Tuesday, 11 August 2026

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (14:59): I rise to speak on the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026. This bill has been a long time coming and I think calls for some celebration. It is an important bill. It addresses a longstanding flaw in Victoria’s electoral system, and given the broad support for its central reforms, I will try to keep my remarks relatively brief – no promises – to assist with its timely passage through the Parliament. The most significant change before us is the abolition of group voting tickets. The Liberals and Nationals strongly support this reform because it closes a loophole that has allowed the electoral system to be manipulated for too long. I am pleased to be able to say this is an issue which we, and I, have been remarkably consistent on. In February 2023 I had just returned to Parliament from some parental leave. In what I am told was only my 14th contribution to this place as a member, I said –

A member interjected.

Evan MULHOLLAND: I am now over 1700 according to the Hansard database, but I want to point back to my contribution in February 2023 on a debate put forward by former member for Northern Metro Dr Ratnam. I said in that contribution that I thought group voting tickets were an absolute affront to democracy. They game the system and people are not getting who they vote for. It is a lottery where no-one is the winner except for the candidate that snuck in through the back door on the back of a small number of votes.

This is an area of policy that is not new to me. I was an adviser in the Australian Senate when it abolished group voting tickets in 2016. If you look at some of the footage from that time, you can see a very young me looking very tired in the advisers box, because that sitting of Parliament at one point went for 28 hours and 56 minutes, which happens to be the longest continuous sitting without a break in the history of the Australian Senate.

We saw that affront to democracy that was group voting tickets in the 2013 Senate election, where we saw the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party win a seat in the Senate with less than 1 per cent of the vote. After that election the Liberal federal government took the necessary steps to abolish group voting tickets. The Greens supported this – credit to them – the crossbench worked constructively with us, but who stood in our way at that time? Who kept the Senate sitting overnight? It was the Australian Labor Party, because it is in their DNA to stop democracy. I suppose we should be pleased that they have finally come to the table – kicking and screaming – to deliver this much-needed reform. You might begrudgingly support it now that you want to save your own political skin for those in the number 2 positions. I note that there is a deal in place that preselections be delayed until group voting tickets are abolished. That must be why it is finally here, so you can abolish group voting tickets and then you can approve all your preselections and no-one will be too upset. Then Mr Erdogan can move to the number 1 position, and the rest of the number 2 positions on that side can be slightly more comfortable about their positions.

I want to point out in particular – a significant point – how much of an outrage it is that for multiple elections the Victorian Labor Party have opposed this necessary reform. They may have indicated support and had members across multiple parliaments from the Andrews–Allan–Carroll governments indicate support in principle for abolishing group voting tickets, but each time they have got to the end of the term and then said, ‘It’s all too hard.’ That has been a blatant subversion of democracy. Victoria has been out of step with the rest of Australia for too long. Every other jurisdiction has recognised that group voting tickets undermine confidence in elections, yet Victoria has persisted with a system that has allowed preference harvesting and backroom deals to determine who has been elected to this place. That was never how our democracy was intended to operate. Members of Parliament should be elected because they have earned the support of voters, not because they have benefited from a complex web of preference arrangements negotiated behind closed doors. We have seen too many examples, both federally and before reforms were introduced here in Victoria, where candidates with only a very small primary vote have found themselves elected because they participated in elaborate preference deals. These outcomes may have complied with the law, but they certainly did not and do not reflect the spirit of our electoral system. As the great Antony Green has noted:

In Eastern Metropolitan Region, Labor won two seats from 37.0% of the vote (2.22 quotas), and the Liberal Party two from 36.1% (2.17 quotas). The Greens were the third placed party with 9.0% (0.54 quotas) more than twice the vote of the fourth placed Liberal Democratic Party.

This was in 2018.

Remarkably, the fifth seat was won by Rod Barton of the 12th placed Transport Matters despite polling only 0.6% or 0.04 quotas. The Greens had 14 times as many votes as Barton but lost the seat to Barton due to deals arranged by group voting tickets. On the evidence of elections conducted since the abolition of –

group voting tickets –

it would have been impossible for Barton to win from such a low vote and the final seat would have gone to the Greens.

So group voting tickets –

… distorted the result.

Let us not forget the disgrace of Mr Barton voting with the government on that terrible pandemic legislation. But we know through leaked recordings from the preference whisperer Glenn Druery that he practically admitted that he made a deal with the Labor Party for an ‘amenable crossbench’. He said that everyone involved in his tickets was part of his family, and they needed to create an amenable crossbench for the government so that you cannot just oppose the government all the time. He then called them a family. No wonder Mr Barton voted the way that he did. Going back to the results:

In Northern Victoria Region in 2018, Labor polled 31.8% (1.91 quotas) for two seats, the Coalition 31.2% (1.87 quotas) for one seat, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers 7.9% (0.47 quotas) missed out, as did the Greens 6.6% (0.39 quotas). The final two seats went to Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party 3.8% (0.29 quotas) and the Liberal Democrats 3.8% (0.23 quotas). Those two seats were only won because of party control over preferences. With voters filling in their own preferences, the Coalition would have won a second seat and the last seat would have been fought out between the SFF and Greens.

So group voting tickets –

distorted that result.

In the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region –

this is in, I believe, 2018 –

Labor polled 49.9% for 2.995 quotas and elected three members. The Liberal Party polled 29.0% (1.74 quotas) but only elected one member. The final seat was won by the 11th placed Liberal Democrats on 0.8% (0.095 quotas). Despite the second Liberal candidate polling 15 times as many votes as the Liberal Democrats, the preference deals embedded in the GVTs delivered victory to the Liberal Democrats. This result would not have occurred without the use of …

group voting tickets. This was repeated in 2022. In the South-Eastern Metropolitan region the Liberal Party achieved 1.6 quotas and 125,762 votes. The Liberal Democrats received 0.2 per cent of a quota and 16,971 votes. And as much as I like and respect David Limbrick, that is a seat that should have been democratically won by the Victorian Liberal Party – twice.

In 2018 in the Southern Metropolitan region:

… the Liberal Party polled 38.2% (2.30 quotas) for two members, Labor polled 34.6% (2.07 quotas) for two members. Third place went to the Greens with … (0.81 quotas), six times the vote for the fourth placed party. Yet despite its high first preference quota, the Greens lost to the 9th placed Sustainable Australia Party who polled only a tenth of the Greens’ vote, 1.3 per cent (0.08 quotas). Another result that could only be produced by …

group voting tickets.

In Northern Victoria the Animal Justice Party spiralled up from 1.56 per cent to beat seven other parties, including Labor, who had 7.8 times as many primary votes for their second candidate. Ironically, the elimination of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, who received 23,374 first-preference votes, or 5.03 per cent, helped elect the Animal Justice Party to this place.

There has been bipartisan recognition for many years that reform was needed. The Commonwealth acted years ago to abolish group voting tickets, yet Victoria continued with a model that had already proven to be flawed. In my view that delay was no accident. I believe the Andrews government was comfortable with a system that produced a crossbench it could negotiate with, because it made it easier to assemble the numbers required to pass legislation through the Legislative Council. Whether those members represented only a very small proportion of voters seemed to matter less than the fact they could provide the votes they needed in the upper house. That may have suited the government’s legislative agenda, but it did little to strengthen confidence in Victoria’s democracy.

I was on the Electoral Matters Committee and have been for the majority of this term of Parliament and was for the report into the upper house system. It was a wideranging inquiry. It was really good to attend multiple different hearings into this particular report. It was a really important report, and I want to foreshadow an argument that we are bound to hear a bit later on in contributions: that we cannot possibly abolish group voting tickets until we abolish the regional structure and move to a statewide system. I particularly want to bring up the extensive work and submission of psephologist Dr Kevin Bonham, who appeared before the committee in May of last year. I asked Dr Bonham at the committee for his views on what would happen if we abolished group voting tickets and did not change the structure of the Council itself due to time constraints. He concluded his answer by saying:

I would still stress again – I cannot stress enough – that this is better than keeping group ticket voting.

Dr Bonham had also written, in his submission to the committee on the 2018 election, that:

The most important aspect of the simulation is that in no case would parties with tiny regional vote shares win seats. All seats would be won by parties with substantial support in their region and a real mandate from, and accountability to, their communities.

This is clearly the correct democratic outcome, and it is long overdue. I strongly believe the argument that we should delay abolishing group voting tickets until we remove the regional structure is just plain wrong. It is still, regardless of the regional structure of our upper house, a subversion of democracy. It is saying to voters that we will arrange who gets elected to this Parliament as political parties, not them, the actual voters. The voters should be in control of their preferences. The Liberals and Nationals have consistently argued that this system should be reformed. We have long believed that Victorians deserve an electoral system that reflects the choices made by voters, not the calculations of preference brokers.

I would also like to point out, and this is significant, that when the Liberals and Nationals supported the abolition of group voting tickets in the Electoral Matters Committee report in December last year, pollsters, election analysts and psephologists alike agreed that at the time the Greens would have had the most benefit out of the abolition of group voting tickets and would have won the final spot in almost every region. We still supported the abolition of group voting tickets back then, because this is something that we support on principle. That is really important in this debate, because I have seen some commentary in the media, and I want to state strongly to those that will use the argument that this will elect more members of One Nation that they are not making this argument on principle. What they are saying is we as politicians should decide to keep a system in place that subverts the democratic will of voters because we, the political elite, do not like the political views of another party that people may want to vote for, that polling shows some Victorians may want to vote for. I cannot stress how unprincipled this line of argument and narrative is. It is Third World, quango democracy behaviour, and I and the Liberals and Nationals are having none of it.

There is nothing wrong with preferences themselves. Preferences are an important part of our voting system, but they should be directed by voters, not by political parties lodging group voting tickets that most electors never read and rarely understand. That is precisely why these reforms matter. They return control over preferences to voters themselves, where it belongs.

We also, as Liberals and Nationals, as outlined in our report, believe that representation of regional Victorians is paramount to any future structure of legislative councils. Again, Labor has been aware of this issue but has failed to act. Their reluctance to fix our broken electoral system means that electoral outcomes in the upper house have been electoral outcomes of people that are here distorted by preference whisperers to reflect undemocratic intentions rather than the will of voters. Again, it is a subversion of democracy, and it has been allowed to continue in this place for far too long now.

As I have pointed out, twice in the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region – the last two elections – it was the Victorian Liberal Party that was robbed of a democratically elected member of Parliament as was the will of the people of the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region. The Labor Party has been robbed of elected members of Parliament several times in the Northern Victoria Region. The Greens have been robbed of members of Parliament countless times – I think probably the most times out of any political party. The will of the voters was to send those members of Parliament to this place. The will of the voters was never to send the Animal Justice Party or the Transport Matters Party – you can basically ‘insert party name here’. Democracy should work for the people; it should not work for the political elite. Those running an argument to try to delay forward the group voting tickets reform until some structure is worked out would still attempt at this election that is coming up to subvert the will of the Victorian people.

Regardless of what system you have in place, a better outcome right now is to abolish group voting tickets. As I said, we should not look at the polling of who is likely to be elected at this election to make a judgement on whether or not we should abolish group voting tickets. As I mentioned, when the adoption meeting happened and the report was tabled in early December last year the polling was very different. We were voting for changes that would have elected a Green in every seat in the upper house. But we did that on principle, and the principle here is really important.

There are a number of other changes in this bill, and given the limited time, I will go through them quickly. There have been a number of amendments to improve the administration of elections, which we do not see as controversial. The first group of amendments relates to vote-saving provisions. These are sensible reforms that align with Victoria’s electoral laws. This approach has already been adopted at a Commonwealth level. We support vote-saving measures because every valid vote deserves to be counted wherever the intention of the voter is clear. Democracy is strengthened when genuine votes are not discarded because of a minor technical error. Anyone who has worked as a scrutineer or participated in counting processes – presumably every one of the members in this chamber is among that group – understands this issue very well. I have to say, particularly in highly diverse electorates you see it all the time where the intent of the voters is quite clear but has been knocked out on a technicality. So this is a positive step forward that will reduce informal voting. Under the current system those ballot papers are often examined individually by the district election manager to determine whether a voter’s intention can reasonably be identified. In many cases it is perfectly obvious how that person intended to vote. Existing practice already allows many of those votes to be saved through administrative guidance issued to those officials. This bill places those practices on a proper legislative footing. That is an important improvement, because it provides certainty, consistency and transparency rather than relying solely on administrative principle. The rules will be now set out clearly in legislation.

This bill also contains a number of amendments arising from the electoral reforms passed last year. My understanding is that these changes are technical rather than substantive and intended to ensure that certain powers sit appropriately within legislation rather than in regulations. In essence these amendments formalise powers that already exist in practice. They do not create significant new powers but instead provide the legislative authority the Victorian Electoral Commission considers necessary to administer the existing framework.

As I said, the abolition of group voting tickets is undoubtedly the most significant reform in this bill. It closes a loophole that has distorted electoral outcomes for many years and finally brings Victoria into line with every other Australian jurisdiction. For too long, candidates have been able to secure election with only a tiny primary vote because of intricate preference arrangements negotiated outside of public view. While those outcomes may have complied with the law, they did little to enhance confidence in our democratic institutions. Victorians should be able to look at the election result and have confidence that those elected have earned the support of voters, not simply have benefited from a complicated web of preferences. This reform restores that confidence by placing control of preferences back where it belongs: in the hands of voters.

The vote-saving provisions are equally sensible. They recognise democracy should not turn on harmless technical mistakes where a person’s voting intention is clear. The remaining amendments, as I said, improve the administration of electoral laws, and taken together these reforms improve the integrity, transparency and operation of Victoria’s electoral laws. Practical changes will strengthen public confidence in the conduct of elections.

As I said from the outset, we know that group voting tickets have long been an issue in Victoria. Over the life cycle of this government, we have been given weasel words by this government, particularly by former Premier Daniel Andrews and the two premiers that followed as well, that, ‘It is to come. We will fix it later. It is to come. These things usually happen at the end of a term,’ for nothing to come. I want to point out again how outrageous that we continue to have a subversion of democracy in this state, and this government, which Premier Ben Carroll was a part of. They did nothing. They sat on their hands and continued multiple times to see the will of the voters subverted and did nothing because they wanted an amenable crossbench. It was and still remains an absolute disgrace.

The Liberals and Nationals do not support group voting tickets. We are glad that this Labor government have been dragged kicking and screaming to their current position to save their preselections and give them a little more comfort on their electoral position. As I said, the Commonwealth recognised the flaws in group voting tickets long ago – 10 years ago. Victoria should have been the grown-up and acted much sooner. Unfortunately, the reform was delayed, and in my view, the delay reflected the political interests of the former Andrews government, which benefited from a Legislative Council crossbench shaped by a preference harvesting system that no longer enjoys public confidence. Thankfully, we are now correcting that mistake. The opposition will assist the government with the swift passage of the legislation. We will not be entertaining amendments, unless any new surprise ones come along, and we will be assisting the government with the passage of this legislation.

 Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (15:28): I rise to speak on this important bill and confirm that One Nation Victoria will be supporting the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026. For years Victoria has been the only jurisdiction in Australia to retain the use of group voting tickets. This is a system that has taken much of the power of preferences out of the hands of voters and placed it in the hands of political parties and preference negotiators. It has created what has become known as the ‘preference whisperer industry’ – people whose job it is to negotiate preference arrangements between political parties and candidates in an attempt to influence who gets elected. I believe that is fundamentally the wrong way to approach democracy. Preferential voting should mean that the voter gets to choose their preferences: number 1, number 2, number 3 and so on. Victorians have the right to know exactly where their vote is going. When someone votes for a particular party or candidate, they should be confident that their vote is being used to express their preferences rather than being directed according to a deal negotiated by political parties behind closed doors.

This bill takes an important step towards putting that power back to where it belongs: with the voter. That is a significant improvement. This is not about protecting one political party or another. It is not about Labor, the Liberals, One Nation or any other party. It is about a simple democratic principle: political parties should have to earn the support of voters. If a person receives a seat in this Parliament, it should be because Victorian voters have chosen to support them, not because that person has negotiated the right preference arrangement. We should not have a system where voters need to understand complicated preference deals or wonder whether their vote might ultimately help elect a candidate from a party they never intended to support. The voter should be in control.

There is already too much cynicism about politics and politicians. The last thing we should do is have an electoral system that creates further distrust. Voters should have the confidence that their vote means what they intend it to mean. This bill brings greater transparency, accountability and choice to Victoria’s electoral system. It puts the power of preferences back into the hands of Victorians, and that is exactly where it belongs. Their vote belongs to them – to Victorians. For those reasons, One Nation Victoria will support this bill.

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:31): I rise to make a contribution on the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026, and I am very pleased to be doing so. These are very important reforms. As previous speakers have highlighted, it is important for voters to know where their preferences go and to decide who gets elected, not faceless people in backroom deals.

I have been a member in this chamber for eight years, and I have seen over that time different iterations of the make-up of the crossbench. I find it really quite astounding, some of the commentary that the government was trying to somehow orchestrate a progressive crossbench that we could deal with, because having sat here through numerous debates on bills and numerous committee stages, I can tell you that, certainly from a government perspective, it has been anything but a crossbench that has been willing to work with government. In fact it is quite often the opposite – all you need to do is look at the voting records of some of the crossbenchers that have come into this place. We have been part of many a marathon debate in committee stages and the like that has gone into the wee small hours, debates which could have been avoided and were quite unnecessary.

We hear quite often from those on the crossbench lectures about how it is important for democracy, that the crossbench provides democracy, that it is important for people to have their say and these sorts of things. But the bottom line is when you look at where people make their decisions for a government to be formed, it is in voting for members in the lower house. That is where government is formed, through a majority formed in the lower house. I might again point to the previous terms in which I was fortunate to be a member of that house. On both those occasions the Labor government was formed with a thumping majority.

In this chamber it is very often the case that the people that are returned do not reflect the will of the voting public, which is to deliver government to one party or another. We have been in a system where major parties – either Labor or Liberal – form government in the lower house. When you look at this chamber, we do have more Labor members on the government benches and Liberal members on the opposition benches, but then we have Greens and crossbenchers. The will of the people and the imprimatur of the voting public are often not represented here.

I want to take a little bit of time to talk about – I think Mr Mulholland did unpack some of this in his contribution around what happened – why we need to change the system. I often sit here – and I know members of the Liberal Party would hear this too – and get lectured about how they are the progressive crossbench, how important they are and how they are standing here to give important views. But the reality is that most of the time – and I will go into the people in a moment who are here, who have benefited through this system through a range of means – they have bought a seat in this chamber and have done so quite often with very low votes.

I will just go through some of the details. I have had the benefit of working with many of the crossbenchers, and I like a lot of them; however, I do not like the means by which some of them have come to this place. Effectively due to group voting tickets in Victoria we have seen some of the most dramatic come-from-behind election wins in Australia’s political –

David Davis interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Yes, that is right; they have come from behind, and this has been done by coordinating complex preference deals through the preference whisperer, whose name I will not mention, but we all know who it is. That basically has seen micro-parties polling under 1 per cent of the primary vote and then managing to leapfrog parties who might have been holding 14 times the support to secure terms in this place.

We talked about an example before. Look, I respected Mr Barton when he was in this place – you know, he did a good job in a whole range of areas – but for the Transport Matters Party in the 2018 election Mr Barton secured, I think, 0.62 of the primary vote. It was under 2500 votes in my region. At that time it was the Eastern Metropolitan Region, but now it is the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region. At that time he won the number 5 spot through a chain of group voting preference swaps, and in so doing he defeated the Greens incumbent at the time, Samantha Dunn, who had started the count with 9 per cent of the primary vote, which was nearly 14 times Mr Barton’s. Then we could also talk about Cliff Hayes from the Sustainable Australia Party, with 0.84 per cent of the vote – under 4000 votes – in Southern Metropolitan. Again, Mr Hayes won the fifth spot, despite starting with under 1 per cent support, and he leapfrogged Liberal candidate Georgie Crozier’s running mate, who began the count holding 12.3 per cent of the primary vote – over 0.7 per cent of a full quota. So again, we saw some really ridiculous outcomes.

Also there were David Limbrick and Tim Quilty. Some of us who were here in the previous term would remember Mr Quilty from the Liberal Democrats. They started with around 0.84 per cent of the vote in South-Eastern Metro and 11.7 per cent in Northern Victoria. The outcome in those cases was that both the Liberal Democrat candidates won upper house seats from minuscule primary bases by funnelling cascading preferences from an array of disparate minor parties, ranging from Shooters, Fishers and Farmers to animal rights groups, under behind-the-scenes group voting arrangements. Again, these arrangements – swaps and the like – were hidden and clandestine for whatever purpose. Then people who were in this chamber not this term but the previous term would remember Catherine Cumming, who was with the Democratic Labour Party but then turned independent. She came through this place with 1.56 per cent of the primary vote, around 7000 votes, in Western Metropolitan. She was elected via the DLP ticket on just 1.5 per cent of the primary vote and defeated a higher polling candidate through micro-party preference swaps, and then she quit the party before she was even sworn in and then sat in this place as an independent. There are many other examples of this as well, but I think they highlight most of it. When we talk about the make-up of the crossbench I find it really quite ironic and distasteful that the constant catcalls of those on the crossbench say that they are progressive and somehow they are the bastion of public good being elected into this place, when really they have no imprimatur to be here. What they have done is benefit through preference deals.

