Victoria has just lost its status as a unique voting jurisdiction in Australia. Unlike every other state or territory, Victoria has been using group voting tickets (GVT) to elect candidates in the Legislative Council (upper house) for the last 20 years.

However, Laws passed earlier this month will mean that the GVT system will no longer be used to elect representatives to the state’s upper house.

What is the GVT?

Up until the 2022 election, the Victorian upper house used a system that was also used in the Australian Senate until 2016. In this system, voters could simply give their first preference to their favoured candidate by placing a ‘1’ next to the candidate’s name above the black line. The preferences would then be distributed to other candidates according to the preference deals made by candidates.

Victoria’s Legislative Council is made up of 40 MPs elected to represent each of the eight regions from across the state and, unlike contests in the lower house, electing representatives in the Victorian upper house does not require a candidate to win a majority of 50 per cent +1. Since proportional representation is used in the upper house, a candidate must win a quota of the vote, which equates to approximately 16.7 per cent of the votes in each region.

As such, using the GVT method meant that the preferred candidate would get the first preference, but it was somewhat less clear where the subsequent preferences of voters would go because parties could organise a series of agreements to attract preferences from other candidates.

Preference deals were thus critical to helping, or hindering, candidates from winning parliamentary representation. Political parties invested significant energy and effort to make preference deals with other parties so they could have the best chance of winning a seat, even if they could not win a quota in their own right.

In the Australian Senate, this meant that parties that attracted a very small number of votes could go on to win representation. For example, in 2013 the Motoring Enthusiast Party was able to win a Senate seat even though the party won less than 1 per cent of the primary vote in Victoria. These results precipitated changes to the voting system in time for the election in 2016.

In more recent Victorian state elections, the Animal Justice Party won a seat in the Northern Victoria Region with a primary vote of 1.5 per cent. The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party candidate won a seat in the Eastern Victoria Region with a primary vote of 3 per cent, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation candidate in Northern Victoria Region won a seat in with a primary vote of just 3.7 per cent.

What the new system will do

The shift in the Victorian system will align it more closely with the current Senate voting system. 

The new laws have received Royal Assent, confirming that at the upcoming State election in November, Victorians will have to indicate at least five of their preferred parties if voting above the line. If voters choose to vote below the line, they will still be required to select at least 5 candidates, a measure which does not change with the reforms.

This will significantly inhibit the prospect of minor parties making preference deals that can catapult them from having a very small primary vote to winning a seat in parliament.

In effect, the days of winning representation through preference deals will be over.

What are the potential downsides?

While changing the system may sound like a positive development, it also comes with some potential challenges.

Votes, for example, may become ‘exhausted’ if, as the AEC explains, ‘there is no next available preference for any continuing candidate, meaning that it [the vote] must be set aside from the scrutiny at that point’. This can spark debates about whether the voices of some Victorians may not play a role in influencing who wins seats in the chamber.

Victoria’s new premier, Ben Carroll, made the reforms to the upper house an immediate priority upon becoming leader last month. As he argued, ‘Victorians deserve to know where their preferences go and decide who gets elected – not faceless people making backroom deals’. 

Victorians, however, were always empowered to determine where their preferences went if they voted below the line, even though this would have taken considerably more time. At the last election, the rate of below the line voting varied across regions. In Northern Metropolitan Region, for example, the rate was 12.7 per cent, while in South-Eastern Metropolitan Region, it was 7.4 per cent.

While, on one level, the reforms seem to mitigate the prospect of preferences carrying unpopular candidates into parliament, they also seem to take an expedient approach and do not engage with the underlying challenge of building political knowledge in the community.

Many in the community, including young people, remain unclear about how government and elections work. By changing the voting system, little investment is made to nurture the knowledge, confidence and capacity of voters. Changing the voting system provided an ideal opportunity to also enhance efforts to accelerate the development of political knowledge.

Ultimately, the reforms will disadvantage minor parties who have relied on preference deals to win representation. It will be up to Victorians to have a more direct role in shaping the next upper house.