Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our country was formed through consensus and was built by the ballot, by the free ability of Australians to vote in favour of our federation. We created a federation that honours both the democratic right and also the importance of the ballot process. How we vote and that we vote are critically important, and that our voting process is fair and transparent is essentially taken as a part of that.

My view on electoral matters of the ballot and on the essential nature of a vote have been known to this place for many years. The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016 deals with Senate reform, changing the way in which we vote for the Senate. I have written about it, I have spoken about it, I voted for it and here I am again today speaking in favour of Senate reform.

Why do we need Senate reform? It is very simple. I have here documents which I will table that are actually Senate ballot papers on the first occasion from the state of Queensland and on the second from the state of Victoria. As you can see, Deputy Speaker Mitchell, they are unwieldy and massive, but in New South Wales these ballot papers have become so big, so complex and so cluttered that in fact we need a magnifying lens to see and to read the names of candidates put forward for election. It is self-evidently the case that our parliament needs to act on electoral reform. It is self-evidently the case that our parliament needs to act to make sure that our voting system is transparent, effective and understood and that the voting process itself is a process where the voter is empowered to deliver a vote to the person that they wish to elect. The system needs to be fixed. Fixing the Senate voting system is as important as one vote, one value. It is as important as the franchise itself.

Senators are elected for long terms and they represent whole states and territories. Their election is guided by principles enunciated in the Constitution. Section 7 of the Constitution demands that our senators be chosen directly by the people, so Senate reform is about upholding the integrity of the Constitution.

For the Senate voters can cast their votes in one of two ways. They can vote above the line by putting a No. 1 in the box of the party or group of their choice. Preferences are then distributed through a voting ticket registered by parties at the Australian Electoral Commission. Alternatively, under current laws votes can be cast below the line by numbering every square on the ballot paper in order of preference. This bill does not fundamentally change that. Few voters choose the second option of voting below the line. It is more complex, and an error can void the whole ballot paper under the current rules. Consequently, 96.5 per cent of all voters in 2013 voted above the line in the Senate. This bill actually makes that process safer by having a better threshold for formality. This bill amends the current Electoral Act, which was first introduced over 30 years ago to reduce informal voting. Unfortunately, that system of ticket voting is now being manipulated and has begun to create unintended outcomes. The report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters makes this clear.

In the last few years, at both state and federal level, pop-up parties designed to attract small numbers of primary votes have manipulated the system through preference harvesting and vote transfers to produce end results that do not reflect the wishes of voters. This is not to cast aspersions on the integrity or capacity of the current independent and minor party senators. While I may not always agree with their positions, it is clear that they are each engaging diligently in the process of policy, discussion and debate, and each of them has been properly elected under the current rules.

My view is that the current rules do need to be changed; the Labor Party's view is that those rules do need to be changed. A fundamental principle of voting systems is that a voter should actually intend to vote for the candidate or party with whom their vote finally rests. Because of the ability to manipulate the current system, the present Senate voting process now fails this test.

The federal parliament’s independent Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, of which I have been a member, found that many microparties are manipulating the system to harvest and direct preferences to each other. The result is that hundreds of thousands of votes cascade to parties that the voter would not deliberately have chosen to vote for. The current Senate electoral process allowed a candidate with only 0.51 per cent of the formal votes to get elected ahead of a candidate with 11.56 per cent of the votes. This was an actual result in the 2013 Senate election where a Senate seat was won and lost with just this primary vote. The winning party received only 17,122 of the 3,499,438 votes cast. Liberal Senator Helen Kroger received 389,745 votes and failed to get elected over a candidate who was in receipt of just over 17,000 votes.

If the 2013 Western Australian Senate result had been upheld, the Sports Party, on 2,974 votes, would have defeated Labor Senator Louise Pratt on 160,141 votes. Fortunately, there is a clear—and the joint standing committee's view was unanimous—way out of the current dysfunctional mess. In May 2014, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in a unanimous and multiparty report recommended that: the system of registering political parties be rigorous; group voting tickets be abolished; and a new system of optional preferential voting be introduced. These recommendations would see the power to allocate preferences given back to voters and stop opaque preference swaps between parties. More specifically, under the recommended optional preferential voting system, voters would be able to expressly preference parties or candidate groups above the line rather than having their preferences distributed for them under a registered group voting ticket. So those reforms are important.

The changes recommended by the report received strong support last year. Antony Green, the respected ABC commentator, supported them, because they significantly strengthen our democratic process and restore transparency. These changes that are proposed in the joint standing committee report, a version of which are being implemented in this bill, are important—and Labor remains committed to electoral reform. These reforms are not intended to stifle or prevent the formation of new parties. These reforms simply mean that political parties, including my own, will have to convince the public rather than backroom dealmakers that they deserve their votes.

There have been many pieces of misinformation spread about the bill that is currently being debated. Some have said that this bill will deliver the coalition a 38- or 39-member controlling majority in the Senate. I will also table another document, which is modelling carried out by the Parliamentary Library on this bill. It conclusively demonstrates the result under this bill.

None of us can predict the outcome of future elections, but this modelling is based on the current bill and was carried out by the Parliamentary Library. We have been told that this bill will increase informality. Informality is a scourge and the better the lower threshold for formality that is in fact enshrined in this bill is a good measure. It allows in the below-the-line voting a better savings provision; and above the line, it also allows a better savings provision.

