#vicvotes2018

This is important. Fuckin Glenn Druery has rigged the group voting tickets in the Victorian Upper House election again. This is the prick whose manipulation of party preferences saw the Motoring Enthusiasts Party win a federal Senate seat in 2013 with only 0.5% of the primary vote, along with other microparties.

If you vote above the line in the Victorian state election, you could inadvertently be helping some truly crackpot parties edge their way into the Upper House.

In Eastern Metro, the single-issue Transport Matters party could snatch a seat with as little as 0.31% of the vote. Even worse, the anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist party Health Australia will benefit from above-the-line preferences here, too. Anti-fucking-vaxxers, guys.

In Western Metro, Stuart O’Neill of the Aussie Battler Party -- an utter turkey of a bloke who reads like a serial 3AW talkback radio caller -- stands to harvest a bundle of preferences.

South-Eastern Metro? Transport Matters will be contending to steal the fifth Upper House seat. Southern Metro? Overpopulation alarmists Sustainable Australia stand to benefit from preferences. Western Vic? The Justice Party, with its deeply misguided tough-on-crime policies, could get a boost.

Voting below the line is easier than you think.

I know the Upper House ballot is absurdly large, but you don’t have to preference every candidate. You only need to number five candidates for your vote to be valid. The simplest way is to choose your top three or four parties (or more, if you want!) and number the candidates top to bottom under each, like so:

The other important thing to remember? If you don’t know anything about a party, don’t preference it. There are some ugly parties hiding behind some deceptively warm and fuzzy names (e.g. Health Australia Party, who are anti-vax, anti-fluoridation, anti-science conspiracy nuts). Don’t be fooled into voting for a party that doesn't share your views.

Well, wow. Anybody who would have predicted this outcome at 5:55pm yesterday would have been called a lunatic. Less than an hour and a half later, and Antony Green was already calling it for the ALP.

There have been some amazing hot takes in the aftermath. I have to wonder if the Liberal Party will learn much from this. Obviously the instability in Canberra was not the only cause of this rout, but it clearly played a role. Also, in campaigning on state-based issues such as law and order, Matthew Guy was using a playbook common to the party nationally. Its failure should suggest a need for new ideas and approaches. I expect, however, many in the federal party to say that “oh Victoria is the ~*progressive state*~ so we don’t need to worry about that elsewhere”. Never mind that a generation ago Victoria was the jewel in the Liberal Party’s crown.

Was this election also a disaster for the Greens? I think that this even needs to be asked suggests the answer is yes. They might come out of this with the same number of lower house seats, three, or they might be reduced to one. Their vetting of candidates has been deficient, and their internal squabbles have spilled into the public domain rather dramatically. In an election when the Greens should have ridden an anti-Liberal tide into office, picking up a seat or two alongside the ALP, they might not even win the one seat they should have cruised into: Brunswick. As somebody who has been an elector in Brunswick since 2007, I was sure the state seat would go Green sooner or later—and, after the massive South Ward result in the last local council elections (which covers much of the territory of the state seat), it seemed all but certain to go Green this election. We will have to wait and see if Tim Read sneaks in.

The problems facing the Greens also pertain to the upper house, and of course that’s my main interest as someone who has been blogging fervently about the microparties running for the Legislative Council and about the need to vote below the line. The Greens’ vote for the upper house is poor—their worst in over a decade—but the fact they might be reduced to just one seat while unknown microparties with a third or even a tenth of their vote could score two or more seats is an utter indictment of the Group Voting Ticket system of election.

The outcome in the lower house is clear: the Andrews government will have an easy majority. The outcome in the upper house will not be known for some time. The AEC has to tally all the votes and then push “the button” to calculate the complex preference flows and get the results. Anything before that point is pure guesswork. You will see people making claims based on election calculators but these assume 100% of voters went above the line. Across the state we’ve had about 10% of voters go below the line, which honestly is a bit disappointing even though it’s much better than the 4% below the line in 2010.

