Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, they do not know where their preferences go, and this is the fundamental problem. What the Labor Party and some on the crossbench are saying to us today is that the Australian people cannot be trusted to choose where their preferences go. I take a different view. I think the Australian people should have the choice to vote for whomever they choose, and it should not be a system that makes it virtually impossible for them to choose that, and it certainly should not be a system that leads to a virtual lottery as to who is actually elected.

I will give an example. A lot has been made of Senator Muir and the low primary vote. Well, I do not care about the low primary vote. I think Senator Muir is a decent bloke. But I say that the voting system that got Senator Muir elected is a lot like a lottery. Senator Muir happens to be a decent fellow, who I think does his best to represent his state, but it could just as easily have been, when you look at the list of votes at that election, the Australian Sex Party; it could have been The WikiLeaks Party, the Shooters and Fishers Party, the Animal Justice Party or the Help End Marijuana Prohibition party, all of whom got more primary votes. Going down the list, it could have been Katter's Australia's Party, the Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party, the Australian Independents, the Senator On-Line, the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics, Bullet Train For Australia or Drug Law Reform Australia, all of whom were getting half a per cent or less. If they were to get half a per cent and get preferences from people deliberately, in a preferential system there would be nothing fundamentally wrong with that. But what happens at the moment in our system is that people who voted for the Australian Stable Population Party do not know whether their preferences are going to elect the Sex Party or the Family First Party or the Pirate Party. They should have that choice. It should not be a lottery. It should not be the luck of the draw on the ballot paper and where you end up when the preferences start being distributed.

There was stuff put out, I think, before the last election saying: 'If you vote for the WikiLeaks party there is a good chance that you can end up voting for the Nationals,' and 'Vote for the Palmer United Party and there is a good chance that your vote can end up electing the Greens,' and that is true. Many people who voted for Palmer would not have known that he was preferencing the Greens. Many people who voted for Bob Katter would not have known that he was preferencing the Greens and vice versa. People who were voting for the Greens would not have known that their votes were helping to elect someone who, on the face of it, would have been significantly ideologically different. What I say to the Senate and to the Australian people is that I want to see a system where Australian people choose who represents them in a genuine way, and at the moment that is not what is happening.

The Labor Party are particularly hypocritical and conflicted on this. We heard from Senator Dastyari, arguing against this and saying that it will disenfranchise people. This is a backroom dealer who is arguing for backroom deals. Let us be clear about that. These are backroom deals where no voter would know—even the most diligent voter who spends hours trying to get across it probably would not really know—where their preferences might end up. And, when we are talking about 20, 30, 50 or 100 preferences, they have absolutely no chance. Under the current system, if you are given the opportunity to vote below the line and you have to fill out 100, the fear, of course, is that there is a good chance that you will get it wrong—you will not order them all properly—and then your vote will not count. So most people—I think it is about 97 per cent—choose to vote above the line, and Senator Day says, 'That means you are delegating your preferences.' Well, yes: you are handing over control because you do not have much choice—you are not really given much choice—and then the deals get done, and you do not know where your preference goes.