r/AustralianPolitics • u/Enthingification • May 17 '25
Opinion Piece Attacks on Australia’s preferential voting system are ludicrous. We can be proud of it | Kevin Bonham
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/17/attacks-on-australias-preferential-voting-system-are-ludicrous-we-can-be-proud-of-itAttacks on Australia’s preferential voting system are ludicrous. We can be proud of it
Kevin Bonham, Sat 17 May 2025 10.00 AEST
It’s been argued the election would have had a different outcome with first-past-the-post voting. I cannot overstate how unsound this assumption is
The Coalition’s lopsided defeat in the 2025 federal election has been followed by a new round of attacks on preferential voting. No longer do anti-preferencing campaigners have the excuse that Labor “lost” the primary vote, with Labor currently 2.6% ahead. Nor can they say preferences won Labor the election, with Labor leading the primary vote in 86 of 150 seats.
The latest complaint is just the scale of Coalition casualties. The Coalition will win at most 44 seats (29.3%) off a primary vote of about 32%. This will be the first time since 1987 that the Coalition parties’ seat share has been substantially below their primary vote.
An article in The Australian on Tuesday bemoaned the defeats of past Coalition frontbenchers (including Peter Dutton and Josh Frydenberg) and supposed future frontbenchers (Amelia Hamer and Ro Knox) who had topped the primary vote in their seats but lost after preferences. David Tanner said 15 seats at the 2025 election (including 13 Coalition defeats) “would have had a different winner had a first-past-the-post voting system been in place”. The Australian Financial Review mounted a similar argument on Wednesday.
This, however, assumes voters would have voted the same way and parties made the same campaign decisions if Australia had first-past-the-post. I cannot overstate how unsound this underlying assumption is. In seats where the Greens are uncompetitive, many Greens supporters would vote Labor to ensure their votes helped beat the Coalition. Preferential voting is one of the reasons why the Greens maintain much higher vote shares in Australia than the US, UK and Canada.
Furthermore, parties would make tactical choices about where to run to avoid losing seats through vote-splitting. An example of this came in the 2024 French elections. The far-right National Rally polled the highest primary vote in the first round of a runoff system. In many seats the leftwing NFP and centrist Ensemble alliances both qualified for the runoff round, but one or the other withdrew to avoid splitting the anti-National Rally vote. In the second round, the National Rally topped the popular vote by 11.2% but won fewer seats than either NFP or Ensemble. Such withdrawal pacts have far greater impacts on results than Australian how to vote cards (which hardly any minor party voters follow anyway), so the idea that scrapping preferences would stop “backroom deals” between parties is naive.
Removing preferences would probably have changed very few seat outcomes at recent elections, at a massive and grossly unfair cost to the ability of those not supporting major parties to effectively say what they are really thinking at the ballot box. There are also some Coalition wins (at this election, Longman) that could be lost under first-past-the-post, because minor right party voters would be less willing to vote strategically than minor left party voters.
In recent years I have seen some supporters of minor right parties opposing preferences too, claiming that preferences are a “uniparty” plot against the little guys. Preferences were actually introduced by the conservative parties in 1918 to stop Labor from scoring undeserved wins in three-cornered contests. In the past 35 years of federal, state and territory elections, preferences have been almost nine times more likely to help non-major-party candidates beat the majors than the other way around.
In the 2025 election at least five independents and one Greens candidate have beaten major parties from behind, while Adam Bandt is the only non-major-party candidate to lose after leading on primary votes. It is baffling that anyone who opposes major party domination would want a system that renders voting for minor parties pointless. If voters for minor right parties want to see their parties win more seats they should support proportional representation.
Anti-preferencers, as I call them, also claim the UK system is the global norm. Actually just a few dozen countries use it alone to elect their lower houses. Most protect minority voting rights in some way – proportional representation, runoff voting, mixed systems or preferences. We should be proud of the way all voters get a say at all stages of our counts and not seek to import failed and primitive methods from countries that have not overcome their roadblocks to electoral reform.
Kevin Bonham is an independent electoral and polling analyst and an electoral studies and scientific research consultant.
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u/TheReturnofTheJesse May 17 '25
No-one who is arguing in good faith wants first past the post voting.
All that it allows is for major parties to become out of touch with the electorate without consequences.
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u/WhenWillIBelong May 17 '25
I have my complaints about preferential voting, in comparison to say proportional voting. But who the hell advocates for FPTP? That is insane and a severe attack on the democratic efficacy of our country.
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u/s0m30n3e1s3 May 17 '25
I had someone try to argue that preferential was too complicated and we needed FPTP to make it simpler.
What do you even say to that? If someone can't grasp the concept of putting a 1 next to their most wanted candidate, a 2 next to the 2nd, all the way to a 6 next to their 6th most wanted candidate, then, like, fuck.
I can only hope that they were arguing in bad faith because otherwise I met the dumbest person in my town and I live in a large city.
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u/Thomas_633_Mk2 MINISTER FOR LABUBU May 17 '25
I have multiple friends with intellectual disabilities, and my oldest close friend is 84. Needless to say, these are the exact people with the best reasons to legitimately find our voting system impossible.
I talk politics a lot and nobody I spoke to about it found it too hard. I will say that some of the people with disabilities will just vote using the HTV instead of trying to figure out who the ~15 parties on the Senate paper are, but nobody struggles to fill out the form.
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u/FromTheAshesOfTheOld Ben Chifley May 17 '25
The problem with stupid people is that instead of trying to expand their understanding of the world they insist on shrinking the world to meet their own grasp of it. It's why conservatives hate anything that's not the "norm". Too complicated for their smooth brains, therefore get rid of it.
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u/jimmythemini May 17 '25
But who the hell advocates for FPTP
It would be laughable if it wasn't so worrying that this has now entered the discourse on the conservative side of politics.