We are told that three million-plus voters will be disenfranchised by this bill. We are told that their votes will be wasted or voided. I do not agree with that any more than I would think that a person who voted Liberal in the seat of Brand had wasted their vote. I wish they had voted Labor but, because they voted Liberal and voted for a losing candidate, they did not waste their vote. Their vote was not voided; their vote was not wasted.

Votes count, and I am astonished by the kind of dumb view that if you vote for someone who loses then your vote is wasted, which has taken some hold during this discussion. We are told that, if you do not vote in all six above-the-line boxes, the vote is informal. We are told that 800,000 votes could be informalised as a consequence of this bill. It is simply nonsense.

The vote-saving provisions in this bill are actually better than those that are currently in place in the Senate. Vote saving is important, and I would like to see the current vote-saving principle that is enshrined in this bill extended to the House of Representatives, where informal voting in New South Wales and Queensland has become a substantial issue. We need to grapple with the issue of vote saving in the House of Representatives as it has been grappled with in the Senate on this occasion.

I lost the argument in my party room on Senate reform, so Labor will oppose the substantive reforms that are enshrined in this bill. I think that is sad, but it is a reality. My party has moved that it will be opposing this bill and therefore I oppose this bill. We will seek to amend this bill or move future amendments to implement key elements of Labor's longstanding policy to enhance transparency and accountability in relation to political donations. These amendments would enact key elements of the reforms proposed by the previous Labor government in the Commonwealth Electoral Amendments (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008. Labor was unable to proceed with this legislation as it was blocked by the coalition and the crossbench in the Senate.

The main objects of that bill were to reduce the donations threshold under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 from the current, in the order of $13,000, down to $1,000, not indexed—by prohibiting foreign donations to registered political parties, candidates and members of Senate groups, preventing the use of foreign donations for political expenditure; prohibiting anonymous donations of over $50 to registered political parties and candidates and by limiting the potential for donations splitting with the intention of evading disclosure requirements.

We will also move amendments to link public electoral funding to genuine electoral expenditure, to prevent pretenders from standing as candidates in an election purely for the purpose of gaining a windfall from public funding. We will extend the range of electoral expenditure that can be claimed and prevent existing members of parliament from claiming electoral expenditure that has been met from their parliamentary entitlements. We will introduce an accelerated disclosure framework in place of the current annual returns system and introduce new offences for noncompliance, and increasing penalties for a range of currently existing offences.

For Labor, the issue of Senate reform is an issue for the future. The issue of Senate reform remains important. It remains important for our parliament. It remains important for the Senate. It remains critically important to the people of Australia. In speaking to this bill, I represent the position of my party. In speaking to this bill, I speak frankly to the House in that I lost the internal debate to meet the government and to negotiate a better bill. I think we could have had a better bill. I think if this bill reflected 100 per cent the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters it would be a better bill. But it still would not have won the support of my party.

Senate reform remains an issue for the future. It remains a vital issue for our nation, a nation that was built on the sanctity of the ballot and on the integrity of the ballot. We, as parliamentarians, need to keep that central fact in mind and the principle in mind that how an elector marks their ballot paper is how that ballot paper should be counted. The counting of a ballot paper should reflect the intention of the voter and not the desires of ballot manipulators.

The Labor Party will be opposing this bill.

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016. This important bill acts to address significant public concerns about the Senate voting system in the aftermath of the 2013 federal election. I agree very much with the member for Brand that it is self-evident that parliament needs to act on electoral reform—in part, to uphold the integrity of the Constitution. I am sorry that he lost the vote in the Labor caucus on this matter. I am sorry because most Australians saw the practices revealed at the last election as scandalous. They saw elaborate preference harvesting, shady deals and the establishment of multiple entities to share those preferences. Antony Green, commenting on a report in The Australian Financial Review earlier this month, said:

A cottage industry has built up of preference whisperers offering advice to 'micro' parties on how to make the system work to their advantage.

The strategy these so-called preference whisperers use is illuminated by this typical media quote:

That advice was to stand as many candidates and parties as possible, and to insure that micro-parties preference each other first ahead of all larger parties. To have a hope of election, the advice is for micro-parties to ignore ideology and political affinity and instead think entirely strategically, to make the system a lottery where by using group ticket votes to aggregate micro-party votes together, one of the parties might draw the lucky ticket and win.

By way of example, a Victorian Senate candidate became a senator in this parliament despite receiving around one half of one percent of Victorians' first preferences. The required 14.29 per cent quota was reached via complex preference-harvesting deals involving a dozen other entities via group ticket votes.

This is not what the vast majority of Australians expect democracy to be, and it is clear from the many comments expressed to me that it shook public confidence in the integrity of our Senate voting system. So great were public concerns that this matter was referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters following the 2013 election. The committee made a range of unanimous recommendations to improve the Senate voting system. At the time, I congratulated the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, now the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Labor's deputy chair for a welcome outbreak of common sense.

