Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

It is entirely a matter for the voter to determine what they want to do with their vote and with their preferences. The guidance on the ballot paper is to number at least six boxes. Of course, the voter can decide to number more boxes, and if the voter ends up numbering fewer than six boxes the vote will be formal under the savings provisions. But ultimately—and we had quite a detailed discussion on this with Senator Wong earlier—it is an entirely legitimate democratic choice for an individual voter to make not to issue a preference to a party they do not want to support in any way, shape or form.

So, as I said earlier, if Senator Edwards, who was in the chamber then, does not want to preference the Sex Party, he should not be forced to preference the Sex Party. If he wants to preference six, seven or eight parties, after the Liberal Party, who he thinks are sufficiently aligned to his view of the world that he would be happy to see his vote go to—or any other voter's vote, if they would be happy to see their vote go to other minor parties—then of course people are entitled to make that choice. If any voter who puts '1' above the line for the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party wants to preference two, three, four, five, six or more other parties—minor or major parties; it does not matter—that is their choice. The point that I made earlier is that in a proper, well-functioning democratic system it is preferable for a vote to exhaust because the voter has made a decision not to issue additional preferences rather than to have a voter's preference go and elect somebody that they never intended to elect or that, in the worst case scenario, they are actually opposed to and that they would only end up contributing to electing by virtue of the way that these non-transparent group voting ticket arrangements operate.

I remind the chamber again that political parties, in trading and directing preferences of voters who vote above the line—and 97 per cent of people vote above the line—can channel these preferences in three different directions. How can anybody credibly suggest that a voter can ascertain what happens to their preferences after they have voted '1' above the line under the current system?