I want to talk about preference deals and whispering. This has been something that has been the feature of much reporting in the press as well. We know that the preference whisperer operated a commercial arrangement for people to come into this place, and this has all been publicly reported, whether it be through the media or in the Parliament itself through inquiries and the like. The arrangement was, for example, that a $5000 deal-in retainer fee was asked to be paid to join his minor party alliance and participate in orchestrated preference swap meetings, and these things occurred. If you were successful, a $50,000 or $55,000 success fee per candidate elected to Parliament was due and payable. This was sometimes settled via direct payment or through post-election parliamentary staffing employment arrangements, such as appointing the whisperer as chief of staff or to some other parliamentary staffer position. There are a number of parties who have disclosed being paying clients. We know the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers is one of those. There was the Australian Sex Party, which is now Reason; Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party – I do not think it exists anymore, but it did at the time; the Family First Party; and the lifestyle party. Again, the list of people who have come into this place is long.

At the end of this process what we did see was that at the last election a group of parties and MPs decided to try and do over the system. The Angry Victorians Party secretly recorded an online pitch meeting where the whisperer outlined his success fee, before leaking that footage to the media outlets. And then there was the infamous Animal Justice Party, who in 2022 engaged in months of preference negotiations with the whisperer in what they called a sting before pulling out at the final deadline to submit independent preferences and bypass his network. I have heard members in this place from the so-called progressive crossbench talk about this being a progressive bloc aiming to overcome the preference-whispering bloc. There were a number of people who had expected to be elected to this place who were very disappointed in that result.

As you can see, there are a range of things that have occurred in this place that have led people to come into this place in ways which defy democracy. Paying a fee of $50,000 or $55,000 to buy a seat in this chamber is offensive. It is wrong. However you want to say it, it is wrong. But then to be lectured by members of the crossbench that somehow they are the bastions of good democracy is really quite fanciful and ridiculous. Again, I go back to my earlier comments about the will of the population and the people who are voting in these elections. That is what this group voting reform will do: rather than the current system, under which parties can direct preference flow through these group voting arrangements, this will see an end to preference whispering. The new above-the-line voting system will require voters to number at least five groups in order of preference, and basically those preferences will flow to candidates in the order they appear for each party. This puts the power into the hands of the voting public, where it should always be.

The reforms will also require the Victorian Electoral Commission to publish information about new political parties, because a party’s name does not always tell voters who is behind it or where their preferences may flow. This is really important. We have seen some right-wing minor parties spruik their intention to use deceptive names and the way in which they might present that they are standing for something but then harvest preferences of parties completely the opposite of what they may advertise they are standing for. If anybody is considering another party, a minor party – however you want to describe it – it is important that the voting public can have a place to go to look at information and be fully informed, because we have seen some terrible examples of misleading voters.

The test around what is misleading in the vote is quite a difficult and tough test, and I can talk about my electorate. In one of the federal elections there were some voting signs that looked very much like official electoral commission signs that directed people, I think it was in Mandarin, to vote the ‘right way’. Those signs were complained about, but the horse had bolted. When we see those sorts of stunts and tricks happen at polling booths on election day, it is always disappointing, so the more information that the voting public and voters can have in their hands to look at when considering candidates is incredibly important.

It is a good thing that this Parliament will bring an end to group voting. Today I believe the crossbench will have a number of things that they will want to say and amendments that they want to propose, but the bottom line is time is up. This has to go. It is long overdue, and Labor is very focused on making this election fair and free from influence. It is too important. We do see there are bad actors in the electoral landscape who have nefarious ideals and want to change and shape our democracy. All I know is when I am out and about in my electorate people say to me all the time, ‘I am very concerned about the prospect of a Liberal–One Nation coalition government.’ They see that as terrible and they are very concerned about that, so in this election they want to make sure that their vote does not go anywhere near flowing down to One Nation. That is their real fear and their real concern.

So I am really pleased to be able to speak on this bill today. It is a very important bill. As I said, we are making elections fairer and more transparent by removing these backroom deals and ensuring Victorians know exactly who they are voting for. Fair and free elections are the bedrock of democracy, and we are delivering these reforms to ensure that Victorians can be more confident in their electoral processes. Like I said, knowledge is power, and making sure voters have access to information and knowledge to be able to exercise their vote is critically important. I will end my contribution there, and I commend the bill to the house.

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (15:46): I want to make a contribution to this electoral reform bill. I want to reiterate or support the points made by the deputy leader here in the chamber earlier. This is a bill that the Liberal Party has always supported. We see the importance of this bill in basic fairness, basic electoral evenness and transparency, and in doing so, we have not deviated from that, even where it may apparently have not been in our interests to see this bill go through. There have been discussions about this over a number of years. The Labor Party has been very tardy, being the party of government for the last three terms now and the party that could have cleaned these matters up. Indeed in the period of the Baillieu–Napthine government, we did go to –

Ryan Batchelor: You lot have never cleaned up anything.

David DAVIS: Well, we actually went to the Labor Party and we said, ‘If you are prepared to support us, we will deal with this. We won’t do it alone, we will do it where there is broad support.’ But Daniel Andrews did not agree at that time, in the period to 2014. So there was an approach made there, there was a discussion there, and we would have supported it at that point in time.

Let us also be clear, there is every reason to be supportive of this because there have been some terrible undemocratic outcomes that have been engineered through the group voting tickets. Essentially, this bill abolishes the group voting tickets. It cleans up the transparency here to make sure that people can preference as they see fit, that the preferencing arrangements are fair and that deals done behind the scenes by preference whisperers or others are not going to unpick the democratic intent. I agree with Ms Terpstra and on some of the cases that Mr Mulholland brought forward that were part of this chamber and people who, whilst they themselves may be quite reasonable people, were amenable to doing terrible deals with the government of the day as it were, terrible deals with preference arrangements and terrible deals with preference whisperers – corrupt deals. Let us be clear that these deals were not the right thing to do, they were not honest, they were not transparent and they in fact in my view ought to have fallen foul of many criminal points.

Jeff Bourman: On a point of order, Acting President, Mr Davis, I invite you to say that outside the chamber.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Mr Bourman, that is not a point of order. If you wish to reframe your point of order, you are welcome to.

Jeff Bourman interjected.

David DAVIS: I am going to instance a couple of examples, as you have invited me to do here, Mr Bourman. I understand your party is a larger party. Your party is a party that has got a serious base, and has had for many years, and is somewhat different from some of the tiny micro-parties that try to appear and actively and discriminatingly try to influence the outcome of elections in particular seats and to do so in a way that I personally believe is corrupt. So I am actually drawing a distinction with your party, which has got a genuine policy base, and others, who might come from a party that has a genuine policy base but who have not always been honest, and I am going to pick on in this case a couple of those who I think have not.

We saw Mr Barton come to this chamber in 2018. He was a case in point where a set of deals were done in preferencing in 2018, and indeed Ms Terpstra laid out the very low number of votes and the tiny spread of votes that he had there, defeating in this case the Greens and others in that seat where there were many, many more votes. He was elected with one key point in mind, and that was about the taxi industry. I am happy to speak about that because it is actually something I feel personally very strongly about. I did not agree with what happened with the taxi industry in 2017. Whilst you might have wanted the reforms and the Uber changes and all of that – I actually can understand why people wanted that – I also believed that people who had legitimately bought licences deserved to be properly and fully compensated. It was really a compensation issue to me, and as Mr Bourman will note, I fought endlessly in this chamber in favour of the taxi owners, who were treated, in my view, so appallingly.

What struck me, though, is that when Mr Barton got here we put an inquiry out – one of the first inquiries that was done in that Parliament – to deal with this issue and to come back with a set of recommendations. Barton voted with Labor repeatedly through the amendments that were put by the opposition in the committee hearings. You can go and read the minority report; you can read the extract of proceedings. If you were a person who wanted to support the taxi industry and those who had owned licences and had been treated unfairly, it would make your hair curl, the things he voted for. He voted down compensation. He voted down steps to get proper outcomes for people who had been treated wrongly by the taxi industry. So I would instance him as one of the persons in this chamber who is most reprehensible and most impacted by these outcomes that are driven by the inadequate voting system that has been in operation since the change, actually I might say, in the shape of the Parliament when the chamber was changed to a proportional system. 2006 was the first election that we went to with that arrangement.

Barton went further when the pandemic bill was here. People in this chamber will remember the pandemic bill. Mr Bourman and the Liberal Democrats did actually support the opposition in our amendments through that process. You did stick still all the way through that. We got to the end of the second reading, and it was clear that the bill would not go further, would not be passed, and the government panicked. The government froze the bill. It stopped. You will remember this, Mr Bourman – you will remember this quite clearly. Mr Barton, who used to sit next to you, was the one who welshed, who changed. It is hard to know what corrupt deal made him move, but he was able –

Jeff Bourman: On a point of order, Acting President, it is unruly for Mr Davis to be pointing.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Yes, there was a bit of pointing. Please refrain from pointing and talk through the Chair, Mr Davis.

David DAVIS: Those who were here will remember Mr Barton’s extraordinary Damascus road conversion, where he changed from opposing the bill to supporting the bill and doing that over a couple of weeks hiatus. The government came back and there was a very late night sitting, but Barton had clearly done a deal for Labor preferences. Everyone knew that he was up to his neck in this. He was up over his neck. This was a clearly corrupt deal that had been done – a deal that should never have been done and a deal that to this day deserves to be exposed. What he did to the taxi owners, who he came to this chamber to support, was actually quite wrong. What he did on the pandemic bill was also quite wrong. This, I think, is one of the unfortunate examples of what these group voting tickets can do and the changes that they can force, because people can have behind-the-scenes arrangements – behind-the-scenes deals can be done. There were others in this chamber who were thrown up by chance, by pure chance, and Ms Terpstra has laid out some of those people.

Clifford Hayes – an affable fellow. Everyone liked him. Clifford got a tiny percentage of the vote.

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: No, I am just reminiscing a little here and pointing to some of the strange outcomes that were thrown up by the group voting tickets. Nobody expected that Mr Hayes would be elected and romp over the Greens, who actually had a very sizeable vote – somewhere around 13 per cent, from memory, at the time, and he had less than 1 per cent. So you are left with these very strange and unpredictable outcomes because of the preference deals that are done – the behind-the-scenes preference whisperer arrangements, the exchange of preferences between parties that are not natural bedfellows, parties that have divergent viewpoints that are actually entirely opposed on some occasions. That is what worries me about these preference arrangements, that they distort and divert the political process because of the capacity of external small groups to influence outcomes in a way that is clearly, clearly undemocratic.

It is for these reasons that I am supporting this bill. I believe the Liberals and Nationals think it is the right thing to support this bill. We have never changed our view on this. We have always been supportive, in principle, of these changes. As I have outlined, even back prior to 2014 we were open if Labor was prepared to do this. To the extent that Labor is now prepared to do it, that is an important step in improving democracy in Victoria.

 Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (15:56): Mr Davis should be very, very thankful he has got parliamentary privilege for some of the absolute rubbish and aspersions he cast. I think he should try them outside the chamber and see how long it takes for a concerns notice to land in his inbox. Anyway, there is no interest like self-interest, as we are all finding out today. Yes, I want to keep this because of the self-interest. I want to be here to represent my people. The wider ‘they’ want to get rid of us because they feel they will get seats, and that is their self-interest. The system we are operating under now was specifically designed to do what is happening now, maybe not through preference harvesting and all this sort of stuff, but it was to allow a wider representation of community. Whilst Animal Justice Party and I do not agree on many things, the fact that we are both here shows that there are voices unlike the Liberals, unlike the Nationals and Labor and of course the Greens, even though the AJP and the Greens are fairly aligned on a lot of things. But if you cannot say that people having Libertarians; Animal Justice; Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (SFFP); and One Nation is a representative voice, then what is?

I have noticed a few things. Mr Mulholland, you said that SFFP got AJP elected – wrong. We got One Nation elected. I have got a fair idea where you got your information from.

Georgie Purcell interjected.

Jeff BOURMAN: Yes. No, we got One Nation elected. Animal Justice were last on every single one of our tickets. One Nation were before the Libs, and I think that is why they are snotty about the whole thing. I do not invite him to withdraw that, but I will just point out that was an utter load of rubbish. It is also nice of Mr Mulholland to worry about the will of the people – I notice that term came up a bit – as long as it benefits him and his people.

Moving on, every single number 2 of the major parties in this place is here because of the group voting ticket. I predict that every single one – not every single one, but close enough for me to make the generalisation – of the number 2s in this place on both sides of the chamber will be gone because of this legislation. Whether you like One Nation or not, they are now a force to be reckoned with, and their primary vote is enough that everyone should have been paying attention. I have spoken to various people behind the scenes from both major parties about this, and no-one seems to be too worried. Well, South Australia should have given you a warning. We are a more left state than South Australia in general, but there is only one poll that counts. We will find out what happens. But if I was a number 2 in any of the major parties, I would be sweating buckets right now because this is going to give them basically zero hope. I do have an amendment to delay the commencement date – self-interest of course. I might ask for that to be circulated.

I have noticed that whilst there was a lot of talk, in fairness to the Greens – I do not like saying nice things about the Greens; it makes me feel a little uneasy – they have a number of times tried to fix this from their perspective. They have put up stuff and been voted down. But I have noticed that in the major parties, probably until about 2014 when I first arrived on the scene in the wave of the new crossbenchers, no-one really cared because it worked for them. Now it does not work for them. Now we basically have something that I feel has been put up by a bunch of bedwetters that sleep with the lights on at night. This is really what is going on. There were panic stations – Chicken Little, ‘the sky is falling in’. Well, you reap what you sow, fellas and ladies. I feel that the next election will be studied for decades because of the disaster for the major parties. We will see. There will be more Greens, I am pretty confident of that. But One Nation will come here, and it is quite conceivable that they will be the largest party in this chamber, so enjoy what is left of it.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (16:01): I am very pleased to rise to speak on this bill, because Mr Davis and Mr Mulholland in their contributions tried to somehow suggest that it is the Liberal Party that is the champion of democratic reform in the Victorian Legislative Council. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. Over the 175 years that this place has existed, the Liberal Party, from the time it was created, and its forebears have been the party opposed to the democratisation of this chamber. The only party that has ever pushed for, secured and initiated democratic change in this chamber has been Labor.

It was the Labor Party in 1950 that made the removal of the property franchise for election to this Parliament a condition of their support for the Country Party government, which left the Liberal Party aghast. It was Labor pressure in the 1950s that saw the abolition of the property franchise that had existed hitherto for election to this Parliament. It was Labor in 1985, under the premiership of John Cain, that first advocated a policy of having multimember, proportionally represented regions as the composition of this chamber, a policy that was opposed by the Liberal Party, who saw the protection of their own members and the protection of an electoral system that had served them well to that point as being more important than standing up for the principles of democratic reform and proportional representation. It was only when the Bracks government in 2002 secured, for the first time ever in Victoria’s history, a constitutional majority in both houses of the Victorian Parliament that Labor initiated constitutional reforms to remove the old system of voting and representation from this chamber – after a constitutional convention, after considerable public debate – and replace the old provinces and members elected for eight-year terms with the series of regions, eight by five, that we have today. Those reforms were initiated by Labor, just as the reforms to remove the property franchise were initiated by Labor, just as these reforms to further extend democratic improvements to elections for the Victorian Legislative Council today were moved by Labor.

Evan Mulholland: It has only taken you 12 years.

Ryan BATCHELOR: Mr Mulholland, you have never done a thing to democratise this place, so I am not going to listen to a word you have to say. This party have always been advocates for democratic change in the Victorian Legislative Council and agents of democratic change in the Victorian Legislative Council, and no amount of bloviating from the Liberal Party can change the facts of history.

David Davis interjected.

Ryan BATCHELOR: It is disappointing that, in an attempt to find some way of enhancing their own credibility and credentials, the Liberal Party, and Mr Davis in particular, have spent their entire contribution to this place today denigrating others. Whatever you believe and whatever your reflections are on our electoral system in this place, you do not need to stand here and dump a bucket on your former colleagues. It is unbecoming, and it is not worthy of serious debate in this chamber.

What we have got today is a piece of legislation that is about improving our democratic system of government here in Victoria – about making a simple but significant change that has been achieved in all of the other second chambers and their electoral systems right around the country. It was achieved in elections to the Commonwealth Parliament and the Australian Senate a decade ago. It has been a feature of change in New South Wales, in South Australia, in Western Australia – other comparable jurisdictions that have similar voting systems for their upper houses. Obviously we do not have one in Queensland, because there was a successful move a century ago to deal with that, and it is a very different system in Tasmania. What we have here is a simple but important change to put decisions about voter preferences in the hands of voters. We have seen very clearly in the operation of the Australian Senate for the last several elections that voters know what they want to do with their preferences in upper house systems: they like to be able to direct preferences by party in a manner that accords with their own ideology and beliefs and preferences. That is what the bill before us today will do here in Victoria. It brings Victoria into line with all the other comparable jurisdictions in Australia, and it puts decisions about preferences in the hands of voters, not in the hands of political parties behind the scenes. If members of Parliament and political parties want to advocate to voters to give them their preferences in the upper house in the same way that they do in the lower house, then they are absolutely free to do so. Those arguments should be had both on the basis of merit and on the basis of openness and transparency.

I think one of the features of the current system, the existing system that we have here in Victoria, is that despite the lodged group voting tickets technically having been made publicly available to electors before they cast their ballots, we all know that in reality the public has not been aware. They were too hard to find. The system we are moving to now will put that information before their very eyes on how-to-vote cards as they walk into a ballot box and fill out their ballot papers. I think that sort of transparency is critical in a democracy, and it is something that all the political parties who participate in the debate, either in this chamber or out in the broader community, should absolutely welcome. This reform is long overdue. It will place decisions about voter preferences in the hands of voters, and there can be nothing that is more fundamentally democratic than that. This is a reform that has been recommended by the Electoral Matters Committee, a joint committee of this Parliament, on several occasions, including most recently in two reports in the last couple of years.

It is a matter that has been well canvassed both with those who are interested and appeared before those Electoral Matters Committee inquiries and also in broader public debate and in debate amongst political scientists, psephologists and others who have an interest in our voting system. There is no world in which anyone can argue that the change before us today has not been well telegraphed, has not been well discussed and has not been on the agenda for a long period of time. If something has those characteristics, both of improving democracy and of being well canvassed, and with an election on the horizon, we have to see this chamber today taking this important step forward to improve the democratic features of the way it is elected. A move to delay that, such as what Mr Bourman has indicated he is seeking to do through his amendment, is an act of absolute self-interest. It is not in keeping with the spirit in which those Electoral Matters Committee inquiries and the broader public debate were done but also some fundamental principles about democracy and democratic action in this state.

It has always been Labor that has pushed the cause of democratic reform in the Victorian Legislative Council. That is absolute fact. If you go back and look at the history of democratic reform to this place, it has always been because Labor has insisted upon it or because Labor has delivered it. This is another example in that long history of where Labor has sought to improve the democratic operation of the Victorian Legislative Council, and that is exactly what it will do. I commend the bill to the house.

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:12): I rise to speak on this particular bill, given that it does affect me directly. The Liberals and Nationals back the removal of the group voting tickets and are open to engaging constructively with the government to ensure regional representation is preserved and to achieve a representative upper house that benefits all Victorians.

Having said that, I think there are a lot of people that will be trying to understand what all of this means, and we can go back to the fact that so many young people are not even getting to learn civics at the moment in schools or their civics understanding is very limited. I would just like to state that the upper house ballot when they go in to vote is not the tiny little slip that they get in which all the numbers have to be put into the little boxes; it is that great big long one that goes out as wide as your arms can go. In the past you would just pick one party – or 90 per cent of the people would do that, and another 10 per cent would vote below the line, picking so many names of people that they preferred. With a group voting ticket, when you picked the party of your choice you could not see where those preferences were going. What that meant was that preference deals could be worked out in little back rooms to make sure that a person that a minor party wanted to try to get up could, with a preference whisperer, as we call them, actually pay a certain amount of money to get those preferences into the direction that they want. Hence we have a crossbench that is very large and very diverse, but some of these people that have been elected onto the crossbench only represent about 1000 votes or maybe 5000 votes, and that is why it is not considered to be a democratic process.

