Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition will not be supporting these amendments, although we do want to acknowledge, as other senators have and as I have on other occasions, Senator Muir's efforts to engage with this legislation in good faith, unlike the Australian Greens. Senator Muir's amendments attempt to address some of the worst elements of the below-the-line optional preferential voting proposal cooked up between the Liberals and Greens coalition. We congratulate Senator Muir on his efforts to respond to this disastrous legislation. However, Labor opposes optional preferential voting in principle, so we cannot support his amendments. Optional preferential voting can replicate first-past-the-post voting systems such as that utilised in the British House of Commons. First-past-the-post systems risk delivering crude winner-takes-all outcomes. They can mean that the winning party is significantly overrepresented in the parliament, eroding accountability and scrutiny of the government of the day.

Of course, I have said these things before, but Senator Rhiannon continues to argue that no alternative positions have ever been put in this discussion. Although it takes the time of the committee at this disastrous hour through this disastrous process, once again, because Senator Rhiannon is in denial, I need to cover it again. The optional preferential voting proposal cooked up by the Liberal-Greens coalition is designed to maximise the number of senators elected by the major parties, such as the Liberal Party, and the established minor players, such as the Greens political party and the Nick Xenophon Team—thus, the parties to this coalition. It is designed to exhaust preferences early so that independents and so-called micro-parties are deprived of votes. The goal is to prevent new players from entering the Senate—in fact, the government has been quite clear about their goals here—which will thereby entrench the electoral dominance of the existing players. Australia has long had full preferential voting for both the House and the Senate, and this has served our democracy well by allowing voters to express their preferences.

I reflected earlier about the discussion we had with Senator Cormann talking about whether voters should be forced to vote for all candidates. Despite what this proposal does in providing advice to voters, I think it was pretty clear from his comments the philosophical direction he was heading in. Labor supports compulsory voting and will always maintain that position. Labor wants to maintain the important aspects of the current system and, therefore, we cannot support Senator Muir's amendments which presuppose a system of optional preferential voting. Once again, however, I wish to acknowledge Senator Muir's efforts to engage with the legislation in good faith.