David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016, as it makes the Senate voting system more transparent and restores the democratic principle of more votes delivering more representation in the Senate. The unrepresentative nature of the Senate voting system has needed addressing and sensible limited reform for some time. The gaming of preferences is encouraged and established by the multitude of microparties who have their microvotes counted literally hundreds of times in backroom preference deals registered with the Australian Electoral Commission. The member for Grayndler, who spoke previously, mentioned thresholds. This is not in this legislation, but our current system is broken, and this reform will improve transparency and restore the ability for voters to have an understanding of where their votes end up.

With the current system, in the last election, for instance, if you go to the AEC website and look at the votes, you can see what I mean. In the Senate voting in Victoria, two senators were elected with 0.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent of the quota, which for everyone else required 13.4 per cent. Literally one vote, according to the website, was changed and recounted, with endless preference deals, 285 times.

How can this be a reflection of voter intent? The whole system obscures and makes it near impossible for the voter to understand who the real recipient of his or her vote really is. In my own electorate of Lyne I held 10 surveys and sent a mail-out to all the voters asking for suggestions and advice on fixing our federation. Many people turned up at the forums and over 1,000 people replied to the survey. One of the most common things they spoke about was the Senate voting system. The voters in the Lyne electorate, particularly those who took the time to respond, are dismayed and frustrated by the appearance of senators who have seemingly microscopic primary votes yet have held the nation to ransom as a result of their lack of ability to make difficult decisions or their tendency to vacillate and change their minds and who have no structure or philosophy behind their political analysis.

It is not only people in the Lyne electorate who have looked at this. We have had two reports—an interim report and a final report—of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The inquiry unanimously recommended these changes of reducing the complexity and obscurity. In effect, that is the problem. The solution with this amendment bill is to introduce partial optional preferential voting above the line as well as including advice on the ballot paper to number from 1 to 6. Unless there are fewer people than six, obviously that will simplify things and make them very clear.

There is a savings provision in place, and by 'savings provision' I do not mean a monetary savings provision but provisions under the act to make sure that the voter's intention, if that does not occur, is still noted. So there will not be, as proposed by the member for Grayndler, and other commentators have also made an assertion that is not the case under these amendments, a lot of informal votes, because the savings provision will allow people who do not do the full 1 to 6 to have their voting intention recorded and a valid vote recorded. Most importantly, it also abolishes group and individual voting tickets. It does not stop the candidates from having their names clustered together on the ballot paper, but the voting tickets for individuals and groups have been abused time and time again. For instance, there were people at the inquiry who were asked about having pop-up and single-issue parties registered, with one officer being the representative for all these pop-up microparties. His comment was that he had set up five and that if he had had time he would have set up 20. The group voting tickets, with all the details of where the preferences go registered with the AEC but not apparent to the voter, mean that you can start voting for a microparty that advises one thing as their cause for existence, only to have your vote end up with a totally unrelated party in the end.

This legislation also amends a giant loophole. It will require one unique registered officer and one unique registered deputy officer for each party, so that one person cannot manipulate the scheme by having multiple puppet pop-up parties all heading preferences in the one direction. This vote harvesting is what really annoyed people in the Lyne Federation forums. They were quite clear. These are not complex electoral analysts; these are average people who have some insight into seeing that the system is being gamed.

The amendments in this bill will also help with the confusion and ambiguity that exists in some names of political parties that have surprisingly similar names. It will allow the logos of the parties to be adjacent to the name of the candidate. But there will also be control on the registering of the names on the logos, so that you cannot have knock-off brands and names appear on the ballot paper.

The member for Grayndler was disturbed that it might change the system so that a party or coalition of parties that has the most votes ends up with the most senators. I am flabbergasted by that comment because that is basically how I and most of Australia understands that democracy works, as opposed to the current complex and opaque system that has been worked out by preference whisperers and used to confuse the voter and get absolute microparties in a position to control Senate voting. This is not democracy.

The only people who will benefit from these amendments are the voters, and the party that will benefit the most is not necessarily the coalition. If the ALP has the most votes they will get the most senators. This will benefit the party with the most votes. There is scrutiny in this process. We have had commentators and electoral analysts look at this for years, particularly after the last vote, in 2013. We have had a standing committee to look at everything, and we have had unanimous recommendations. So I cannot see why, all of a sudden, after a unanimous recommendation from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the members from the other side are now objecting to the recommendations being enforced. In essence, this is a win for democracy and a win for the voters. I commend this bill to the House.

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