The difficulty in the upper house is that each upper house member represents a region. There are eight regions in Victoria, and this has been put into the constitution. For each of those regions there are five upper house members, so there can be a variety of people representing a variety of parties among those five members. To get elected you need about 16.7 per cent of the vote, and if you do not get that through your primary vote, then you have to get it through other preferences. As I said, those have been done in the past through backroom deals, so you could not always see who was being preferenced and where those preferences were going. That is why we have such a diverse and large crossbench.

I found it a little bit rich to listen to Mr Batchelor saying that Labor have always been the champions of democracy when in fact this is the first time that they have been willing to change the group voting ticket system because suddenly they are under threat by a rising conservative One Nation. Until this point they had absolutely no interest in changing the group voting ticket, because largely the crossbench served their own purposes and their own bills. In fact many of them would have been Labor voters prior to being representatives of whatever party it is that they represent. That is something that people do not really understand.

In my case of course I have been bumped down to number 2, which means that my chances with the change in the group voting tickets could be at a disadvantage. I am actually having to vote for something that may or may not disadvantage me personally. I think it is important for people to understand that on the issue of democracy it needs to be the voice of the people and not just a handful of people but people in general that are the larger body of people; that is what democracy is. It should be that the larger body of people has the say in what it wants and who it wants. I support democracy, so in this situation, irrespective of what the impact may be on me personally, I support the democratic system and will be voting obviously with my party on the group voting ticket and for this whole situation to be changed.

I think it is really important that people understand how this all works. Obviously the rise of One Nation is the fear of the Labor Party. The rise of One Nation is unknown. They are polling way over 20 per cent, maybe at 25 per cent. That means that they are most likely in some regions automatically going to be quite comfortable in getting representatives into the upper house in those five positions in many of the eight regions, maybe in all of the eight regions. I think that it is going to be an interesting outcome as we go forward into the election. Somebody like me as a number 2 candidate can no longer count on catching that massive wave of downstream preferences from minor conservative parties. I have to be left marooned trying to reach that 16.7 per cent or have those individual people within my community who actually know me be prepared to vote for me. That is something that people need to understand. They do need to understand how the voting system works, they need to understand what that group ballot looks like and they need to know what each one is for. I get so surprised when I am out in the community and people do not really understand the difference between the great big, long ballot and the tiny, little, small ballot. You would think that would be something that would be basic, but it actually is not being taught in schools and people do not really understand our system and how it works.

We have had this massive influx in the last couple of months of additional citizenship ceremonies for thousands of new citizens, and I have to question whether some of them are actually saying the affirmation and taking the oath, because I have noticed a number of mouths not moving during that time.

A member interjected.

Ann-Marie HERMANS: No, that is actually an observation. That is not a criticism; it is a factual observation which other people have noted as well. It is a concern to have people becoming Australian citizens who are not actually moving their mouths when they are making those commitments. That concerns me. That is technically not allowed. You are not becoming an Australian citizen unless you are actually taking those oaths and affirming them afterwards. I think that is something that councils need to be looking at and being more vigilant on. There has been this surge of additional citizenship ceremonies that have been pushed through in the last month, and they continue to be pushed through. There were three additional ones added in Dandenong on Sunday. There were two additional ones in Frankston. There are so many additional ones that are happening, and people are coming to me and saying, ‘Why are they doing this? Has this got anything to do with the election?’ I would have to say, ‘Yes, it does.’ On that note I am going to finish up, but I will say this: I wholeheartedly support my party and its changes, and I will be voting to see these changes made to group voting tickets.

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (16:19): I rise to speak on this bill, and much like many of my colleagues on the crossbench I will be voting against it. I want to speak to what I think has been a bit of a consistent theme in this debate about the idea of so-called self-interest in doing that and making that decision. It would be very easy to be perceived that way, and of course a lot of us do very much want to be back here in the next Parliament. But it is certainly not just about that. It is about a great belief in our parties, our policies and our issues and ourselves simply operating under the system that was granted to us to get elected. The process in which this has occurred, honestly, has been quite galling and incredibly difficult, particularly as someone who has had a more proactive working relationship with the government that has been longstanding not just in this term but in the previous term, when I worked for the first Animal Justice Party MP that was elected to the Victorian Parliament. We have obviously worked collaboratively and constructively where possible.

For anyone, like Mr Davis, who claims that there were so-called corrupt deals, I am standing here today at the end of the term with duck shooting, jumps racing and greyhound racing still here in Victoria because we have chosen to be collaborative and proactive members of Parliament and take our jobs representing our communities really, really seriously. Some of the commentary that has come up in this debate has been pretty disappointing, to be completely honest. We are all still your colleagues. We all still have to spend time together until the end of this term. I am hearing it not just from the opposition – whom, frankly, I expect it from – but from government MPs, especially about the progressive crossbench and the way in which we operate. Need I remind Ms Terpstra whom the government has relied on in order to progress the legislative agenda this term. I know she is certainly not doing the new Premier any favours in making those comments in this debate today.

This decision is one that we honestly all very much expected to potentially happen. We are not asking the government to keep the status quo. I want to make that really clear. In fact we have been asking, pleading, begging the government to change this system to abolish the group voting ticket (GVT) but to do it in a way that was not rushed, that was not like this – that actually still created a model that was representative of democracy and the people of Victoria and did not just cancel out the minor parties. We have seen that happen in New South Wales and WA. My crossbench colleagues all have colleagues in those parliaments. Of course Victoria has locked in a system that requires a referendum in order to do that. We have for eight years, from my experience, been asking the government to have that referendum – to take it to the people of Victoria to agree to change our voting system before putting legislation first. That is simply all we have been asking for. Hearing the debate in the lower house, government MPs, opposition MPs and other MPs were saying, ‘We’ll do this, then we’ll do that and we’ll have a conversation about the structure.’ Believe me, that is never going to happen now, because putting one form of reform in place that will benefit some parties ahead of others is going to make working together to achieve the fairest model for everyone near impossible. In doing that we are going to see Victorians poorer for it.

All of us clearly come in here with different positions and parties, but I very much believe that no-one comes in here with anything but good intentions, wanting to do good things on behalf of the causes that they believe in. That brings me to how we got here today. Last sitting week we were notified, not in any way formally, that the GVT legislation would be entering the Parliament. That certainly was not a shock; we knew that if this legislation was going to be in place, it needed to be done by the end of August. What I naively thought, perhaps stupidly, having faith that the government would do the right thing, at least by the people that have worked alongside them for the last four years, is that that bill would follow the usual process of being introduced in the lower house, debated in the lower house the following week and coming to us the week after that, which would be next sitting week. I actually thought that Mr Bourman, when he came to me saying that this was going through urgently, was being, frankly, a conspiracy theorist and that there was no possible way that the government would do that to us, noting the relationships that we have made in this place, noting what is usual practice when it comes to an urgent bill, only to find that everyone knew about it except for us. The Greens knew, the opposition knew and the government knew. We did not know.

In trying to be a negotiator on behalf of the crossbench I was attempting to reach out to the Premier’s office – of course the Premier’s office was a little bit hard to reach last sitting week – to at least slow it down. We had not even been briefed. We had not seen the legislation. In fact I only got confirmation that it was definitely going to happen when I looked at the guillotine motion in the lower house to see if the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026 was up for debate and passing of the amendments from the sitting week before the break. To say that that realisation was bruising would be an understatement. As I said, none of us were surprised by this, but the process by which it happened meant we were completely blindsided by it, particularly those MPs who have worked in a way that was perhaps too generous to the government at times despite our issues not moving and despite having a really frustrating four years. To not even have someone pick up the phone and let us know that this bill not only was coming but was coming down on us like a steam train – I think it was already going to be a hard rest of the term with the passing of this legislation, but doing it in that way was a pretty difficult realisation for people like me – and I am sure Ms Payne as well – who have really, really tried hard to do the right thing and to support the government when they are doing things right. I think they have done many things right as well as many things wrong, and that is why I am here in the first place.

We have, as I said, gone to the government a number of times to try and talk about this and been told there was just no decision that was made, so then to not even be informed when a decision had been made was quite shocking. There was clearly a decision somewhere that they would simply shore up the people that they knew they needed. But what I would say is that they will certainly need more than those people at times in order to progress their legislative agenda until the end of the term. I do just want to say, in saying that, that this could have been easier for everyone, and that was not chosen in deciding to move through with this policy. It was decided to do it in probably in the worst possible way. It would have been worse if it had happened last sitting week, but it is still really not ideal.

We, as I said, would have supported this basically in any way but this. All we said throughout this entire term and last term as well was, ‘We can do this with you. We can do this right. We can support you in this decision. We can abolish the GVT.’ What we do not want is to find out at the eleventh hour, when our parties are ready for elections, when we have staff in our offices – I have staff whom I had to speak to about this decision who are having this pretty difficult realisation, on top of finding out that this legislation was potentially coming within three days last sitting week.

We have simply asked for these laws to be developed carefully, transparently and collaboratively, even if we do not all agree. Even if this decision was eventually made at the very end, we simply asked for us to at least know about it and to have a seat at the table and to have that conversation. I know that the government has said that they got told to do this by a parliamentary inquiry. They got told that by a parliamentary inquiry last term as well. That is exactly why we have been trying to find a pathway forward in making those changes. But the decision was made to rush it at the last minute, because it seems that there are some people out there who think that this is for their political gain. I think they are going to be incredibly shocked when they walk in here next term and see that it probably made no difference, that we have less representation and our democracy is poorer for it.

Many of these issues have been advanced in this state for a really long time – for decades – such as legalising cannabis, such as banning duck shooting and such as the things that Mr Limbrick does. They are often a bit random. He is my bench colleague and we have opposing views, but we often find really good areas of middle ground. That is a really beautiful thing about this place that is going to be really sad to lose, and Mr Bourman touched on that as well. When I speak to school students and they ask, ‘What’s the most interesting thing about Parliament?’, I always say, ‘Actually, one of the people I like the most is the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP.’ I think that is a really nice story to tell about the workplace and about our Parliament and about how we have a system that allows this diversity and differing of views but we all see each other as people at the end of the day. Of course that was made in a really beautiful and meaningful gesture when Mr Bourman gave up his office for me so I could return to work one month postpartum and have my baby at work. That is certainly not in any way an argument to keep the GVT; it is an argument to say we could have had that same representation in a process that was not rushed, in a process that the government claims that they are going to do and I now believe they just will not be able to.

I want to talk about something that is often left out of these conversations and might not have been considered by others. In my party, the Animal Justice Party, I was one of the first 50 members in Victoria. I got asked to join outside Flemington Racecourse in 2013. They said, ‘We want to start a political party for animals, will you join? We are trying to get 50 members.’ And I said, ‘Of course I will,’ not thinking it would ever go anywhere. We built that party up to be a really strong, powerful force running in elections. Even without members of Parliament, we were able to negotiate to get agreements from the government, and that is often what people do not see when it comes to the other side, that those puppy farm laws that were agreed to in 2014 were part of Oscar’s Law and the Coalition Against Duck Shooting and the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses and the Animal Justice Party joining together and saying, ‘Let’s work together on this election campaign, and if we can achieve just one thing, we’ll all be really happy about it.’

Our party has only grown in strides. Mr Davis touched on having a substantial membership and policies, and we certainly do have that. We have thousands and thousands of members in our state. Something that has been difficult and stressful and a pressurised environment, again, having this come through so quickly, is that I have had to talk to my party about this and say to them that I do not think we can stop this, I do not think we can find a way forward. The staff that are employed under our admin funding agreements and all of the people that help us run our volunteers are probably facing an uncertain future. Of course we will run in the upcoming election, but it is going to be a really difficult battle and it is going to be so much harder. I really grieve for many of the minor parties who are legitimate parties who have done the work, who have built themselves up, who have gotten representatives elected in here that have helped them progress and grow and get their policy issues on the political agenda, only for that to be lost very, very soon. Many of us already have substantial election plans and positions and funding in place that will probably have to be reconsidered as a result of this move.

I do not really want to speak too much about who will benefit from this, because I agree that we should not set our electoral laws based on whether or not we like the political landscape of the day. Certainly I do not think we should make changes to our voting system because we do not like that it might benefit, say, the far right. We have been opposed to doing it this way for as long as it has been proposed, for the reasons that I have said. I certainly do think that it should be a consideration for the government that if they think this is somehow going to improve their electoral chances at the next election, that is going to be a pretty significant shock. What we will be missing is the ability to have a few people like us to work alongside. I know we can be a bunch of random weirdos at times that care about really obscure things, but certainly it has been much easier to work with us as individuals or as small groups than a big, large bloc who holds a balance of power, demanding things that will very likely not be in the interest of many Victorians come the next term.

I want to talk about voter education and voter literacy as well, ahead of this change. Again I think it is really irresponsible, when this has been on the government’s agenda, to act like this is necessary to do right now, when it has been a live conversation for almost a decade, as many people have said. We already know voter literacy in the upper house in particular is so incredibly low. Making this change is one thing, but to hear the government saying they will then look at changing the system again – I mean, we are looking at a 2026 election with one system and potentially a 2030 election with another system, if that is successful. That is something else that should be taken into consideration – the demands on the Victorian Electoral Commission to get that work done, to educate voters, to train up staff on how to count votes now and also the taxpayer money that will go into making that decision. Once again, it could have been done in a process that was streamlined one time and set us up for the future in a system that we know works, in a system that parliaments across the country already have – a system that WA did very, very recently and a system that is working for them and certainly still reflects the ability to have these representative voices in our halls of power.

We heard a number of comments about former MPs, including Mr Barton. I just do need to say that I find it very upsetting, as someone who worked alongside Mr Barton last term. He was a lovely man, and for him to not be in this chamber when he is being called corrupt in a debate that is very difficult for many of us, I think is one of the most reprehensible things that has happened here in a long time. I would like to say to Mr Barton, if he is watching this, that I would encourage him to do a right of reply. I would like to talk about some of the really wonderful things that Mr Barton was able to do in his time here, regardless of how he got elected, because as I said, that was just operating under the system that we did not create. Mr Barton established the parliamentary inquiry into the children of incarcerated parents. That was a very special inquiry, and it resulted in policy change in our state. Mr Barton also established the parliamentary inquiry into homelessness in Victoria. That was one of the final things that he did, and that report was delivered in this term of Parliament, and it was a really meaningful, important report.

I was also actually in those so-called corrupt meetings as an Animal Justice Party staffer at the time. Let me tell you, Mr Davis, they certainly were not as thrilling as you seem to think they were. To hear again about really difficult decisions that were made, whether people agree with them or not, with a view of trying to do the right thing by public health at the time and the advice that was given, I just ask that members are mindful that –

David Davis interjected.

Georgie PURCELL: I have never been in preference meetings. I am referring to the so-called meetings with the government on the pandemic legislation. That was an incredibly difficult decision for so many of the members who supported it, because they knew what was going to be accused of them, which is still happening here right now. It was an incredibly difficult time where we could make decisions in the interests of public health, knowing what the opposition and others were going to whip up and the rhetoric of fear and conspiracy, or do what would have been more politically convenient. Let me tell you, Mr Barton could have very easily done what was more politically convenient. I know that there are members here on these benches who do not agree with those decisions, but certainly to say that they were done for any other reason but to do the right thing I just find really offensive. As I said, I was up close to those negotiations, and it was an incredibly difficult time in our office as well.

David Davis interjected.

Georgie PURCELL: I am not referring to preference negotiations, Mr Davis; you were talking about pandemic legislation. Regardless, Mr Barton was someone, regardless of how we got in this place, who was an incredibly good person, and I just really want to put that on the record, if that is going to be one of the things that is said on the way out of here.

I want to talk about Mr Grimley, who was also in the last Parliament, and it was not lost on me when I was sitting in the chamber for the apology last sitting week in the joint sitting, to hear of all of the work that went into reaching that point and the victim-survivors who needed an advocate to speak on behalf of them, to hear their stories and, as other members said, to just listen and to hear their stories and to validate them and to get that apology. Throughout the debate we heard consistently that that work was done by Stuart Grimley. It was on the same day that I was trying to slow down the GVT legislation that was rolling through the Parliament, and the irony was not lost on me, thinking, ‘Well, if he was never in here, we’d probably never be hearing this apology.’ How difficult it is going to be for many advocates who, frankly, often do feel unheard by the major parties, or even if they are heard by the major parties, the individual MPs do not have the ability to speak openly about pushing further on those issues, because they are bound by the structures and the rules in which they operate.

I have many debates in my household about whether we would prefer to be a minor party MP on the crossbench or in a party of government. Certainly I do believe that there is the space to have that internal advocacy and internal change and fight from within your party system to bring about reform, but something that is also a critical part of that equation is having people like me and others who are out there having the public conversation, moving the government in the right direction and speaking and telling their stories. That very important advocacy piece inside the government and other systems can go on as well. I think that losing that, certainly for the many communities that I represent, will be a difficult realisation to have.

Just today the government made an announcement that is a very welcome one on victim-survivor reforms. Actually the first line of it was about adding family and domestic violence as a protected attribute in our equal opportunity laws. What was missing from that, obviously, is something that I have been pushing the government to do for almost a year now alongside a community legal centre who has actually found that it is common practice for victim-survivors to be sacked by their employers for disclosing that they are a survivor. When we were going to – apparently this week; it is not happening now – enshrine the right to work from home, I was not necessarily opposed to that, but I said, ‘If you’re going to enshrine the right to work from home, surely we can also protect discrimination on the basis of family and domestic violence in the same piece of legislation where it belongs.’ That was not as easy a process as you would think it was. It was actually a real fight, and I am thankful for the government doing it. I am thankful that the Attorney-General made that announcement today, but anyone reading that media release this morning would think that that was a government decision, and it just would not have happened today without the advocacy of my office and the community legal centre who came to me, as I said, in the first place because they were not getting anywhere with the government.

That was very much demonstrated by other MPs. Of course we had Fiona Patten spend two terms in this place. She was a brilliant reformer – one of the most effective legislators and collaborators that our state I think has ever seen. I was really lucky to see it up close. Fiona is a dear friend, and she has been a mentor and a confidant and someone who has really helped me on my political journey. In fact I probably would not be here if it was not for her, because she helped me see that a sex worker could in fact step foot in this place and could be a politician, and not only that, but it would also be a really brilliant thing and a great thing for democracy, and people would see themselves in many different ways. It is because of her that I felt that this could be something that I could do too, that this could be a place for me, and certainly in sharing my story and feeling like that is a possibility – feeling that people do not need a certain kind of politician; they need politicians who represent them and feel like them and look like them and have the same experiences as them – she has given me the bravery to speak out in many ways that I just never thought would ever be possible in my lifetime. She has a legislative record that speaks for itself. I know that there are many MPs in here who unfortunately were not able to spend time watching her in action, but certainly she was instrumental in reforms to bring about voluntary assisted dying and put so much into that to see that happen, as well as sex work decriminalisation and abortion law reform. In fact I spoke about this in my inaugural speech – that because of Fiona Patten I was able to access abortion without being harassed walking into a clinic. That was my first realisation of what one single person on the crossbench in a minor party can achieve in working with the government.

Of course we need champions on the inside to progress these reforms. We saw it further with medically supervised injection rooms, medicinal cannabis and other reforms. I know the government will say that they ultimately did those reforms and they introduced their own legislation, but certainly it is my view that that would not have happened, or perhaps not at the speed in which it happened, if there were not other advocates who were willing to advance those through the Parliament and in ideal circumstances work with the government through parliamentary inquiries and other forms to secure that change. I was saying to someone before that I always said that we have been reflecting a lot on today. It sort of has come on very quickly, and many of us have not really had the ability to prepare or process or I guess work out what is next and how we are going to fight our elections and how we are going to operate in this new system that it seems is going to be put upon us. I always said that I planned on being here for a good time not a long time. Certainly that is going to be the case. Unfortunately, it was not a very good time either. I think that one of the things I find most difficult about this is knowing that many of the things that I came in here to do probably should have happened. I was gifted political circumstances out of my control and changes in leadership at times that were really sensitive to my issues. Knowing that, I would feel much more at peace with this decision if it felt fairer for all of the work that we have done.

I leave this debate ready to do the work to at least show that I believe in my party and my issues heading into the election and knowing that we did try to change our voting system in a way that was constructive and pragmatic and in good faith, and to negotiate and to actually open up the door to achieve this change in a way that could have been wholly supported and that did not deliver such difficult circumstances, not just for us and our parties but actually for me. I feel sad for animals, obviously, and for my stakeholders, who finally had someone in here who could speak consistently about their issues and not rely on larger parties who have a range of other issues and policies that they are also expected to champion. Certainly we have picked up a lot of those communities as well through our core issues of animals, people and planet. I have done significant work in the victim-survivor space and with women’s groups and environmental groups and forest groups and community legal centres and various other stakeholders that we have really given a lot of time to.

