Opinion: New voting rules for Senate see unholy alliances forged for preferences

A BIGGER collection of fundamentalist, social knuckle draggers, moral authoritarians, backward-looking, illiberal, obstructionist and self-centred political wannabes and opportunists is hard to imagine.

POLITICS, we’re told, makes strange bedfellows but this year’s election has been the weirdest matchmaker for nearly two decades.

Some bedmates are so strange they make the prophesies of Cory Bernardi seem conventional by comparison.

The complexities of our preferential system, the mysteries of above and below the line Senate voting, the usual wheeling and dealing, the dark arts of the preference whisperers and the tightness of the polls make some how-to-vote cards an exercise in contradiction and hypocrisy.

ELECTION: Libs offer preferences to Labor

The compulsory numbering of candidates on the House of Representatives ballot always makes for uneasy neighbours. But new Senate rules that mean voters have to number at least six boxes above the line, have forced parties to select some strange new besties.

They might be pretend friends but just having them (and their policies) there is offensive to some people.

We saw how things were heading when there was conjecture about the Liberals giving preferences to the Greens but, after much billing and cooing, they were eventually left at the altar.

And Labor’s Senate voting card for Queensland tiptoes around the fringes of insult. It preferences Greens at number two followed by the Australian Sex Party, Jacqui Lambie Network, Glenn Lazarus Team and Katter’s Australian Party.

Already, the so-called party of equality has been caught in Kennedy pragmatically preferencing the homophobic KAP and Family First ahead of a gay Liberal National Party candidate.

But, never mind because the candidate has preferenced Family First ahead of Labor for reasons of shared “conservative interests’’.

Those same sort of conservative interests presumably weighed on the LNP’s choice of preferences for the Queensland Senate poll.

Frankly, it reads a bit like the list of relatives you hope won’t turn up at your wedding. In order, the LNP gives the nod to Family First, KAP, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, the Christian Democrat Party (Fred Nile Group), and Australian Christians.

A bigger collection of fundamentalist, social knuckle draggers, moral authoritarians, small minded, backward-looking, illiberal, obstructionist and self-centred political wannabes and opportunists is difficult to imagine.

Just where they might fit into the LNP’s much touted “plan” for recovery escapes me. It is a roll call that suggests neither “liberal” nor “national’’. In fact, it is an affront to each if either still exists.

And how the party that gave us gun controls could even countenance swapping anything with the hunters and shooters is beyond me.

The move by the Liberals and the Nationals to put One Nation ahead of Labor in the 19998 Queensland election condemned the state to a minority government.

The last time I can recall anything so distasteful was in 1998 when the Liberals and the Nationals put One Nation ahead of Labor in the state election. Leading lights of both parties warned of the danger but their organisational wings walked right into it with their eyes open.

And what a disaster. One Nation won 11 seats in the Parliament (largely at the expense of conservatives) and we were condemned to a minority government.

It was an exercise in misplaced pragmatism that really bit into the Liberal core which was embarrassed by cosying up with the Hansonites.

The Australian Parliamentary Library records: “The question of preferences, namely the decision of the Coalition to direct preferences to One Nation ahead of the ALP and the decision of One Nation to direct preferences to the Coalition ahead of the ALP in a number of marginal seats, dominated the Queensland election campaign.’’

But it went on: “The ability of the parties to control the flow of preferences is open to question.”

And, crucially: “This most apparent for the Liberal Party where there was considerable supporter resistance to the notion of directing preferences to One Nation over the Labor Party and considerable leakage of second preference votes occurred. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the decision of the Liberal Party to direct preferences to One Nation ahead of the ALP cost the party votes and seats in Brisbane. … in Liberal held seats in Brisbane, lost to Labor in the election, support for the Liberal Party fell during the campaign, an outcome partly attributable to the preference decision.’’

They were extraordinary times, but these too are extraordinary times with figures showing up to 28 per cent of people could direct votes to Independent or minor party candidates.

There’s a caution for the major parties today. It could well be premature for backroom schemers of either colour to presume voters will go along with some of the preference schemes cooked up.

Plenty of ALP voters would be nauseated by being asked to preference KAP or Lambie’s mob and lots of Liberals would choke on giving preferences to the torchbearers of intolerance.

It might be a game of numbers and percentages for clever folk at HQ but sometimes it’s perceptions that count in the real world.

Pragmatism usually wins over principle in politics but we should recall another saying: “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.’’

Email Terry Sweetman

Originally published as Opinion: New voting rules for Senate see unholy alliances forged for preferences