The 2022 federal election is effectively under way, with more than 50,000 completed postal votes already signed, sealed and delivered since the Australian Electoral Commission started sending out ballot papers last week.
Among other things, this has meant crunch time for the parties’ preference deals — and, as always, a lot of accompanying sound and fury that doesn’t always signify much.
In truth, the subject has become a lot less interesting since the Turnbull government abolished group voting tickets for the Senate in 2016, before which 95% of voters signed on their party’s full preference order by voting above the line.
When liberated from the need to grind through dozens of individual candidates to lodge an independently determined formal vote — never an issue in the lower house, and now also unnecessary in the Senate — most voters have proved capable of making up their own minds.
This runs contrary to yesterday’s claim by Greg Sheridan in The Australian that teal independents threaten to achieve democratically illegitimate wins off preferences from Labor and the Greens, who “print how-to-vote cards that most of their voters follow automatically”.
In fact, Senate ballot paper data from the 2019 election show that fewer than one in five Labor voters numbered the six boxes in the order recommended by the how-to-vote card.
While adherence rates are higher in the lower house — about 40% for Labor, according to ballot paper studies conducted in decades past — it seems intuitively likely that the affluent and educated voters who dominate the seats targeted by the teal independents will be least disposed to seek guidance from how-to-vote cards.
It’s true that these contests seem finely balanced enough that Labor’s preference directions could potentially swing a result, and Sheridan will surely not be the last conservative inspired to advocate for optional preferential voting. However, Greens how-to-vote cards are rather less likely to prove decisive, as demonstrated by the fact that Labor’s share of its preferences hardly budges from its usual 80% when the Greens try to punish it by telling voters to decide for themselves.
This points to the related fact that how-to-vote cards usually tell voters to do what they would have done anyway, at least so far as consequential decisions are concerned.
The latter qualification is significant, because quite a few column inches are spent each election on preference recommendations that are entirely academic.
This applies to Labor’s sneaky decision to put Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party ahead of the Greens in the central Queensland seats where it got savaged by the Adani backlash in 2019, in contrast to its general approach elsewhere of putting the party last but for One Nation.
Labor presumably hopes this will pass unnoticed in Western Australia, where Premier Mark McGowan has described an apparent deal between the Liberals and Palmer as “pretty low and pretty disgraceful”.
But whereas the UAP’s high placement on Liberal tickets everywhere except (wait for it) Western Australia could be of real value in its quest for Senate seats, Labor’s lower house preferences will be distributed only if its candidates fail to make the final count.
The party’s position in central Queensland is not weak enough for this to be likely — and even if it happens, results there will assuredly not hinge on who Labor has highest out of the UAP and the Greens.
Similarly, the “left-leaning” Liberal members One Nation is directing against to portray itself as above the partisan fray are conveniently in seats where the party is weakly supported and lacks the volunteers needed to distribute how-to-vote cards.
Certainly none are in Queensland, where the Liberal National Party has helpfully boosted Pauline Hanson’s Senate reelection bid by putting her second.
That this decision has passed all but unnoticed shows how far the Overton window has shifted since two decades ago, when Queensland’s Liberals and Nationals tore each other apart over whether to put her last.
William Bowe is conducting paid consultancy during the federal election campaign for Climate 200, which is helping fund independent candidates who support policies to promote renewable energy and mitigate climate change.
Two points to make.
How to Vote cards are a sightly anachronistic throwback to the days pre 1984 when Party names weren’t listed on ballot papers and, unless a candidate was widely known in the electorate, voters had no way of separating their preferred party candidate from another. Having just submitted my postal vote, I can attest that I don’t remember the name of the Labor candidate in my very safe Liberal seat (let alone UAP, ON and LD candidates), but I do know what number I put beside his/her name, because they were the Labor candidate (and the same for UAP, ON and LD).
RE Greg Sheridan and “… Sheridan will surely not be the last conservative inspired to advocate for optional preferential voting.” It was a different story back in the ’70’s and ’80’s, before the Libs and Nats worked out that they shouldn’t both contest regional and rural seats. Then, it was a case of a Labor candidate on 40% of the vote being beaten by a Lib with 32% getting preferences from a Nat (or Country Party candidate) with 28%. The same with Libs winning seats on DLP preferences. One could ask “What’s different now Mr Sheridan?”
