One Nation was cheated by the electoral system in Queensland. It should have got 22 seats, not 10. Indeed, there should have been a One Nation Premier heading a coalition of One Nation, National and Liberal members.
Democracy is more in the counting of the votes than the casting of them.
In a proportional system (with, say, a minimum 5 per cent cut-off to eliminate parties with very minor support), the result would have been very different. Instead of the present Labor 44, Coalition 35 and One Nation 10, it would have been Labor 38, Coalition 29 and One Nation 22. The Coalition would have been split Liberal 15, Nationals 14, so One Nation would have been the senior partner in a conservative government.
Incidentally, the Liberals have also been cheated. They got 15.9 per cent of the vote but only got 8 seats. The Nationals got less vote than the Liberals, at 14.7 per cent, but nearly three times the number of seats, at 23. The voting system has treated the Nationals extremely well. Their leader, Rob Borbidge, may be Premier on 14.7 per cent of the vote.
The British first-past-the-post system where voters put a tick beside only one candidate, which kept Margaret Thatcher in power with only 40 per cent support against a fractured left, would have produced a similar result for Labor against a fractured right in Queensland. The result would have been Labor 56, Coalition 23, One Nation 10 — a handsome Labor majority of 13.
In the preferential system, the result would have been very much different if Labor had given preferences to One Nation instead of the Coalition. One Nation would have got 15 seats, rather than 10. Labor saved five coalition seats.
(I have used the latest Queensland Electoral Commission figures with an average of about 80 per cent of the vote counted in each seat for this analysis. Later counting is unlikely to significantly change it.)
Electoral systems are crucial to outcomes. And the politicians’ spin depends on the election outcome, not the expression of voter opinion.
If it had been first past the post, Peter Beattie would be now claiming a Labor triumph, on exactly the same vote. A proportional system would have had the One Nation change of the political landscape magnified tenfold.
Maybe the major parties might start looking even more closely at changing the Senate voting system to make it constituency-based, rather than state-wide proportional to deny One Nation Senate seats. It would be a denial of democracy, but with attacks from both the left (Greens and Democrats) and the right (One Nation), it wouldn’t surprise me if it came back on the agenda.
The Constitution says that the Senate voting system is a matter for the Parliament, it is not fixed in the Constitution, so the major parties could gang up and change the system.
Because electoral systems are so crucial in deciding outcomes, governing parties have often tampered with them.
Labor introduced the voluntary preferential system in NSW and Queensland. It was to great advantage to Labor; 25 per cent of One Nation voters expressed no preference instead of going the Nationals as most would.
Federally, Labor introduced above the line voting in the Senate, transferring many otherwise informal votes to Labor, but it backfired when many voters misunderstood and thought it applied in the Reps as well. There lies a lesson to Nick Minchin and others who want voluntary voting. There could be unintended consequences.