It is now almost certain that Pauline Hanson will return to the Australian parliament as a senator for Queensland after 18 years, and her party has a real chance of picking up two other seats in New South Wales and Queensland.
This surprise result has sparked criticism of the recent reforms to the Senate voting system, with some figures such as Craig Emerson blaming the reforms for the resurgence of One Nation.
The LNP-Greens changes to Senate voting + double dissolution have breathed new life into Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. Australia loses.
— Craig Emerson (@DrCraigEmerson) July 3, 2016
Some have argued that Hanson would have been stopped by other parties directing preferences against her, and that the Senate reforms makes it impossible for this to be achieved. In reality, Hanson and One Nation did just fine out of preferences under the old system of party-controlled preferences.
Hanson and One Nation were once such pariahs they were unable to gain enough preferences to win seats.
The One Nation leader was defeated for re-election in the seat of Blair in 1998 thanks to Labor and Nationals preferences flowing to the Liberal party.
Her party failed to win numerous Senate seats in 1998 and 2001 thanks to adverse preference arrangements, despite a respectable primary vote. Yet that time has passed.
One Nation’s ability to attract preferences has improved significantly since it collapsed into just another micro party.
This may be due to Hanson being seen as a more acceptable figure, or just that the growth of rightwing minor parties gives the party more preference options.
In 2013, One Nation received high preference rankings in Queensland from the Animal Justice party, Senator Online, the Shooters and Fishers, the Australian Christians, Katter’s Australian party, the Democratic Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and Family First.
The party is now fully rehabilitated among the ranks of small rightwing minor parties, which between them command a sizeable slice of the Senate vote.
If Hanson were to have polled the same vote in Queensland as she did at a half-Senate election conducted under the old system, she would have been very likely to win anyway.
It is true that Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to call a double dissolution has helped One Nation win additional seats, as it has helped other small parties. But a double dissolution wasn’t a necessary consequence of Senate reform – in hindsight it is clear that Turnbull would have been better placed to fix the voting system and then tolerate his existing crossbench until their terms expired in 2019.
The double dissolution enhanced One Nation’s performance, but it is not the cause of Hanson’s election.
The election of Pauline Hanson shouldn’t obscure the reality that Senate voting reform has largely achieved its purpose.
Before Senate voting reform, many voters didn’t understand where their vote was going, and it was difficult to cast a formal vote using preferences that you decided.
It was also possible for parties with an extremely small vote to overtake many bigger parties and win seats off preferences from voters who had never heard of them. This problem has been thoroughly solved.
We don’t yet know how many preferences will flow, but we do know that the preferences will reflect the decisions of individual votes.
We can roughly predict that the minor parties that win seats will be those that win more votes than other minor parties, and if a party overtakes another on preferences it will be off a sizeable primary vote of its own.
Despite a lot of commentary suggesting otherwise, Senate reform wasn’t designed to stop minor parties from being elected, and it hasn’t.
The proportional voting system still makes it possible for small parties to get elected.
This would even be true if this election weren’t a double dissolution – Hanson, Derryn Hinch, Jacqui Lambie, Nick Xenophon and many Greens candidates would have likely been elected if each state were only electing six senators.
You shouldn’t design voting systems to achieve a particular political outcome – this almost always backfires.
We can’t rely on the voting system to achieve outcomes any of us might want, including blocking fringe parties such as One Nation.
Hanson’s One Nation has returned to the parliament not because of the voting system, or even because of the prime minister calling a double dissolution, but because over 4% of Australians and more than 9% of Queenslanders voted for One Nation on their Senate ballot.
Those who are looking for an answer should look at those voters, not the voting system, for an answer.
