The Liberals reap what they sow in the Senate

One of the consequences of optional preferential voting is that votes can exhaust before electing anyone, even the recommended votes for six parties above the line. Exhausted votes have no influence on the outcome.

With the primary vote of the major parties in slow decline that makes preferences more important than ever, particularly those that do not exhaust. For the major parties, it makes sense to capture as many as possible.

Labor tends to understand that and, notwithstanding differences in ideology and policy, talks to many of the minor parties. The party's campaign managers are (in my experience) amiable and professional, negotiating exchanges of preferences on how-to-vote cards. Labor's current support in the Senate is evidence of the success of that approach.

It is a different story with the Liberals (and Nationals where present). Their campaign people tend to be unapproachable and avoid links with minor parties. With rare exceptions, such as the (now defunct) Christian Democrats in NSW, they do no Senate preference deals. Their how-to-vote cards are often little more than wishful thinking.

An obvious example of this is seen in their attitude to One Nation, which they have often shunned because of criticism by people who would never vote for them. The United Australia Party fares little better and even my party, the Liberal Democrats (now the Libertarian Party), is avoided despite having policies more in keeping with the Liberal Party's principles than the party itself.

Rather than acknowledge that if they can't win a seat themselves it is better to help elect a potential ally, the Liberals see such parties as competitors stealing their votes. In the case of the Liberal Democrats they even took legal action and introduced legislation to force a change of name. If its name had been Labour Democrats, the Labor Party would have locked in its preferences.

The Senate is often described as a house of review, like the House of Lords in the UK. But that does not mean only one side of politics should be able to get its legislation passed. It leads to an elected government being essentially blocked from implementing the policies on which it was elected. It is a distortion of democracy.

And yet, it's what the Liberals have done to themselves.