Every vote below the line makes a difference. It complicates the preference flows further, so at crucial points of exclusion in the count it might suppress some of the wacky flows. Kevin Bonham has a post on his blog that details some of the possible outcomes. I will reserve commentary for now, except to say two things. First, it is no small relief that, at the moment, the Aussie Battlers (they of the ever-changing bait-and-switch policy platform) do not look like getting in. Second, I think the upper house will be poorer for the presumed replacement of Fiona Patten and some capable Greens with a rabble of opportunists from parties that almost nobody supports and whose platforms are either incomplete or unsavoury.

'no thank you *walking faster*'

On election day you will receive TWO ballot papers, and you need to fill both of them in.

The SMALL ballot paper is for the Legislative Assembly (lower house). With this ballot, you elect a single member to represent your electoral district. There are 88 districts in the state. To complete this ballot so that your vote counts, you must number EVERY box, beginning with 1 in the order of your preference. If you repeat numbers, include zero or skip numbers or your vote will be informal and will not be counted. The following is an example of a correctly filled in ballot paper:

The LARGE ballot paper is for the Legislative Council (upper house). With this ballot paper, you will elect five members to represent your region. There are 8 regions in the state. There are two ways you can complete this ballot paper: either above or below the line. 

If you choose to vote above the line, you need only write the number 1 in a single box above the line for your vote to be formal. Marking a 1 in the box above the line indicates that you would like to allocate your preferences the way in which the party you have voted for has indicated they should allocated. Each party in each region submits a list of preferences (called the Group Vote Ticket). You can access the GVTs for each region here.

If you choose to vote below the line, you must number AT LEAST FIVE boxes from 1 to 5 in order of your preference for your vote to be formal. You can number as many boxes below the line as you would like, and your preferences will be counted until you either skip a number, repeat a number or stop numbering the boxes. 

If you cast a formal vote both above and below the line, only your below the line preferences will be considered.

Below is an example of a ballot paper which has been filled in correctly both above and below the line. 

Victoria goes to the polls on Saturday, and if you are unsure who some of these parties are, hopefully my reviews provide a little bit of clarity. Before I list them, I want to emphasise the importance of voting below the line.

You will receive two ballots: a small one for the Legislative Assembly and a large one for the Legislative Council. The Legislative Assembly, widely known as the lower house, has 88 single-member electorates and it is where government is formed. Each seat is filled by the candidate who wins over 50% of the vote (either outright or by preferences); whichever party can command a majority of seats in the Assembly—either in its own right or with support from other parties—forms government. For the Legislative Assembly you must number every square on the ballot to cast a valid vote.

The Legislative Council, widely known as the upper house, is the house of review. It has only eight electorates, but each electorate sends five members to Spring Street. If a candidate achieves a quota (16.7% of the vote, either outright or by preferences), they are elected. Your ballot gives you two ways to vote for the Legislative Council: above the line or below the line. DO NOT VOTE ABOVE THE LINE. If you vote above the line, you mark 1 beside the party of your choice and receive the preferences they have lodged with the Victorian Electoral Commission on what’s called a Group Voting Ticket. We don’t have this at federal elections any more, but Victoria still does it at state elections. This means that the party, not you, decides where your preferences go, and almost every party this year has made extremely dodgy deals to try to game the system. You cannot distribute your own preferences above the line and FRIENDS DO NOT LET FRIENDS VOTE ABOVE THE LINE. Break the preference harvesters’ cynical business model and vote below the line.

And how do you vote below the line? To cast a valid vote below the line, you must give at least five preferences, so number five candidates 1–5, and then keep numbering as far as you want. This guarantees your preferences only go to the people YOU want them to go to. I recommend you preference as far as possible—I will number every box. The complexities of the Legislative Council electoral system mean that it is in your interest to number as many boxes as you feel capable of numbering. But whatever you do, do not vote above the line; make sure you give at least five preferences below the line. Vote below the line to cast a powerful and meaningful vote.