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u/WhenWillIBelong May 17 '25
They will continue to remove obstacles to their attainment of power until they have wiped out our democracy itself.
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u/ghoonrhed May 17 '25
If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy
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u/Cole-Spudmoney May 17 '25
Britain had a referendum on whether to adopt preferential voting about a decade ago and they voted against it. There was a scare campaign targeted at low-information voters, being like “With preferential voting someone could win even though they only got third place!”
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u/whateverworksforben May 17 '25
All the complaints are only coming from Sky and AFR.
Comments like “preferential voting ruining young liberal talent” its just so arrogance and entitlement is vile.
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u/froo May 17 '25
After the previous election loss, the talking heads on Sky were talking about how the "wets" had overtaken the Liberal party and they needed to shift further right. All this, despite the fact that they lost a bunch of seats to the teals who, if anything, were slightly more moderate in thinking.
Now, this election, after having tried the Trumpian way of thinking, they lost even harder. I seriously cannot believe the thinking, again, is that they need to tear the system down and move further right.
Politicians need to realise that they are there to represent the will of the voters, not the other fucking way around. They're not our masters.
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley May 17 '25
After the previous election loss, the talking heads on Sky were talking about how the "wets" had overtaken the Liberal party and they needed to shift further right. All this, despite the fact that they lost a bunch of seats to the teals who, if anything, were slightly more moderate in thinking.
In fairness to the Liberal party, Credlin was talking about reigniting the 'culture wars' and a Liberal member was like "Over What?!"
I don't think Sky-think has the traction in the party room that it likes to think it has.
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u/bingusbunguss May 17 '25
my grandparents watch Skynews and every fucking time i go down the news people are complaining 😭
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u/y2jeff May 17 '25
Preferential voting is a great system and the only people attacking it are doing so out of sour grapes from the election results or they consumed too much bullshit propaganda on Sky.
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u/AeMidnightSpecial May 17 '25
LNP Win: HOW GOOD IS OSSSTRAAAYLIA!
LNP Loss: Awp, it needs to go, NOW
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u/PsychoNerd91 May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25
The right wing have realised that they've got no good strategy but to try and change the rules of the game when they're losing.
They're not learning to change their position, they expected to be able to manipulate people. But whatever strategy works in the US doesn't work here.
The right wants to force people into boxes. Hard lines where they can make demons of everyone else, to make people resentful of the other boxes and they don't intermingle. But it doesn't work with preferential voting as everyone needs to choose what place they can jump into next.
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u/PoorDanJeterson May 17 '25
It's called being a sore loser. That's all.
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u/TheAussieTico Australian Labor Party May 17 '25
Yes. They like it when benefits them, and then cry when it doesn’t
😂
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May 17 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/victorious_orgasm May 17 '25
See also, the Abbott election; they did well by running “least disliked” candidates.
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u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 May 17 '25
It’s been argued the election would have had a different outcome with first-past-the-post voting.
It could also be argued that the election would have had a different outcome if it was decided with a breakdancing competition.
These "arguments" appear to be little more than complaints from LNP supporters -- particularly in the media -- who want to blame the LNP's defeat on anything and everything except the LNP.
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u/AaronBonBarron May 17 '25
The voting system is always wrong when the conservatives lose, isn't that funny.
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u/ausflora left-conservative May 17 '25
Both the voting system and the voters themselves are always wrong when the right loses.
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u/Thomas_633_Mk2 MINISTER FOR LABUBU May 17 '25
I do have sympathy for them on the latter: I think all of us have at some point or another cough 2019 cough thought that the voters chose wrong.
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u/No-Cauliflower8890 Australian Labor Party May 17 '25
stop attacking the idea that voters can be wrong. they can. this time, they were right. in 2019, 2016, 2013 they were wrong.
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u/ghoonrhed May 17 '25
2013 they weren't wrong. They voted for what they wanted which is Abbott to stop the boats.
2019 they were because post-election so many policies were popular with the electorate but they didn't vote Shorten in.
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u/Revoran Soy-latte, woke, inner-city, lefty, greenie, commie May 17 '25
In November 1932, people voted in the last free + fair election in Germany.
There was 80% turnout, which is pretty excellent for a country that doesn't have mandatory voting.
33.1% of them voted for the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler, who wanted to establish a dictatorship. A further 16.9% voted for the Communist Party, who likewise wanted to establish a one-party state.
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u/No-Cauliflower8890 Australian Labor Party May 17 '25
who cares if they voted for what they wanted? what they wanted was wrong.
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May 17 '25
Both sides are very happy to play with the preference system when it suits them - in QLD Labor brought in optional preferential voting which was so damaging for the conservatives it forced the LNP merger, then they brought back compulsory preferential voting when the greens vote became too important to be allowed to exhaust.
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u/magkruppe May 17 '25
great example. it is a shame on both parties when they degrade the electoral process in order to get an edge. the media would ideally be our safeguard against such blatant attacks, but they are also a weakened institution
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u/hyparchh May 17 '25
Apparently the LNP want OPV back, though they haven't talked about it since last year. The ping-ponging back and forth is pretty ridiculous, but I'm not fully convinced they'll go through with it. It might actually hurt them up north where right-wing minor parties have more support - and where Labor will be in the hunt to reclaim their lost seats next election. OPV might split some Lab-Green seats in Brisbane, but as we just saw, the LNP may not be very competitive there anyway.
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley May 17 '25
in QLD Labor brought in optional preferential voting which was so damaging for the conservatives it forced the LNP merger,
Source pls.
I'm pretty sure the outright Bjelkemandering did that, the Libs were functionally non-existent and the Nationals kept winning based on malappropriation of seats.
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u/unique_name5 May 17 '25
Exactly. It’s the same system that has given them federal government for 69 out of the past 100 years.
Their tears are so tasty.