At the time, Labor's deputy chair of the committee, the member for Bruce, said this about the committee's recommendations during a press conference on Friday, 9 May 2014: 'This is a positive step forward to take into account what occurred at the recent Senate election: a set of problems which are very much unique to the particular facets of the Senate voting system as it currently stands, and deal with those particular issues. The consensus on the committee pretty much represented the consensus overwhelmingly on the submissions that were received. We think they're the sorts of steps that government should be considering very seriously to actually ensure that the sorts of events that occurred in the Senate election of September 2013 don't happen again.' And I say 'hear, hear' to those words of impeccable wisdom from the member for Bruce, who embraced the committee's key conclusion that retaining the current Senate voting system was not an option.

Recommendations on Senate voting reform were made by the committee to guide the legislative change process, including a recommendation to abolish the current system of Senate voting above the line, and its reliance on group voting tickets. Instead, the committee called for a replacement system that puts the power of preferencing back in the hands of the voter, via an optional preferential voting system, where it is the voter who decides whether to preference and how many parties or candidates to preference.

The member for Brand illuminated how, under the current system, almost 97 per cent of voters at the last election voted '1' above the line.    But, at that point, they lost control of their preferences. Parties then, through insufficiently transparent group and individual voting ticket arrangements, direct what happens to the voter's preferences. It is incumbent on us to respect the voter's right to choose, to ensure that it is the voter, not the shady backroom operator, who determines where their preferences go—not just their first preference but also their second, third and subsequent preferences.

The committee also expressed the unanimous view that party registration rules needed to be enhanced to ensure that parties are real and genuine, rather than vehicles for electoral manipulation. It is worth noting that the committee received over 200 submissions and extensive evidence from many parties during its inquiry. Since the committee handed down its report, the government has carefully considered those recommendations and consulted widely. On Monday, based on the outcome of those consultations, the government put a proposal to the parliament designed to implement the committee's recommendations about voter empowerment and improving the transparency of Senate voting arrangements.

Key aspects of the government's proposal were as follows: the introduction of optional preferential voting above the line, with advice to the voter on the ballot paper to vote above the line by numbering at least six of the boxes in the order of the voter's choice; second, the introduction of a related provision to ensure that a ballot is still formal where the voter has numbered one or fewer than six boxes above the line; third, in relation to voting below the line—and, as I said, a very small proportion of the Australian public do that—a proposal was put into the legislation to reduce the number of informal votes by increasing the number of allowable mistakes from three to five, as long as 90 per cent of the ballot paper below the line is filled in correctly; fourth, the abolition of group and individual voting tickets; fifth, the introduction of a restriction to prevent individuals holding relevant official positions in multiple parties; sixth, to reduce voter confusion between parties with similar party names, a proposal to allow political parties, at their discretion, to have their logo included on the ballot paper.

Yet despite the Labor Party's unanimous endorsement of many of these measures in committee, through the member for Bruce, and publicly, through the member for Brand—including in his very good speech just prior to mine—Labor is now opposing them, for rank political reasons. It is not only false but nonsensical to say, as a number of Labor members have asserted in the last 48 hours, that these changes will lead to 800,000 additional informal votes. That is because there is a specific provision in the legislation to ensure that any voter who numbers just one box above the line, for example, will still have their vote counted. So Australians will be very surprised at the news that Labor will be voting against the proposed overhaul of Senate voting.

I note media reports yesterday that there were those in the Labor caucus who warned against delaying this long-overdue action, and I respect the member for Brand for being one of those active voices in the Labor caucus, because he and the other members that spoke against the Labor position know how poorly this change in sentiment will be seen by the Australian people.

For those calling for more inquiry, more delay, more talk, I would direct them to the comprehensive inquiry undertaken by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, with Labor members unanimously endorsing the committee's recommendations. I would refer them to the well-established precedent of above-the-line optional preferential voting in New South Wales, where it has worked very well since being introduced in the aftermath of the scandalous 'tablecloth' ballot paper of 1999, which the member for Brand brought into this chamber and highlighted in his speech. That change in New South Wales has not decimated small parties, with the Christian Democrats and others still in parliament. What it achieved in New South Wales was to more accurately reflect the people's will. And why shouldn't we elevate the people's will, in a democracy, to decide where their preferences are directed and when they exhaust? Constitutional law professor George Williams, whom members opposite are often fond of quoting, has reflected negatively on the current system in media comments recently, saying:

… in the current system … you cast a vote and you don't even know who it is.

There is of course an urgent imperative for these changes, given that the next general election is due in the second half of this year. Given the lead times involved in implementing these changes, this is the appropriate time to pursue them. It is necessary to give the Australian Electoral Commission sufficient time to adjust their processes, or we risk another general election where the system and the Senate result are disproportionally influenced by those shady backroom operators and their shady preference deals.

Let us implement these reforms and empower voters to clearly express their preferences above and, should they choose, below the line. I think it is fair to say that there is coalescence across the political divide around the need for Senate voting reform. A bipartisan report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters proves exactly that. Let us not fall at this legislative hurdle and impose the same flawed system on the Australian people at the 2016 election.

What this bill proposes is laudable. It reduces the complexity of the Senate voting system, by providing for partial optional preferential voting above the line, including the introduction of advice on the Senate ballot paper that voters number, in order of preference, at least six squares. As I said earlier, this bill provides appropriate provisions to capture voter intent and reduce the risk of increased vote informality. It improves transparency around the allocation of preferences in a Senate election, by abolishing group and individual voting tickets, noting that this does not change other provisions relating to candidates nominating to be grouped on the Senate ballot paper. The bill introduces a restriction that there be a unique registered officer and deputy registered officer for a federally registered party. And it reduces the sort of confusion we saw the 2013 election, around political parties with similar names, by allowing party logos to be printed on ballot papers for both the House of Representatives and the Senate. What these changes do is end party control over preferences between parties. If this legislation is enacted, and I hope that it is, the only way a vote can transfer between parties or groups is if the voter decides that is their preference.

