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Labor leader calls for return to compulsory preferential voting
By Cameron Atfield
The Labor Party's leader in Brisbane City Council has sought to reignite debate over optional preferential voting in Queensland, warning of a rise in informal votes at the upcoming federal election.
Wynnum Manly councillor Peter Cumming used his first speech as opposition leader to call for uniformity of voting systems across all levels of government.
Brisbane City Council opposition leader Peter Cumming has called for the reintroduction of compulsory preferential voting.Credit: Glenn Hunt
Cr Cumming said Queensland voters were confused about the state's different voting systems, which were optional preferential at state and local level and compulsory preferential in federal polls.
Adding to the discrepancy was the fact 54 of Queensland's 77 councils were not divided into wards or divisions, so they employed a first-past-the-post system.
Queensland electors face different voting systems, depending on the level of government.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
Cr Cumming, who led a team of five in the 27-person council chamber, said Queensland's system of optional preferential voting should be scrapped, a move that could have bolstered Labor's Brisbane City Council ranks.
Such a move could well have also delivered Labor an outright majority in State Parliament, according to 2015 voting data.
"I believe we need a uniform voting system for all levels of government in Queensland," Cr Cumming said.
"There will be far more informal votes in the federal election in Queensland than in other states because voters have cast their vote in two consecutive optional preferential elections in succession, the state election in January 2015 and the council election in March 2016.
"We should have a uniform voting system of compulsory preferential every time Queenslanders vote.
"I have read that state opposition leader Lawrence Springborg also supports compulsory preferential."
But Cr Cumming did not receive the support of his Labor colleagues on George Street.
For now, at least, a change to optional preferential voting was not on the cards, according to a spokesman for state Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath.
"It's not something that's under active consideration at the moment," he said.
Former Labor premier Peter Beattie, who was a vocal proponent of optional preferential voting during his time in government, agreed there should be uniformity across the three levels of government, but said it should go the other way.
Rather than reintroduce compulsory preferential voting in state and local government elections, Mr Beattie told Fairfax Media directing preferences at federal elections should also be made optional.
"I've always been a strong supporter of choice, but I understand the concerns people have about different voting systems," he said.
"I can understand Peter's concerns about it and I respect that, but I think people are pretty smart – Queenslanders are pretty clever – and they know the difference between voting for different levels of government."
Mr Beattie said the reasoning behind his stance was clear.
"If I don't want to vote for someone, then why should I?" he said.
"If you've got a government people what to vote for, then they'll be elected. The system won't change that."
Optional preferential voting in Queensland was introduced by the Goss Labor government in time for the 1992 state election, following a recommendation from Electoral and Administrative Review Commission – a body set up following recommendations coming out of the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
It was long seen as an electoral disaster for the conservative side of politics in three-cornered contests involving the National and Liberal parties.
The National Party platform in the late 1990s called for the reintroduction of compulsory preferential voting.
The Liberal Party, meanwhile, blamed optional preferential voting for the then-Coalition's electoral defeat in 1998 and the coinciding rise of One Nation.
But the Liberal National Party has changed its tune since the Queensland parties merged in 2008.
Since then, LNP has become the main beneficiary of optional preferential voting.
The rise of the Greens as a stronger political force in Queensland in the past decade has meant three-cornered contests generally consisted of the conservative LNP and, from the progressive side of politics, the Greens and Labor.
So it was the progressive, rather than the conservative, vote that was now being split.
State opposition leader Lawrence Springborg said while he did not initially support optional preferential voting, his views had changed.
"I fully support optional preferential voting because it respects voters' choice," the LNP leader said.
"This has been the case for many years now."
A Fairfax Media analysis of last year's state election suggested Labor could have ended up with an outright majority if compulsory preferential voting had been in place.
Based on preference flows in Mount Ommaney and Whitsunday at the 2015 state election, assuming exhausted votes would have followed those flows under compulsory preferencing, Labor would have claimed those two electorates and won 46 seats with a majority in its own right.
However, the subsequent departures of north Queensland MPs Billy Gordon and Rob Pyne would have returned Labor to a minority government.
And the preference flows in the Coorparoo, Doboy and Northgate wards at last month's Brisbane City Council election show that had the exhausted votes in those wards followed suit, Labor would almost certainly have had another three seats in the council chamber.
Kim Flesser, the former Labor councillor for Northgate, has cited the lack of preference flows from the Greens as a major contributor for his party's loss in the ward.
The only other Australian state to have optional preferential voting was New South Wales.
A Newman government review of Queensland's electoral system in 2013 recommended no changes be made.
"Queensland uses an optional preferential voting system, meaning a voter only has to indicate his or her first preference, with all subsequent preferences optional," it found.
"An alternative is full preferential voting, as used in Federal House of Representatives elections, under which the voter must show a preference for all candidates listed on the ballot paper by consecutively numbering in order of preference.
"The government has considered the relative merits of both of these systems and is not persuaded of the need for change where the current system of voting is understood by electors and is consistent with the system currently used in local government elections."
NOTE: This story was updated on 14/04/2016 to include the Brisbane City Council ward of Doboy on the list of wards that would have been won by Labor, based on preference flows at the March 2016 election, had compulsory preferential voting been applied.