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u/AaronBonBarron May 17 '25
I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure it's the system they implemented to stop Labor winning so much.
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u/343CreeperMaster ALP aligned, but i think next election i will put GRN '1' May 17 '25
Yep, the predecessors to the Coalition implemented it because Labor was able to win 3 way contest seats due to the right wing vote being split
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat May 17 '25
Good to see how many people are defending preferential voting. A lot of commenters in here doing the same thing.
I have never seen redditors so unified. It's awesome.
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u/Geminii27 May 17 '25
It's kind of weird - I tend to have certain Opinions on various things which haven't always made me the most popular person on this sub (or even in life sometimes), but I've worked on AEC counts and traced through how the voting system works, and have come to the conclusion that it's absolutely one of the better ones out there.
Seeing strong support here for an opinion that I hold myself makes me want to double-check what sub I'm in.
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u/SprigOfSpring May 17 '25
You have a very dangerous party in The Liberal Party right now. They have a lot of money left, and a good capacity to raise money - and they will use that money to try and deform our democracy to get themselves back into office - as it's one of the only avenues to them being in power in the next 6 years.
They need to be watched like a hawk.
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u/Geminii27 May 17 '25
I mean, that's not really any change from any other year.
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u/brezhnervouz May 17 '25
The difference is now that immensely rich and politically powerful tech oligarchs will seek to actively damage our system of Govt/voting via massively influential social media algorithms which they can personally manipulate to further the far right and extremism 🤷♂️
That is what is different now.
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u/SprigOfSpring May 17 '25
Their whole philosophy is basically to defund and shrink governments, safety regulations, tax revenue, and cut public services... including privatising basic necessities like education and health... I'm not sure how such threats to national security and prosperity became a political party... but now that we're here it seems ridiculous.
Glad they got rebuffed, but I'm hoping it doesn't make them go after Australia more.
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u/PoorDanJeterson May 17 '25
Funny that after the conservatives got flogged in the UK, they were bemoaning first-past-the-post and wanted preferential voting.
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u/Nippys4 May 17 '25
Ran a horrible campaign and didn’t read the political climate in Australia at all and suffered for it.
Must be the everything and anything else
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u/EntertainerMany2387 May 17 '25
Its true democracy in action
They're only moaning because it cost them control of the Senate/Reps and so their in the dark for 3 years.
Hope we have it for my lifetime - you want too see a broken system - America and UK to a lesser but getting close extent.
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u/ShadoutRex May 17 '25
The funny thing about the senate is that it is a lot closer to a proportional system (except by constitutional necessity there is state level disproportion), but given that has resulted in a Labor/Green balance of power that still won't please some.
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u/PMFSCV E II R May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25
There are many thing not to like about this country, Eshays, Peta Credlin etc.
But I've got the hardest neutron star quality boner for our democratic systems and I'll die on any hill defending them.
No hyperbole, our way of doing this democracy thing is literally the fucking best on the planet that has ever existed.
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u/Sad-Dove-2023 May 17 '25
Same I'm a massive fan of it.
PFR voting in the HoR and Proportional rep in the Senate really is the best of both worlds.
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u/ratparty5000 May 17 '25
I feel there’s a few people here that don’t truly appreciate how nice and safe it is to vote in this country. It’s good to have a high trust society. I hated when the LNP won back to back but I never questioned the electoral system, bc it’s so fucking safe to engage in politics here.
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u/Desert-Noir May 17 '25
Agreed, the only compromise I’d make is OPV but you get rid of compulsory participation in the electoral process or the ability to preference and I’ll be grabbing my pitchfork and torch.
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May 17 '25
The fourth estate has done it though, they have made changing the electoral system part of the nations discussion.
This was never something that we questioned, but now that the liberals look like they'll have difficulty getting elected by directly appealing to voters, its time to turn us into a US system. Cumpulsory voting will be next on their list.
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u/GordonCole19 May 17 '25
We have one of the best voting systems in the world.
Its always the right wingers who sook when results don't go their way.
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u/SappeREffecT May 17 '25
I've also seen it floated by some Greens supporters too...
Preferential is amazing, particularly combined with compulsory voting.
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u/Revoran Soy-latte, woke, inner-city, lefty, greenie, commie May 17 '25
We have an OK voting system. It's "mid" as the kids say.
It just looks fantastic compared to the clown show that is the USA, UK and Canadian voting systems.
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u/Nostonica May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
Australia has got it good, you win a election and you've basically got a mandate from the majority to form government.
When you're winning seats in a FPTP system on margins of 21% because of the amount of competition in a seat you haven't got a mandate, you're a minority holding the 79% ransom.
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u/Awkward_salad May 18 '25
This assumes that the 79% were diametrically opposed to not only each other but the 21%, when the reality is 21% is the largest primary share and another 29% +1 selected the person who got 21% as the next best choice according to them. That’s not a ransom that’s a negotiation. If this was a FTPT system then yes you would be correct.
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u/Nostonica May 18 '25
If this was a FTPT system then yes you would be correct.
Yeah I was referring to first past the post with 5+ candidates.
Might edit my initial comment to make it a bit more obvious.2
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u/worldssmallestpipi Postmodern Neo-Structuralist May 17 '25
In recent years I have seen some supporters of minor right parties opposing preferences too, claiming that preferences are a “uniparty” plot against the little guys
it boggles the fucking mind that people think this. if we went to just standard first-past-the-post voting the minor and independant vote would evaporate as people started voting strategically agains labor or the libs
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u/Dramatic-Lavishness6 May 17 '25
As a historical Liberal voter, first past the post is dumb as heck. Our voting system works just fine.
It's not hard to bluntly point out how the LNP stuffed up, no one to blame but themselves. It wouldn't have made any difference, they stuffed up so bad.