I plead with those opposite to elevate the will of the individual voter in our system above the shady backroom operators, to say to the voters of Australia, 'We will put your needs and your will above all other matters.' Australians should be entitled to that right. To expect that when they vote for the Senate the outcomes will reflect faithfully what each and every voter intends as they exercise their democratic choice. As the member for Brand so beautifully said, 'It is self-evident that parliament needs to act on electoral reform, in part, to uphold the integrity of the Constitution.' On that basis, I strongly commend this bill to the House.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016. One of the questions that I am most often asked as it gets closer to election day is, 'If I vote for you, or if I vote for another party, where do my preferences go?' They are usually not questions about policy or questions about where you stand on a particular thing. It is a question about, 'If I vote for you, and I place a mark on a ballot paper, where do my preferences go?' People are right to be asking that question and to be concerned about it because what we have seen in the past is—and I am talking less about the current Senate than we have seen in various instances in the past—parties get elected on the basis of preferences even though that party's initial vote was very low. That has caused people in Australia, in my electorate of Melbourne, to be quite surprised and, therefore, quite concerned about whether, when they voted, they played some unwitting part in getting someone else elected on the basis of preferences.

What I like to tell people is, 'You, the voter, are in control of your own preferences.' It is a little understood fact—and there is often misinformation spread by people who do not want to educate voters about it—that voters are in control of their own preferences. When you are voting in the lower house it is very easy to say to people, 'We'll hand out a how-to-vote card,' but, at the end of the day, it is up to you how you want to number preferences in that box. It's up to you. Vote 1 for whoever you like and, as long as you number the other boxes, you can order them in whatever preference you want. Parties do not control your preferences in the lower house, you do.' For many people that is often a revelation and a reassurance.

The difficulty has been that we have not always been able to say that when it comes to the Senate. We have not been able to say that when it comes to the Senate because if you vote 1 above the line in the Senate—and the Senate is a place where there are lots of individuals and parties who run—you do not get to allocate where your preferences go. They get allocated by the party. Your only alternative is to number all the boxes below the line, which, for many people, is a quite a task when you consider the very large size of the Senate ballot paper and the number of people who run.

What should happen is that the same principle that applies in the lower house—that the voter is in control of their preferences—should apply in the Senate as well and that is the principle behind this reform. It is a reform that was supported by all parties on the joint standing committee, including Labor, because it is a sensible reform and it puts power back in the hands of the voters. It gives the voters in the Senate the same power that they have currently in the lower house. In my mind, anything that gives voters more power over where their vote goes is a good thing.

In supporting this reform it is worth noting that this is a reform that has been pursued, for some time, by Greens predecessors. There were two bills introduced by our former leader Senator Bob Brown. It is often said, 'Sometimes the Greens have benefited from this and so what are you doing now?' It is worth remembering that Bob Brown for many years campaigned for this reform. He campaigned, from the Senate, from a position of having only one or two senators there. He said, 'We've got to do this because we have to give power back to the voters, so that preferences are allocated the way the voter wants them to be rather than according to some deal.' This is something that we have been advancing regardless of what it might mean for us, or other parties, but as a matter of principle.

As a matter of principle it is right that voters have power over where their preferences go. It is for that reason that when this first was looked at everyone supported it. It is disappointing that some people have now walked away from it, but you cannot walk away from the basic principle. As I said, the principle I tell voters in the lead-up to the election and on election day is, 'Only you are in control of your vote. You are in control of where your preferences go.' That is now something we will be able to say about the Senate as well as about the House.

When people step back from the hurly-burly they will be pleased about the principle behind this reform because they will be able to be confident now knowing that when they go in to mark their Senate ballot paper—they might have to mark a few more numbers above the line, but that is what you have to do in the House of Representatives and now you just do it in the Senate as well—they will be absolutely confident that their preferences have gone where they want them to go. For that reason, it is a reform that did enjoy the support of everyone and should still enjoy the support of everyone.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to obviously support the government's position in relation to this important bill, the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016. As the minister has pointed out, it is necessary that people across electorates, including my electorate of Dickson, are given the opportunity to direct their vote in the way that they want. It is a complicated process in this country in terms of voting in the upper house, but it is a very important process and people want to know that they have the ability to know where their vote is going. There has been a lot of concern in Queensland, in particular, with the rise of Clive Palmer and the influence he has had over a number of senators—which has, of course, fallen away quite dramatically in recent months. It does concern voters in my electorate. In fact, on many occasions people have raised this concern with me and that is why I have strongly supported the work of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and note the recommendations of the committee.

