Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will not be supporting this urgency motion today. Whilst we agree with Senator Hanson that group voting tickets are an abomination—and I'll come to that shortly—there's more than a whiff of electoral denialism to this motion. We know that the far right here in this parliament and around the world are waging a war on democracy and on free and fair elections, and we are not interested in being a part of that. Thanks to our AEC and our state and territory electoral commissions, Australia's elections have some of the highest integrity and transparency in the world.

But none of that changes how appalling group voting tickets are. Group voting tickets enable preference whisperers, like Mr Druery, to allocate your preferences for you when you vote above the line. That means that, for the over 90 per cent of voters who do just that, when you put a party like the Health Australia Party or the Sustainable Australia Party as your No. 1, you could very well end up sending your preferences to pro-gun parties like the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party or anti-abortion parties like the Democratic Labour Party. Under these rules, the only way around this, to actually control your own preferences, is to vote below the line and number every box, risking an invalid vote if you make a mistake.

Here in the federal parliament, the Greens were proud to be part of abolishing group voting tickets in 2016. In every other state and territory, parliaments have made the wise decision to abolish group voting tickets. Everyone knows group voting tickets need to end. Experts like Antony Green hate them. Every state and territory government, including Labor governments, like Mr McGowan's in WA, also hates them. The Greens hate them. Even the Liberals hate them. It's only the Victorian Labor government that has refused to abolish group voting tickets. My Victorian Greens colleagues have been the only members of the last Victorian parliament who've pushed to get rid of group voting tickets and have challenged both the Labor and the Liberal parties to commit to reform this undemocratic system before the election on Saturday. The group voting system will continue to distort the will of voters until Labor and the Liberals commit to reform.

Victoria needs to get on with the job of abolishing group voting tickets, and the Greens will continue to campaign both here and in Victoria for improvements to our electoral system. But make no mistake: we won't team up with One Nation when it comes to questions of electoral integrity.