Source : the age
Australians don’t like sore losers. We are a country that celebrates near misses, unlucky defeats or even unexpected successes (see: Steven Bradbury). Generally, we recognise that if you fall short, you should accept your lot and march on. Now, it seems there’s an exception to this rule: federal elections.
Since the historic outcome of the May 3 election (historically good for Labor, historically bad for the Liberal Party), there has been a growing chorus of those who argue that because their team didn’t win, preferential voting is to blame.
Some are claiming that the Liberal Party lost by historic margins because of preferential voting. Pictured are new party leader Sussan Ley and former leader Peter Dutton. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
A feature of Australian elections for more than a century, preferential voting was originally a promise from then Nationalist prime minister Billy Hughes, gaining support within conservative circles after the 1918 byelection for the West Australian seat of Swan.
Labor’s Ted Corboy, a young returned serviceman who had seen action at Gallipoli and in France, was up against the Country Party candidate Basil Murray, the Nationalists’ William Hedges and an independent, William Watson.
Corboy secured 34.4 per cent of the vote, enough under the then first-past-the-post electoral system to make him the new member (and, at 22, the youngest person ever elected to the House).
Between them, Hedges and Murray gathered 61 per cent of the vote, but without preferential voting, they were left in Corboy’s wake.
The Hughes government, under pressure from his party and the emerging Country Party, moved quickly to introduce preferential voting in time for a byelection less than two months later (which was won by the conservative candidate). And that’s how we’ve run House of Representatives elections ever since.
But the May 3 result has prompted an outpouring of sour grapes from those who reckon a century-old system put in place by conservative parties to maximise their electoral chances is somehow being used by Labor to keep the mob formerly known as the Coalition from power.
For some, it’s even worse – a full-blown conspiracy against democracy. This has included the claim that the preferential voting system (also known as an instant run-off or ranked choice) is somehow unconstitutional.
For decades, the preferential system almost always resulted in a final run-off between Labor and Coalition candidates. But as society has changed, so have the wants and needs of voters.
Of the 150 seats contested on May 3, more than 30 had a final two-party preferred battle outside the Labor-Coalition alignment. About 13 were between a Liberal and an independent, nine were between Labor and a Green, another had Labor facing off against One Nation. There was also Labor versus an independent, and the Nationals against an independent.
That should be one of the key takeaways for the major parties from this election. It’s a sign that our society wants more on offer than just a choice between the traditional left and right. It also shows the dissatisfaction among a growing number of voters with the major parties; more than a third backed someone else. Voters are exercising their right to choose, something we should cherish in a democracy.
Some critics have claimed going back to a first-past-the-post system would have changed the entire result. That’s not true. Coalition candidates beat their opponents on the primary vote, and subsequently lost them on preferences, in 12 seats, including Dutton’s former seat of Dickson. Labor would have picked up Fowler, but former Greens leader Adam Bandt would have held on to Melbourne. And at the end of the day, Anthony Albanese would still have had a clear majority in the House.
This argument also rests on a huge assumption – that voters would cast a ballot the same way as they do under the preferential system if we had a first-past-the-post system. It’s highly likely, though, that people would vote differently if they knew their ballot would only stick with one candidate.
This goes to another argument floating in the ether: that Australians don’t understand preferential voting. This arguably reflects more about the critics than voters at large. Are they seriously suggesting that a system that’s been in place for a century is suddenly “too complex”? Wait till someone tries to explain the Senate’s system of proportional representation.
The whole idea of preferential voting is to avoid the situation delivered by first-past-the-post, under which a candidate with a relatively small support base can win. We have decided that if you can’t get your most preferred representative, your vote can get you to perhaps your second or third most preferred, and that broadly, that’s a much better model for democracy.
As my learned colleague David Crowe noted days after the election, while parties try to influence the preference allocation of voters, ultimately it is up to the individual to decide. Again, that’s key to our democracy.
If you want to give your first preference to the Victorian Socialists and your second to One Nation, that’s your right. That should be defended, especially at a time when democracy is under threat around the world.
You can mount an argument that a more representative voting system would be multi-member seats rather than our single-member system, but such a move would probably require larger seats and more MPs, something I do need.
But the critics don’t want more representation – they just want their representation. They’re using disingenuous or factually incorrect claims because they can’t accept voters didn’t see the world through their prism.
Democracy requires the losers to accept the decision of the electorate. Voters have spoken, through a preferential voting system that despite its shortcomings has stood this country in good stead for a century.
Shane Wright is a senior economics correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
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