I also pay tribute to Gary Gray. As he said, he was rolled by his own caucus on this but nonetheless he still provided support over a long period of time for significant and sensible change. On that basis I strongly support the bill before the House and I hope that at some point the Labor Party will see beyond their own political point-scoring in this matter and come together with the government, because a very significant effort is required to clean up this system and that is what the government is proposing here.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this critical debate on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016, which has been rushed through the parliament and which will change the makeup of future parliaments for years and potentially decades ahead. There has been a dirty deal between the Greens political party and the Liberals to rush through legislation without any proper scrutiny. I note that the Greens' deputy leader, the member for Melbourne, could not get through 15 minutes speaking on this legislation in defence of this deal and sat down after less than five minutes. That is a pathetic attempt, and I am not surprised that the member for Melbourne is not keen to have scrutiny of what exactly is going on here.

Let us be clear: this legislation does not relate to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters—which undertook a process in public, which looked at submissions, which considered evidence and then came down with recommendations. This legislation is a direct result of a very different process: a process whereby the Liberal Party and the Greens political party have come to a deal behind closed doors with absolutely no scrutiny whatsoever. This legislation was introduced into the parliament on Monday, after an emergency caucus meeting of the coalition on Monday morning. It was introduced into the parliament, debated in the same week and carried in the same week.

As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I was leader of this House for six years. The process for ordinary legislation is that you introduce legislation on the Wednesday or the Thursday, it lays on the table to enable proper scrutiny to occur, the parties have their meetings the following week, and then debate usually commences in the sitting week after that. You then have appropriate Senate committee processes and examination of legislation to make sure that there are not unintended consequences of legislation, even beyond the ideological differences that might be represented in this chamber, to make sure that it is right. But what we have here is an abuse of process. What we have here is legislation that has not been subject to any proper scrutiny. It is legislation that is a fix to advantage the Greens political party and the coalition. It is a fix in which the Greens show themselves to be complete hypocrites when it comes to democratic processes. This is the political party that is very interested in having long, drawn out processes, Senate committees and public meetings. There was none of that with this legislation, and it is legislation that will change the very make-up of the parliament, particularly the Senate of Australia.

In Australia's political system, the coalition tend to have the highest primary vote in terms of any of the parties because they combine the Liberal and National parties in terms of the Senate tickets. This legislation—on the cursory examination that has been possible in the last two days—is likely to ensure, more times than not, 38 votes over a period of time for the coalition in the Senate. The Greens say that they object to the privatisation of Medicare, the privatisation of our education system, the failure to fund public transport and the failure to have proper processes with regard to foreign policy, but the Greens are assisting a process that will advantage the coalition because of short-term opportunistic means.

When you are dealing with something as important as Senate reform, you need to make sure that you get it right. I do not support the gaming of the system with regard to Senate preferences, but there are a range of ways in which you could deal with this. One is that you could make sure that there is a threshold beyond which you could be elected. That is just one that has been suggested and I believe is worthy of support. Of course, it is a problem if people get elected with less than one per cent of the vote. We acknowledge that and we support change to ensure that that does not happen. But what we do not support is going down the road of the optional preferential system, which this would provide in terms of the Senate. What we do not support is having reform which will see an increase in the informalities of ballots cast in the Senate.

For a political party that does not try to appeal to working people and does not try to engage with anyone except for the elites that might be okay. But the truth is if you have a look at the sorts of levels that occur for informal votes, which you can see from the figures in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, they tend to be, by and large, in Labor held seats. We want to make sure that everyone is given the franchise, that everyone's vote is counted. This will see massive amounts of votes excluded both through the informality process and through the exhaustion process.

In terms of the solutions to it, you cannot solve a political problem with a political fix, and that is what this is. If we are going to be honest with ourselves as the major parties, the political problem is that, increasingly in recent times, more and more Australians have chosen to give their votes to smaller parties—microparties, as they are called. That is a challenge for the Labor Party and for the coalition. It is a challenge for us to reach out to people and make sure we secure their support, not to introduce legislation that seeks to exclude people's right to do that. Effectively, that is what this legislation does and that is what I am very concerned about: any process that will reduce participation in our political system. That is precisely what this legislation will do.

The hypocrisy of this. The Greens spokesperson on these matters is, of course, Senator Lee Rhiannon, who goes on about participation and democratic processes. Let us have a look at what the result of this legislation will be. It is very likely that the result of this legislation will be that the government will give increased consideration to a double dissolution election after or, perhaps, before it introduces a budget. Perhaps they will say, 'We'll make a major economic statement just after the budget' and they will not really put their plans out there before the Australian people, because we know that their economic narrative is a mess.

A double dissolution election will reduce the quota. Instead of having to be one out of six, they will become one out of 12. What happened in the New South Wales Senate return at the last federal election? The Greens did not get a quota; did not get anyone elected. The only Greens sitting from New South Wales in the Senate is Senator Rhiannon. So if this legislation is passed and there is a double dissolution, Senator Rhiannon goes from needing to be one out of six to one out of 12. This is someone who has stood for preselection again and again. But the hypocrisy is there.

Of course, prior to being a senator, Senator Rhiannon was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. As a senator, she still gets a vote in the New South Wales caucus, by the way. She can go along and they change the rules, because they run a pretty tight regime in New South Wales. This is what Senator Rhiannon had to say when she was seeking to knock off the New South Wales MLC Ian Cohen, a genuine environmentalist from the North Coast of New South Wales, in a preselection back in 2002. She said:

My experience as a Green member of the NSW Legislative Council has convinced me that one term, which in the upper house is eight years, is what we should be adopting for our elected representatives in this house.

