Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased that the shadow minister would vote for me on that basis. But, not to make a fun point out of this, if I were to score 200,000 votes in South Australia, that is about 50,000 spare for a quota. My 50,000 spare votes then go on to the next preference. But which 50,000 do you use? Which 50,000 votes go to the next preference, given that some people may have followed a below-the-line voting pattern? What that means, in effect, is that those votes that are passed on are devalued by a factor of about 75 per cent and averaged back over the candidates, and then they are deflected to the various options chosen by the voters. That is about as clear as mud, it must be said, but it just shows how complex this system is.

These reforms before us today do not actually address that individual issue, but they do address some of the complexities of voting for the upper house, and they do address some of the vagaries that have been brought to our notice by the last election. What that little story I told you about where the preferences go shows is just how important people's preferences are. Our system is designed so that our preferences will flow down so our vote is worth a value somewhere in the system. Yet so many people voting in the last election, and probably the last 20 before that, have very little idea where their preferences are going, so they might have voted for the Rowan Ramsey Left-Legged Party and, if I were an unsuccessful candidate, they have very little idea where that vote has gone, because Rowan Ramsey determined where that vote should go. And so it was the case with the last election. As I said before, we have these vagaries before but they were not occurring on a regular basis. Last election we had a fellow called Glenn Druery, the vote whisperer, who realised that if he could get all these groups together and if he could get them to deflect their votes to each other around this group then they could ensure that one of that group would become the lucky recipient, the last port of call, of all these votes—but they were not too sure who that person was. So they all threw their hats in the ring together in this lottery, if you like.

On the last New South Wales Senate ticket there were 110 candidates. While is it not the subject of this debate today, in the 2015 New South Wales Legislative Council vote there were 394 candidates—no wonder people vote above the line. We presume that most people can get to 394, but they are going to need a cut lunch, a waterbag and somewhere to sit down while they do it. Whether we originally intended people to vote above the line and whether that, in turn, has led to the proliferation of candidates, I am not sure but that is certainly where we are. And yet these people voting above the line have very little idea where their vote is going. In the last election Glenn Druery worked with the Shooters and Fishers Party, the Sex Party, the Multicultural Party and the Liberal Democrats; more than 30 small groups in fact. In Western Australia his most spectacular success was the Sports Party. They had a candidate elected to the Senate with 0.2 per cent of the vote—gee the Australian people knew what they were doing there, didn't they? You could assume that, apart from his family, hardly anyone knew they were voting for that particular candidate. As it turned out the Senate vote in Western Australia was disallowed because of some problems the Australian Electoral Commission had with some votes going missing and the Sports Party candidate was unsuccessful in the run-off.

The next one was the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, where Senator Ricky Muir was elected on 0.5 per cent of the vote. To me this clearly flies in the face of an intelligent and informed democracy. It was never envisaged that the system would be gamed in this way and for this purpose. I think the Australian people woke up with a hell of a shock after the 2013 election. They said, 'How did this happen. What is going on here?' The members of this place have heard loud and clear, and it has been expected right throughout the electorate, that before the next election we would do something about this so that it could not be done again. As I said earlier, these vagaries have thrown up a situation where we have had people elected on very slim votes before but the gaming of the system has almost ensured that the last place in every state will go to one of the minor parties, to someone with a very low vote. If you multiply that by six that gives you about 12 on average, and we did pretty close to that in the last election.

These reforms allow for an optional preferential voting system above the line. The great advantage of this is that the voters get to say where their preferences go. They will be encouraged to vote to six places, which should, with any kind of a fair system or any kind of average, make sure that their vote is counted—to make sure that their vote is exhausted, if you like. We will allow for people who do not elect to fill in those six spaces and so there is a savings measure that says that your vote will not be declared invalid if, in fact, you fill in only one or two spots above the line. But they should fill in the six spots, because it is important that their voice be heard. At the moment when they check '1' in the box their voice is being heard but they are not sure who it is being heard by or who that vote is being harvested by. Part of that is the abolition of group party voting tickets, meaning that we cannot do this any more and I think that would be a very great improvement.

The other thing I will touch on briefly in the time I have left is the use of party logos. There would not be many commentators in Australia—those people who watch politics with some interest—who believe Senator David Leyonhjelm would have been elected in the last election were not the name of his party and the name of the Liberal Party of Australia confused. Senator Leyonhjelm, I have heard, believes differently and he is entitled to that view. I think it was a bad mistake the day that the Australian Electoral Commission allowed his party to register that name, which sounds so much like the Liberal Party of Australia. But it is done. In recognition of this fact, in an effort to supply clarity to voters, this legislation proposes that parties can put their logo alongside their group voting ticket, or alongside their group of candidates—we do not have a group voting ticket as such—alongside their recommendations. I think no-one could be against that move. Anything that supplies clarity to the voters must be an improvement to the system.

With these reforms, already we have seen some sabre-rattling from the Senate suggesting we will get non-cooperation from some of those aggrieved parties who feel they will be disproportionately affected. But I say to them and I say to the Australian people: how could this place possibly be against their views being properly interpreted by the electoral system? How can we possibly support a system that was so clearly distorted at the last election? As I said, as I walked down the streets immediately after the last election and it became apparent that we had in the Senate a significant grouping of people we had never heard of before, people who were complete strangers to Australian public, complete strangers to the voters, and complete strangers to those who voted for them. I support this legislation. (Time expired)

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