I am probably not good at having work–life balance, and I really tried to make the most of my guaranteed time in here. Certainly we will be fighting to try and do that again, but I wish that we were moving forward with electoral reform under better circumstances. There have been amendments proposed to change the start date of this legislation so that we are not coming into a new system only months out from an election – a new system to educate voters about and for us on the crossbench, who thought we might be able to have this conversation again next term, for the third time around, and make that offer. Certainly we were not dealt those cards. But I will be supporting the amendment to make this start date. It is, again, just a reminder to the government that we could all be standing here today supporting this legislation if it was done well, if it was done right, if we were given more time. Certainly there is an ability for everyone in this place to support the legislation if it is not just going to be thrust upon us through circumstances outside of our control at the eleventh hour, after so much goodwill this term trying to work on a better way forward, so we can have a red house which I know can be a little bit different at times. I know the lower house certainly does not really understand what is going on in here, but something that I have always thought is really wonderful about this room is that because of the make-up of it we all have these relationships with each other, because there is no majority and there is no ruling party. I think that is a wonderful thing. I think it is going to be sad that that representation and those voices are going to be lost. I will leave my comments there.

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (16:50): I rise to make a contribution to the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026. The bill makes a range of administrative and campaign finance amendments to the Electoral Act 2002 and some consequential changes to the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Act 2026.

Evan Mulholland: On a point of order, Acting President, I note that there have been a number of rulings on political logos and branding for members of Parliament, and I note that the member’s water bottle has a political party logo on it. I just seek your clarification on whether that is allowed under the standing orders.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): I uphold the point of order. It might have been an oversight, but there certainly have been multiple rulings by our current President and by Mr Atkinson as well, so I think the item needs to be removed from view.

David ETTERSHANK: I only have it here, Acting President, because as you may have noticed, I am masked up with the flu. So if Mr Mulholland is happy for me to continue to rehydrate, I am sure I can keep it at an off-camera angle.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): It is a matter of whether the Acting President is happy, and I am happy with that.

David ETTERSHANK: Thank you, Acting President – such small things that matters such as this can pivot upon.

These reforms have already been fully explained by other members, and Legalise Cannabis have no issues with those provisions. However, the amendments to the Electoral Act 2002 that seek to abolish group voting tickets without addressing the electoral reform of the regions are deeply concerning. As they stand, these amendments will render it virtually impossible for minor parties, independents and new entrants, the fastest growing participants in the electoral landscape, to be elected to the Legislative Council. Instead the reforms will effectively lock in the old parties – the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Greens – parties whose primary votes have at best plateaued or more often have in fact been in decline.

Before proceeding further I want to make it clear that Legalise Cannabis indicated our support for the removal of group voting tickets during the 2022 election campaign, and we have held consistent to that position ever since, and that remains our position now. So it is not about removing GVTs but how it is done and what they are replaced with. The provisions in this bill are both inadequate and undemocratic.

In the 2022 election roughly 28 per cent of voters voted for a candidate not belonging to the four old parties. Labor polled at 33 per cent, the coalition at 29, and then the next largest group was that 28 per cent who voted for other than the big four – way ahead of the Greens on 10 per cent – and that figure is growing exponentially. In 2014 it was 19 per cent; by 2018 it was 22 per cent. It is the strongest signal of the electorate’s growing mistrust in the old parties, and it is happening both here in Victoria and nationally. So obviously this has been recognised as a threat by those old parties, and what do they do? They collude in a deal to consolidate their power and to eliminate those independent and diverse voices from the Parliament – the very voices that Ms Purcell was talking about in her excellent submission prior to my own. And in so doing this bill validates the concerns of those very people who have lost faith in the major parties. They see the cynicism. They see the dirty deals being done dirt cheap. It might result in a good outcome for those old parties in the short term, but it is a tragedy for democracy in Victoria, and it may very well contribute to One Nation holding the balance of power in the next Parliament, as that 28 per cent who would vote for alternatives to the old parties feel that they have no other way to express their disenchantment with the status quo. What is more, it is highly likely that this percentage will be even greater come the 2026 election.

There is no question that the upper house voting system in Victoria needs serious reform. During the 2022 election much attention was paid to GVTs, preference deals and payments to the preference whisperer Glenn Druery. All major parties, including Legalise Cannabis Victoria, publicly supported comprehensive reform of voting arrangements in the Legislative Council. In submissions to the inquiry into the conduct of the 2022 state election by the Electoral Matters Committee (EMC), of which I am a member, the issue of voting arrangements in the Council came up again and again, and the inquiry suggested a number of ways that group voting tickets could be abolished while still retaining the diversity of voices in this Legislative Council, including increasing the number of members for each region or having the same number of members but reducing or eliminating the regions and electing all members from the state as a whole.

Victoria is, as we have heard ad infinitum throughout this debate, the only Australian upper house to retain group voting tickets. GVTs were abolished in New South Wales in 2003, in South Australia in 2018 and in Western Australia in 2021. But here is the rub: these jurisdictions also abolished their regions, allowing voters to vote in one statewide electorate. That is how a range of minor parties and independents are still able to win and retain seats in those parliaments. It might be irritating for the old parties, but it is a win for democracy. Heaven forbid that I preach to the politically savvy veterans of this place, but it is called proportional representation. It may be politically inconvenient to the old parties, but it is at the very heart of our democracy.

Is it not an extraordinary coincidence that in the 2022 election Legalise Cannabis Victoria received about 5 per cent of the vote and we have 5 per cent of the members in this place. The Greens got 10 per cent of the vote, and surprise, surprise, they have 10 per cent of the members here. The numbers for the larger parties are likewise generally consistent with their share of the vote. It is a bit inconvenient, and yes, you can point to the micro-parties here as being over-represented individually, but collectively they are generally numerically consistent with the remaining pool of votes that went to the dozens of micro-parties and independents. They have as much right to be here as anyone.

I would fully get behind an upper house voting system that abolished the regions as well as GVTs. Such a system has great merit and would give those 28 per cent of voters an alternative to the major parties they clearly disdain. But this bill instead cherrypicks from the present system, abolishing the group voting system but retaining the regions and handing themselves – the old parties, the big parties and the other major parties – an unbeatable advantage.

I listened with interest to the contribution of the member for Tarneit in the other place, the former chair of the Electoral Matters Committee, and he talked about the report’s suggested two-stage approach. He said:

… get rid of group voting tickets and get rid of them now … we do not have time to lose … then let us come back in the next term and have a conversation about what the structure of the upper house looks like … that requires a referendum, and as we know, there is no time for a referendum between now and the state election.

Please – this sudden urgency is so utterly contrived and laced with political opportunism. There has been ample opportunity and time to hold a referendum. Reform of the upper house voting system has been under consideration in this state since at least as far back as 2015, but nothing was done in 2015. Nothing was done when virtually the same recommendations that came out of EMC in 2018 came out from the inquiry in 2022; still nothing was done. What we find is the big parties have waited until 1 minute to midnight to put up this bill, even though the VEC, the Victorian Electoral Commission, told them that time was of the essence two years ago. They have let the clock run down, knowing that it would force the separation of voting systems from regional distribution and a one-off political sugar hit. Or will it be one-off?

If these GVT changes are so urgent, and it is so utterly morally repugnant for it to remain in place, why was there no urgent action to stop GVTs from being used in the last City of Melbourne election only about 18 months ago? The simple answer to knowing where preferences go is apparently the heart of this issue, and it is a valid question. What was the response? The response was that a booklet was provided with the ballot paper to document the preference flows, and thus it was made transparent. But of course, we would not want to take a simple, obvious and proven recipe; we would prefer to go the path that is being proposed here today. Seriously, does anyone really believe that whoever forms government after the next election, having rid themselves of these pesky minor parties and the independents and having pulled up the drawbridge to exclude those independent voices, will allow for their return? Who will be left in this chamber to advocate for its restructure? Will stage 2 of the reform process ever come to pass?

Now, it has been argued, and it is correct, that we recently passed section 182 in the previous electoral reform bill, and that establishes an independent inquiry into the electoral regions and related questions. But we all know the fate of so many of these independent inquiries over decades and over successive governments of both colours: if the findings of those inquiries are inconvenient, they are either ignored or they are metastasised into some unrecognisable form. There is absolutely no requirement for any government to accept the recommendations of such an inquiry.

I recently received correspondence from the father of modern Australian political science and psephology Professor Malcolm Mackerras, and he said that no-one seriously believes there will be any second step. Instead the need for a referendum will become an excuse to have no further reform, and they will rely upon the assertion that this 2026 legislation was itself a genuine democratic reform. It is nothing of the kind – beautifully summed. The only way to ensure that a fair democratic system prevails is to abolish group voting tickets and the regions simultaneously. To that effect, we will be supporting an amendment from Mr Bourman during the committee stage to delay the commencement of the GVT reforms and to link them to the reorganisation of the regions. Democracy is and should be vibrant and dynamic, and sometimes it may be a bit messy. It is an inconvenient truth, for example, that strangely, despite a flood of publicity about Glenn Druery and GVTs and preference whispering in the 2022 election campaign – and let us remember it was front page on all the papers; it was in all of the electronic media – more than 90 per cent of Victorians chose to vote above the line. Despite all of the crashing democracy, all of the threats that were published and all of the cries, the overwhelming majority of Victorians went with the system as we know it.

Of course the attack on small and emerging parties and independents is not limited to this bill. In the last electoral reform bill, which I spoke about previously, three other changes were passed that significantly reduced the ability of citizens to form and operate smaller parties and for those parties or independents to compete in an election. Firstly, we saw the number of members required for party registration go from 500 to 750 – a 50 per cent increase. Secondly, we saw the number of people required to support someone to run as an independent for the lower house increase from six to 50 to support that nomination. And thirdly, we saw the time requirement to have a completed party registration lodged with the VEC increase from 120 days to 180 days.

I would like to raise another issue with regard to the separation of voting systems from regional distributions – and Ms Purcell alluded to this before. We know that the Electoral Matters Committee recommended adopting the inclusive Gregory method in the next election. I am not going to attempt to try and explain what that means, but it is a different way of weighting preferences in the count of the vote. That change could not be accommodated, because the VEC said it did not have the time to do that. They could squeeze in the request of the big old parties to abolish GVTs, but they could not do the referendum, and they could not do the inclusive Gregory method. It is entirely possible that if a fulsome discussion around electoral reform does occur in the next Parliament and an alternate configuration is agreed upon, that may in fact necessitate further changes to the voting system. What a triumph that would be – two different voting systems in two successive elections, when it could have all been done in one hit if the voting system and the regions were addressed concurrently. Do it once; do it right – but no.

This question about rushing reform is not simply shared by those who will be crushed by it. Those who have been watching this debate will doubtless remember that in both the previous electoral reform bill and this reform bill a leading role has been taken by the Centre for Public Integrity. They are, I think it is fair to say, an impartial body. I think it is fair to say that they enjoy broad respect across the community, and if I may read from a media release that they put out this afternoon:

The Centre for Public Integrity urges the Government and Parliament to slow down the passage of the Bill, release an exposure draft for public and expert consultation on its specific provisions, and ensure it is subject to robust parliamentary committee scrutiny before it is put to a vote.

That does not leave much to the imagination, does it? It is pretty clear where the Centre for Public Integrity is standing, and it is not simply, as has been suggested by some other speakers here, being put forward for improper purposes.

There is real opportunity for reform of the upper house voting system that would bolster our democracy and possibly restore some faith in those voters who find the machinery of our major political parties abhorrent. But this bill is so contrived, it is so very opportunistic and cynical, and it is these very qualities that continue to drive the growth of new, smaller parties that speak directly to the people, often only a subset of the electorate but people who wish to express their political preferences. It is our democracy. It is our proportional representation system. I fear that in the future, if this legislation goes forward in its current form, this will no longer be known as the Legislative Council. It will be the ‘old parties club’ and the sign out there that says ‘Members only’ will have a whole new meaning.

We understand that the passage of this bill is guaranteed. The deals have been done, but nonetheless, Legalise Cannabis Victoria will not be supporting this bill. We will also be pursuing changes to it.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:12): I did not like the voting system in Victoria before I was involved in politics. I did not like it when I ran for election in 2014 and 2018, I did not like it after I was elected, and I do not like it now. Nonetheless I did not make the system; I dealt with the system that we have. Imperfect as it is, our party, the Libertarian Party, or the Liberal Democrats as it was known at the time, dealt with the system as it is. But my ideal system is one that many have spoken about today and many in the community advocate for: a fully proportional statewide system, similar to what New South Wales has and South Australia, Western Australia et cetera have, where the entire state is allocated members of Parliament according to the preferences of the will of the Victorian people. That is by far my preferred option.

This bill that we have here today has been supported in a deal between the major parties – bipartisan support is always a worry, and anyone in the public that sees bipartisan support should always worry about what is going to happen next. My concern is that what is going to happen here is the incentives for never doing statewide proportional reform will be locked into the system, because whoever gets elected after this new system goes in, if this bill is to pass today, there will be no incentive whatsoever to do reforms to enable the Victorian people to have a fully proportional system in Victoria. I have seen no public commitments from the Labor Party. I have seen no public commitments from the opposition to push this forward. A couple of crossbenchers have spoken about it.

What I will say today is that the Libertarian Party will not be going down without a fight. I do not see this as the end; I see this as the start of a new battle, one in which we will have to change tactics. The very first thing that I will do is I will make the commitment that if the Libertarian Party is fortunate enough to have an MP elected in the next term, we will be the first to make the commitment to push for reform of the electoral system to a fully proportionate representative system.

The reasons why we have not already done this are rather convoluted, but I expect the Labor Party is probably regretting a decision it made many years ago when it put forward the reforms in Victoria, in that changing the make-up of the regions requires a referendum. That is a big deal. The Labor Party does not like referendums, especially after what happened recently. That is a big problem because they do not want to campaign on a referendum. I doubt that they would get bipartisan support for a referendum for something good like this. They only get bipartisan support for something which they think benefits them both, but not something that would benefit Victorians as a whole. The government have had lots of time – eight years, since I have been here almost – to put up a referendum and change the regional make-up and get rid of group voting tickets at the same time, but they have chosen not to do it. As has been said, they have waited until the last minute – almost the very last opportunity that the Victorian Electoral Commission said that they had to do it – and then put it up. And of course they are supported by the opposition.

Mr Mulholland made some comments earlier. I think Mr Mulholland was a bit salty about how in the south-east in the last two elections he feels that the Libertarian Party, or as it was known then, the Liberal Democrats, took a position in Parliament that he felt the Liberal Party would have otherwise been entitled to. I do not know if that is how it would have worked out, because the make-up of parties would have been completely different under that system, but let us assume that is correct. When I was first elected in 2018 – on a very small vote, as was pointed out by Mr Mulholland – we had very, very limited resources in the Liberal Democrats. In fact the whole thing was run on a shoestring. But nevertheless I got over the line, and no-one was more surprised than me. I did not expect to get elected. In fact it was the last thing in the world that I expected to happen. But I was elected as a representative of a party that is meant to represent a philosophy – the philosophy of Western civilisation, the philosophy of liberalism – and I took that seriously. I took that very seriously. Despite many members in this place disagreeing with me, maybe they would not disagree with the idea that I took that seriously – defending that.

What would have happened if that Liberal MP had been elected and there was no Libertarian representation in the Victorian Parliament? Well, in 2019 we would not have had an inquiry into nuclear energy in Victoria. That would never have happened. When the pandemic came, who would have stood up against the government and what they did with their overreach? It would not have been the Liberal Party. There were not many people on the crossbench that were speaking out. It was the Libertarians that were opposing the government and what they were doing. I will remind people what the opposition did when push came to shove. Many Victorians were losing their jobs and had terrible restrictions. All sorts of awful things happened during the pandemic, and many people lost their jobs over vaccine mandates. They were forced to make medical decisions that they did not otherwise want to make. They chose not to make it, and they lost their jobs in the process. In order to make sure that Parliament had the same rules as workers, Parliament voted to enact the same thing. The Liberal Party supported that. I did not support it. Even though I had been vaccinated, I refused to hand over my paperwork. The Liberal Party voted to kick me out of Parliament. There was no opposition to the pandemic from the Liberal Party. They were pushed into opposing the government. After a lot of work by me and many others, eventually they ended up opposing the government during the pandemic bill debate.

On other things that would never have happened, we would never have had an inquiry into stamp duty. We would never have had an inquiry investigating Transport Accident Commission claimants. We have also done a lot of work on the local laws at Casey council and getting a review there. We saved a private wildlife sanctuary. We ensured a serial killer will never be able to harm women again. Who would have been talking about castle law and pepper spray in Victoria? Maybe Mr Bourman might have been speaking about pepper spray, I will give you that. But certainly, raising castle law in the public consciousness – I think that we can take credit for that.

Who in this Parliament has a perfect record on never voting for an increase in taxes? It is the Libertarians. We have never voted for an increase in taxes. We are the only party that has never voted for an increase in taxes. We were the ones talking about the underlying incentives and the government policies driving organised crime. Still the government does not talk about this. The opposition rarely talk about it. They just say, ‘Well, we need more laws and we need more police.’ But actually we are the ones talking about the incentives, the taxes, the procurement policies, the size of government projects – the things that are actually driving organised crime in this state. We are the ones leading the conversation on that. We were the ones in the last term and in this term talking about what we are doing on energy policy and opposing the government on net zero. We have been talking about this for years now. We actually introduced a private members bill in this term of Parliament to repeal the outdated Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act 1983 in Victoria. We also forced the government to do a review into the rock climbing bans that were happening in Mount Arapiles. On top of this, we have also been the only ones that have really, truly stood up for freedom of speech in this state, because I think every party seems to like freedom of speech until it is someone speaking about something that they do not like, and then all of a sudden they are a bit flaky on it.

I would say this: in this new system, in this new battle, there are going to be new choices for Victorian people. I think that the Victorian people should look at the track record of the parties that are elected in this place, including the Libertarian Party – I am happy to stand by our track record – and look at who has actually been fighting for their constituents and who has been fighting for these issues. I am not resigned to failure on this. I think that with this new battle the Libertarians will not be going anywhere. We want to continue the fight to make sure that there is a voice in Parliament defending liberty, because we do not trust the Liberal Party to do this. We do not trust One Nation to do this. We do not trust any other party to do this. We are the only party that can be depended on to defend liberty at all times.

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (17:21): I rise to speak in strong support of this bill. This bill will end group voting and make Victoria’s voting system more democratic. Victoria is currently the last jurisdiction to still have group voting tickets (GVTs), apart from the City of Melbourne. We agree that is also something that should be dealt with, but that is a debate for another day. How did we even get here? Group voting tickets were introduced in Australia in the 1980s at the federal level and then into the Victorian Legislative Council in 2003. Under the system, for the 90 per cent of voters who cast their upper house vote above the line, they simply have to mark a single box with their first preference. The rationale for this was to simplify voting and reduce informal voting, and for a time many felt that it was working, until it did not.

The problems with this method began to be exposed when candidates on a teeny, tiny fraction of the vote were getting elected above candidates with many times greater votes. In 2018 the then Liberal Democrats got a seat on just 0.84 per cent, as did the taxi advocate from Transport Matters, who was elected on a tiny 0.63 per cent. It also meant that there were some absurd situations, like in 2018 where in one region someone voting for the Animal Justice Party had their vote end up with the pro-gun Liberal Democrats. Unlike Mr Ettershank, I cannot subscribe to the view that anyone voting for a non-major party is happy with any non-major party. I am pretty sure that most voters you talk to in the community would agree with that. It is one of the most bizarre arguments in favour of GVTs that I have heard.

The fundamental problem at the heart of group voting tickets is that after a voter has indicated their first preference above the line, they lose control over how their vote is distributed. Parties, not voters, swap preferences with one another in backroom deals, and voters have no idea what these deals are when they cast their vote. When voters have no control over or even any knowledge of where their preferences are going, there is no world in which this can be considered democratic. What became even more problematic was the fact that some people worked out how to game the system and began offering to arrange deals for a fee. The so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery charged micro-parties – he still does this – a $5000 joining fee to be part of a network where he arranged preference swaps and up to $55,000 in return for someone getting elected. In 2018 in this place at least eight MPs, or 20 per cent, won a seat due to these cash-for-preferences deals. These sorts of situations led the federal Parliament and other states to abolish group voting tickets some time ago.

The case for change in Victoria has long been argued and has been well established. Following the farcical 2018 election the Electoral Matters Committee, while raising concerns with group voting tickets, recommended that the Parliament refer an inquiry to the committee to consider possible reforms. This referral never happened. Then in July 2024 the same committee’s inquiry into the conduct of the 2022 Victorian state election recommended that Victoria should scrap group voting tickets without delay. Then in December 2025 the committee’s report into Victoria’s upper house electoral system, an inquiry that I was part of, recommended that the Victorian government reform the upper house voting system by introducing legislation amending the Electoral Act 2002 to eliminate group voting tickets; it could not be clearer. Now it is at the eleventh hour we finally have legislation that seeks to abolish group voting tickets once and for all in Victoria.