She went on:

If we do not adopt some form of limited terms we will most definitely limit the number of Greens members who will have the chance of serving as an MP.

She went on to say that the Greens were committed to grassroots participation. And she said this—remarkable, a direct quote:

Indeed I believe that if we do not take this path we are breaking our principles and negating our roots. As the Greens grow stronger we will inevitably have people join us purely as a means to enter parliament as a career. A limit on the number of terms would serve to discourage careerists from exploiting our party.

Well, the careerist is still sitting over there in the Senate, having argued 14 years ago, when she was already a sitting MP, that there should be a limit of one term. She sought preselection multiple times in the Legislative Council and has now sought multiple times in the Senate from New South Wales, and has sought preselection again. Their internal processes are if you are not a part of the faction that dominates the New South Wales Greens and who refer to people like Bob Brown and Christine Milne as 'Liberals on bicycles'—that is the attitude that they have—the group who proudly call themselves 'watermelons', green on the outside and red on the inside, are seeking another term, but now with this process will be one out of 12 not one out of six.

For goodness sake, to Senator Rhiannon, the member for Melbourne and the rest of the Greens, don't you dare stay on your so-called high horse—the unctuousness that we have to put up with in the Labor Party from the local Greens in my electorate and others who carry on. I will make this prediction, Senator Di Natale has been asked about preference negotiations with the coalition. He has been asked very clearly, and clearly it is going on. And here is the fix: the Greens get preferences from the Liberal Party in seats where they think they might have an opportunity of winning—spontaneously—and they will not give them preferences back in those seats, because that would be a bit crude and a bit obvious. They will either do that or run split tickets in other seats, just like in Victoria during the last state election, when they produced a different how-to-vote card on polling day in some of the seats where they were handing out at prepoll—a different how-to-vote card on polling day, and they talk about transparency and wanting people to know where the votes are going.

The fact is that people will know that the Greens have been prepared to sit down with the coalition and enter into an alliance in order to secure passage of this legislation being rushed through. It will be interesting to see whether they are prepared to vote for the amendment moved by Senator Day, which he has foreshadowed in the Senate. It will be interesting to see whether they are prepared to vote for things like a reduction in the disclosure provisions for donations—something Labor has campaigned for for a long period of time; that has been our position and is something that was changed by the coalition. It is entirely inappropriate that we have legislation being rushed through today so that it can get across to the Senate. The Senate committee is already being established before we have even had the debate in this House—quite extraordinary provisions designed to undermine democracy. It shows the hypocrisy that is represented by this dirty deal between the Greens and the coalition.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There comes a time when fundamental change, revolution if you like, comes along. In America, the two people who were leading the last time I looked were Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. They are saying that all of this free market rubbish has resulted in Americans ending up being cut back and cut down. Their jobs have been transferred overseas and their economy is languishing, and we are playing the game by certain rules which place us at an enormous disadvantage. The only people who are making those remarks in this place are the people who have been elected by this system. We had outrage from the previous speaker that the people should have a say. These people are there because a majority of people in that last sixth of the voting wanted this person to be there, and you say, 'Well, they didn't really know or understand any of it.' The net result of the democratic system is that they are the only people in the Senate who have voted against the free market policy.

Adam Smith put forward and illustrated magnificently an economic mechanism, not a policy for government. He put forward an economic mechanism that should be understood by government and used intelligently as a tool of understanding the economy. This is so relevant because the only people who are voting against the sell-out of Australia to foreign corporations are those people. Do the major parties reflect the will of the Australian people? In every single opinion poll that I have seen, 80 per cent of the people oppose tenaciously the selling off of the country and 80 per cent of the people oppose tenaciously the removal of tariffs and subsidies and the other protections. These enable our workers and farmers in Australia to get a decent income. They enable our industrialists to get a fair go. We can have a fair go, and Mr Keating proposed this—if we go down to slave labour wage levels which prevail in Africa and Asia and South America, we can compete. We can have our people working for nothing, but if we are not going to have our people working for nothing then we need protection. No protection, then no industry. So we now live in a country with no manufacturing base.

The only people voting that we should have a manufacturing base are the people who are going to be eliminated by this 'there will only be two parties' project. As for the Greens and Senator Xenophon—I am deeply disappointed in his behaviour here. To me, and for those of us who have read the terrible George Orwell, the pigs on the Orwellian farm are starting to walk on two legs. From where I sit, it is the Greens and the Xenophons. From where I sit, the pigs on the Orwellian farm are starting to walk on two legs. The only people who have spoken for that 80 per cent of Australia, through the machinations of the democratic system drawn up by our forebears, are those people, and they are being eliminated here today.

Everybody knows what this is. It is a sneaky little trick to make sure that the majors have all of the say and the rest of us have none of the say. The majors are controlled by their party machines. Their party machines are answerable to the people who pay them: the giant corporations. Robert Hogg, the federal secretary of the ALP, upon resigning from that position—he did not say it before he resigned—said the majority of money coming into the ALP comes from big corporations, big corporate donors. There is the man himself saying it. Is there anyone in Australia who would not believe that that is infinitely more true of the Liberal Party and their lapdogs the National Party?