What the hardRite, eg IPA & exSen. Minchin et al, really want in the fever dreams of their unquiet night which would be our darkness at noon, is the return of FPtP voting.
Sheridan’s new(?) hots for ‘optional preferential voting‘ is the electoral equivalent of ‘I’ll only put it in a little way then stop if you don’t like it‘.
It has been shown in state elections (Qld since 1990 and NSW for the two (fixed term) elections) to be very effective in curtailing the untidy interference of the oldLeft working class who so often get it wrong in not understanding their sole function is to (appear to) endorse the ruling clique.
The lazy, fecklessness of yer avraj punter makes it very attractive instead of those boring numbers, especially in winter when they might be wearing shoes.
It also has the added benefit that, if used in error at federal elections, it renders the vote invalid – win/win & lose.
Essentially it comes down this: Do you really want action on CC. Or do you mostly just want to sneer at ScuzMo and feel good about your own conspicuous virtue, using the vehicle of a compelling celebrity.
Obviously anyone of a centre rightish bent in those Teal seats who was serious about CC would have got involved with their local moderate Liberal member and branch, to try to push the party centre wards. Plenty have, too. Interesting though that the dominant Lib activists/stackers now rapidly changing the party in NSW are all hard right, CC deniers/spoilers.
This election may finally be the pivot. But never forget this democratic rule: if the voters really want it, they vote for it, and get it.
Unfortunately the majority of voters have no idea what they want and won’t stop whinging until somebody gives it to them.
Then they will just moan that it is the wrong colour, style or size.
Yes, on bad days I’m convinced you’re right. That’s why it’s such a hard road being genuinely progressive. People only tend to realise what progressive reforms are desperately needed when the bad policy ills are hurting them directly. By then it’s invariably too late.
We’re about to see that with housing. Suspect we’ll only truly ‘get it’ with CC after another 4-5 years of extreme weather catastrophe…:-(
Far more interesting will be what these cute, frolicking Indy puppies actually do with their cars if they should happen to catch them. For all the shiny bauble excitement in the coverage – yeah, I know, gotta find a new hook to justify a byline in a crowded marketplace – ultimately this lot will back Labor or LNP in forming a government. Governments set agendas, Parly and legislative schedules, shape committees…sit in Ministries. There are a couple of issues where you’ll get a bit of headline trading and maybe even some reform but the nature of the most likely Indy up setters is that this notion of their ‘by merit, vote by vote’ parliamentary impact is a pipe dream.
‘Maybe’ Spender, Tink, Wright and let’s say FAS Kate Chaney in Curtin get up…noise, smoke, flashing lights, a shop window Federal ICAC (Labor doesn’t want teeth either!!), some more tacked-on expensive gender bunting (a la Resetting the Standard)…and the grind of CC negotiation which might shift the dial a small bit in a good direction (but little more than Zimmerman, Sharma, Freydenberg and Hammond would have from inside the tent anyway)…then they’ll all vote LNP, and horsetrade for their electorate. (Anyone who thinks any of these Reps would choose Labor over Lib on franked divvies, tax reform, IR, foreign policy, budget blow out measures, property, welfare transfers etc…isn’t really paying attention to their electorates’ demographic. These Indy’s will all want to get re-elected, having done the hard yards!)
Not slagging Indy ambition off for kicks – just ran for Council as one myself, and all the Voices are obviously excellent candidates, would be diligent and decent local members and would no doubt make their welcome presence ‘felt’ in the wider national debate via disproportionate media profile, especially the ABC. (They all love a camera, and vice versa). But parliament is a boring self-effacing slog and they won’t by sheer Indy willpower ‘magic away’ the wildly competing electoral imperatives that have been the real problem on an issue like CC. To really reconcile the paralysing stand-off and advance the issue, you don’t need pro-CC action Reps in seats like Warringah and Kooyong – you’ve already got that – you need them in, or with influence on, Hunter and Capricornia and Gippsland. Personally I’d reckon a Darren Chester will likely have a lot more influence over say a Keith Pitt on CC ground-giving than say a Zoe Daniels. Hey, could be wrong…
Independents are cool toys to play about with for a bit, but from a reform perspective way over-rated. Most end up lasting a term, maybe two. Do some local good, systemically change little. Even Andrew Wilkie, a terrific and long-term Indy, can’t seem to get his (fairly popular) pet issue of gambling reform anywhere special.