The Palmer United party (PUP) has confirmed it will stand candidates for the upper house in next month’s Victorian state election, adding to an already complex contest, with tiny parties negotiating furiously to try to win seats and wield the balance of power.
The so-called “preference whisperer”, Glenn Druery, has placed a bet that micro parties will win at least four upper house seats. He is working in Victoria with several parties to arrange preference swaps that would give them their best chance.
“If minor parties are successful, then the Nationals may be one of the losers, but having said that, they are going to have to play a disciplined game and be very, very clever,” he told Guardian Australia. “At the minor party level, you can’t afford to make any mistakes, you have to be precise, if they do that they have a chance.”
But Druery, who helped organise the preference swap ticket that helped the Motoring Enthusiasts party’s Ricky Muir snare the final Victorian senate spot with less than 1% of the primary vote, acknowledges that the state election will be tougher.
A quota for Victoria’s eight upper house regions is 16.7%, compared with 14.3% for the senate, meaning tiny parties have a higher bar to reach. Each region in Victoria elects five members, with the minor and micro parties competing with major parties for the fifth seat.
On Wednesday, 17 parties had registered in Victoria, with six awaiting registration, far more than the nine parties that stood for the Legislative Council election at the 2010 poll. Still, it’s a small field compared with the national election, meaning it is harder for tiny parties to put together a group voting ticket with complex preference swaps that might see one of them elected.
The other difference is that in Victoria, unlike nationally, voters have the option to preference only five candidates “below the line” rather than numbering every candidate as is required in the Senate. That also makes it harder for micro parties.
Druery pointed out that despite those obstacles, the Country Alliance and the Australian Sex parties came close to winning upper house seats at the 2010 election.
PUP is not running in the lower house. Clive Palmer was unavailable on Wednesday because he is campaigning in NSW for two byelections on Saturday. The party appears to be giving little attention to Victoria, with no candidates as yet announced. Its best chance is most likely in Eastern Victoria, including Gippsland, where it polled strongest at the federal election.
The Greens party, which holds three Melbourne-based upper house seats, is also dreaming of the balance of power. It is putting most resources into the western Victoria region, where it came very close to winning the final seat at both the 2006 and 2010 elections.