We watch today the muzzling of the people, the taking away of the power of the people, the taking away of their right to be able to vote the way in which they want to vote. We will vote now in the way which the major parties want us to vote. I have to single out the ALP in this case. Whether they are acting out of self-interest or whatever their interest is, they are most certainly on the side of the angels in this debate. History will pass a very harsh judgement upon the Greens and upon the Xenophons on the decision that they have made here. They have got themselves a little bit bigger than the rest of us, and that little bit bigger has resulted in them making this decision.

If Australia is placed under the control of the two major parties, members of the two major parties—every member in this parliament on both sides of the parliament—depend for their place in this parliament upon their endorsement by their political party. In fact, before I went as an Independent, I researched and found out that not a single Independent from any state in Australia had ever got re-elected in Australian history. Not a single person had ever got re-elected. So, when I made the decision to walk and become an Independent, I was walking into my open grave. But I felt I owed that to the people that I represented and the money that they paid us—

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're a martyr, Bob!

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I was not really. I was getting to the end of my run. I do not want to be acting like I am some sort of hero. I was getting to the end of my run, and I just could not stand any more of the sort of vitriolic hatred that I encountered in the electorate, which I knew was totally justified. I knew it was totally justified. When I went up to the Atherton Tableland, the tobacco industry had been closed down—2,000 people lost their jobs—by the government. The dairy industry had been closed down—1,500 people lost their jobs—by the government. The fishing industry on the coast at Innisfail had been closed down—by the government. The timber industry—we had a huge timber industry, with 2,000 employees—was closed down by the government. We had 8,000 jobs gone as a result of government action.

These are the only people speaking up against that—which has been the policy for nearly 30 years in this country. As one person said, 'The trouble is that we're in the 30th year of the Gough Whitlam era.' He cut tariffs across the board by 25 per cent. If that was going to help the working man of Australia, I am the abominable snowman from Boulia! If that was going to help the workers of Australia—a 25 per cent cut in tariffs! The unions claim that 150,000 jobs have gone in manufacturing. That is before the demise of the car industry, which takes down with it, according to all reports—government reports, I might add—72 per cent of what is left of Australian industry. We were told in this place that there would be 20 per cent attrition. Well, there has been 100 per cent attrition.

We are not lied to; this is just the policy of the majors. And it appears that the Greens and the Xenophons have joined the majors. Their interests have aligned with the majors. When I say that, this is on policy. In this particular vote, we praise the ALP for taking the stand that they have taken.

On the elimination of the smaller voices: Australia is an interesting country because it is the only country on earth to my knowledge that has a two-party system without a constituency based electorate. The Americans have a two-party system, but they have a constituency based electorate. The honourable member from Victoria behind me here, for example, got elected because she goes to the people to ask for their support. Everyone in America, every single congressman, has to ask for that support. You have what is called a primary for your congressional seat, so you are answerable not to the party machine but to the people in your electorate who are registered Democrats or registered Republicans, depending upon which party persuasion you are of. The American system is entirely different than any other system on earth.

If you take that out, this is the only country on earth that I know of that has a two-party system. New Zealand does not have a two-party system anymore; England does not have a two-party system—not that they would be good examples of a successfully operating democracy. Most certainly none of the Europeans or Japan or any of those other people have two-party systems. Every single system allows for a smaller voice to be heard.

In the same two weeks that the Liberals are taking away the voice of the people they are changing the media laws so that everything in Australia can be owned by two or three people—every single vision that you see on television, every single image that you see and every single newspaper you read. In Queensland I think 95 per cent of the readership already lies with the Murdoch empire. Whether you think that is a good thing or a bad thing, I do not think anyone would agree that 95 per cent of print media should be owned by one person. Through the arrangements with Foxtel almost everything we will watch on television will be controlled by the same overseas corporation—and that is what it is, an overseas corporation.

What sort of a country closes down its entire manufacturing base consciously knowing that it is doing it? You cannot not know that what you have done is close the manufacturing base. The last whitegoods factory closed in Orange last year. The last motor vehicle factory will close this year. With the closure of the motor vehicle industry 72 per cent of what is left of Australian manufacturing will vanish. The OECD economic statements on countries have a column called 'elaborately transformed'. That exists for OECD countries—advanced economies, if you like—where they transform product.

At a meeting recently I was quite pleased to hear a very young engineering fitter say: 'Don't say we are a mining country. We are not a mining country. Mining is when you take it out of the ground and sell a metal. We take it out of the ground and sell the ground. We do not do any processing any more. We just sell concentrate.' We are going to lose the great refineries of North Queensland: the nickel refinery, the zinc refinery and the copper refinery—three of the most magnificent processing plants in the entire world, and there are very few mineral processing plants in the world. We are going to lose them as sure as the sun rises. With the continuation of these policies we will lose them. Most mines in Australia now simply send out the ground, not the metal.

So we have got no manufacturing and no mining—we are a quarrying country, not a mining country any more. In the agricultural sector our biggest export item was wool until Mr Keating announced that he was going to deregulate it and then proceeded to deregulate the wool industry. It was a bigger export item than coal in 1990 when Mr Keating inaugurated our wonderful free market policies that have served us so well in Australia. So our greatest commodity that carried the country for nearly 200 years was wiped out in 2½ years. Seventy-five per cent of the entire sheep herd have now gone, and they will never come back.