Who are all these parties you’ve got to choose from? Here are my reviews. I have not reviewed the major parties (ALP, Green, Liberal/National) because I assume the ordinary voter, and especially a reader of this guide, already has an opinion on them. Almost every party is contesting every seat in the upper house; the number of parties contesting each lower house seat varies considerably. I have reviewed all independents for the upper house as well as the parties, but in the lower house I have only reviewed the independents for Brunswick. If you have independents standing in your lower house seat, I encourage you to Google them.

(The comment in brackets indicates the party’s general ideology.)

Animal Justice Party (single issue: animal rights)

Aussie Battler Party (right-wing populism / shady bait-and-switch ideology)

Australian Country Party (rural conservative)

Australian Liberty Alliance (racism and xenophobia)

Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party (cult of personality / tough on crime)

Health Australia (anti-vax, anti-fluoride Big Pharma conspiracy theorists)

Hudson for Northern Victoria (cult of personality)

Labour DLP, aka Democratic Labour Party (Catholic conservative)

Liberal Democratic Party (right-libertarian)

Fiona Patten’s Reason Party, formerly the Sex Party (civil libertarian)

Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers Party (pro-gun / anti-environmentalist)

Sustainable Australia (single issue: small population / anti-immigration)

Transport Matters (single issue: anti-Uber taxi lobbyists)

Victorian Socialists (socialism)

Voluntary Euthanasia Party (single issue: assisted dying)

Vote 1 Local Jobs (rural protectionism)

Save the Planet (single issue: climate action)

Independents: part one (District of Brunswick, Region of Eastern Victoria); part two (Region of South Eastern Metropolitan); part three (Regions of Western Metropolitan and Western Victoria)

You should also visit Cate Speaks, whose reviews are more detailed and less acerbic than mine. She has reviewed the independents in Pascoe Vale if that is your lower house seat. And if you are curious about my past reviews, check out the indices for the 2013 federal election, 2014 Victorian election, and 2016 federal election.

I will probably write some more stuff before the election is over, and I expect to be back next year for the NSW and federal elections, but I want to end this entry on a personal note. I was not intending to revive my blog for this election; I wrote a short Twitter thread instead. Read it here if you like your reviews in 280-character bites. Of course, preparing that thread whet my appetite for some sweet sweet political ranting. I did not think the Twitter thread would crack triple digits (I thought it niche enough that 20 or 30 likes would be a good showing); I absolutely never expected it to get shared on Facebook to the extent that I have received messages from friends and acquaintances saying “hey dude these people I know are sharing your Twitter thread”.

It’s the morning of the state election, and if you are still tossing up your options, hopefully the index to my party reviews will provide useful guidance and sufficient encouragement to vote below the line.

If you feel a little unenthused about your options, I do not blame you. Depending on the precise nature of your political inclinations and interests, I think the Greens, Socialists, Reason, and ALP all represent adequate choices. But I feel that both the Greens and ALP have acted contrary to their stated aims and goals lately, and knowing that the ALP (especially anti-Green members of the ALP Right) would dig dirt, the Greens clearly could have vetted their candidates better. I’ve suggested in my reviews that Reason have admirable qualities—they contributed to a number of positive reforms in the past term—and some less desirable corporate and libertarian leanings. And the Socialists, well, I’m in sympathy with much of their ideology but you will forgive me if I am hesitant because organised socialism in Australia has been a notoriously fractious joke for too long.

If you are passionate about assisted dying, then the Voluntary Euthanasia Party might be worth your preferences too; likewise, the Animal Justice Party if animal rights and veganism loom large in your decisionmaking. I have made no secret, however, that single-issue parties are of limited interest to me. Even when they address an issue I hold dear, I favour parties with fully rounded platforms; parliaments deal with quite diverse business.