I recognise that the repeal of group voting tickets will likely impact the future electoral prospects of some members of the upper house, and some of these members are people who I have great respect for and who have been excellent, hardworking representatives. I work closely with them. I genuinely like many of them. And I agree that maybe this process – the way this bill has been introduced – if it was not discussed with them in the proper manner, is not great. I do not agree with that. But this is not personal. I think it is really clear that this is not about individuals – who is a good representative and who is not a good representative. Those decisions are for the people to make. This is about the principle. Group voting is poorly understood by our electorate and produces outcomes that do not reflect voter intention. It is a blight on our democracy. Voting should not be an opaque process where a candidate with a tiny proportion of the primary vote can get elected thanks to dodgy and opaque backroom deals, and I cannot think of any ordinary voter who thinks it is acceptable to be able to buy a seat in this upper house for $55,000. I challenge someone to go and find a voter who feels that that is an acceptable outcome.

I have heard the criticism that the repeal of this law will undermine the diversity of voices in this place, despite those voices not representing actual voter preference. As my good friend Dr Tim Read pointed out in the Legislative Assembly, if that is genuinely the goal, we might as well hold a lottery instead. I wholeheartedly agree with the words of the Honourable Anthony Carbines in his second-reading speech for this bill. He said:

Removing GVT from the voting process will also not make it impossible for smaller parties to be elected to the Legislative Council. It will however require candidates to convince electors to give their party voting preference rather than relying on the GVT practice.

That sounds like democracy. No-one is outlawing micro-parties or minor parties. You just need to build a vote that is large enough to be democratically elected. The reality is that most Victorian voters still do not know what group voting tickets are. Victorians might not notice when they are gone, but our democracy will be healthier when this law is passed. We are very open to a discussion about whether there is a better structure that we could have in the upper house, but that is a separate question to whether group voting tickets should be allowed to continue, and those two questions do not have to be linked – and that was, in fact, the finding of multiple inquiries of the Electoral Matters Committee.

The other thing to point out is that changing the structure of the upper house requires a referendum, which therefore requires agreement across a majority of members of this place on what question would be put to the people in a referendum, and as yet there is no agreement on what an ideal structure is and there is no sense that that agreement would be reached any time soon. There is no ability to hold a referendum before the next election, so there is no certainty about how long that process might take, whereas the question about GVTs is clear. They need to go and they can go now, so we should get rid of them at this opportunity. It does not preclude any kind of discussion about the structure of the upper house happening down the track, and that is a discussion that the Greens certainly welcome. But abolishing GVTs at its core is about ensuring that elected members legitimately reflect the intentions of voters, and more broadly, it is about public confidence in our voting system and Parliament as an institution. These are things that are increasingly under threat, and it is therefore more important than ever that we work together to defend and strengthen our democracy.

We are here today debating a law to protect our democracy in large part due to the advocacy of my Greens colleague and dear friend Dr Tim Read. Since his first speech in Parliament eight years ago Tim has campaigned for group voting tickets to be abolished in a way only Tim could – through clear-eyed, relentless and evidence-based advocacy. When he spoke in support of this bill last month it was the 16th time he had raised this issue in Parliament. I want to use this moment to thank him for gifting us a template for how to do politics differently – a template for how to put into practice what he calls politics: hope in motion. He has shown us how to explain without talking down, how to disagree respectfully and still build trust with those who hold a different opinion, how to hold true to your values and still keep an open mind to a better argument and how to bring the campsite rule to politics – leave it better than you found it. Thank you for everything you have done, Tim. As he did in the other place, I commend this bill to the house.

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:31): I rise to make a contribution to the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026. Democracy should never be taken for granted. Our democracy belongs to Victorians; it does not belong to political parties, governments or politicians. It belongs to every Victorian who takes the time to enrol, cast their vote and place their trust in this Parliament to act in the public interest. Reform should always be guided by what strengthens public trust and ensures that Parliament remains responsive to the people of Victoria.

I do acknowledge that this reform is aligned to the recommendations of the Victorian Electoral Commission’s report on the upper house electoral system. However, abolishing group voting tickets without broader electoral reform benefits the major parties rather than strengthening our democracy. This reform is self-serving and motivated by all the wrong reasons. The government argues that abolishing group voting tickets will make Victoria’s Legislative Council elections more transparent by ending preference whispering. I agree that voters should be back in control of where their votes go to ensure that voters rather than political parties decide where their preferences flow. However, electoral reform should strengthen democracy, not simply reshuffle political advantage. Without broader reforms to the upper house electoral system, abolishing GVTs will simply see Labor retain seats, see the Liberals potentially gain additional representation and give One Nation a huge leg-up.

We have had some independent expert advice provided, looking at what the upper house will look like without group voting tickets. If I was to get out my crystal ball and make a prediction, the 61st Parliament will look like this: one party, an emerging party in Victoria, will end up with the balance of power, holding 12, potentially 13, seats – more seats than the traditional older parties. The upper house will be made up of the big four. How effective will the 61st Parliament be when you are handing the balance of power to one party? Victorians deserve an electoral system that puts voters, not political parties, at the centre. Real reform means protecting proportional representation and ensuring every vote counts fairly. When it becomes more difficult for smaller parties and independents to win seats, Parliament is more likely to be dominated by the major parties. This can mean that communities with views not represented by Labor or the coalition, such as members of the Legalise Cannabis Party and others, have fewer representatives advocating their interests.

This bill addresses only one part of the problem and in doing so creates another. If this Parliament is serious about electoral reform, then we must also be serious about ensuring that reform is comprehensive and consistent. If the objective is genuine electoral reform, it should be comprehensive rather than selective. Victoria’s upper house electoral system requires reform that is fair. We should not be satisfied with only implementing reforms that advantage the larger parties while ignoring parts of the system that compromise and erode representation and accountability. Abolishing group voting tickets while retaining the existing regional structure risks creating an imbalance that advantages larger parties at the expense of smaller parties and independent voices. If both elements of the current system are considered flawed, then reform should address both together, rather than implementing only one change that favours almost always those already holding power. Electoral reform should never be driven by political convenience.

If the current regional structure is also considered to be flawed, then we should have the courage to pursue that reform as well. Of course, unlike the abolition of group voting tickets, changing or abolishing Victoria’s eight Legislative Council regions requires a constitutional referendum. That means that the Victorian people, not the politicians, must have the final say. This is an appropriate safeguard for a change of such significance. It should ask whether every voter has an equal opportunity to influence the outcome of the election, whether Parliament remains representative of the diversity of our community and whether the electoral system gives the public confidence that elections are fair. If GVTs are abolished without the necessary changes to the regions, success in the upper house will become increasingly dependent on higher primary votes alone. This means substantial campaign funding and established party infrastructure will be critical, making it almost impossible for emerging parties and independent voices to get elected. Electoral reform should improve transparency without reducing political diversity or limiting genuine community representation. More than ever, voters are disillusioned and are feeling unheard, and this is why we need to ensure that reforms to our electoral system can restore faith in our democratic processes.

The Legislative Council was designed to be a house of review, not simply a chamber that endorses decisions made by the Legislative Assembly. This means that voices that may not be represented by major parties may still be able to have influence in decision-making. A diverse crossbench can hold the government to account by scrutinising legislation and demanding greater transparency. It is more reflective of the reality of the Victorian community. Many significant improvements to legislation come through this process.

We all know that I represent the Legalise Cannabis Party, a protest and grassroots party that was founded in 1993. For decades people involved in this movement have been advocating to bring the lived experiences of patients, families and advocates whose voices were often ignored. The possession, use, supply and unlicensed cultivation of cannabis remain illegal in most Australian states and territories. It has been so for nearly 100 years. Despite growing evidence of the harms associated with the criminalisation of cannabis and increasing public support for reform, I and my colleagues across the country are still pushing for change. For too long, cannabis policy has been driven by ideology and stigma rather than evidence and public health. As a crossbench MP, I bring these voices to the chamber and I can scrutinise government decisions.

I am not alone as a crossbencher who has brought the government on the journey and pushed for meaningful reform. In fact last week I listened with interest as the Premier delivered his apology to victim-survivors of child abuse in state schools. Interestingly, the Premier, the opposition leader and Brad Rowswell MP all acknowledged former upper house crossbencher Stuart Grimley and the work that he did to bring the issue to the forefront. Stuart did not give up on survivors; he elevated their voices in Parliament until those in positions of power listened. This is the power of a diverse crossbench.

Another amazing former crossbencher and a dear friend of mine, Fiona Patten, was also pivotal in getting issues on the table and persuading government to act. Safe access zones, voluntary assisted dying, medically supervised injecting rooms, spent convictions – to name a few – were all campaigns initiated by Fiona and taken up by this Labor government.

My colleague Georgie Purcell raised the important work of former crossbencher Rod Barton. The thing about us crossbenchers is that we are brave enough to raise issues in this place that those from the major parties are too afraid to raise. All of the abovementioned have come from all sides of politics. Again, this is the power of a diverse crossbench. If Parliament becomes less politically diverse, governments will face fewer challenges to their decisions. The result will be a reduction in the checks and balances that are an important part of a healthy democracy. Crossbenchers are needed in this chamber.

I am also concerned about how rushed these changes are and how close to the election they are being made. I am proud to represent the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region, a growing, vibrant area and one of the most culturally diverse regions in Victoria. Over 45 per cent of our residents were born outside Australia and speak languages other than English. Any significant change to our electoral system requires education and understanding. It carries with it a responsibility to ensure that every voter understands how changes affect them before they cast their ballot. It is not enough to simply change the law; we must also invest in educating the community about what those changes mean in practice. Need I remind you that the overwhelming majority of voters – some 95 per cent – vote with that ‘1’ above the line? How can the Victorian Electoral Commission effectively educate all Victorians about this electoral reform in the next three months?

We need to make sure that we are not rushing the reforms to our electoral system and that any changes that need to be implemented are done carefully. That includes ensuring that clear, accessible and culturally appropriate information is available to all Victorians, including people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people with disability, young voters and those voting for the first time. If we are asking Victorians to vote differently, then we have an obligation to make sure they understand how to complete their ballot correctly, how their preferences will be counted and what these reforms mean for their representation in Parliament. It should be guided by democratic principles and by what best serves the Victorian people to make sure that their voices are heard. Electoral reform should not create confusion or unintentionally disenfranchise voters. It should empower them to participate with confidence, knowing that their vote reflects their choices and that their voice matters. Every reform we consider should be measured against a simple question: does it give Victorians a stronger voice in the decisions that affect their lives?

Victorians deserve an electoral system that is coherent and transparent, not one that is selectively reformed according to what is politically expedient for the major parties. If we believe the system needs fixing, then we should commit to fixing it properly. Genuine electoral reform should be comprehensive, respect the voices of the people and strengthen, not weaken, the diversity and representativeness of this Parliament. Look around: voters are already disillusioned. We see the polarisation, the confusion and the anger. They do not feel seen or heard, and rigging the system to give more power to the already powerful major parties will make them feel worse. We are at a critical time in our state’s history. We need now more than ever to encourage greater engagement in our democratic process, strengthen public trust in our institutions and ensure that every Victorian has confidence that their vote carries genuine weight and importance. As such, we will oppose this half-baked reform of our electoral system and this bill.

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:43): I rise to speak on the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026. People on both sides of this debate have argued that they are the ones that are protecting democracy, they are the ones who are protecting Victorians against corruption, but the truth is that if people in this place truly cared about ensuring that every single Victorian and every single vote was represented fairly in this place, then we would not be debating a bill to just remove group voting tickets, because that is only half the problem.

This bill, based on the 2022 election, cuts out the first preference votes of 25 per cent of Victorians; together, Labor, the Liberals, One Nation and the Greens got the other 75 per cent. To make this system fair, the upper house regions should be abolished, as in New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia. That would give every Victorian the ability to vote statewide for their preferred representative in the upper house. If we did that, everybody could get what they wanted. They would vote in the lower house for their local representative and in the upper house for their statewide representatives. Every vote would count. That is it: that is what democracy is supposed to be.

Let us not forget that this bill, in an attempt to stop parties with 2 per cent of the vote from getting 2.5 per cent of the seats, means that parties with as low as 10 per cent of the first preference votes will get 20 per cent of the seats – and in case anyone is wondering, yes, I am talking about the Greens. Forgive me if I cannot take the lectures being given by some here in this place today seriously at all; this bill does not seem to me to be about what is best for Victorians or democracy.

People in Victoria work hard. They have to, considering all the taxes they have to pay – tradies, young families and mums and dads juggling bills and school runs, trying to keep a roof over their heads, seeing if they can build something up that is not taxed away to nothing to hand on to the next generation. It should not actually be asking for much. They just want a fair go, and they want to pick someone to vote for who actually listens and represents them in Parliament. Victorians are not all the same. We think differently and we want different things. That means sometimes there are messy arguments, but that is fine; that is democracy. I would rather that than the other kind of fighting. A healthy democracy makes room for all these discussions and for all these debates to take place, and you cannot have that debate if you do not have all the voices in the room.

We need to have the voices at the table in proportion to the way they were voted for, but that is not what this bill does. The upper house regions need to be abolished so that 75 per cent of the vote equals 75 per cent of the seats and 25 per cent of the vote equals 25 per cent of the seats. It is simple and it is fair. As it stands, this regional system sets the highest bar to get elected of any upper house system in the country, the highest quota in Australia in fact. Nowhere else makes it this hard for those outside the establishment to get representation in Parliament. The quota for the federal Senate is 14 per cent, for the South Australian upper house it is 8 per cent, for the New South Wales upper house it is 4.5 per cent and for Western Australia’s upper house it is 2.7 per cent. The quota for getting elected into this place is higher than all of those, at 16.7 per cent. It is a set-up to make it virtually impossible for minor parties to get elected unless they band together and combine their votes. This rigs it so only the establishment parties get to do that kind of rigging. Other states vote statewide in the upper house and get good, fair representation in their parliaments. It might not be the kind of representation that we would all vote for, but at least everyone gets their say.

Some have been arguing that it is too late: ‘It’s too late. The election is upon us; we just can’t get it done.’ But this could have been done under the former Liberal government, and it could have been done in the last two terms of Labor government. This was all about choices. Nobody did it because nobody wanted to do it, and after 28 November this bill will lock out the one in four Victorians who want to choose a minor party first.

It is especially interesting that over the last 20 years the primary vote for Labor and for Liberals has been falling – falling, falling, falling. Meanwhile, minor parties keep rising. Those in this Parliament who like to call themselves a party of government can barely get 30 per cent first preferences on their own and just manage to scrape over 50 per cent to 60 per cent when they are combined. This does not really strike me to be a bill about reform. It looks like a bill about protection – protection for themselves. They are serving themselves and not actually serving Victorians. If they cannot win voters back, they are going to shut out the other choices that voters had, but one day soon the parties voting to silence Victorian voters today may find themselves to be minor parties.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) incorporated the following:

President, I rise to speak in favour of the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026.

This is important legislation which will make our elections fairer and more representative of the will of the Victorian people.

I believe that the abolition of Group Ticket Voting is a reform which an overwhelming majority of us in this place will be able to support enthusiastically.

In that spirit, I do want to acknowledge the bi-partisan nature of these reforms.

Members of the opposition worked constructively with government MPs on the Inquiry into Victoria’s Upper House Electoral System, producing a report in December last year which recommended abolishing Group Ticket Voting.

Abolishing Group Ticket Voting was something which produced consensus between parties, and that is why we are acting on it through this bill.

In fact, the report concluded that the process towards upper house reform should run through first abolishing Group Ticket Voting, and second, that if further reform is to be pursued, a process whereby consensus can be reached should take place.

Generally speaking, it is a good idea to seek consensus before going ahead with this sort of reform.

We initiated a process by which members from across the political spectrum and from both houses of parliament were given the opportunity to contribute.

That inquiry produced a report to which the government is now providing a legislative response in the form of this bill.

To understand the historical context of how we arrived at a system which made use of Group Ticket Voting, it is very useful to understand the system which was used prior to 2006 and the reasons why that was seen as outdated and in need of replacement.

To put it simply: the old unbalanced system which the Group Ticket Voting System replaced needed to go.

Before 2006, members of the Legislative Assembly did not represent regions.

Instead, they represented ‘provinces’ covering very different parts of the state.

Under that system, each province would have two MPs, with one of them being on the ballot at each election, much like the way that we elect half of the Senate at each federal election.

This meant that a member of this chamber could serve a term of up to eight years off one election, though at the time we did not have fixed term parliaments.

That meant that often elections would be held more frequently than our current system of electing members every four years.

Replacing that way of electing members was another change which was introduced when the old upper house system was reformed.

The introduction of fixed terms of parliament, with elections regularly held on the last Saturday of November every four years was a common sense and well needed change.

Some argued at the time that, in the old system, the risk of parliamentary gridlock was too great, with instances of one party forming government in the lower house and another party holding a majority in this place blocking any legislation which was proposed to them.

However, the optimist in all of us might hope that this would incentivise parties to work together collaboratively in the best interests of the people whom they represent.

Though, we can all agree, that ideal scenario was not always successful, and politics sometimes overrode effective governance.

Gradually, a view emerged that this system should be reformed and replaced with a system which allowed for a more representative voting system in the upper house.

As a result, the Bracks Labor Government passed the Constitution (Parliamentary Reform) Act 2003, creating the upper house that we know today: 40 seats, 8 regions, elected with Group Ticket Voting.

And, for the time, Group Ticket Voting seemed like the best possible way to go about reforming such a broken system due to a number of considerations.

The then-Bracks government in 2003 introduced a system to elect this chamber in a proportional way similar to the rest of the states, and similar to the Federal Senate.

We mimicked the upper houses of the various states and the Commonwealth, with the exception of Queensland, which insists on not having an upper house at all.

At the time, Group Ticket Voting was seen as a way of allowing people to vote in a more complicated, proportional, system without seeing an increase in informal votes as a result of the complexity of the system.

It would have been no good to introduce a supposedly more representative electoral system if it led to a sharp increase in ballots being thrown out due to minor mistakes made by voters who had intended to cast a valid vote.

The system that existed prior to the 2003 act, to be clear, had accomplished what it was originally set out to do.

It’s main goal was to help improve the democratic representation of the people in this state.

Prior to 1951, the Legislative Council was elected based on a strict property franchise, meaning that only those wealthy enough to meet certain thresholds of property ownership were eligible to vote in upper house elections.

For an international comparison, in Britain, the fourth Reform bill passed in 1918, abolishing the property franchise for men, and another bill in 1928 abolished the property franchise for women, meaning that we were very much behind the times when we got around to abolishing it ourselves several decades later.

On the other hand, Western Australia took another decade before they finally got around to abolishing their property qualifications to vote in upper house elections in 1964.

In 2026, it would probably seem ridiculous to us if someone were to suggest going back to that old system of the property franchise, because it appears to go against every instinct we have as people who understand democracy as being fundamentally about giving equal power to the vote of each citizen, on the basis that they are citizens, not land owners.

The reality is that the Legislative Council was originally seen as a champion of the land-owning classes within colonial Victoria.

Even earlier iterations of the Legislative Council had seen large portions of the chamber being appointed by the colonial governor rather than elected.

It is great to see that we have come far since then, and made a genuinely democratically elected representative chamber to review legislation.

So, putting this bill into the broader context of this chamber’s history, abolishing Group Ticket Voting does seem like a fairly technical adjustment to electoral law when compared with making the chamber fully elected, abolishing the property franchise, or giving women the right to vote as we did in 1908.

Coming back to this issue at hand of replacing Group Ticket Voting with a system which asks above the line voters to number at least five preferences.

Group Ticket Voting is certainly not the worst system which we could have, as a quick look through the history of this chamber would show, but is not the best system we could have either.

That is why we are debating these changes to it today.

Before abolishing Group Ticket votes, we need to understand why they were implemented in the first place.

As I have already referenced, it was because the government of the day did not want to see a more complicated electoral system, which could have resulted in a higher informal vote.

For whatever flaws it has, under Group Ticket Voting, it is very simple for the voter to cast a formal vote.

Ensuring that voters would continue to be able to cast valid, formal votes despite the change in voting system was an important consideration back in 2003, when the system was introduced.

What is important to consider when replacing Group Ticket Voting, is that we should introduce a new system which will not lead to a strange increase in informal votes because of confused voters who intended to vote for a candidate, making a mistake and filling out the ballot incorrectly.

What we have seen from the system introduced to the federal Senate by the Turnbull Government in 2016 is that a system which asks voters to distribute their own preferences above the line can in fact work.