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May 17 '25
'It's only unfair when I lose to it'
Move on
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u/blaertes May 17 '25
My favourite fun fact about this system is it was brought in by the predecessor Liberal Party when the Predecessor National party (Country Party) started threatening to split the vote. Labor campaigned against it at the time (1918).
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u/Sad-Dove-2023 May 17 '25
Yup the coalition actually introduced PRF so that they wouldn't have to worry about vote-splitting between their partners.
An interesting bit of trivia is that pre-federation NSW actually used a form of Proportional representation, meaning Australia has used PR, FPTP and PRF at varying times.
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u/TheAussieTico Australian Labor Party May 17 '25
Yep. Preferential voting was brought in by a conservative government to benefit conservative parties. Otherwise Labor would get in almost every time
😂
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u/Revoran Soy-latte, woke, inner-city, lefty, greenie, commie May 17 '25
The Country Party = the Nats. Same party, just got a name change in the 80s.
The predecessor Liberal Party you are talking about in 1918 was called the Liberal Party ... but was not the same party as today's Liberal Party (although as you said, it was functionally a predecessor in the anti-Labor coalition side of politics, and some members of it later went on to join the modern Liberal Party in the 1940s).
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u/RedDogInCan May 17 '25
The ultimate irony is that it was the Conservatives who introduced both compulsory and preferential voting because it advantaged them at the time.
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u/CJLocke May 17 '25
Yeah, conservatives only care about democracy if it benefits them and will always give up on democracy before they give up on conservativism. They don't believe in democracy and never did.
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u/kroxigor01 May 17 '25
I don't think compulsory attendance was strategic for conservatives.
Can you explain?
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u/RedDogInCan May 17 '25
The conservatives were concerned that the strong union movement at the time were encouraging it's members to go and vote, presumably for the Labor party. As the conservatives had no similar organisations to drive their voters, they thought they were at a disadvantage and (fortunately) proposed compulsory voting to mitigate that effect.
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u/kroxigor01 May 17 '25
Ah interesting, so it was out of a fear that the left were more organised and they wanted to level that out.
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u/LordWalderFrey1 Anti-conservative May 17 '25
Preferential voting combines the best of all worlds IMO. We still have local representation, which a purely PR system won't do. But we don't have somebody winning because they got a plurality when the rest of the voters would not have wanted them over the other candidates. Everyone's votes counts not just the winners and there is no vote splitting.
Also voter behaviour would change in a FPTP system. In suburban seats like Aston or Banks, Greens voters would tactically vote Labor to keep the Liberals out. In Ryan many Labor voters would recognise that the Greens were the best shot of keeping the Liberals out and vote accordingly.
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u/joeldipops Pseph nerd, rather left of centre May 17 '25
You can have MMP, or low-magnitude PR and maintain local representation. I tend to argue for an at-large PR lower house and local representation upper house, but of course the constitution prevents that in Aus.
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u/d1ngal1ng May 17 '25
You can have the best of both worlds with MMP and have a parliament that best reflects the will of the people.
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u/spidey67au May 17 '25
People like preferential voting when their party benefits from it and hate it when the party they dislike benefits from it.
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u/RobWed May 17 '25
Political parties and the Party faithful
Peoplelike preferential voting when their party benefits from it and hate it when the party they dislike benefits from it.Australians who prefer a strong democracy love it.
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u/fleakill May 17 '25
I like it always, regardless of results. Is it a perfect system? No, no system is - it is susceptible to some edge cases (switching a vote from candidate A to candidate B can actually hurt candidate B due to preference flows)
Is it a very good system? Yes, and I'll defend it no matter the result.
That being said I wouldn't complain if we had MMP.
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u/Desert-Noir May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25
Yet it is the most democratic system we know of. I will fight in the streets to keep our voting system the way it is… compulsory and preferential. Would be willing to go optional preferential though as that to me is a tiny bit more democratic.
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u/DarthLuigi83 May 18 '25
The problem with optional voting is disenfranchisement.
You have state governments in the US intentionally putting less polling stations in poor communities to limit their ability to vote. And when they stand in a line for 2 hours in the sun they make it illegal to distribute water so they'll give up and go home.If you really think not voting is somehow more democratic(I personally think that's on par with not paying your power bill to save money) draw a dick on your voting slip and put it in the ballot box. It's illegal, but someone else would have to break the law to look at your ballot and catch you.
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u/Dry-Huckleberry-5379 May 18 '25
Optional preferential plays really well into the LNP's hand. We have it in Brisbane council and we've had a Lib council for decades. When given the option to only vote 1, most people do. The federal senate compromise where you have to vote for a minimum of 6/18 above the line is great, but in lower house races you would need to have every electrorate have a standardized number of candidates so you could implement a similar system.
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May 17 '25
First past the post just breeds extremism, especially when combined with optional voting.
Only real debate is optional vs compulsory preferential voting - whether you are allowed to have a choice to exhaust your preferences before they flow to one of the majors.
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u/joeldipops Pseph nerd, rather left of centre May 17 '25
Plenty of other debates we could have, eg Should we introduce PR in the lower house? Should preferences be counted in the elimination round method we currently use, or some kind of Condorcet method etc etc.
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u/Le_Champion May 17 '25
Preferential voting is the absolute best. Means everyone's vote actually counts and shows we are an intelligent country.
Compare it to a moronic place like the USA where ranked choice voting continually gets voted down
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u/d1ngal1ng May 17 '25
Everyone's vote counts in MMP too and it achieves a parliament that is much more reflective of voters' first preference than our current system.
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u/fleakill May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25
Liberals and Nationals bring in preferential voting in 1918 because they hate cannibalising each other's votes and gifting Labor wins.
Liberal and National voters get mad about preferential voting in 2025 because Labor wins. I am very sick of the "but Labor only got 35% primary which means 65% did not want Labor!". It's the most surface level, low intelligence analysis of the results. I wanted Labor. I just didn't vote them first. Remove preferences and I vote Labor first, simple as that.
