suggests that this website information include a note that rates of informal voting can be expected to diminish as ballot papers are processed in order to be part of an automated count to determine the successful candidates, Similarly when reporting percentage counted which uses enrolment numbers as the base, there should be a note indicating that the turnout was considerably short of 100%. Availability on the Australian Electoral Commission’s website of sample ballot papers for electors’ preparation would make things easier for thoughtful voters and lead to them spending less time in voting compartments because they could easily copy the House of Representatives and Senate numbers upon which they had previously decided on various grounds. That could help reduce the extent of queues in numerous electorates, just as could

9 be expected from a simplification and decluttering of the Senate ballot paper by removing party boxes. Consideration may need to be given to making voting compartments wider if large numbers of nominating groups persist in an environment where it is clear that quotas of nearly 14.3% in particular can no longer be fluked through the operation of group voting tickets. There are however grounds for expecting this consequence of the Senate voting changes of 2016 to become more widely known and for there to be some consolidation of parties emphasising particular types of similar policies.

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