“If you are a Green voter in the suburbs and regions of Australia, when you vote Green your vote will be going to the Liberal Party,” said Bill Shorten.
“The federal director will decide how preferences are allocated,” responded Turnbull, saying no preference deal had been done, with the Greens or anyone else.
Michael Danby, Labor MP for Melbourne Ports, seemed to have done a preference deal: “I, as in the last election, have determined that in my seat that I will be preferencing the Liberals ahead of the Green party [sic].” But Victorian Labor’s assistant state secretary Kosmos Samaras kyboshed that: “Obviously negotiations take place. Negotiations have taken place in the past between the Labor Party and the Greens, and other minor parties, but we have not commenced discussions yet.”
Fran Kelly this morning tried to pin down Nick Xenophon over a rumoured preference deal with Labor, but he was having none of it: “I don’t want to do preference deals, and I think the most likely scenario [is] … that there will be open tickets … I reckon voters are smart enough to decide where their preferences will go … We unashamedly are a party of the political centre, we are not ideological.”
It’s all nonsense, of course. All parties are furiously negotiating preference deals behind the scenes, and as Josh Taylor wrote on Wednesday, the Sex Party is preferencing Labor over the Greens — even though the Greens are more closely ideologically aligned — because Labor is more politically expedient. Former Howard media adviser Paula Matthewson writes in Crikey today a deal with the Greens could benefit the Libs for the same reason. Don’t be surprised to see other strange bedfellows — when there’s an election on the line, ideology goes out the window.
I wonder why in every media article preferences are a thing that parties decide, when in the booth everyone can decide them for themselves. Want your Greens preferences to go to One Nation? I think you’re a little confused, but *sure* the system not only lets you do that, it encourages you to.
We so often forget that “how to vote” cards are just like “serving suggestions”. If you like greens but not potato then you can easily preference Dutton last.
Yep, Mcdrewski has it in one. Preference deals can only go as far as suggestions on “how to vote” cards. Since the Senate voting reforms, voters will choose their own preferences in both houses.
This is all noise.
OneHand is perfectly, precisely correct. Must be the stopped clock syndrome.
I think it’s revealing how parties think they can dictate how we vote – an indication of their real regard for us and our intelligence.
…. As if they know what they’re doing, themselves?
We ended up with that footnote, Fielding, thanks to Cornroy’s “judgement”.
What an absurd claim by Xenophon that he is not ideological. What he means is that his ideology is not consistent.