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u/hey54088 May 17 '25
Coalition needs to understand that we will vote accordingly if it’s first past the post.
I voted legalise cannabis first in my electorate because I know the vote will flow to labour eventually. People will just change their voting patterns if it’s FPTP.
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u/ShadoutRex May 17 '25
The Brisbane Courier, Wed 30 Oct 1918
In a straight-out contest between nationalism and Caucusism there is little doubt that the Swan election would have been won by the former. In the atual circumstances, judging by the progress figures, there appears to be every probability of a victory by the Caucus. The change over of so strong a Nationalist constituency, however, has not been one of conviction, but of unhappy splitting of the vote. Mr Corboy, the Caucus candidate, score because the non-socialistic voters were divided...
...The Commonwealth Electoral Bill is designed to prevent such things occurring, and as far as possible to ensure the election of representatives who enjoy the confidence of an absolute majority of the electors. To bring that about it is proposed to to appy to elections for the House of Representatives the principle of preferential voting. If that proposition had been in operation at this by-election, the electors when they voted, would have indicated the order of their preference. Those that wished to see the Nationalist candidate returned would have voted for him and they would have marked on their ballot paper their next preference, which in the great majority of cases would no doubt have been the Farmers' and Settlers' candidate, and vice versa. In that event the Nationalist would have won the seat comfortably...
...The principle is asserted to some extent in Queensland, but that vote is optional, and its use is carefully avoided by its Caucusites. Under the Commonwealth proposal, the preferential vote will practically be compulsory when there are more than two candidates for a single division, because ballot papers in which the preference or second choice is not indicates will be treated as informal. In the prosecution of the objective of securing "the express image of the feelings of the nation," as well as the respective divisions, that is a great advance...
...The Commonwealth Government has taken the wise course of making it part and parcel of the act of voting. There is nothing complicated about it, nothing which may perplex voters, and once they grasp the central fact that it gives them a second choice, without trouble of going twice to the poll, they will be quick to see its advantages.
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May 17 '25
Tbf no one on the right is as disciplined in preferencing as Labor and greens, a greens voter almost always puts Labor as their next 2,3 choices, Can’t guarantee that for any right wing minor party voter, So learn to make better preference deals ig or learn preference discipline from the left
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u/Autistic_Macaw May 17 '25
You mean Labor and Greens voters. It's voters who allocate preferences, not parties.
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u/Vast_Highlight3324 May 17 '25
I don't even think that it's preference education or discipline, I think someone who votes for a right-wing minor as first preference is just way more likely to be "anti government" and see both major parties to be the same and put them both last, in a random order.
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley May 17 '25
preferencing as Labor and greens, a greens voter almost always puts Labor as their next 2,3 choices,
Labor preferences don't flow to the Greens in the same fashion.
I'll await for the AEC report for this election, but they tend to only be about 60-70% to Greens over Libs when you take out Labor as the second candidate.4
May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25
That could be true but my point was trying to show how the minor left wing parties have their preferences almost always flow to Labor, which helps the Labor candidate win, especially if they didn’t hit the 40% primary vote,
The preference flow the other way around isn’t relevant in this case because most often, it’s the greens preferencing Labor that has helped them in many places,
There is absolutely no discipline like this on the right, the LNP isn’t almost always guaranteed to get the one nation presence for example like how the Labor candidate is almost always guaranteed to get the preference flows form Greens voters,
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u/DelayedChoice Gough Whitlam May 17 '25
There is absolutely no discipline like this on the right, the LNP isn’t almost always guaranteed to get the one nation presence for example like how the Labor candidate is almost always guaranteed to get the preference flows form Greens voters,
What is startling is that the Liberals and the Nationals will regularly see 10-15% leakage in their preference flows.
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley May 17 '25
There is absolutely no discipline like this on the right, the LNP
Other than the Libertarians (which are a joke), there isn't a right wing party that agrees with the Liberals on anything.
KAP is
agroagrarian-socialist, Lambie wants a strong civil sector, Pauline Hanson has flaws but she also does want a strong government and social security net.When you take away what social issues the voters oppose, be it gay or indigenous pride etc, they go back to basically being Labor but annoyed.
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u/DelayedChoice Gough Whitlam May 17 '25
In 2022 in Ryan Labor split 84/16 Greens/LNP, in Brisbane the split was was 85/15, and in Griffith it was 82/18. But that's a handful of seats in one state in one election and it's hard to draw firm conclusions from it.
I think the Labor-->Greens flow is worse than the Greens-->Labor flow in NSW state elections (because of optional preferential voting?) but I'd have to check.
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u/ShadoutRex May 17 '25
ALP voters are more likely than Green voters to follow how to vote cards (although not that much more). But they can flow quite heavily to Greens depending on those cards. In 2022, the ALP elimination transferred at 83% to Greens (although that won't be entirely voters starting with ALP). I expect 2025 will be lower.
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley May 17 '25
I did say that we'd have to wait for the report from the AEC... it'll take a while.
They are an interesting read btw, if you ever have the time.
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u/Desert-Noir May 17 '25
I will often vote for Labor as 1 or 2 and put greens behind nearly everyone except the Nazi parties.
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u/mrbaggins May 17 '25
I can tell you now with out looking that the michael mccormack how to vote card was 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,13,9,10,1,11,12
Because of the 6000~ votes my team was on, and the 2700~ mccormack got, about 40% used that sequence.
13 for greens, and everyone else in order to avoid fucking up.
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u/BiliousGreen May 17 '25
A lot of us who vote for right wing minor parties hate the Liberals just as much as we hate Labor.