The system being proposed within this bill is very much comparable to the system currently used in the Senate.

People trust it, people know how to use it, and people are largely able to cast their votes with confidence that they will not be struck off for a minor mistake.

In last year’s federal election, roughly 3.08% of Senate votes cast in Victoria were informal.

In the 2022 state election, 3.22% of ballots cast for the Legislative Council were either invalid or blank.

Of course, there may never be an election with zero informal votes, given that some voters spoil their ballots intentionally.

The aim here is to ensure the system sees as few people as possible spoiling their ballots inadvertently, due to not understanding the voting system or through making a mistake in how they fill out their ballot.

Over time, Group Ticket Voting has fallen off use from other states and the Commonwealth, as voters stopped supporting the system.

This has come about as a result of the ability of some candidates to get elected with vanishingly small primary votes.

The public understand that preferences in the upper house, under Group Ticket Voting, are not the same as handing out a how to vote card for the lower house, through which a party provides a recommendation of who to preference.

Under Group Ticket Voting, parties are distributing preferences on behalf of the voters.

While the VEC does publish where each party will be distributing its preferences at the commencement of voting, the vast majority of voters do not consult this before deciding whether to vote above or below the line.

The Inquiry into upper house reform found that, overall, voters did not walk into the polling booth knowing how their preferences would be distributed if they voted above the line, and the results do not always reflect the preferences of voters.

For example, in the 2018 election, two candidates were elected to the Legislative Council with less than 1% of the primary vote in their seats.

These preference deals are widely seen as opaque and lacking in sufficient transparency.

While the direction of preferences is published publicly, voters seem to mostly not look this information up ahead of voting.

Ultimately, with the results of elections increasingly being determined through preference deals, skewed away from reflecting how people voted, we risk the public losing faith in our system of representation in this chamber.

When the public sees a voting system as being opaque and unrepresentative, the prestige of the Legislative Council is diminished, and so too is the perception of its legitimacy among voters.

This can negatively impact the public’s satisfaction with democracy, and can create a sense among people that their votes don’t matter, or that their votes will not be respected by the system.

Furthermore, President, we remain the only jurisdiction in Australia which still uses group voting tickets.

Every other upper house in the country has moved onto new representative methods of casting and counting votes.

This bill proposes to create a new system of voting above the line which would require voters to number at least five groups in order of preference.

While the instructions for how to cast a valid vote will stipulate that voters must number at least five groups, ballot saving provisions will be included to ensure that those who do not number five or more groups will not be considered informal.

This matters because an election with a high percentage of votes being counted as informal may not accurately reflect the voting intentions of the public.

These ballot saving provisions will also apply to ballots with non-consecutive preferences which have a clear indication of a first preference and will count a tick or a cross placed in the square next to a group will be counted as a first preference vote.

While these ballot saving measures are important, they are for last resorts where a ballot does not meet the requirements for how a ballot should be cast but nevertheless does give a clear indication of voting intention.

At the end of the day, I do not find it unreasonable to ask voters to number at least five parties or groups when they vote above the line.

Given how important preferences are in a proportional electoral system, it is important that voters distribute their own preferences according to which party they believe deserves them.

This bill does not seek to amend the below the line voting system for the Legislative Council, nor does it seek to amend how preferences are counted in local government elections.

Also important is the fact that this bill does not exist to make it harder for smaller parties to get elected.

Small and minor parties have every right to contest elections, and if enough voters choose to vote for or preference them, then they will be elected to parliament and given the opportunity to serve the Victorian people.

An election should be a contest of ideas and an exercise in persuasion.

To keep our democracy strong, voters need to know what they are getting when they vote for a party.

And equally, maintaining the confidence in the political system, and in particular the democratic mode which we elect people to chambers such as this, is critical.

This is why having a system which is in line with other states, which these guardrail provisions to ensure ballots are not falling into an informal vote pile, is essential to maintaining public support for our democracy.

That means a fair system, which the public trust and feel represents them best, and it means a system where candidates from both major parties and minor parties have an equal shot at representation.

Minor parties and independents who want to seek election to this place should continue to have the right to do so an independent or as a member of a minor party, this bill preserves that right.

To put it simply, this bill seeks to create a fairer and more representative voting system for the Legislative Council in which voters will distribute their own preferences when voting above the line.

I commend the bill to the Chamber.

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Special Minister of State) (17:49): I thank all members for their contributions on this important bill. There has been a lot said in the chamber today. I am sure there will be a lot more said in the committee stage, but I would like to place on record the government’s support for this reform. It is an important reform for the future of our democracy. Preferences should be determined by voters, not in backroom deals. I appreciate that this is a policy decision that the government has arrived at that not everybody agrees with. This is certainly not about anyone in this chamber, nor is it about the legitimacy of those in this place who have been elected under the current system. In the government’s view it is an essential reform to remove group ticket voting ahead of the upcoming election, because Victorians do deserve to know where their votes are going and do deserve to have confidence that when they vote they are selecting their own preferences.

Essentially this legislation will kill the business model of the so-called preference whisperers who seek to subvert our democratic processes in the way in which they game the system. The changes to require the ordering of at least five groups above the line will put voters in control of their preferences, making our elections fairer and more transparent. As a number of members have already highlighted, these changes will also align Victoria with the rest of the country. There are amendments in this bill that also go to improving transparency as well, so that Victorians can make informed decisions on election day.

I do want to acknowledge the significant work of the Electoral Matters Committee on the two reports that they consulted widely on, the review of the 2022 election and the inquiry into Victoria’s upper house electoral system. I understand that there are a number of members who have amendments. I know not all of those amendments have been circulated yet, so I will hold my comments about those amendments to the committee stage. But just to be very clear about the government’s position, we will not be supporting any of the amendments. I am looking forward to taking all those questions in the committee stage of this bill.

Council divided on motion:

Clause 1 (18:00)

David ETTERSHANK: If we could circulate my amendments, that would be appreciated. This is a fairly simple amendment. There has been much said about the evils of preference whispering – ‘profits for preferences’ might be one way we could describe it. This has been used in turn as an argument for why we need to now go to this cumbersome two-stage process that will disenfranchise and remove all of the smaller parties in this place and the independents. This amendment is quite simple. It inserts a new section 84A, which makes it an offence to do preferences for profit. It is that simple. This has been prepared by a senior counsel at our request. Basically it defines what actions are prohibited in the form of advice or the sale of preferences. It provides for penalties, and that is really all we need. Despite all the drama and all the theatre and everything, it is very simple. In that context we would like to advance that. I would also indicate, as I should have done previously, that I will not be proceeding with my other amendments, which are amendments 1, 2 and 5.

David LIMBRICK: I would like to circulate my amendment too. I will speak on it later, when we get to clause 30.

Jeff BOURMAN: If I may, with the will of the house, I might do my questions in clause 1. Is the minister okay with that?

Ingrid STITT: Yes.

Jeff BOURMAN: Minister, starting with clause 13 – this is on page 6 of the bill – in clause 13(1), under paragraphs (ca)(iii)(A) and (ca)(iii)(B), and on the next page in clause 13(2) there is massive use of the word ‘must’. It says ‘number 1 must be placed above the line’ in paragraph (ca)(iii)(A) and ‘number 1 must be placed below the line’ in paragraph (ca)(iii)(B) and so on. Everywhere seems to be ‘must’. Taking the usual dictionary meaning of ‘must’ – that they have to – why are there savings provisions in this bill?

Ingrid STITT: The savings provisions are intended to make sure that voters are not disenfranchised. They mirror the provisions that apply to the Commonwealth’s savings provisions. The bill does include savings provisions so that a Legislative Council ballot paper will not be treated as an informal vote if there are fewer than five boxes numbered or if there is non-consecutive numbering above the line. The ballot paper will be taken to be formal in relation to the preference marked by the number 1 or up to a break in sequence. If a ballot paper is marked with a tick or a cross, the act will continue to provide that the ballot paper will be taken to have been marked with the number 1. The savings provisions in the bill apply to ballot papers that have been marked with the number 1 or a tick or a cross, and any ballot papers that are not numbered in this way will be treated as an informal vote. The savings provisions are really designed to make sure that allowing a tick or a cross is taken to have been marked with the number 1, or if there is more than one number, up to a break in sequence. That, as I said, aligns with the Commonwealth savings provision.

Jeff BOURMAN: I understand all that, but why was the word ‘must’ chosen when ‘must’ is a fairly declarative word – you have to. Why did the word ‘must’ get used when there is a savings provision? Why was the word ‘should’ not used?

Ingrid STITT: Amendments need to be consistent with the rest of the drafting of this legislation, and this is consistent with the way in which the legislation applies when it comes to electoral matters.

Jeff BOURMAN: I understand that it is consistent, and I also understand it is consistent with the federal Senate legislation, but – I do not want to use the phrase ‘copy and paste’ – it seems to have brought across what is an error. You can take this as a statement or whatever you want, but it seems to me that the word ‘must’ and then having a savings provision which says, ‘Well, you can have a cross, a tick or whatever,’ is shoring up a problem with this system. For the moment, I will just say that this leaves the legislation open to challenges. Whether it is a High Court challenge or not, I do not know. I cannot afford to do that. But this would have been an opportunity for the government to fix what I see as an error in the whole system.

Also, it has just given me a thought: how will a tick or a cross be treated in the event of – this is bit of a hypothetical – a sequence of numbers and then there is a tick or a cross as well? What is going to be the outcome of that when you cannot discern whether it is meant to be at the beginning, at the end, in the middle?

Ingrid STITT: As I have already indicated, the savings provisions in the bill only apply to ballot papers that have been marked with the number 1 or a tick or a cross or if there is more than one number up to a break in sequence, that aligns with the Commonwealth savings provisions. I am sure that you will want to go into the details of how the savings provisions will apply, but I can only reassure you that these are entirely consistent with the Commonwealth savings provisions. As you would expect, the government has had regard to legal advice in the development of the bill.

Jeff BOURMAN: You are right, but I do not have the advantage of that legal advice in front of me. Again, these are slightly hypothetical, but I think they are very important: in the event someone puts a tick and a cross or a cross and a tick or two crosses – pick whatever sequence you want – will something of that nature be covered by the savings provisions?

Ingrid STITT: Any break in the sequence would be an informal vote. It has to be clear that it is a consistent number – or a tick or a cross – so if there is any break in that sequence, then that would be an invalid vote.

Jeff BOURMAN: Minister, I am going to harp on about this a little bit; it still confuses me. If we have two ticks – I am using that as an example – that is a sequence, or a tick and a cross. If it is like ‘1, 2, 3, 4, tick, 7, 8, 9,’ I can appreciate that. But if it is a number of ticks or a number of crosses, will that be informal or will that be covered by the savings provisions, providing there are enough ticks or crosses or whatever it might be?

Ingrid STITT: Perhaps I can just go through this carefully again. Two ticks would be informal, and a tick and a cross would be informal. But as I indicated earlier, the savings provisions provide that a Council ballot paper will not be treated as an informal vote if there are fewer than five boxes numbered or if there is non-consecutive numbering above the line. The ballot paper will be taken to be formal in relation to the preference marked by the number 1 or up to a break in sequence.

Jeff BOURMAN: I am just going to make a quick statement – and this goes to the Senate legislation too. I think it is an appalling thing that you say you must do at least six, but if you do less than six, it is okay. I want people’s votes to count – five or less, whatever. People’s votes need to count, but to say ‘must’ and not really mean ‘must’ I feel is really, not abhorrent, but I think an example of legislation that is written to basically give the major parties what they want at the expense of other people. Let us be honest: the Senate election changes, which were done in 2016 I think, were aimed at Ricky Muir, and they did the same thing.

One last point, which I should have brought up in my speech, is that it was said that the Senate reforms did not get rid of the minor parties. But in the Senate it is different in that each state has six senators. Tasmania and the ACT have such small populations; if you get a small portion of the vote in relation to the other states, you can be a senator. Now, this: we still have the regions. This was really a missed opportunity for the government, where we should have had a statewide model. As I said, I just make that as a statement.

David LIMBRICK: In 2003 the Bracks government introduced group voting tickets (GVT) as an integral part of the new proportional representation system for the Legislative Council. The constitution commission and the government at the time justified above-the-line voting with group voting tickets on the grounds that it would give electors a simpler option and help deliver a more representative upper house. Can the minister explain why the same mechanism that was presented as essential to a modern, accessible and representative Council is now being abolished?

Ingrid STITT: I think I said in my brief summing-up that I appreciate that not everybody agrees with the policy position that the government is taking here. But I would point to a number of issues and the way in which the government has arrived at this policy position. Of course there were two important reports by the Electoral Matters Committee (EMC), first of all on the inquiry into the conduct of the 2022 state election. The Electoral Matters Committee received a large number of submissions in relation to that inquiry. They held 27 public hearings. They heard from a number of expert witnesses and others in the community who had views about these matters. They also had an inquiry into Victoria’s upper house electoral system, which again was a wideranging inquiry, with submissions from 62 individuals and organisations, 141 people providing comments through the online form that was set up for that and 16 public hearings, with 29 witnesses. These issues have also been in the public domain, and there has been much debate about the relative merits of group ticket voting systems versus the proposals that are contained in the bill today. So there are a range of reasons why the government has come to the view that it has, has adopted this policy position and is presenting the bill to the house. We want to make sure that voters have the power when it comes to exercising their preferences in upper house elections.

David LIMBRICK: I would point out to the minister that voters have always had the option of exercising their preferences through below-the-line voting.

Ingrid STITT: That is true.

David LIMBRICK: Yes, they have always had that option, and many people do take that option, including me. Was consideration given to region reform as well? As I brought up in my second-reading debate speech, I am concerned that doing this reform independently just before an election has the danger of locking in incentives that will make it nearly impossible for region reform, which was also something that was recommended by the Electoral Matters Committee and many submissions and has been spoken about publicly by many people who are interested in proportional representation in democratic systems. What consideration was given to region reform?

Ingrid STITT: The decision that the government arrived at in bringing forward the amendments in today’s bill also recognises the fact that we are only four months off, or a little bit less than four months off, from the state election, and we are mindful of the ability of the Victorian Electoral Commission to implement these changes and operationalise them in time for the state election. That was certainly one consideration. Again, I appreciate that others may have a different view in the chamber, but the VEC has been very clear that it would not be possible to implement further changes, and the government has taken the view that this is the most appropriate set of amendments to put before the house.

David LIMBRICK: I would point out that the timing of this bill is solely at the government’s discretion. In fact the government could have brought forward this bill any time after the recommendations of the Electoral Matters Committee. Was the consideration of regional reform deemed too hard because it would require a referendum?

Ingrid STITT: No. That certainly was not a defining factor in the bill before the house.

David LIMBRICK: In 2010 this government’s predecessors made the lodging of group voting tickets mandatory and attached a penalty for noncompliance with this lodging. Why did Labor strengthen the group voting ticket system in 2010 if it now believes the system undermines voter intention?

Ingrid STITT: As I indicated earlier, 16 years is quite a long time, Mr Limbrick. A lot has changed in the electoral system and in the electorate in that time, and we have of course seen great concern expressed in a number of parts of the community about what is considered by some to be the unethical practice of preference whispering and the way in which the current system enables that.

David LIMBRICK: One of the explicit aims of the 2003 reforms, and this was something that was proposed by the Labor Party at the time, was to increase the number of parties represented in the upper house through proportional representation. Does the government accept that removing group voting tickets alone without regional reform will reverse that outcome and produce a less diverse Council?

Ingrid STITT: I think the way in which I would respond to that, Mr Limbrick, is to go back to what I said in my summing-up, which is that in bringing this legislation, we want to ensure that Victorians know where their votes are going, and they have confidence that when they select their preferences, that that is actually what they get at the end of the democratic process. It is also always going to depend on how people vote in any given electorate or election.

David LIMBRICK: Back to the timing of this bill, why has the government left this bill down to the wire, basically? There is only one more sitting week, I think, that this bill could be passed and the VEC would have sufficient time to implement it. Why was it left so late?

Ingrid STITT: We have had a very busy legislative agenda in this term of Parliament. There are, as you know, many bills that are on the notice paper, and we only have how many sitting days left? I do not think that we would want you to criticise us for being a very busy government.

Jeff BOURMAN: Just for the record, there were quite a number of sitting weeks where we were doing take-note motions and bailing early, so we have not been that busy. My question is about consultation on this. Not consultation with the wider thing, but consultation with the parties represented in here. Did the government consult with the opposition and the Greens prior to crafting this legislation?

Ingrid STITT: I think it is important that consultation occurred through the very important Electoral Matters Committee processes – the review of the 2022 election and also the inquiry into the Victorian upper house electoral system. The government certainly consulted with the VEC on the bill. I do not think that anybody’s position in relation to this bill across the political spectrum has come as any surprise to anybody.

Jeff BOURMAN: I am going to ask the question about the actual bill, not the consultation leading up to the bill. I can only speak for myself, but we were not consulted on this bill before it appeared in the Assembly or anything like that. Why were we – and I am going to presume the other crossbenchers too – excluded?

Ingrid STITT: My understanding, and I have not had specific ministerial carriage of this bill, is that briefings were provided in accordance with the way in which briefings are normally undertaken with the opposition and the crossbench and other parties.

Jeff BOURMAN: Minister, that is once the horse has bolted. I am quite sure I was not consulted before. Once the briefings got there, the bill is not done, there is obviously time for amendments if we can, but it is my understanding, and I am happy to be corrected, that the Liberals and the Greens were consulted before the briefings occurred.

Anyway, moving on, given voter disengagement with politics, call it what you want, voter fatigue, rather than a wholesale half-baked attempt at reforming the system when the next reform may come next Parliament, which we all know will not, why wasn’t a decent education campaign about the group voting ticket, how it works, how you can work your way around it – ‘You can vote below the line, a minimum of 1 to 6’ – considered rather than a blunt object like this?

Ingrid STITT: I think we appreciate that we are coming at this from different positions, and I accept that you are opposed to this legislation, but I do not accept your characterisation of this as ‘half-baked’. This is a bill that does important things. I think that the other point I would make is that the VEC always undertakes education campaigns. As they operationalise these changes, should the bill pass the chamber today and get royal assent, these issues will be dealt with by the VEC, who always have an ongoing campaign around voter education, and these changes would be no exception to that.

Jeff BOURMAN: I was not asking about these changes, I was asking about the previous system. I might also point out this is actually half baked. This is only half of the reforms, and the other half, as I said, may or may not come. Whilst my characterisation is a bit over the top, it is still accurate: this is only half of them. The VEC advised that it requires legislation to be passed no later than August 2026 to implement the group voting ticket change. I do not recall whether it said at the beginning or end of August; I always presumed it would be at the beginning. What is the government’s plan if the VEC actually run out of time? We are now getting towards halfway through August.

Ingrid STITT: The advice that I have is that there has been close consultation with the VEC about their requirements to be able to implement this successfully before the election, and the end of August is the timeframe that they indicated they would need these changes passed.

Jeff BOURMAN: Okay. Again, I did not quite get an answer. It was more about what the government’s plan was, but we are just going to presume it will make it because the VEC said so. That is not as snotty as it sounds. Did the government seek advice from the New South Wales, South Australia or WA electoral commissions on the lessons learned from their transitions away from group voting tickets? I would suggest that there would have been issues. No-one can see the future – I would be very rich if I could see the future – but did the government check with the other states what lessons they learned and implement them in the legislation?

Ingrid STITT: The models of other jurisdictions certainly informed the development of the bill, and so too did the work of the Electoral Matters Committee that I have already gone to a couple of times.

David LIMBRICK: Clauses 3 and 4 in the bill remove the wording and the definition of ‘Order in Council’, and the explanatory memorandum says that this is to provide clarity about above- and below-the-line voting, but this repeal also has the effect of removing the requirement for decisions under sections 12(6) and 13(6) to be published in the gazette which pertain to conditions of employment for the commissioner and deputy commissioner. It appears that this was an item of consideration as clauses 5 and 11 retain the gazette reporting requirement, where this term is also amended, but it explicitly includes gazette reporting requirements. So my question is: is it the government’s intention for these conditions of employment arrangements to not be published in the gazette?

Ingrid STITT: Deputy President, I am in your hands. I suspect we might need to get some instructions on that question, so noting the time, I am in your hands.

Sitting suspended 6:30 pm until 7:30 pm.

David LIMBRICK: I was wondering if the minister might be able to answer my rather detailed question that I gave before the dinner break.

Ingrid STITT: I can, and the advice that I have is that these are technical changes. The amendments to section 12(6) and 13(6) of the act will not change the practice of publishing in the Government Gazette the order made by the Governor in Council to appoint an Electoral Commissioner or Deputy Electoral Commissioner.

David LIMBRICK: So just for my understanding and clarification, it is the intention that, regardless of this omission as per this bill, the appointments will continue to be published in the gazette.

