Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It is; 83 per cent of ballot papers had only a single 1 above the line.

Senator O'Sullivan interjecting—

Yes, I am extrapolating! Oh my goodness, isn't that a dreadful thing to do! You might think that how people vote in a state might also demonstrate how they might vote federally. Yes, you are right; federally, currently it is more—96 to 97 per cent vote 1 above the line. A useful assessment—and we are all looking into the future—of the extent to which an optional preferential system results in people maintaining that habit of going 1 above the line is the New South Wales system. The evidence before JSCEM is that 83 per cent of ballot papers had only a single 1 above the line.

That accords with the report that I quoted, which was an ABC news report reporting comments by Monash University's Dr Nick Economou, where he said that his assessment was that voters had been voting above the line at rates of about 90 per cent or more since the system was introduced in 1980s:

He said the new rules were likely to increase the number of exhausted votes.

"If we looked at the result of the last election and we applied the new rules, you'd be looking at exhausted votes in each state of anywhere between 14 and 20 per cent," …

Interestingly, the figures that I have just quoted from the New South Wales system are in the same window. That would suggest that that is probably about right. What that essentially means is that a great many voters would essentially have their votes exhausted under the system that the government is proposing. So I want to know: what analysis was done on exhausted votes? And, if I can finally have an answer on the campaign, I would really appreciate it.