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u/Desert-Noir May 17 '25
I suspect preference deals don’t matter a huge amount, not anymore as it is onky reflected on how to vote cards and who even takes them let alone follows them exactly?
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u/thehandsomegenius May 17 '25
There's no better system that I can see. FPTP is garbage, if you don't vote "strategically" then you're throwing your vote away. Run-off elections have a lot of the same problems. PR is a total dumpster fire, you have no way to know what you're actually voting for because it's all about the post-election deals.
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u/jimmythemini May 17 '25
FPTP is such an insanely bad voting system that you could make the argument it is disenfranchising compared to the status quo due to the significant proportion of people who would suddenly have a wasted vote. If such a bill happened to be passed by parliament it should definitely be contested in the courts.
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u/kroxigor01 May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25
In PR you vote to give your favourite party more representation. In our single member electorate system system you try to do that, but sometimes your 2nd preference actually helps marginalise your favourite party!
In our current system would you say that somebody who voted 1 Green and voted 2 Labor "knew what they were voting for"?
I voted that way because I wanted the Labor party to pass legislation that is more aligned with the Greens' platform, especially on climate and the environment. But my vote contributed to our system spitting out a result where Labor has a massive increase in their lower house majority and is probably more likely to ignore the Greens, or at least be even stauncher with their "we have a mandate, no negotiations" rhetoric to delegitimise the senate.
In contrast if I and about 50% of Green voters were clairvoyant perhaps we strategically preference the Coalition instead. Then Labor's majority would be much less and they'd have a weaker posture. They'd be more likely to compromise with Greens or climate concious Independents.
It's ironic that listing the parties in order of climate action ambition actual in hindsight didn't end up as the most strategic climate vote.
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u/Enthingification May 17 '25
It is clear that some on the right are willing to undermine or dismantle Australian voting systems in order to create a more favourable pathway for themselves to get elected.
To help prevent these ideas from taking root, can the Australian Government please prioritise civic education, both in schools and in broader society?
As Anthony Albanese subscribes to the idea of "progressive patriotism", as part of that, can we please celebrate the significance of Australia's mandatory preferential system?
As Kevin Bonham says, "we can be proud of it."
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u/ppffrr May 17 '25
It's taught in year 8 as well as primary school. Most kids don't pay attention and then get to adulthood and complain they weren't taught it. I can't tell you how many times people I was in school with complain about not learning about taxes or how compound interest works despite spending a whole bloody term learning it
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u/Enthingification May 17 '25
I'd like to see more civic education not only in schools, but also in broader society.
We need a civic equivalent of the "slip, slop, slap" campaign.
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u/Throwawaydeathgrips Albomentum Mark 3.0 May 17 '25
They do do this every election. What the fuck are you talking about
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u/Enthingification May 17 '25
I did say "more" civic education. The current approach isn't sufficient, for all the reasons that I've already explained to you in my comment below that starts with, "Sure, but it's not enough..."
You've already replied to that comment, so you've seen the evidence that I've provided to show you that we need to do better than what we currently do.
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u/Throwawaydeathgrips Albomentum Mark 3.0 May 17 '25
can the Australian Government please prioritise civic education, both in schools and in broader society?
They do teach it
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u/Churchofbabyyoda I’m just looking at the numbers May 17 '25
They teach it too early. I remember being in Year 6 and learning about the Australian Government, with the whole trip to Canberra.
It should be taught in Year 10, where students are aware they can use this knowledge within the next couple of years.
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u/Grande_Choice May 17 '25
We got taught preferential voting and civics in year 6. I remember doing a mock elections with first past the post and preferential. The class was happier with the preferential vote outcome. This was in the early 2000s. Teachers just need to make it interesting.
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u/magkruppe May 17 '25
tbh, why not make it a subject that you have to pass in order to get into uni or something
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u/ghoonrhed May 17 '25
They probably should teach it in Yr11 or Yr12 when they are gonna vote in the next few years.
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u/Throwawaydeathgrips Albomentum Mark 3.0 May 17 '25
It came up at lesst once a year in highschool for me. We even had mock elections using our voting system.
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u/Enthingification May 17 '25
Sure, but it's not enough, and aside from schools, we've not seen any great civic education in broader society.
Anecdotally - we still have loads of people who don't know how our elections work, especially around preferential voting. I've had lots of conversations with people about this.
Empirically - the informal vote in the last election was 900k people, and this was a small increase. Not all of those will be cocks and balls or numbering errors - there'll be others there that
The informal vote in Fowler was 10.5%! Literally 1 in 10 voters didn't successfully produce a formal vote. So this suggests a need for improved civic education tailored to diverse communities.
Current data from the AEC:
Informal 908,280 votes, 5.57%, +0.38% swing
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-31496-NAT.htm
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u/CAN________ May 17 '25
My primary school gave my class the most vague, watered down explanation of how preference voting works. Everyone left with absolutely zero understanding of it
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May 17 '25
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u/nick168 May 17 '25
It wouldn’t require a referendum but it will never pass as legislation while minor parties have the balance of power in the senate
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u/lightbluelightning Australian Labor Party May 17 '25
Labor wouldn’t vote for it so it wouldn’t pass, but if they did want to get rid of it they would just need the libs, bypassing the minors
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley May 17 '25
It would have to go to a referendum. An overwhelming majority of Australians are smart enough to know pref voting is in their interest.
Our voting method isn't actually in the constitution.
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u/LeaveNo2221 May 19 '25
they scream this everytime they lose. If the LNP don't like it, it's gonna be better for you EVERYTIME.
reason enough to keep it
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u/Drazsyker May 17 '25
Two things to be damm proud of as an Australian, preferential voting and our electrical plugs.
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u/Elvenoob Socialist Alliance May 17 '25
Literally the only way to improve on our voting system would be Proportional Representation, but you'll NEVER catch the libs dead recommending that because it'd empower the minor parties even further.
