reform

Summary: Change is coming to the Victorian Legislative Council’s electoral system for November’s state election. Victoria becomes the last jurisdiction to abolish group voting tickets, a system that allowed parties to control preference flows and distort election results. Voters will now control between-party preferences and the method of voting mimics the Senate system in use since 2016. The change favours parties that campaign for votes over parties that rely on preferences. Based on past results, the big losers will be minor parties whose election from low votes has been achieved by “preference harvesting” tactics, something that is impossible with group voting tickets abolished.

The Victorian Labor government’s bill to abolish group voting tickets (GVTs) for Legislative Council elections was introduced on Tuesday 28 July, passed the lower house the next day with no opposition, and will be debated in the the upper house on Tuesday 11 August.

The bill is supported by the government, opposition and Greens and will pass by week’s end. The new voting rules will be in place for November’s state election.

(Update 9:30pm 11 August: the bill passed the upper house without amendment. The next step is royal assent by the Governor at which point the amendments in the bill are incorporated into the Electoral Act.)

Inside this post I look back at the five Victorian elections that have used GVTs and estimate how the results might have looked without GVTs. In summary –

• The new system will favour parties that attract significant first preference support and disadvantage parties that rely heavily on preferences. Based on my analysis of post-GVT Senate results, (see this post), weaker preference flows will make it very difficult for a party to be elected with less than 6% in a region.
• Across the 2014, 2018 and 2022 elections, 24 leading candidates who began the preference distribution with more than 6% of the vote were defeated by lower polling candidates. Three of the defeated candidates polled above 12% or 0.7 quotas.
• At the same elections there were 20 candidates elected from under 6%, including nine that polled below 3%.
• Without GVTs, the 2014 election would have seen five fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, two Coalition and two Greens.
• Without GVTs, the 2018 election would have seen seven fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, three Coalition and three Greens.
• Without GVTs, the 2022 result would have seen six fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, one Coalition and four Greens.
• Over the last three elections, the number of non-Green minor party members would have fallen from 22 to 4. The number of Greens elected would have risen from 10 to 19, Labor from 47 to 50, and the Coalition from 41 to 47.

Table 1 below shows a four party breakdown of seats won at elections since 2006, along with my estimated results had there been no GVTs. My estimates assume the same parties contested election and the same party vote shares were recorded. I explain my method for estimating results inside the post.

Source: Estimated results without GVTs calculated by Antony Green as set out in the post.

The changed results are due to weaker preference flows with the abolition of GVTs. Preference ‘deals’ implemented by GVTs were previously used to engineer results. Even the smallest parties could deliver preference flows above 90%. GVT deals could deliver victory to parties with little electoral support at the expense parties with up to 14 times the vote. These remarkable come from behind victories were created by GVT preference deals, not by the actions of voters.

Three of the more remarkable results occurred in 2018. In Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Transport Matters Party was elected from 0.62%, defeating a Greens candidate who began the count with 9.0%. In Southern-Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Liberal Democrats polled just 0.84% but defeated the second Liberal candidate who began the count with 12.3%. In Southern Metropolitan Region, the Sustainable Australia Party polled 1.32% but defeated the Greens on 13.5%. (Data in this paragraph has been corrected.)

Results such as these could only happen under an electoral system where voters are herded into voting for above-the-line for tickets with preferences controlled by parties.

A decade of experience with Senate elections since GVTs were abolished, and evidence from Legislative Council elections in other states, shows that preference flows are much weaker without GVTs. Larger parties that campaign actively can still influence preference decisions and create stronger preference flows, but the flows of smaller parties become almost random. This decreases the ability of parties to win from trailing positions.

When voters control preferences rather than parties, the system rewards parties that attract first preference votes over parties that rely on opaque and labyrinthine preference deals. The days of preference ‘whisperers’, preference ‘harvesting’ and ‘corralling’ preferences disappear when GVTs are abolished. Voters first preference party choices play a greater role in determining which parties elect members.

But I need to stress that the analysis in this post is about the parties that have contested the last five Victorian Legislative Council elections, not the parties contested the 2026 election.

It is clear from polls that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will poll strongly, will elect MLCs, and probably outpoll the Greens. I make no comment on whether abolishing GVTs increases or decreases the number of MLCs that One Nation might elect.

What is certain is that abolishing GVTs will see the number of MLCs elected by party more accurately reflect vote share by party. The new system will better translate the will of the electorate into representation than any election conducted with GVTs.

Read More »How GVTs Have Distorted Victorian Legislative Council Elections