Ingrid STITT: Yes.

David LIMBRICK: If that is the case, what is the point of removing those definitions?

Ingrid STITT: It is to ensure that the drafting is consistent with all the other integrity agencies’ drafting.

David LIMBRICK: I will move on to a question about clause 6. Clause 6 makes it a requirement for ungrouped or cross-party candidates – which is rather unusual, but I have seen it once before – to nominate the order in which their names will appear below the line. My first question is: is this request regulated by the use of a form?

Ingrid STITT: It will be at the discretion of the VEC as to how they approach the operationalisation of these changes.

David LIMBRICK: Maybe that answers my next question. So the format and content of this form – is the minister saying that that will be determined by regulations or that it will be determined by the VEC?

Ingrid STITT: By the VEC, Mr Limbrick.

David LIMBRICK: Is it the intention that the candidate handbooks will be updated to reflect this new requirement?

Ingrid STITT: Yes, that is right, and there will obviously be work undertaken by the VEC in making sure that they implement the changes that are contained in the bill.

David LIMBRICK: With regard to the work required by the VEC, I understand there would be a number of things, including managing the design of the ballot papers and educational materials and things like this, but would there be a requirement by the VEC to undertake any IT development in order to implement the directions or the new voting system under this bill? Does that require an IT project?

Ingrid STITT: I will have to seek some advice from the box on that, but we understand that they can do it under their current platforms. One of the reasons why it is possible to implement these changes before the end of August or before the election commences is because there is not a requirement to implement any major changes to their systems.

David LIMBRICK: So is the minister saying that their current software that they use is capable of handling this without any software development – is that what the minister is saying?

Ingrid STITT: That is our understanding, based on what the VEC has advised.

David LIMBRICK: I note that one of the other recommendations from the Electoral Matters Committee was to implement changes to the inclusive Gregory counting system. Was the reason that that was not included in this bill because it would require software development and therefore increase the timelines required by the VEC? Is that the reason the government did not do it in this bill?

Ingrid STITT: I would have to confirm whether the reason was anything to do with IT systems. But the advice from the VEC is that it would be very challenging to introduce that weighted inclusive Gregory method ahead of the 2026 election.

David LIMBRICK: Did the VEC give some indication of what advance notice would be necessary to implement that sort of technical change?

Ingrid STITT: I will have to take that one on notice and see if we can get you an answer to that.

David LIMBRICK: Surely the government would know the answer to this, though, because they would have had discussions with the VEC, and surely the VEC would have outlined timeframes for these types of activities to happen. They have said quite publicly that to implement group voting ticket reform, they need it passed by the end of August. I am guessing that they gave the government a range of other things that the government might want to do. Does the government not actually know how long this might take?

Ingrid STITT: The VEC advice was that any change to the method would require at least 18 months lead time, but the proposal before us today does not change the method of counting upper house ballots.

David LIMBRICK: What sort of work actually is required by the VEC to implement this change? It sounds like they do not require changes to IT, to software, which is good, because I know how government IT projects normally go, but what sorts of changes are actually required? I can imagine some. There would be voter education, there would be staff training, things like this, but what other things does the VEC actually need to do to implement what the government is proposing here today?

Ingrid STITT: There are a number of different things, Mr Limbrick, including guidance materials and education of VEC staff and also obviously of the voting public.

David LIMBRICK: Clause 7, which is the one that removes the group voting ticket provisions, includes removal of section 69B(7), which enforces statements under sections 69B(1), 69B(2) and 69B(3) by means of a fine. Will any current or future calls to action for this provision be extinguished or disallowed or will outstanding fines issued under this section be waived?

Ingrid STITT: That would be a matter for the VEC.

David LIMBRICK: Understood. Just to clarify, is the minister saying that the waiving of these fines would be at the VEC’s discretion?

Ingrid STITT: That is correct.

David LIMBRICK: Clause 10 requires that the VEC allocate a letter of the alphabet to each candidate or group of candidates after ballot draw. What should the VEC do if there are more than 26 candidates?

Ingrid STITT: Has that ever happened? One moment. Yes, it has happened. When they have exhausted the alphabet, they start with AA, BB, CC and so on.

David LIMBRICK: I sort of anticipated that. Proposed section 74(1A) prescribes that the VEC use a letter of the alphabet – but not multiple letters of the alphabet. Whilst it is accepted practice already for the VEC to remedy this issue using common sense, such as using AA, for example, why is this practice not codified in this amendment?

Ingrid STITT: It does already, Mr Limbrick.

David LIMBRICK: So can I take it by the minister’s answer that even though the bill prescribes a letter, it actually could mean a bunch of letters, like AA, for example?

Ingrid STITT: They are still letters.

David LIMBRICK: I will have to come back to what the minister said, because my notes say that it says ‘a letter’, which would seem to indicate a single letter, but I will wait for advice on that. On another question that I was going to ask, if we go back to motivations, recently there were a number of parties registered. We all would have received notifications from the Victorian Electoral Commission about those new parties. One of those parties received much attention. It was called the Free Palestine Party, and it was publicly stated that the reason for establishing this party was to redirect preferences in a certain way. Did the registration of this party have any effect on the government’s decision-making process in bringing forward this bill?

Ingrid STITT: Broadly, as I indicated in my second-reading contribution, the motivation for bringing forward this bill was based on a number of things. The government has taken a policy position based on a range of factors, including the reports that I have already mentioned in respect to the Electoral Matters Committee work, but the answer to your specific question is no.

David LIMBRICK: When did the government form a final position on whether to proceed with this bill or not?

Ingrid STITT: It went through the normal cabinet process.

David LIMBRICK: What date was that cabinet process finalised?

Ingrid STITT: On 27 July.

David LIMBRICK: Clause 12 of the bill requires how-to-vote cards to indicate the order of preference for electors voting above the line or below the line. Can a how-to-vote card indicate how to vote above the line and below the line, given safeguards implemented by this bill to address informality caused by votes indicated both above and below the line?

Ingrid STITT: Can I just double-check I am answering the right thing here: is this in respect to a how-to-vote card or the validity of a ballot paper?

David LIMBRICK: This is in respect to a how-to-vote card. There are safeguards in the bill to address informality caused by votes both above and below the line, but I am asking: if a party issues a how-to-vote card, can they indicate to voters how to vote above the line and below the line simultaneously? They may wish to do that for whatever reason – that I am not sure of.

Ingrid STITT: A how-to-vote card can explain how to fill in both above and below the line.

David LIMBRICK: So just to clarify, a how-to-vote card that says, ‘If you support party X, you can either vote above the line with these numbers or below the line with these numbers,’ would be totally legal under this bill. Is that correct?

Ingrid STITT: A how-to-vote card, Mr Limbrick, can show how to vote 1 to 5 above the line or how to vote 1 to 5 below the line.

David LIMBRICK: So just to clarify, it is important that it says ‘or’.

Ingrid STITT: It says ‘or’.

David LIMBRICK: Okay, understood. Clause 14 repeals definitions from section 83. This includes the definition of ‘donor’, which referred to a definition under section 206(1). The in-force version of the principal act does not appear to have a definition of ‘donor’. What does this definition refer to now?

Ingrid STITT: The definition of those matters is contained in section 83(4) of the act.

David LIMBRICK: Clause 15 requires that votes marked by an elector in the elections use the number 1 and then sequentially numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5 to nominate their vote. Is there a requirement that these numerals be in Arabic format, or can they be in other formats – for example, Roman numerals?

Ingrid STITT: Yes, as long as the voter’s intention is clear.

David LIMBRICK: I thank the minister. That is actually helpful. Clauses 16 and 17 describe circumstances where an informal vote can be accepted as formal up to a break in a sequence. If there is a break in the sequence, up to that point it can be accepted. Will a vote which is accepted as formal under these provisions be recorded for electoral data purposes as formal, informal or some other categorisation? It is not really a formal vote, but the savings provision capture it. So is it formal or informal or something else?

Ingrid STITT: I think I went to these questions a little earlier in terms of what would be considered valid or invalid. If the savings provision captures it, it would be a formal vote that would be recorded.

David LIMBRICK: These provisions also allow for a tick or a cross to be treated as a 1. What other symbols could be recognised? Is it only a tick or a cross?

Ingrid STITT: Just a tick or a cross, the same as the Commonwealth legislation, Mr Limbrick, which is what we modelled the GVT savings provisions on.

David LIMBRICK: I would point out, though, that in many cultures – and I know in the Japanese language and I think also in Chinese language – a cross has a very different meaning, and in fact a circle would be considered selecting something. Would a circle not be considered similarly to a tick or a cross?

Ingrid STITT: Again, I think my previous answer clarified that, in that we have modelled these provisions on the Commonwealth savings provision. And I think I have gone through that a couple of times now in respect to numbers or a tick or a cross, and any ballot papers that are not numbered in this way will be treated as an informal vote.

Rachel PAYNE: Minister, I just want to go back to a question about timing. This bill was introduced in the Legislative Assembly on 28 July and passed both the second and third reading in that chamber the following day. Why did a bill that changes the fundamental architecture of how Victorians vote for the Legislative Council receive only a single sitting day of debate in the Assembly?

Ingrid STITT: I mean, I would not seek to be intruding on what is a matter for the Assembly, and in the other place the government business program and the way in which legislation moves through that chamber to our chamber is a matter for them.

Rachel PAYNE: Well, given the government controls the Assembly’s government business program, why did it set a guillotine requiring debate on this bill to be completed by 7 pm on 29 July 2026 rather than allowing extended scrutiny of a bill of constitutional significance?

Ingrid STITT: I mean, some would argue that the scrutiny happens when it comes here. But again, I am not in a position to comment on what is a matter for the other place.

Rachel PAYNE: The VEC advised that it required legislation to be passed no later than August 2026 to implement the abolition of group voting tickets in time for the election. Given the bill was not passed by that date – I am assuming that would be 1 August – what advice has the government received from the VEC about the residual risks to the timely and accurate conduct of the November election?

Ingrid STITT: I think I answered this question earlier, Ms Payne. The VEC have advised the government that they would require the legislation by the end of August.

Rachel PAYNE: Thank you for clarifying, Minister – end of August is appreciated. Just in relation to consultation – and I know that Mr Bourman asked about consultation with other parties, including the Liberal coalition and the Greens, and Minister, I note that you responded to say that the government had sought legal advice – can you please confirm: was this internal legal advice or did the government seek independent expert advice around consultation?

Ingrid STITT: I think just to clarify, what I said on the record was that the government has had regard to legal advice in the development of the bill.

Rachel PAYNE: Minister, thank you for your clarification. Mr Bourman also made reference to consultation with other states who have abolished group voting tickets and have proportional representation such as New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. Mr Bourman, you asked questions about the electoral commissions and engagement with them. Were there any implementation problems, count delays or disputes in other states following their abolition of group voting tickets that the government has taken into account in preparing this bill?

Ingrid STITT: Again, I think I have already gone to these matters, Ms Payne. To a similar question I indicated that the work of the Electoral Matters Committee was important in this regard, particularly their report into the upper house electoral system. As to what engagement the VEC has with its counterparts in other states and territories, I am not in a position to know, but I would be surprised if there was not regular engagement. But again, the model that we are bringing forward in this bill today is modelled on the Commonwealth model.

Rachel PAYNE: Just in regard to voter education and the ballot paper design, what evidence does the government have that voters actually understand the proposed system that will replace GVTs?

Ingrid STITT: I would point you to the work that is ongoing that the VEC undertakes to continue to educate both the voting public and also the staff of the VEC. Again, these are modelled consistently on the Commonwealth arrangements, but obviously that is a matter for the VEC in terms of how they operationalise and educate around these changes should they pass.

Rachel PAYNE: What assessment has the government made of the risk of an increased informal vote at the November election, given voters will be required to number a minimum of five boxes above the line for the first time in the Victorian state election?

Ingrid STITT: The savings provisions are a very powerful example of how the government has considered important guardrails. Again, VEC education will be another important factor.

Rachel PAYNE: Minister, as far as you are aware, will the VEC also be capturing informal votes where someone may just vote 1 above the line? Is that something that is a requirement of the VEC to record, and is it something that the government will seek advice on?

Ingrid STITT: The savings provisions allow a tick or a cross to be taken to have been marked with a number 1 or if there is more than one number up to a break in sequence aligned with the Commonwealth savings provisions, but to the specifics of your question, that is an operational matter for the VEC.

Rachel PAYNE: Minister, you have made reference to the Commonwealth structure around their Senate-style voting. Why was the decision made to make it five above the line rather than, as the Senate-style voting indicates, six above the line? What was the rationale behind this?

Ingrid STITT: It is in line with the Electoral Matters Committee recommendations.

Rachel PAYNE: I think Mr Limbrick asked some questions around the design of a new ballot. Has it been user-tested by the VEC, to the best of your knowledge?

Ingrid STITT: Again, that is a matter for them, and they are very adept at operationalising changes to the legislation that impact on the conduct of elections.

Rachel PAYNE: Was the VEC advised to prepare for voting reform ahead of this legislation passing Parliament?

Ingrid STITT: Whenever the government considers changes to the electoral system, we always consult with the VEC on the development of and the timelines for legislation, and this was no exception to that practice.

Rachel PAYNE: I am going to make reference now to the 2003 constitutional committee. The 2003 Parliament of Victoria constitutional commission committee recommended proportional representation for the Legislative Council as part of a coherent package of reforms. How does the government reconcile abolishing group voting tickets in isolation with the broader integrated reform envisaged by that committee in 2003?

Ingrid STITT: I think I answered that question earlier this evening, Ms Payne. The government has taken the decision that the priorities for this bill were the abolition of group ticket voting. I have actually answered that question already.

Rachel PAYNE: Apologies, I must have missed that response. Recommendation 4 of the inquiry into the Victorian upper house electoral system reform recommended:

That, following the 2026 election, a new process be established to consider and negotiate different views about the best electoral structure for Victoria’s Upper House and make a recommendation if it reaches general agreement. The independent process could be:

• an expert panel

• a citizens’ assembly

• a constitutional convention.

That report was tabled in December 2025, allowing ample time for the government to move legislation to establish such an independent process. Why has the government not done this, or is there an intention to do this in the next Parliament?

Ingrid STITT: It will essentially be a matter for the next Parliament, but it is not within the scope of the bill before the house tonight.

Rachel PAYNE: What guarantee, if any, can the government give this Parliament that proportional representation will actually happen within the next term of Parliament?

Ingrid STITT: Far be it from me to predict what may happen at the next election, Ms Payne, but again, it will be a matter for the next Parliament to determine.

Rachel PAYNE: Will the government commit to an independent post-election review of how the new above-the-line system operated at the November 2026 election, including its effect on informal rates and counting outcomes?

Ingrid STITT: There is a review that will be undertaken as a result of the previous legislation that we passed in this place a couple of months ago. That review will go to the specifics of that legislation. You would know that after each election the Electoral Matters Committee undertakes a review of the previous election.

Rachel PAYNE: If such a review does identify problems with the new system, assuming that the bill will pass this evening, what mechanism exists to make further changes before the 2030 election, given how compressed this process has already been?

Ingrid STITT: That will be a matter for the next Parliament.

David LIMBRICK: Clause 19 expands the scope of determinations by the VEC for expenditures to include claimable administrative expenditures. Will the VEC be able to make these determinations for expenses retroactively against past reports for previous electoral funding periods?

Ingrid STITT: It will not be retrospective past 15 April.

David LIMBRICK: Just to clarify, any new scope of determinations under these expenditures cannot be used to reopen a historical audit. Is that correct?

Ingrid STITT: That is correct.

Georgie PURCELL: Minister, does the government believe that electoral laws should not be changed immediately before an election unless there is an overwhelming and unavoidable reason?

Ingrid STITT: Could you repeat the question, Ms Purcell?

Georgie PURCELL: Is it the government’s position that electoral law should not be changed right before an election unless there is an overwhelming and unavoidable reason? And if not, why not?

Ingrid STITT: The government is bringing this bill based on its policy position that it believes it is the appropriate thing to do to abolish group ticket voting in Victoria.

Georgie PURCELL: Apologies, you touched on this earlier, but I guess the point to my question is: what is the urgency currently now, after 12 years in government?

Ingrid STITT: I have already touched on these issues in answers to previous questions from members, Ms Purcell, and I talked about reports from the Electoral Matters Committee, but I also talked about the conduct that has been the subject of public discourse around preference whispering and the fact that we believe strongly that the Victorian voting public should be in control of their own vote.

Georgie PURCELL: I agree with those statements, and I have watched the rest of the committee stage, although I was not in here. More to the point of the question is that evidence came to light some time ago, in fact at the start of the term, and then the report was handed down some time ago, but this decision has been made now. What is the reason for the change at such late notice instead of the usual processes or acting immediately when that evidence came to light, as I would note many crossbenchers called for?

Ingrid STITT: I would contend that this has gone through the normal cabinet process when determining policy and legislation to bring forward to the Parliament. I do appreciate that not everybody will be supportive of this bill or the government’s policy decision.

Georgie PURCELL: Has the government done any modelling of whether abolishing GVTs will advantage larger or more established parties or particular parties in the Parliament?

Ingrid STITT: No, we have not. But we have taken account of the Electoral Matters Committee reports and also the fact that we are the only jurisdiction in the country who still has this voting method. I will not repeat myself in relation to the policy drivers behind bringing in this bill; I think they are well understood.

Georgie PURCELL: There was a lot of discussion in the lower house debate about this being the first stage of reform and the next stage will be looking into restructuring the make-up of the upper house when it comes to regions or statewide proportional representation or another model. Why are GVTs being done before that stage?

Ingrid STITT: I have addressed this question already. It is a matter for the next Parliament as to what, if any, electoral reforms they see fit to progress. The government of the day, I am sure, will have a view about those matters.

Georgie PURCELL: I know that you have answered it. I am seeking more information about why the government has decided to do GVTs before reviewing the structure of the upper house and if there is any particular reasoning behind that given that they have said that that will be the intention if they come back into government.

Ingrid STITT: This has been asked and answered on a number of occasions already.

Georgie PURCELL: I promise I am not trying to be a pain. I do not believe this was answered: is it the government’s position that this is the correct order in which to do it? I know you think it is the same question, and I have watched the rest of the committee. I know this has been explored. I am seeking understanding of if the government’s position is that this is the preferred order in which to do it or if any consideration has been made of why it is being done this way, noting that the intention in the lower house was that a new model will be explored if the government maintains government.

Ingrid STITT: I cannot speak to what members’ contributions were in the other place, other than to say that it is on the public record, but the clear objectives of this bill are to remove group voting tickets from Legislative Council elections and to improve the operation of the Electoral Act 2002 and the electoral system in Victoria. There are a number of other minor amendments, but the primary objective of this bill is to remove group ticket voting.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Just quickly on that, this is something that the upper house voting system inquiry, I do recall, looked at. You also had psephologists like Kevin Bonham, who stated that a referendum prior to any change to group voting would likely be a disaster that could risk a populist backlash and that any failure of that referendum could also be seen as a failure and a vote against abolishing group voting tickets overall. So this is probably the neatest way to do this, and that is the prevailing view amongst the experts. It is certainly what I would look at in regard to that line as well.

Georgie PURCELL: Thank you, Mr Mulholland. I appreciate your view. I am seeking the government’s view, and exactly actually what I am seeking to understand from the government is the order of the decision, which I am particularly interested in only because there has been an ongoing discussion about restructuring the upper house and what this place looks like. So my next question would be: is there a concern that doing GVTs before a referendum and having agreement from the people to change our voting system could result in it no longer being possible?

Ingrid STITT: I think you are drawing a few conclusions there, Ms Purcell. Essentially the reforms are about making sure that the Victorian voting public have control over their upper house votes. That is certainly the driving factor behind the government taking this policy position and bringing the bill to the house. I do not know that you are going to agree with the timing of the bill coming, but I do not think we are going to be able to agree on that point tonight. I respect that there are different views in the chamber about the timing of this bill, but given the timing of this bill, the clear advice from the VEC is that it would not be possible to implement a broader set of reforms in the timelines available, and we have prioritised removing group ticket voting and those other minor consequential amendments that are in the bill.

Georgie PURCELL: Minister, absolutely, we probably will not reach agreement on the timing. However, given that the government did not consult with us or collaborate with us on this, we are just seeking explanations of how this decision was made, so I do appreciate your answers. I would like to move to consideration of the cost of this reform and if the government has looked into or allocated any funding for doing this reform, especially at the last minute, and if so, how much it will cost.

Ingrid STITT: I want to take issue with the way that you are putting that question to me, Ms Purcell. You are asserting that this is rushed. I think I answered a question from another member earlier about this having gone through the normal and proper cabinet consideration and cabinet process, and that is why the bill is in the Parliament now. The VEC has not asked for any additional funding in order to operationalise these changes, and there has been regular contact and consultation with the VEC on the development of this bill.

