Support democracy in Victoria

Good if parochial news for election junkies. The Victorian parliamentary committee conducting an inquiry into the state’s upper house electoral system has extended the date for submissions for an additional four weeks, until 3 March.

Last July, the Electoral Matters Committee submitted its report on the conduct of the 2022 state election. It made a number of sensible recommendations, but the most important one (recommendation 17) was the abolition of group voting tickets (GVTs) for the Legislative Council. Victoria is the last state to retain this system of automatic party-directed preferencing, which, as the committee noted, leads to votes being “transferred in ways that [voters] do not expect and would not want.”

We’ve covered this issue here before: here’s my report on the bizarre results of the 2018 Council election, and here are my comments on the Western Australian decision to finally abolish GVTs in 2021. It’s an absolute scandal that this system has survived for so long in Victoria, and its demise is still by no means assured.

When Western Australia made the move, it took the logical step of also abolishing its previous system of regions, so that the upper house members would all be elected from the state voting as a single electorate – as is done in New South Wales and South Australia. But because Victoria’s provisions are constitutionally entrenched, the regions cannot be abolished (or even restructured) without a referendum.

The committee was concerned, understandably enough, that scrapping GVTs without changing the regions would lead to a loss of diversity in representation. Five-member regions mean a high quota of 16.7%, and the GVTs do at least result in some minor parties winning seats, albeit by way of a rigged lottery rather than any genuine voter preference. But the committee argued that this was not sufficient reason to delay making the change:

Eliminating group voting tickets should occur independently of changes to the regions and must not be delayed in order to take place after or at the same time as changes to the regions. …

While the Committee believes that the best outcome for Victoria would be the elimination of group voting tickets together with a change to the regions, the Committee considers that eliminating group voting tickets would be beneficial even without changes to the regions.

It recommended that there should be a further inquiry specifically into the upper house electoral system, including the abolition or revision of the regions. That is the inquiry now being conducted; submissions were originally to close on 3 February but have now been extended. As they are received, submissions are being posted here, but it evidently takes a while: I lodged mine last week but it has not yet appeared.

Readers will not be surprised to learn, however, that I strongly supported both the abolition of GVTs and the replacement of the regions by a single statewide election. As I put it:

Victoria has two houses of parliament, with one, the Legislative Assembly, already based exclusively on local representation. That is not going to change … All Victorians will retain a local representative, dedicated to their particular geographic area with no thought to total representation. There is therefore, it seems to me, no reason why the principle of total representation should not be give free rein in the other and less powerful house.

But the success of reform is not a foregone conclusion. Although the recommendations above were endorsed by both government and opposition members of the committee, the government’s official response to them is non-committal, saying that it “will await the findings of [the current] Inquiry before forming a view,” even though that is exactly what the committee told it was not required. Kevin Bonham (whose post contains much useful background on the issue) is rightly outraged:

This government has had ten years in office to form at least an in-principle view, based on abundant evidence, that Group Ticket Voting needs to go in the bin. How long can it take? In the absence of even in-principle or conditional support – with nothing but more stalling – there is no basis for faith that Labor will do anything about the issue at all.

So anyone who wants to strike a blow for democracy in Victoria could consider making a submission to the inquiry. Or just contact your local MP and tell them to get on board.

UPDATE, 19 February: More submissions have now been posted, including mine (number 31). You’ll also find submissions from many of the usual suspects, including Kevin Bonham, Stephen Luntz, Malcolm Mackerras, Ben Raue, and the Liberal and National Parties.