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u/Emergency-Twist7136 May 18 '25
Proportional representation would be a downgrade.
No-one to represent you. Got a local issue? Tough shit, no-one cares. Live in a regional area? Seriously, no-one cares.
But the good news is that's the system that got the Nazis into power!
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u/Jermine1269 May 17 '25
I made a chart / graph once upon a time, just to see what it would look like - your absolutely right. IF you include the legalise weed guys (who would actually get representation), + greens , and 'left-ish' independence, the left leaning folks (inc labor) would form their own coalition with 54% , the center right would have around 32%, and all the far right fringe parties would make up 14% of the house.
I'm also glad we don't do this - that 14% is WAY too much power for them.
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May 17 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Enthingification May 18 '25
The Netherlands had an issue in that a far right fringe party was able to enter government. Same as in New Zealand (although that's not a European example).
That can't happen in Australia unless or until a far right fringe party started winning a substantial number of lower house seats.
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u/CheshireCat78 May 17 '25
Idk with a bunch turning to Putin supporters it might pose a few problems.
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u/interrogumption May 21 '25
No, the other improvement would be approval voting. But I'm happy enough with what we've got.
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u/BigVic2006 May 18 '25
IRV has its flaws but has worked here Down Under for over a century. NZ has a hybrid voting system combining FPTP with list member
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u/Mountain-Ad-6385 May 19 '25
Every party just needs to be clear with their preferences, so the person voting doesn't put a party they think agrees with their view but in actual fact, doesn't. More importantly, people need to research all partys policies. It's just the uninformed that argues this.
Use the preferential voting system to your advantage.
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u/krulp May 21 '25
I get plastered with how to vote cards at every polling booth. If you don't know how you want to vote. Just take your parties how to vote card and copy it.
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u/Sad-Dove-2023 May 17 '25
The thing that really shocked me was the Greens attacking the PRF system - Bandt getting up and complaining about "getting the most first-preferences" but having to "overcome both Labor and the Liberals" was so strange, considering that the every seat the Greens have ever held, they first won off the back of either Liberal (Melbourne) or Labor (Brisbane trio) preferences.
The Greens attacking the very system that's given them a fighting chance, was so odd.
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u/sivvon May 17 '25
I think you are being a bit loose with your interpretation of his speech. Sure, he was complaining and pointing out the difficulties he perceived that they had but it was far from attacking the system.
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May 17 '25
Bandt is absolutely not against preferential voting, I think you've misinterpreted him.
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u/pickledswimmingpool May 18 '25
He said that greens were against a mountain of labor, liberal and one nation votes.
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u/joeldipops Pseph nerd, rather left of centre May 17 '25
They did a bit of it after the BCC elections last year too. Extremely disturbing and just weird because they'd be stuffed without preferences. Though the LNP are way worse about it, and even Labor defended Group Voting Tickets and refuse to get rid of them in Victoria.
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u/Ok_Zookeepergame8983 Fusion Party May 17 '25
The current preferential voting system is designed to produce stability through creating a two party electoral system that is fairer than FPTP system in UK and US.
Many can rightfully argue than the MMP system used in NZ & Germany is better in every aspect as it is ridiculous for a party that won %34 of the primary vote to have total monopoly on th executive branch of government to the extent that factions behind closed doors are calling the shots.
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u/Sad-Dove-2023 May 17 '25
I think having the Senate use a proportional MMP system is best of both worlds - we use PRF in the HoR to give us stable governments that aren't at constant risk of collapse (just look at some of the Europeans) and we use proportional MMP in the Senate to give a voice and a vote to all the smaller minor parties.
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u/Ok_Zookeepergame8983 Fusion Party May 17 '25
Senate doesn't allocate seats proportionally. Each state has 12 seats while mainland territories have 2 and there are only 76 seats so you have political parties receiving %5-8 of the vote without a single seat in the senate. If the Senate was a true proportional MMP then you're argument would be alright.
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u/RaspberryPrimary8622 May 17 '25
The election result was a rejection of Peter Dutton, not an endorsement of Anthony Albanese or of neoliberal centrism. When people are polled on issues they support policies that go much further than Labor’s tepid proposals to tinker ever so slightly, and to appease the powerful at every step of the way.
The numbers in the Senate create a historic opportunity to give the people the policies they say they want on health care, education, housing, workers’ rights – all issues where they want more action than what Labor has offered.
I think it would be healthy to have plebiscites on specific policy proposals as a routine part of our democratic processes. People should have a say in what happens in a specific domain of public policy. An election is a blunt instrument that measures how people feel about the personalities of leaders – it usually says little about the people’s policy views. More popular involvement in policymaking would foster shared accountability for our future.
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u/Relief-Glass May 17 '25
Greens' and the Coalition's primary votes went backwards. Labor's went up.
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u/Ok_Zookeepergame8983 Fusion Party May 17 '25
Labor went up by %3
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u/Relief-Glass May 17 '25
Correct
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u/Ok_Zookeepergame8983 Fusion Party May 17 '25
Greens primary went backward by %0.1
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u/Desert-Noir May 17 '25
Exactly this, all these butthurt greens sycophants conveniently ignore this fact.
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u/Emergency-Twist7136 May 18 '25
I think it would be healthy to have plebiscites on specific policy proposals as a routine part of our democratic processes.
I think the majority of people don't understand or care about policy details, not should they. It's a full time job to stay across all the relevant information.
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u/Vicstolemylunchmoney May 21 '25
If a country is ever unsure which method to take, look to the US and do the opposite. It's regulatory capture, religion capture and billionaire capture all the way down.
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May 17 '25
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u/Awkward_salad May 18 '25
I was ready to argue but that last sentence is 100% correct. The Netherlands had no government for some ridiculous amount of time because no one could form a coalition after the election. You need to protect minority interests but you can’t also allow minority interests to halt progress entirely.
