Northern Victoria Region
Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (12:55): (377) My question is to the Premier. Will the Victorian state government commit to implementing changes to upper house group voting to restore integrity in our electoral system before the next state election? Constituents in Northern Victoria, particularly Bendigo, have raised concerns that our current system of voting is unrepresentative, as people have been elected to hold a seat in this chamber despite receiving less than 2 per cent of the public vote. The current system enables people like Glenn Druery to manipulate the electoral outcome and receive financial payments for doing preference deals between political parties. Victoria is now the only state where group voting tickets continue to operate, as every other state and the federal government have made reforms. I note concerns were raised in the 59th Parliament following the electoral results, which were clearly unrepresentative of the public vote, and these issues were reviewed by the Electoral Matters Committee. Four years later and these matters are again being reviewed by the committee, only this time I trust that reforms will be implemented before the next state election to restore integrity in our electoral system.