Wednesday, 18 February 2026

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (10:41): I am speaking on the Electoral Matters Committee report into Victoria’s upper house electoral system, in particular recommendation 1: that the government reform the upper house voting system by introducing legislation amending the Electoral Act 2002 to eliminate group voting tickets. I will just remind members that not all of us will be here next year. It is important to note that Victoria is the only remaining state in the Commonwealth – and that is including the Commonwealth – where voters are prevented from directing their own preferences when voting above the line. Group voting is undemocratic and needs to go, and the Greens have recently introduced a bill into this Parliament to achieve just that.

Today I want to dispel some common myths about group voting that obscure the clear case for reform. The first myth is that group voting will keep One Nation out of Parliament. There is already a One Nation member in the upper house. A recent article in the Age quotes Glenn Druery saying that if we abolish group voting tickets it will be Christmas for One Nation. I assume Mr Druery’s rationale for this view, apart from the abject self-interest of a yacht-dwelling con man with the most to benefit from the status quo, is that under the current system if One Nation do not have enough primary votes for a full quota there is a real possibility that they will miss out to a micro-party with a fraction of the same vote. The Greens are as ideologically separate from One Nation as I am from my hair, but the bald truth is that supporting an undemocratic system in the hope that a guy who manipulates it for profit will keep the bad guys out is straight out of the MAGA playbook.

The sad truth is that if One Nation perform at the next state election as they are currently polling nationally they will get enough votes to make quota in their own right in multiple upper house electorates. One Nation’s support is a barometer of the nation’s dissatisfaction with politics, and our job therefore is to connect with these disaffected voters and win them back with laws and policies that can genuinely improve their lives and restore their faith in politics. That is easier said than done, I know, but we should not be propping up an undemocratic system to keep them out. Democracy means allowing voters to choose, and Victorians – even Victorians we disagree with – should be allowed to allocate their preferences above the line.

The second myth I want to address is that reform can wait. In 2018 the Electoral Matters Committee, while raising concerns about group voting tickets, recommended that the Parliament refer an inquiry to the committee to consider possible reforms, and that referral never happened. In July 2024 the committee’s inquiry into the conduct of the 2022 state election recommended that Victoria should scrap group voting tickets without delay. Naturally Labor then proceeded to delay for a year and a half until another committee report landed in December last year. It will come as no surprise that that report recommended we should implement the 2024 recommendation as soon as possible. We have endured eight or more years of delaying tactics so Labor can avoid articulating a stance on the most important flaw in our state’s democracy. We cannot delay reform of a system which leaves roughly 8 to 10 per cent of voters completely unrepresented in a system designed for proportional representation.

The third myth I want to address is that our push to abolish group voting is solely about getting more Greens elected. Had group voting been abolished prior to the 2022 election, there may have been more Greens elected and they would have been elected with a far higher proportion of the primary vote than the micro-party candidates who were elected in their place, but the same can be said for the Labor Party and the Liberal Party alike. Psephologist Kevin Bonham estimated that both Labor and the coalition would have won one more seat each in the 2022 state election had Victorian voters been allowed to direct their preferences above the line. Uncontroversially, we think election results should reflect voter intention, and this principle applies equally to the almost 400,000 Victorians who vote Greens as it does to those who give their vote to another party. Victoria’s voters deserve better than a Parliament that is more representative of Mr Druery’s dodgy backroom deals than of the citizens of Victoria.