Hi, I’m Greg and I want to grumble about election preferences. Now preferences are a good thing – having your vote still count if your first choice candidate does not get elected gives you a much better say in the election and gives us all a much more representative government.
However, the preference system needs to be open and accountable, especially in the Senate. Unlike in your local seat where you direct your preferences, in the Senate the parties direct the preferences in the vast majority of case – those where votes are cast above-the-line.
Personally, I am a fan of the Senate and the proportional representation system which gives a broader range of voices in the parliament. I think that it is vital we have this breadth of views to have accountability and close scrutiny of legislation. Unfortunately though, the election process is so complicated that voting and counting is far from transparent and the results can be a lottery. I am not going to grumble about that today, but I do want to grumble about parties whose preference deals undermine what they stand for, or mislead voters or make voting on principle or policy difficult.
In the South Australian Senate race there are the usual assortment of parties on the right preferencing eachother, and those votes will probably eventually find their way to the Liberals. And there are the competing groups of leftish or social-issue candidates whose preferences will flow to the Greens or Labor. That is fine and relatively transparent. My grumble is about some other parties.
Do the warm fuzzy supporters of the Animal Justice Party, the Sex Party or the Hemp Party know that their preferences will go to the climate sceptics before they go to parties and candidates who have moved legislation in support of their causes? And will the voters for the Australian Christians know that they will be preferencing the climate sceptics ahead of other nominally Christian parties like Family First and the DLP. Curiously, the Australian Independents are preferencing a political party (Family First) before any other independents, and the Socialist Equality Party is preferencing all the major parties equally!
And what do we make of Senator Nick Xenophon’s decision to split his preferences between the Liberal and Labor Parties. He is most famous as the no-pokies MP, but the Liberal Party never supported poker machine reform and the Labor Party tore up the pokie reform agreement in the last parliament. So why did Senator Xenophon preference these parties above the Greens who, like him, have campaigned for good reforms like mandatory pre-commitment and one-dollar bet limits on pokies? Where does that leave those who care about the harm caused by gambling in our community as voting above the line becomes difficult and contradictory.
Is it really too much to ask that political parties make preference decisions based on policy and principles, so that those who want to vote above the line can be confident that their vote won’t end up somewhere they don’t want it to go? I am Greg, and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard or downloaded at https://radio.adelaide.edu.au/gregs-grumbles-3/
First Broadcast: 20 August 2013
