Don’t believe Labor spin on who’s to blame for Pauline Hanson

Yes, the lower double dissolution quota and some exhaustion of votes has made it possible for some senators at this election to be elected off low first preference votes as well. Examples include Derryn Hinch, elected off a first preference vote of six per cent, David Leyonhjelm with 3.1 per cent, and Bob Day with 2.9 per cent. As with the Ricky Muirs and Steve Fieldings of the world, all of these senators relied on a hefty flow of preferences to get them over the line.

But the key difference is that unlike Muir and Fielding, the senators elected in 2016 received preferences allocated directly by the voters, not by political parties.

In other words, every single cross bench senator is there because somebody, somewhere out there voted for them, either as their number one choice or as one of their subsequent preferences. That’s more that could be said for many of the crossbenchers in the old parliament.

The fact that it was possible, under the old system, for a senator to be elected not because of the wishes of voters but as a result of backroom deals by political parties was arguably undemocratic and inarguably unacceptable.

But don’t take my word for it. Or Malcolm Turnbull’s. Or Nick Xenophon’s or Richard Di Natale’s, both of whom supported the reforms.

Ask the Labor Party. Well, the old Labor Party, the one that was purportedly concerned about improving the democratic process.

As the dust settled after the 2013 federal election, ALP National Secretary George Wright wrote to then-electoral matters committee chair Tony Smith, with concerns about the rise of preference-whispering arrangements, claiming that ‘it is clear that candidates have been elected with little public support… through the manipulation of micro-party preferences.’ Specifically, Wright cited ‘the current operation of group voting tickets in harvesting preferences and by doing so delivering outcomes that are not an expression of genuine voter intent.’

The electoral matters committee subsequently released a report into the Senate voting system which mirrored Wright’s concerns. It contained a series of recommendations for reforms, including the introduction of optional preferential voting and the abolition of group voting tickets.

The committee’s report was bipartisan, and its recommendations were fully supported by the Labor Party. Labor deputy chair Alan Griffin encouraged the adoptions of the report’s recommendations in parliament, arguing that group ticket voting ‘conflicts with the democratic will of the voters’. On the unlikely election of Ricky Muir, Griffin said that there was ‘absolutely no doubt that the overwhelming majority of people who effectively ended up voting for him had absolutely no idea that that is where they would end up delivering their democratic support.’

Gary Gray, Labor’s then-shadow minister responsible for electoral matters, went further, saying that the recommendations would ‘significantly strengthen our democratic process by reducing the capacity for manipulation and increasing transparency in our electoral system’ and that ‘it would be a travesty for Australian democracy if these careful and thought-through reforms were not in place in time for the next federal election’

But somewhere along the way, Labor’s tune changed. By the end of 2015, there were reports of a split in Labor on the reforms. Apparently, Gray and Griffin were losing the argument to the likes of Senate hardheads Stephen Conroy and Sam Dastyari, who perhaps were seeking to ingratiate Labor with the unruly Senate crossbench and create further headaches for the government.

Whatever the reason, by the time the Turnbull Government got around to legislating reforms based on the recommendations of the electoral matters committee, bipartisanship on the issue had disintegrated. The Coalition had to rely on Nick Xenophon and the Greens to get the legislation through. Labor fought it until the bitter end.