Today what little voice the people have left is being extinguished, and I hope the people who were doing it are very proud of themselves. They can look at the economy of Australia and look out at the vast horizon of destruction and human misery and they cannot blame anyone else except themselves. The destruction is continuing today with the lights going out on democracy.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016. I speak in support of this bill as both a former Chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and a member of parliament with one of the largest populations of first-time voters in their electorate. This bill is about one thing only: democracy—that is the process of selecting representatives by majority ballot. It is about nothing more than that. It is not about what is fair or unfair; it is not about what might advantage one party but disadvantage another. It is about the process—the process of selecting representatives by majority ballot and reflecting, to the greatest extent possible, the true intention of the voter. Whatever others may submit to the contrary, either in this House or in the other place, is, with respect, irrelevant.

Protestations against the spirit and intent of this bill are motivated by self-interest and self-interest alone—the self-interest of those who owe their elected positions and the money and prestige that come with them to the vagaries of an opaque and confusing preference system, which lends itself to manipulation by so-called preference whisperers to produce perverse electoral outcomes. Let me make this crystal clear: anyone who argues against the spirit of this bill is arguing to retain a system that deliberately or otherwise permits the intention of the voter to be obscured in accordance with the backroom deals of political parties.

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill is informed by the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matter's Interim report on the inquiry into the conduct of the 2013 federal election: Senate voting practices, with which the committee agreed unanimously. In the interests of transparency and in the event that any of the committee members seek to refashion themselves as latent objectors to the recommendations of the report, I will read into Hansard the membership of the committee at the time the report was tabled and universally supported: the member for Casey, who is now the Speaker of the House; the member for Bruce; the member for Moore; the member for Brand; the member for Mitchell, who is now the Assistant Minister to the Treasurer; Senator the Hon. John Faulkner; Senator Helen Kroger; Senator Lee Rhiannon; Senator Anne Ruston; and Senator Mehmet Tillem.

The bill, inter alia, seeks to do the following: first, introduce an optional preferential above-the-line voting system, which will include advice on the ballot paper instructing the voter to number at least six of the boxes in order of their preference; second, introduce a savings provision that stipulates that a vote is still formal where the voter numbers at least one box but fewer than six; third, reduce the number of informal votes by increasing, from three to five, the number of allowable mistakes, so long as 90 per cent of the below-the-line ballot paper has been completed correctly; fourth, abolish group and individual voting ticket deals; fifth, introduce a restriction to unique registered officers of a federally registered political party, to prevent an individual holding office in more than one political party; and, sixth, allow political parties, at their choosing, to display their party logo on the ballot paper to avoid voter confusion between similarly named political parties.

The combined effect of these measures is to reflect and preserve, to the greatest extent possible, the intention of the voter. The introduction of an optional preferential above-the-line voting system provides the voter with more choice—not less—in how they cast their vote. To cast an above-the-line vote, the voter can mark one box, or six, or three, or 12—or they can continue to vote below the line, if that is their preference. Any of those votes would be treated as formal. The bill gives voters more choice and, through the savings provisions, errs on the side of voter enfranchisement to a greater extent than the act currently does. The abolition of group and individual voting tickets gives the voter certainty about where their vote is going, and, by prohibiting people from holding office in more than one party, we reduce the instance of sham feeder tickets. And, with political parties being allowed to display a party logo on the ballot paper, voters will know that the party they are voting for is the party they intended to vote for.

The people in my electorate have lives outside politics. They are mums and dads, professionals, retirees and university students. When it comes time to vote, they do not expect to have to independently research dozens of group voting tickets just to know where their vote is going. They simply want to indicate who they are voting for and to have sufficient choice in how they cast their vote. That is not much to ask of this House. To support this bill is to support the rights of the voter. To support this bill is to support democracy. I commend the bill to the House.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that this bill be now read a second time, and I call the honourable member for—

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

Grey.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Grey.

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

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is indeed an honour to be the member for Grey, let me say, and I rise at the moment to speak on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016.

The vagaries of upper house voting systems around Australia—in the Senate in particular—are long and large. I hazard a guess that, outside people that work in the Electoral Commission and those addicted to politics, there are very few that understand the voting system. It has always been the case that on many occasions Senate elections have thrown up winners that no-one expected and that managed to be, if you like, the last repository for optional votes that were avoiding the major parties. I can think of a couple of quite prominent ones, and I mean no harm to either of these particular members of the Senate. I do not believe, for instance, that Senator John Madigan would be in this parliament now if it were not for those vagaries, because, for all intents and purposes, even the people of Victoria thought the DLP had disappeared before his election. I do not reflect in any way on his contribution to this parliament, but it was a surprise.

Perhaps an even bigger surprise, and someone who has made an even bigger impact on this parliament, is someone who was not first elected to the Senate on a very small vote but was elected by a very small margin to the South Australian Legislative Council, which is, by and large, a reflection of the voting system that we use. That is Senator Nick Xenophon, who was first elected as a No Pokies campaigner on, from memory—and I did not look it up—about two per cent of the vote. It was a surprise to everyone. I think it was a surprise to Nick. He certainly built on that opportunity to turn himself into a substantial politician, but it has to be said that no-one really expected that result, and probably he did not either.

It is difficult even to explain the Senate voting system and, as I said, I think very few understand it. But, to give the people of Australia some idea of the way I understand it, at least, if I stood for the Senate as the Rowan Ramsey Left-Legged Party and I scored—

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, I'd vote for that!

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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)

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.