A Victorian government-led inquiry has called for the scrapping of an “undemocratic” upper-house voting system to bring elections into line with all other Australian jurisdictions and prevent “preference whispering”.
The electoral matters committee, chaired by Labor MP Luba Grigorovitch, used its report into the 2022 election to recommend legislation to ditch group voting tickets.
Victoria’s legislative council is the only house of parliament in Australia still using such a voting system, in which voters choose just one party above the line on the ballot paper, with their preferences then allocated by the party.
Voters can also vote below the line, and list their own preferences, but must number at least five boxes for their vote to be valid. Only 9.4% of voters did so at the 2022 election.
According to the committee, the group voting tickets can “result in some above-the-line votes for the upper house being distributed in ways that voters do not expect or want”.
“The upper-house voting system can lead to some candidates with small numbers of first-preference votes being elected based on the flow of preferences, while other candidates with more first-preference votes do not get elected,” their report reads.
“If voters have not chosen those preferences, this is problematic.”
They said this can lead to “distrust in the system” and enable “preference whispering”.
The committee said this was especially evident at the 2018 election, when the Transport Matters party’s Rod Barton and Sustainable Australia’s Clifford Hayes both won upper house seats with less than 1.3% of the first-preference votes.
The duo, who were not reelected in 2022, had received help from so-called “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery.
His clients’ preference deals at that poll saw the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Jeff Bourman elected. Georgie Purcell also benefited from the deals, though her Animal Justice party directed its preferences to a bloc of progressive parties, in a “sting” revealed by Guardian Australia.
Druery’s methods also came under scrutiny during the campaign after the Angry Victorian party leaked videos to the Herald Sun of an online meeting they had with Druery, in which he claimed Labor had avoided reforming the system because he can help “keep the Greens at bay”.
After the video was released, Druery reportedly told the ABC that “any assertion that I’m here to help Labor is absolute nonsense” and that he discussed no deals with the party.
The Greens integrity spokesperson, Tim Read, welcomed the committee’s recommendation on Tuesday.
“Group voting tricks voters into electing parties they haven’t heard of and may not support, ahead of candidates with a larger vote, leaving Victoria with an unrepresentative upper house,” Read said.
The committee recommended the government move to a similar voting system to the one used for the federal Senate, which would allow voters to indicate multiple preferences above the line. But it said any reform should be subject to a separate inquiry.
• This article was amended on 31 July 2024. Clifford Hayes received 1.26% of first-preference votes in the 2018 election, not less than 1% as the article previously suggested.
