The Turnbull government is prepared to bypass Labor and push ahead with changes to Senate voting rules by March with the support of the Greens and some independents.
The federal cabinet has not made a formal decision but the government is holding talks with the Greens and informal discussions with Labor over the changes aimed at ending the complicated backroom preference deals that allow micro-parties to win Senate seats on a tiny first-preference vote by outlawing “group voting tickets” and introducing partial optional preferential voting.
It is understood the government is keen to press ahead with the changes regardless of whether it exercises its preferred option of a normal election in September or October or the less likely option of an earlier double dissolution election, given that they would need to be considered by a parliamentary inquiry and would take some time for the Australian Electoral Commission to implement.
Government sources said bipartisan support for major voting reform was usual and always desirable but even if Labor could not be persuaded to support the amendments they were likely to be passed with the backing of the Greens and Senator Nick Xenophon.
And the government could also point to strong backing for the idea from the shadow special minister of state, Gary Gray, and Labor veterans including Senator John Faulkner in a bipartisan 2014 parliamentary interim report.
In 2015 Gray spoke about the changes in parliament, saying: “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. These reforms will significantly strengthen our democratic process by reducing the capacity for manipulation and increasing transparency in our electoral system, which, despite these concerns, still remains among the most stable and effective in the world.”
But ever since the Abbott government started taking soundings last March Labor has been deeply divided about the plan.
Factional leaders including the shadow minister and Victorian senator Stephen Conroy and the New South Wales senator Sam Dastyari and the leader of the opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong, are opposed to change on the grounds that it would “entrench” Coalition control of the Senate.
“It would be complete madness for Labor to support any proposal that would risk forever preventing a progressive Senate. I can’t see Labor doing that,” Dastyari said last year. “Frankly I can’t find a single Labor senator that supports any of this.”
Others, including the Gray and the deputy chair of the joint standing committee on electoral matters, Alan Griffin, support them.
The shadow cabinet has yet to take a decision and has consistently said it will not do so until the government produces legislation.
Xenophon is about to circulate a draft bill similar to one already proposed by the Greens – suggesting voters should be required to number six squares “above the line” on a Senate ballot paper – choosing between parties with multiple candidates. Under Xenophon’s plan a voter could also number 12 squares “below the line”.
Malcolm Turnbull has held informal talks with Labor on the issue, and the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has sought more talks with the Greens leader, Senator Richard Di Natale.
The independent senator John Madigan told the ABC the major parties were trying to create a cartel. “The government, the opposition and others will band together to silence any dissenting voices in this place and have, for want of a better word, a cartel,” he said.
But the Greens spokeswoman Senator Lee Rhiannon said the changes would not disenfranchise “genuine” small parties. “It would certainly have an impact on front parties that are really only set up to harvest preferences through backroom deals but if voters can express a preference for up to six parties that means they could preference smaller parties as well,” she said.
Both the Abbott and Turnbull governments have proceeded warily with the changes because they will anger the cross-party senators whose support they often need to pass legislation.
Supporters of the change point to calculations by the ABC’s election analyst Antony Green that had the optional preferential system been in place in 2013 both Labor and the Greens would have benefited.
