Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:52): I lay on the table a statement of compatibility with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006.

In accordance with section 28 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (the Charter), I make this statement of compatibility with respect to the Electoral Amendment (Group Voting and Vote Counting) Bill 2026.

In my opinion, the bill, as introduced to the Legislative Council, is compatible with the human rights protected by the Charter. I base my opinion on the reasons outlined in this statement.

The purpose of the Electoral Amendment (Group Voting and Vote Counting) Bill 2026 is to abolish the use of group voting tickets in Council elections and change the way surplus votes are counted in Council elections.

Both of these aims are intended to more accurately represent the will of Victorian voters in Council elections. Therefore, this Bill strengthens section 18, ‘Taking Part in Public Life’, which stipulates that every person in Victoria has the right to participate in the conduct of public affairs, and to vote in periodic elections that guarantee the free expression of the will of the electors.

In conclusion, the Electoral Amendment (Group Voting and Vote Counting) Bill 2026 is not only compatible with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, it actively strengthens its provisions.

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:52): I move:

That the bill be now read a second time.

I am pleased to introduce the Electoral Amendment (Group Voting and Vote Counting) Bill 2026 into the Victorian Parliament.

This is a bill to abolish the use of group voting tickets in the election for the upper house and improve how surplus votes are counted. In short, it will make the Victorian Legislative Council more democratic and representative of the wishes of Victorian voters.

At the moment, Victoria is the last state in the country where politicians are allowed to decide where your preferences go.

Group voting tickets allow political candidates to buy a seat in the Legislative Council simply by engaging the services of a so-called ‘preference whisperer’. These ‘preference whisperers’ make their money manipulating voters’ preferences behind the scenes to install their clients as upper house MPs in the state Parliament.

For the low, low price of $55,000, and with as little as 1 per cent of the primary vote, you can purchase a plush red velvet chair in this place – a chair that should have rightly gone to a candidate who received many times that number of primary votes.

Victorian voters will go to the polls in just over nine months, and when they do, they’ll rightly expect that the way they vote will determine who represents them. That’s the way our democracy works, isn’t it? One person, one vote, all tallied up fairly by the VEC in a preferential system we can all be proud of.

Unfortunately, under the current system this is not the case. For the 90 per cent of voters who cast their upper house vote above the line, once they mark their first preference they lose any control over how their vote is distributed from that point on.

Instead, to paraphrase our national icon Antony Green, their vote embarks on a preferential magical mystery tour across the ballot paper, predetermined in backroom deals between the preference whisperers and a hodgepodge of micro-parties with esoteric names. By the time that’s done, Victorians might be surprised to learn that their vote above the line for their preferred minor party has somehow resulted in the election of a taxi industry advocate from the Transport Matters Party who received just 0.63 per cent of primary votes, as was the case in 2018.

2018, in fact, was the year that at least eight MPs, or 20 per cent of this chamber, won seats as a result of backroom group voting deals.

So it is clear that shady group voting ticket backroom deals, lubricated by cash, are helping fringe micro-parties accumulate preference votes at the expense of other parties with a much higher primary vote. In short, group voting tickets are distorting democracy in this state.

I want to be clear here that there is nothing wrong with being elected on second or subsequent preferences and nothing undemocratic about a candidate overtaking another with a higher primary vote by accumulating preferences – if that reflects voters’ preferences.

But when voters have no control over where their preferences flow, as is still the case in the Victorian upper house, that cannot be called democratic.

Instead of this unrepresentative mess, can we try some simple democracy instead?

And this is what this bill sets out to do. It amends the Electoral Act 2002 (Vic) to abolish group voting tickets, bringing us in line with the rest of Australia – except, curiously, City of Melbourne council elections, but that’s a conversation for another day. The Commonwealth and other states are way ahead of us on this: most recently, the Labor government in WA abolished group voting tickets after a candidate with the Daylight Savings Party was famously elected on just 98 votes, and even he was so surprised he had to move back from his established life in America to take the seat.

The Greens are by no means the lone voice in the wilderness calling for this necessary change.

In July 2024, the Victorian Electoral Matters Committee recommended in no uncertain terms that Victoria should scrap group voting tickets without delay. Naturally, Labor then proceeded to delay, insisting that now wasn’t the time, that we needed to wait another year and a half for another committee report in December 2025 to know what to do.

That report is now out, and guess what it says? Once again, it recommends in no uncertain terms that Victoria should scrap group voting tickets without delay. To their credit, this time many Labor figures seem more willing to listen. Committee chair Dylan Wight, state member for Tarneit, wrote in his chair’s foreword that ‘group voting tickets have had their day,’ and should be abolished as the first step in reforming Victoria’s upper house electoral system. Dylan, I couldn’t agree more.

And perhaps when the member for Tarneit made this statement of support he was thinking of Labor candidates who would have been rightfully elected by the people but for the manifestly undemocratic group voting ticket system. Psephologist Kevin Bonham estimates that both Labor and the coalition would have each won one more seat in the 2022 state election had Victorian voters been allowed to direct their preferences above the line.

With nine months to go before the next state election, we need to jump on this quickly to allow the VEC time to update their processes to facilitate a smooth and more democratic election.

Additionally, we need to firmly shut the door to the possibility of far-right extremist and neo-Nazi micro-parties abusing the group voting system to infiltrate their way into this place. This chamber must not become a platform for their extreme and unrepresentative views and racist ideologies.

This is a real possibility. In 2018, the then Liberal Democrats got in on 0.84 per cent and Transport Matters on 0.63 per cent, just ahead of the Australian Liberty Alliance, which got a primary vote of 0.56 per cent. They were a far-right outfit who would have been right at home marching in that anti-immigration rally last week on Invasion Day.

Not only does our bill amend the Electoral Act 2002 (Vic) to abolish group voting tickets, but it also adopts the weighted inclusive Gregory method of vote counting, another one of the committee’s recommendations.

Previously, when there were no computers to assist with complex vote counts, the current inclusive Gregory system was designed to keep things simple enough for us mere mortals to deal with. Under this unweighted system, when a candidate gains enough votes to reach quota and is therefore elected, all of their votes surplus to that quota are distributed to other candidates at a reduced fraction of their value, using a simple blanket calculation that was designed to keep things manageable back in the days of manual counts. This simple calculation of vote transfer values leads to an over-representation of the surplus votes of candidates who have already won seats. For those interested, the aforementioned Antony Green has written in his blog about how this has impacted election outcomes in a few cases.

But in our new, modern digital era, we can do better. Weighted inclusive Gregory applies weighting to these vote transfer calculations to count votes more equitably as they move through successive counting rounds. Initially, this method is the same as the original inclusive Gregory method, but as surplus votes move through further counting rounds, their value is multiplied by new transfer values to ensure that the surplus votes of already-elected candidates do not retain a disproportionate level of power.

As Antony Green writes:

The Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method removes the bias built into the Inclusive Gregory Method that favours the vote of parties whose votes have already elected members.

And the Electoral Matters Committee agrees, writing in their December 2025 final report that:

The Committee considers the weighted inclusive Gregory method to be straightforward, as this would be a fairer system for counting the votes no matter what structure is put in place. There is no reason to delay this until a further process is completed.

It’s long past time to give the people control of their vote. Western Australia agrees. The rest of this country agrees. The Electoral Matters Committee agrees. Let’s make our elections better and fairer now, in time for November.

I commend the bill to the house.

 Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:01): I move:

That debate on this bill be adjourned for two weeks.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned for two weeks.