What landslide and wipe-out?

There has been far too much talk of a “Labor landslide”, a “Liberal demolition”, and a “Green wipe-out”.

In fact, fairly modest swings were hugely magnified and amplified by the electoral system to result in very large swings in the number of seats for those three parties.

Single-member electorates and the preferential system, particularly the way the Liberal Party directed its preferences, conspired to make the 2025 election look like a seismic change which it was not. 

And anyone who imagines that this is the beginning of a long period of Labor ascendancy should look at the figures.

Labor got a swing towards it of just 2.5 per cent but got a seat swing of more than 20 per cent, on present projections. The Coalition got a swing against it of just under 3 per cent but got a seat loss of around 30 per cent.

The Greens got a tiny swing of less than half a percent against them but a massive loss of 75 per cent of their seats.

Greens leader Adam Bandt lost his seat because of a deadly combination of boundary changes and the Liberal Party essentially directing its preferences to Labor.

Bandt’s seat of Melbourne was one of up to half a dozen on present projections that was won by Labor on Liberal Party preferences.

Others (independents and minor parties) got a small swing towards them, but their seat count went backwards a little.

Overall, a roughly equal three way split between Labor, the Coalition, and others resulted in a seat split of more than 63 per cent to Labor, 28 per cent to the Coalition and 9 per cent to others. Late counting might change this a bit, but not by much.

Perhaps one of the most important lessons of this election, especially for the Liberal Party, is to take care with the allocation of preferences on the how-to-vote-card.

Sure, somewhere between a fifth and a half of voters do not follow the cards, depending on the electorate. But in elections where seats are won or lost on a few percent, the 50 to 80 percent who do are decisive.

As the primary vote for the major parties continues to leach away, preferences will become even more important. The Coalition’s move to preference Labor over Greens and all minors and independents (bar One Nation) resulted only in an increased Labor’s seat count this election, but in the future, it could decide whether it is a minority or majority government. 

Minority government is logistically better for an Opposition.

Further, the Coalition’s disgraceful preferencing of One Nation could easily cost Jacqui Lambie her Tasmanian Senate seat with Liberal Preferences going to Pauline Hanson’s daughter, Lee.

Lambie speaks sense quite a bit of the time; One Nation senators almost never do.

Staying on the theme of the importance of preferences, the new Parliament should revisit the Senate voting rules. The present system is disenfranchising a significant number of votes from deciding who gets the last Senate seat in each state.

At present, voters are told to either vote above the line (where just the parties are listed) numbering at least six preferences, or to vote below the line (where all the candidates are listed under their party banner) numbering at least 12 preferences.

Our own voting experience (including watching in the queue) and talking to people who work at polling booths, it is apparent that the vast majority of voters want the process to be as simple as possible. 

Most conclude that numbering one to six above the line is the go and that below-the-line voting is too hard. 

But the trouble with just numbering one to six is that there is a good chance your vote will have exhausted by the time it comes to deciding the last seat.

The number of above-the-line boxes this Senate election was between 12 and 25 – say an average of 18. If you only number six, the average voter leaves 12 blanks. Once five seats have been taken you have to have one “live” box to stay in the franchise for the last seat. 

In Tasmania for example, many voters would not have selected Jacqui Lambie Network or One Nation among their six boxes. Yet the last seat could well be a contest between those two and their ballot paper would sit lifeless in the “exhausted” pile.

The new Parliament should abolish below-the-line voting and have full preferential voting for the parties and independents. The same instruction to voters to fill out all the boxes would apply to the Senate ballot paper in the same way as the House of Representatives paper.

The only reason that anyone would want to vote below the line is to change the order of candidates within a party list. Perhaps your Aunt Mary is No 4 on the Labor list or you Uncle Tom is No 5 on the Coalition list. Even then it is not going to affect the result.

No state has ever elected a senator outside the party order since the present system was introduced a decade ago. So, abolishing below-the-line voting would disenfranchise no-one. 

It would then allow for full preferential voting of what are now above the line parties and independents without having too much complication or large ballot papers which attract derision from a lot of voters.

The unnecessary and ineffectual pandering to political junkies and friends and relatives of candidates low on their party’s list is worth sacrificing for the enfranchisement of more voters by having a “number-all-the-boxes” system in the Senate, just like the House of Representatives.

Crispin Hull is a former editor of The Canberra Times and regular columnist.