No preferences as minors tear up How To Vote cards
Queenslanders will be told to pick their own preferences as minor parties tear up standard how-to-vote cards this election, saying neither side deserves their help to win office. The move will make winners even harder to predict in key seats.
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Queenslanders will be told to pick their own preferences as minor parties tear up standard how-to-vote cards this election, saying neither side deserve their help to win office.
Both the Katter’s Australia Party and One Nation are looking at issuing split how-to-vote cards in a move that will make winners even harder to predict in key regional seats that could decide government on October 31.
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The news comes as the LNP are set to decide their preference flows within days, with a decision eagerly awaited by members who are already angry over a decision to help the Greens in South Brisbane.
The conservative party is considering whether it might widen its South Brisbane strategy, where its Greens political enemies will be preferenced higher than Labor to help unseat former deputy premier Jackie Trad.
Compulsory preferential voting in Queensland introduced for the 2017 election means voters have to number every box or their vote isn’t counted.
Katters Australia Party leader Robbie Katter said the party hadn’t signed off on its strategy yet, but it was likely how-to-vote cards would contain two possibilities for voters.
“We’re most likely going to leave that up to voters in a split ticket,” he said.
The split cards would advice voters how to vote if they preferred a Labor government, and the other side would show them how to vote if they preferred the LNP.
“We want voters to make up their own mind when it comes to preferences,” Mr Katter said.
“We certainly don’t think the government’s performed well.
“We think they’ve performed really badly.”
One Nation spokesman James Ashby said the final touches were being put on a One Nation voting app that would allow voters to run their own preference arrangements.
Candidates will be input by the party and voters will be able to answer questions around which major party they preferred to receive personal voting instructions.
“The whole idea of the app is to empower people to make decisions for themselves, not where the parties force people to go,” he said.
“We want to empower people to understand the preferential system themselves and at the end of the day they have the final say.”
However, it’s understood both the KAP and ONP will allocate preferences to each other.
Sources say polling shows ONP support has collapsed across the state compared with 2017, although are still cognisant that ONP flows three years ago helped decide seats like Mansfield when the party decided to preference against sitting members.
ONP is particularly concentrating on Rockhampton seats Keppel and Rockhampton this time, both held by Labor.
KAP polled high in vital Townsville seats Thurungowa and Mundingburra in 2017 and will also contest Townsville this time.
It already holds Townsville’s fourth seat of Hinchinbrooke, which it took from the LNP at the last election.
Meanwhile, LNP Leader Deb Frecklington remained tight-lipped on her party’s deliberations ahead of a state executive meeting “within days”.
She said the prospect of deciding preferences on a seat-by-seat basis was something for the state executive to consider, but the party was not entering in to any preference swap deals with minor parties.
“What I’m going to do is encourage all Queenslanders to put their first vote with the LNP and that’s what (Deputy Leader) Tim (Mander) and I will be working extremely hard on,” she said.
“But more will be said on this in the coming days.
“We won’t be doing any deals when it comes to preferencing.”
LNP campaign director Lincoln Folo would not be drawn on flows.
“Our job is to lift our primary vote and we’ll be asking Queenslanders to give us their first preference to change the government and get Queensland working again,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Queensland Resources Council is urging voters to put the Greens last and not risk a minority government with them in control.
QRC Chief Executive Ian Macfarlane said with unemployment tipped to hit 9 per cent it was vital for people to vote for candidates who support the resources sector and the jobs it creates.
“Now is not the time to risk a single job in Queensland by voting for the Greens or by putting them anywhere but last on your ballot paper,” Mr Macfarlane said.