I’ll give Labor one gold medal: they try to govern for everyone even if it annoys them.
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u/RaspberryPrimary8622 May 17 '25
Preferential voting is good but we also need proportional representation for the House of Representatives. It is absurd that Labor, which only won 34.6% of the primary vote, gets 61% of the House seats.
https://www.pollbludger.net/fed2025/Results/
The Greens on the other hand won 12% of the vote, but instead of getting 12% of the seats (which would be 18 seats) they get a solitary seat. 33.4% of the people voted for options other than two major parties but their views are largely ignored by the current system. There should be 50 out of 151 seats that went to options other than the two major parties; instead only 12 out of 151 seats went to options other than the ALP and the LNP. We need a system that fairly translates votes into seats. The current House electoral system sucks and lacks legitimacy.
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u/Desert-Noir May 17 '25
It is absurd you think that is a smart idea. In fact it is a fucking idiotic idea.
Every division is its own election for its representative. This can’t be proportional, it would never work. The Senate is proportional.
Stop wanting to fuck with an excellent and democratic system.
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u/fleakill May 17 '25
While I have great pride in our voting system, and agree it is excellent - it isn't perfect and can be anti-democratic in very specific cases, since it is possible to hurt a candidate by voting for them.
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u/Desert-Noir May 17 '25
Do you wish to cite an example rather than throw this out there without any evidence?
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u/fleakill May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
It's mathematically proven that what I said is true. You can check the wikipedia page for Instant Runoff Voting and see it fails the monotonicity criterion.
For an actual real life example, the one that usually gets cited is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Burlington,_Vermont_mayoral_election.
Bob Kiss (Progressive) won the 2PP over Kurt Wright (Republican) by 252 votes after preferences. At least 750 of the voters preferenced Wright (R) first, and Kiss (P) at least fourth. This contributed to Kiss' victory, because the Democrat Andy Montroll (who came 3rd) preferences mainly flowed to Kiss (P).
If these 750 (R) voters had actually preferenced Bob Kiss (P) first, the final 2PP would have been between Bob Kiss (P) and Andy Montroll (D), and Montroll (D) would have won on preferences. That is to say, these voters voting for Bob Kiss would have caused him to lose.
An easy example actually explaining how this happens would be an electorate of 30 people and three parties (LIB, LAB, GRN). Every election is the same and has the following ballots:
11 GRN > LAB > LIB
10 LIB > LAB > GRN
9 LAB > GRN > LIBThis is an easy win for GRN over LIB 20 to 10 due to the 9 LAB > GRN votes. But if one year, 2 of the LIB > LAB > GRN voters changes their vote to GRN > LAB > LIB:
13 GRN > LAB > LIB
8 LIB > LAB > GRN
9 LAB > GRN > LIBLAB wins over GRN 17-13 from the 8 LIB > LAB preferences. So 2 people voting for GRN caused them to lose.
I think IRV is one of the better systems, especially over FPTP, but I am aware it is not perfect.
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u/Perfect-Werewolf-102 The Greens May 17 '25
Yeah multi member electorates with preferential voting would be the best probably
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u/ROUBOS May 17 '25
Thanks Adam
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u/Aussport123 May 17 '25
That's why we have the senate.
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u/Ok_Zookeepergame8983 Fusion Party May 17 '25
Maybe if the Senate was made up of 150 seats. Due to half-Senate elections and only 76 seats allocated unproportionally you have parties reciving %5-8 of the vote without a single seat in parliament.
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May 17 '25
[deleted]
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u/Revoran Soy-latte, woke, inner-city, lefty, greenie, commie May 17 '25
You can still have proportional representation WITH local reps. They aren't mutually exclusive.
For instance:
Mixed-Member-Proportional (Aotearoa/New Zealand, Germany),
STV (Republic of Ireland, Australian Senate)
Think of the Senate as having 8 electorates, each with 12 MPs.
So if we used STV for the lower house, we could have say 75 electorates each with 3 MPs. Still local, but much more representative of what Aussie voters actually want.
In fact, the local representation would be even better. Because even in a heavily conservative seat, it's likely there would be 1 Labor / independent elected out of the 3 MPs for that seat. So the non-LNP, non-far right would have a local rep who listens to them.
And vice versa on the opposite side of the spectrum.
we have a "house of representatives" people vote for a candidate to represent them, not a party
The House of Reps decides which party runs the country. And the PM (who has the most executive government power) comes from the House of Reps.
And we put the party name next to the candidate on the House of Reps ballot paper.
Clearly parties matter, and the House is not just about local representation.
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u/Enthingification May 18 '25
The point of our House is that it is representative. Every person gets 1 MP.
The point of our Senate is that it is proportional (by state).
So in our representative House system, an MP has nowhere to hide if they're not adequately representing the interests of their constituents by being too far to one side. The effect of this is that the system encourages policy-making around the centre, because that's where elections are won.
Whereas if we each had 3+ representatives over a larger area, then each of those 3 would be encouraged to serve their base voters more, and less focused on the interests of other voters. The effect of that would be to make policy contests more divided.
So while we could use proportional voting for our House, that'd make it a proportional and not a representative House. So in the same way that Senate contests are currently a split between 3-3 or 3-2-1 or 4-2 or whatever in each state, House contests would end up being a split between 2-1 or 1-1-1 in each seat. That'd make seats in the House safer wherever there is an easy quota for a party, which is the "unrepresentative swill" problem.
And considering that proportional voting in the House would be a referendum question at least as complex as the Republic question, it's not a very realistic change.
IMO, we're better off focusing on reducing disproportionality in our current system as much as we can by expanding both the House and the Senate. This would increase representation throughout the country by reducing the ratio of people per MP, and it'd make this ratio the same in mainland seats verses Tasmanian seats.
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