Victorian voting overhaul would see Greens ‘run state’, MP warns
An independent MP has warned the Greens will “run this state” if Victoria proceeds with plans to eliminate its group voting ticket system.
The Greens would control parliament and “run this state” if a plan to scrap Victoria’s group voting ticket system goes ahead, an independent MP has warned.
In a devastating blow to minor parties, the parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee on Tuesday tabled its latest report citing the current system as no longer fit for purpose.
And it flagged scrapping the system before next year’s state election.
Such a move would drastically alter the makeup of the parliament’s upper house, meaning the Greens could remain as kingmakers of the next parliament.
“Group voting tickets have had their day,” the committee’s report said.
“They have led to votes being counted in ways that voters could not predict and may not have expected.
“Combined with the practice of ‘preference whispering’, they have undermined trust in our electoral system.
“Victoria is the last Australian jurisdiction to still use group voting tickets and it is time for us to remove them.”
The group voting system means voters who number one box at the top of their ballot paper, rather than at least five boxes at the bottom, lose control of where their preference votes are directed if their favoured candidate is knocked out of the race.
This has resulted in several candidates with very small primary votes being elected to the parliament and ultimately beating competitors who received more votes.
Victoria remains the only state to still use the system.
The report proposed a two-step process but flagged the current system could be eliminated as a first step “easily and immediately”.
The second step would establish an independent process to guide structural reform.
Libertarian Party leader David Limbrick said that if group voting tickets are removed, that under the system replacing the tickets “the Greens will run this state”.
“The roughly one third of voters who do not vote for a major party should be represented proportionally,” Mr Limbrick said.
He said reform was needed, to make the system similar to the proportional model in SA and NSW.
“If we remove GVTs without regional reform it’s mostly irrelevant who wins government, the Greens will run this state,” he said.
Other independent crossbenchers — some of whom benefit from the current group voting ticket system — also decried the recommended changes.
Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell said that the “entire crossbench” supported electoral reform, but doing it in the wrong order would “sign the death warrant for some of our state’s most effective legislators”.
“The Premier has the opportunity to undertake meaningful reform with the support of the entire parliament. We’ve all been asking for reform for years, so anything less would be yet another knee-jerk reaction to a problem that her government has allowed to fester,” Ms Purcell said.
Legalise Cannabis Victoria MP David Ettershank wrote in a minority report to the inquiry that there was an “insidious” underlying motivation to the electoral reforms.
“(To) frustrate the growth and preferably neuter the smaller political parties,” Mr Ettershank wrote.
“The Old Parties, normally at each other’s throats, have demonstrated an extraordinary unity of purpose in supporting a series of changes that will suppress the smaller parties.”
Ahead of the 2022 state election, the Herald Sun exposed the brazen rorting of the ugly system through the sale of seats by election fixer Glenn Druery.
The committee said while there was broad agreement on scrapping group voting tickets, there was disagreement about whether the electoral structure should be changed.
“Ultimately, further work is required to resolve the differing views about what the electoral structure should be,” it said.
“Achieving consensus will require an independent, inclusive process that can navigate the diverse perspectives of political parties and the community.
“A parliamentary inquiry is not the best process for that.
“The committee considers that an expert panel, citizens’ assembly or constitutional convention would be more able to do this work and may be perceived by the community as more
independent than this inquiry.