Georgie PURCELL: Forgive me, Minister. I am just speaking from my own position, because certainly the bill did not follow its usual process for us on the crossbench, so it does feel rushed for us. I appreciate that that is not your position. However, moving further into the cost of the reform, is this something that the VEC had been working on prior to this decision, noting that it could be a possibility, or does all of this work begin following the passage of this legislation?

Ingrid STITT: I am not wanting to labour the point, but the crossbench briefings occurred in the normal way. The difference, I guess, is that the Legislative Assembly were a bit quicker in dealing with the bill than they might ordinarily have been. In respect to the VEC, there have been conversations with the VEC, as you would expect, about the proposed changes, but ultimately if the Parliament changes the electoral system through changed legislation, then it is always important to make sure that there is contact with the VEC about how that is operationalised. The actual work of operationalising it is a matter for the VEC and something that they are adept at doing. Again, these are questions that I have already answered in previous members’ questions earlier this evening.

Georgie PURCELL: I do not want to labour the point, but it absolutely did not follow the usual processes. We get briefed on bills introduced to the lower house when they are going through the lower house. We got briefed on this last week. However, more on the costs of this reform, noting that they have not asked for extra money now, will there be any costs associated with training or new systems as a result of the passage of this legislation following that?

Ingrid STITT: I can only reiterate that the VEC have not asked for any additional funding in order to operationalise these changes, but they have an ongoing role in the training of their staff and also of course education for the electorate. That is business as usual for them. Again, I can only reiterate that there have been no additional funding requests made.

David LIMBRICK: One of the good things about the current system is that votes do not exhaust. If an elector chooses a number above the line, then votes do not exhaust. Has the government done any modelling on what the exhaustion rates might be under the new system – for example, by analysing the Senate system?

Ingrid STITT: No.

David LIMBRICK: It is the government’s expectation then, considering that the current exhaustion rate for above-the-line voting is 0 per cent, that exhaustion will increase but at an unknown amount. Is that correct?

Ingrid STITT: The short answer is yes.

Georgie PURCELL: Will postal vote certificates, early voting centre materials and overseas voting arrangements all be updated in time to reflect the new above-the-line requirements given that postal voting typically opens several weeks before election day?

Ingrid STITT: Yes.

David LIMBRICK: I would just like to go back to my questions before about how-to-vote cards and their specifications. I have just received advice that in recommendation 17 of the EMC report it said that ballot papers should only direct voters to select at least five preferences above the line. Does the minister have a response to that? It seems that the government’s legislation is actually in conflict with the recommendation from the EMC.

Ingrid STITT: It is consistent with the recommendation of the Electoral Matters Committee. That is the advice I have.

David LIMBRICK: I would just like to draw the minister’s attention to a previous discussion we had where – please correct me if I am wrong – my understanding was that a how-to-vote card can show five or more preferences above the line or five or more preferences below the line, and it has to say ‘or’. However, recommendation 17 – I have it right in front of me – from the inquiry says it should amend the Electoral Act to ‘have ballot papers direct voters to select at least five preferences above the line’. That would appear to be in conflict with what the minister said earlier.

Ingrid STITT: Sorry, that was because there already is for below the line. I believe I answered that earlier.

David LIMBRICK: The minister said earlier in her response to Ms Payne’s question about the review of this system that it would be conducted by the Electoral Matters Committee. Why was the decision made to do that rather than incorporate it into the independent inquiry that was set up with the last electoral bill that this Parliament set up? Why was the decision made to send it through to the Electoral Matters Committee rather than this independent committee that we discussed at length on the last electoral bill that went through this Parliament?

Ingrid STITT: Mr Limbrick, I believe this issue is the subject of your amendment, which I am sure we will get into when we get to talking through and dealing with the amendments. But we do not support that as the approach. We believe that the review must also examine and make recommendations in relation to the operation of the Victorian electoral system, including the operation and the effectiveness of any political donation disclosure scheme and the effectiveness of the Electoral Act in addressing risks of undue influence arising from political donations. It was a very specific review that was agreed to as part of the previous bill that the chamber dealt with a couple of months ago. The Electoral Further Amendment Bill 2026 introduced the current part 12 of the act containing the legislative framework for political donations, state funding and reporting in Victoria. They are quite significant changes, and it was rightly flagged for review given the issues and the significant interest in those matters. We do not support expanding the scope of the review to include the review of the removal of group voting tickets or the findings and recommendations of the Electoral Matters Committee inquiry into the upper house electoral system. It would significantly alter the focus of that review, and there are other mechanisms available to review these matters through the committee process after the 2026 election.

David LIMBRICK: If I draw my mind back to that last bill, though, when we all agreed, I think, that setting up an independent committee was a good idea because we did not want politicians deciding whether or not the current donation scheme was a good idea, surely a change to the electoral system, which arguably is a bigger deal than the donation system, should also be independent. Is it not the case that the members on the Electoral Matters Committee in the new Parliament will most likely be beneficiaries of this new system?

Ingrid STITT: I cannot predict what the make-up of the next Parliament will be, Mr Limbrick, and I would not want to predetermine what their views might be about these matters. I know you have got an amendment, and I know that we will deal with it when we get to amendments to the bill. I appreciate that you hold those views, but the government is not going to support that amendment, and I guess we will deal with that in due course in the committee stage.

David LIMBRICK: Regardless of my amendment, I think it is a matter of factual observation that regarding the new members of the Electoral Matters Committee in the new Parliament, there is no way other than that their parties could be beneficiaries of this new system, and therefore by definition it should be biased in favour of the current system. I cannot see how there could be any other reality than that.

Ingrid STITT: It is a bit of a statement, but you are also asking me for an opinion about the next Parliament, and I am not in a position to be able to crystal-ball what may happen in the new Parliament.

Rachel PAYNE: Is the government committed to seeking a referendum for a constitutional amendment regarding changes to the regional structure or adopting a model like other jurisdictions in the regions?

Ingrid STITT: Not at this time.

Rachel PAYNE: Just in relation to the VEC and funding, has the VEC been allocated any additional funding to support public education regarding the new above-the-line requirements for numbering with voting?

Ingrid STITT: I have already answered this question on a number of occasions, Ms Payne. The VEC has not sought any additional funding in order to operationalise the changes that this bill contemplates.

Rachel PAYNE: I think that that may be alarming, considering that we are changing how people are expected to vote above the line. If there is not additional funding, would there be an assumption that there would be additional education, and how would that public education be expected to be done in line with the new requirements?

Ingrid STITT: They are already funded in their base funding to do this work on an ongoing basis, Ms Payne – but again, that is a matter for the VEC in terms of how they determine to expend their funding. I know that they do take very seriously education for the community and for their own staff on any changes to the electoral laws.

David LIMBRICK: In 2003 when the reforms first went through, these reforms were actually referred to the Minister for Education to ensure that they were incorporated into the school curriculum. Many schools in Victoria do civics education. Has the education minister received any request to ensure that the curriculum is updated for next year to ensure students are being taught the current electoral system in Victoria?

Ingrid STITT: I may need to take that one on notice, Mr Limbrick, and we will see if we can get you an answer on that this evening. I know that the previous education minister, the Premier, has been very passionate about the curriculum, and it is being reviewed on a regular basis. If it is okay, I will probably need to take that one on notice and see whether we can make contact with the education minister’s office. I think the other place has gone home already.

Rachel PAYNE: I note that you have indicated that the VEC has its operational duties, but can the government confirm what information has been provided to the community in other languages to inform communities of the changes to upcoming elections?

Ingrid STITT: Noting that we have not passed the bill yet, again, those are matters for the VEC. We have a very diverse community, and I know that translation into community languages is a high priority for the VEC. In terms of this particular legislation, we have already, as I have indicated, been in contact with the VEC around timeframes and operationalising this change, should it pass the Parliament.

Rachel PAYNE: Has there been specific engagement by the government towards people with disability, people who may be blind or have low vision and older Victorians about new above-the-line voting requirements? Was this part of the consideration of the Electoral Matters Committee review?

Ingrid STITT: Earlier I indicated that there was quite extensive engagement with the Electoral Matters Committee inquiry into the conduct of the 2022 general election and also the inquiry into Victoria’s upper house electoral system. Whilst I do not have the demographic breakdown of all of the individual Victorians that interacted with those inquiries, I can indicate that there were 114 individuals and organisations that made submissions to the 2022 general election inquiry. There were 27 public hearings with various stakeholders. In addition, they conducted a survey of voters with disability, a community round table with voters from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and they also did a survey of members of Parliament – a special group. The Electoral Matters Committee inquiry into the upper house electoral system received written submissions from 62 individuals and organisations, 141 people provided comment through the online platform and the committee conducted 16 public hearings with 29 witnesses. So I think that the work of the committee was quite extensive and engaged with a large and diverse group of Victorians.

Rachel PAYNE: Interestingly, I have spent quite a bit of time looking at interpreting services, and so discovered that I am the only MP in the Victorian Parliament who has interpreting services on my website, which is fascinating. But anyway, I will continue.

Has the VEC identified any risks to the delivery of the November election if this bill is implemented, and if so, what are they?

Ingrid STITT: No. They have just indicated the timeframes that would be required by them for the bill to have passed the Parliament.

Rachel PAYNE: Has the VEC identified any risks around sufficient staffing, facilities and resources to implement these changes effectively?

Ingrid STITT: No.

Rachel PAYNE: We touched on the 2003 constitution commission review. What consideration has the government given to the 2003 commission’s reasoning that piecemeal changes to the electoral system risk unintended consequences for proportionality and representation?

Ingrid STITT: I think we have answered this previously, Ms Payne. I indicated that that was a long time ago, and a lot has changed, both in terms of the electorate and also the concerns that have been publicly aired around the model that we have currently. The constitutional work that you are referring to is quite old now. It was important at the time absolutely, but we have, as a government, the prerogative to address issues as they arise, and this is certainly one of them.

Georgie PURCELL: Has the government sought advice on how the removal of group voting tickets interacts with the filling of casual vacancies in the Legislative Council, given that the process has historically relied on the ticket lodged by the outgoing member’s party and if there will be any impact on that?

Ingrid STITT: It has no effect.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 2 (20:46)

Jeff BOURMAN: I move:

1.   Clause 2, line 2, omit “This Act” and insert “(1) This Act (other than sections 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 29 and 30 and paragraph (a) of section 3)”.

2.   Clause 2, after line 3 insert –

“(2) Sections 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 29 and 30 and paragraph (a) of section 3 come into operation on 1 December 2026.”.

Amendments 1 and 2 are basically removing a whole lot of stuff and inserting a whole lot of stuff, the difference being that section 3 would come into operation on 1 December 2026, which is obviously post the election. What that means is we can have our feel-good change of everything here and still give people time to go through an election and do this. The VEC will have a lot more time and it will not be just one of the things done at the last moment. I do not feel the government will support this – I am just predicting that – but I think it is a way of making this fair as well as getting the job done.

Ingrid STITT: The government does not support the amendment. The effect of the amendment would be that the bill would not commence until after the election, and this would allow group voting tickets for the 2026 election. The government’s position is very clearly that group voting tickets should be removed ahead of the upcoming election.

Evan MULHOLLAND: I thank Mr Bourman for moving this amendment. Similarly, the Liberals and Nationals do not support this amendment. I was speaking before to the impact of delaying the removal of group voting tickets. While there is debate on whether or not the regional structure or statewide structure should be done before or afterwards, we have to deal with what is before us now and what is possible now. For us, the abolition of group voting tickets now, even with the regional structure, is a far better outcome than another election with group voting tickets in place and the regional structure.

David LIMBRICK: The Libertarian Party will be supporting Mr Bourman’s amendment. As stated, my fear is that we will never reach a fully proportional regional system in Victoria if we do this now, independently of regional reform. This amendment would put us in a position where both could be done simultaneously, and therefore it makes sense to support this amendment, in my view.

Sarah MANSFIELD: The Greens will not be supporting this amendment, for similar reasons to the ones Mr Mulholland outlined. As I said in my second-reading contribution, we are very open to a discussion around upper house reform, but there is absolutely no certainty about when this would occur. The process is complicated, and it has been well established that removal of group voting tickets and upper house reform do not need to be linked. As has been said, we do not support another election being held with group voting tickets still in place given they are just fundamentally undemocratic.

Council divided on amendments:

New clause 14A (20:57)

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Ms Payne, I invite you to move Mr Ettershank’s amendment 3, which tests his amendment 4.

Rachel PAYNE: I move:

3.   Insert the following New Clause to follow Clause 14 –

‘14A New section 84A inserted

After section 84 of the Electoral Act 2002 insert –

“84A   Preference whispering

A person must not sell, or make any other commercial arrangement for, any services that, in exchange for a fee, provide advice or purport to advise, whether in writing or orally, a person or registered political party on how to allocate preferences for candidates or groups in an election.

Penalty:   In the case of a natural person, 60 penalty units or 6 months imprisonment;

In the case of a body corporate, 300 penalty units.

Note

Section 179A applies to an offence against this section.”.’.

My colleague Mr Ettershank has already spoken of the rationale for this amendment – amending clause 14, adding a new section 14A – that would just see that rather than proceeding with the highly problematic two-stage process for the reform that we have before us today, we can remove that preference whisperer issue. It can be addressed in a handful of lines that are contained in these amendments. The clause clearly defines what is being outlawed, how it may apply and the appropriate penalties for breaches. It is noted that this issue is not around political advice. Everyone is entitled to seek such advice. Rather, it is an amendment to remove that pursuit of commercial activity in association with preference negotiations or agreements that lend to this issue – so defining that principle around commerciality.

Ingrid STITT: The government will not be supporting this amendment. The bill, in removing group ticket voting from Legislative Council elections and introducing a new method for above-the-line preferential voting, negates the need – or the incentive, for that matter – for preference whispering, and consequently a statutory offence is not required.

David LIMBRICK: Although I appreciate the intent of this amendment and it would have maybe made sense if the previous amendment had passed, as there will not be any elections where group voting tickets will happen, assuming this bill passes, I do not feel that this amendment makes sense. That is my first objection to it.

My second objection to this amendment is I am not actually sure of the consequences of this. I feel like actually all political parties – or major parties, at least – have people that professionally work for them to manage these negotiations, and I feel that that is sort of necessary and might be outlawed by this. I am concerned about the consequences if this was to pass; therefore the Libertarians will not be supporting this amendment.

Evan MULHOLLAND: The Liberals and Nationals will not be supporting this amendment, for similar reasons to the government. While a unique way of putting forward an amendment, it does rather go against Mr Ettershank’s – I was hoping he would be here – previous comments in this place, arguing against the incarceration of nonviolent offenders. I would also think that this amendment, while unique and interesting, is probably not the best solution to this bill. I think the bill in itself is the solution.

Sarah MANSFIELD: The Greens will also not be supporting this amendment. The best way to get rid of preference whispering is to get rid of group voting tickets, and that is what this bill does.

Council divided on new clause:

New clause 19A (21:03)

Jeff BOURMAN: I move:

3.   Insert the following New Clause to follow Clause 19 –

‘19A Instalment payments of public funding entitlement

After section 232(4) of the Electoral Act 2002 insert –

“(4A)   Subsection (4) does not apply –

(a)   in respect of a registered political party if the party loses a member of Parliament at a general election as a consequence of the removal of group voting tickets from the Legislative Council by the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Act 2026; or

(b)   in respect of an independent candidate if the candidate loses their seat as a member of Parliament at a general election as a consequence of the removal of group voting tickets from the Legislative Council by the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Act 2026.”.’.

Basically, we as parties get advance funding, and as a number of minor parties are about to have the rug pulled out from them, we could be left with a debt through no fault of our own. This is not a normal election where you take it as it comes. This has been done to us. This is basically that the VEC will forgive any debts, this one time only, of the people that are getting the cold loving hand of the government in this bill.

Ingrid STITT: The government will not be supporting Mr Bourman’s amendment. The effect of the proposed amendment is that any party or independent candidate who loses their seat as a result of the amendments contained in the bill will have any debt arising from an obligation to repay payments of any advance public funding forgiven. For the provision to be operationalised the VEC would need to establish that the registered political party or candidate has lost their seat at a general election as a consequence of the removal of GVTs. We do not think that it is possible to establish causality. This amendment places an impossible burden on the VEC to be the arbiter of such a loss, so we will not be supporting this amendment.

David LIMBRICK: Can I just clarify from the minister, then: is it the government’s position that it is not possible to implement this amendment that Mr Bourman is proposing? Is that what you are saying here, because the causality is unable to be determined? Is that the government’s position?

Ingrid STITT: I think I clearly articulated the reasons why the government will not be supporting the amendment. We think that it would be extremely difficult and not possible. It would place an impossible burden on the VEC for them to become the arbiter in these matters. We do not support this approach.

Jeff BOURMAN: I might just point out for the minister’s edification: ‘in respect of a registered political party if the party loses a member of Parliament at the general election as a consequence’ of this – basically, it is only us.

Sarah MANSFIELD: The Greens will not be supporting this amendment. While I understand Mr Bourman’s point here, and I hope that the VEC will apply some discretion in its decisions around these things and take people’s personal circumstances into account, it is very hard to establish whether someone would have retained their seat whether there were GVTs or not, quite frankly, in advance. It is hard to attribute the change in the electoral system to the loss of a seat. I am not sure how anyone here could predict that they are still going to have their seat post election, short of them getting a full quota. I am not quite sure how this amendment would be able to be interpreted by the VEC.

Evan MULHOLLAND: The Liberals and Nationals will not be supporting this amendment. I agree with the reasons put forward by both the government and the Greens. I think foreshadowing and looking into the future and trying to work back from that and saying that somehow these changes might cause a person to lose their seat rather reflects that people might have been elected to this place through reasons other than popular support and voter support anyway. Without foreshadowing what might be to come as a result of this bill, I would not want to support this amendment that might foreshadow an outcome and tie it to the bill itself.

Council divided on new clause:

New clause 30A (21:11)

David LIMBRICK: I move:

1.   Insert the following New Clause to follow Clause 30 –

‘30A Section 182A amended

(1) In the heading to section 182A of the Electoral Act 2002, after “2026” insert “and Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Act 2026”.

(2) In section 182A of the Electoral Act 2002 –

(a)   in subsection (1), after “2026” insert “and the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Act 2026”;

(b)   in subsection (6)(i), for “Victoria.” substitute “Victoria;”;

(c)   after subsection (6)(i) insert –

“(j)   the findings and recommendations of the Electoral Matters Committee Inquiry into Victoria’s Upper House electoral system.”.’.

This amendment is rather simple actually. We spoke about it earlier. Basically what we are doing here is that after the last bill there was an independent committee set up to review the donations system, and it makes total sense to me that this also should be part of that independent committee. It is my concern that the Electoral Matters Committee in the new Parliament will actually comprise members of Parliament who are beneficiaries of the new system and who therefore will not be independent at all. Therefore I think it is entirely appropriate for this independent committee to add these things to their scope, and that is all that this amendment does. It just increases the scope of the committee that we have already set up and agreed to set up.

Ingrid STITT: As I indicated earlier in the committee stage, the government will not be supporting Mr Limbrick’s amendment. I went to the specific reasons why the review that will examine and make recommendations in relation to the operation of the Victorian electoral system from the previous bill passed in this place, including the operation and effectiveness of any political donation disclosure scheme and the effectiveness of the Electoral Act, is an important review in and of itself. We do not support further extending that review and taking the focus away from the original intent of the review. I do note, notwithstanding Mr Limbrick’s concerns about the make-up of any Electoral Matters Committee in a future Parliament, that it does have the ability to inquire into elections and any other matter that the committee sees fit.

Evan MULHOLLAND: The Liberals and Nationals will not be supporting this amendment, for similar reasons to the government. We cannot predict, as the minister said, who might be on the Electoral Matters Committee and what they might look at. Lee Tarlamis will probably be on it, I think it is safe to assume. I would not support this amendment. It is up to the government of the day to commission the EMC as well.

Sarah MANSFIELD: While we are very much in favour of reviews post election, as the minister said, this review and committee process was set up with a very specific purpose in mind. I think it is important that they are able to look at what are already very substantial changes to our donation laws, and that warrants a dedicated review. The Electoral Matters Committee will undertake a review after the election, as will the VEC. I am sure the next Parliament if it sees fit could also instigate an independent review, but to tack it onto the work of another committee with a very well-defined purpose is not quite the appropriate mechanism.

Council divided on new clause:

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Special Minister of State) (21:21): I move:

That the report be now adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Special Minister of State) (21:21): I move:

That the bill be now read a third time and do pass.

Council divided on motion:

The PRESIDENT: Pursuant to standing order 14.28, the bill will be returned to the Assembly with a message informing them that the Council have agreed to the bill without amendment.