The recently elected Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, faces a potentially chaotic time passing legislation through the upper house, with the Sex party and the Democratic Labour party (DLP) among those to gain seats.
The final results have 14 Labor MPs in the 40-seat Legislative Council. It means Andrews will need to work closely with minor parties whose policy platforms range from wanting to give doctors the right to refuse to refer women on for abortions (Democratic Labor party), to legalising euthanasia (Sex party).
The Greens result was particularly strong with the party now represented by five members in the upper house. The Shooters and Fishers hold two seats as do the Nationals, while Vote 1 Local Jobs, who are pushing for renewable energy, gained one seat.
Between them, minor parties have claimed almost one third of upper house seats. The ABC’s election analyst, Antony Green, said it meant Andrews was going to need to show strategic negotiation skills to pass policy.
“He’s going to have a difficult time,” Green said.
“Getting legislation through will need to be done with a lot of negotiation, be it with the Opposition, or be it with the Greens and some cross-benchers, every time.”
Labor would need to obtain seven extra votes from the parties to pass legislation, which might be possible depending on the issue and how much the minor parties wanted to throw their weight around, Green said.
“If the government doesn’t set out to implement radical changes, if it’s trying to pass, for example some minor amendment to planning laws, then it all may be quite calm,” Green said.
“But how simple that is will depend on how crossbenchers behave, because in NSW we saw the Shooters start to block legislation to get their own legislation noticed and passed.
“But a lot of legislation going through you’d think would be of no interest to parties like the Shooters or the Sex party.”
Labor had failed to gain control of the upper house thanks to group ticket voting, or “above-the-line” voting, Green said. While it is intended to simplify voting, it created a complicated upper house, Green said.
“As long as group ticket voting exists we’ll see huge numbers of parties contesting and we’ll see surprising results in the upper house,” he said. “What happened in Victoria is an exact replica of what happened in the federal election.”
But abolishing group ticket voting and forcing voters to number all 40 boxes would push informal voting “through the roof”, he said.
Jeffrey Bourman, who will represent Shooters and Fishers for eastern Victoria and who controversially said Australia’s gun laws had failed to prevent the Sydney siege tragedy, told 774 ABC Melbourne on Wednesday the party had no desire to be at odds with the government “unless it’s something we really believe in”.
“As minor parties, we are going to have to talk amongst themselves, and on some issues we will agree and on some we won’t and we’ll just have to deal with that,” he said.
The Sex party’s national president, Fiona Patten, said gaining a seat in the northern metropolitan region – the party’s first after five years of trying in state and federal politics – was a “ringing endorsement of the democratic nature of the preferential voting system”.
“I will immediately commence work on referring voluntary euthanasia to the Victorian Law Reform Commission and then, with the mandate I have, will begin progressing drug law reform in Victoria, including legalising medical and recreational cannabis,” she said.