What stands out to me more are the parties I dislike, and some of the sneaky and misleading names they use to try to hook in the gullible or inattentive voter. Health Australia pursue anti-vax and Big Pharma conspiracies. Transport Matters is an anti-Uber taxi lobby front. Sustainable Australia is anti-immigrant NIMBYism. The Australian Liberty Alliance is xenophobic and certainly does not offer liberty to Muslims or other people just a little too different for that white-bread comfort. The Democratic Labour Party is less labour and more very conservative Catholicism. The Liberal Democrats promote vacuous right-libertarian garbage.

At least some are more honest. The Shooters’ very name should clue you into the fact they would dismantle the bipartisan success story that is Australia’s gun control policies. The Australian Country Party is rather obviously a party of rural conservatives. Vote 1 Local Jobs and you get protectionism.

If I were to give out prizes:

Worst on field: Australian Liberty Alliance

Most deceptive name: Transport Matters

Mark Latham Award for Shit Politics: Aussie Battler Party, for changing their platform three times in a week! Not even Latho could contort that quickly.

Prior review: 2016

What I said before: “In case you haven’t heard enough weird shit about Big Pharma from cranks in YouTube comments or your grumpy uncle sharing too many shitty memes on Facebook, here’s a party to peddle it to you.”

What I think this year:

Health Australia have made some modest gestures to suggest that they are not anti-vax, but they are unconvincing. The party policy is shot through with Big Pharma conspiracies and explicitly runs with the anti-fluoride crowd. There is plenty of language in their policy statements that avoids any direct anti-vax pronouncement while making all the appropriate dogwhistles to the reckless and gullible people who would unwind the profound gains in public health that we have enjoyed through mass vaccination this past century. Fellow election blogger Cate Speaks has again done a comprehensive and withering takedown of how thoroughly misguided this party is, and I cannot but concur with her assessment. I do not engage with those who peddle anti-vax nonsense and I suggest that the only appropriate engagement with this party, no matter how pleasant and shiny their veneer may be, is to give them a very poor preference.

Prior reviews: none; this is a new party.

The Aussie Battler Party is a disreputable group that does not deserve your support. I want to emphasise that I do not make that statement only to those who share my politics, but to everyone. Fellow election blogger Cate Speaks reviewed them on the basis of their website content on 12 November. By the time I tweeted about them on 15 November (based on a read of their website the previous evening), the content had changed. It is now different again. In the space of a week, this party has had three different policy platforms and at the time of writing it has provided no explanation for the changes. The last post on their Facebook page is dated 12 November.

The original Aussie Battler platform included policies to house the homeless in shipping containers and to give kids a free mouthguard annually. By the time I tweeted about them, they had morphed into rabble-rousing far-right frothers with extremely punitive policies on crime and immigration, including a threat to return the families of migrants who committed a violent crime. To underscore how breathtakingly idiotic that policy is, an abusive husband and father could rather easily use it to intimidate his family into silence: “if you tell the cops that I beat your mum and touch your sister, we are all going back, including you, so zip it!” These policies got a suitably unflattering write-up in the Age.

Yesterday, 17 November, Cate drew attention to another change. The Aussie Battlers now have a pretty vague centrist platform that does not commit to much of anything. She is quite right to condemn this as a bait-and-switch. I would go further: it is duplicity born of rank incompetence. This is not the behaviour of a political party that deserves a shred of support even from those who might have endorsed any of the policies they have promoted at some juncture in the past week. I will accordingly give the Battlers my second-last preference, ahead only of the worst party in contention, the subject of a forthcoming review, the Australian Liberty Alliance.

By the way, notes on two candidates:

The lead candidate in Northern Metropolitan is Walter Mikac, whose wife and two daughters were murdered in the Port Arthur massacre, and who subsequently founded the Alannah and Madeline Foundation for children who are victims of violent crime. If you personally support Mikac and are a voter in Northern Metro, I urge you to preference him separately and higher than the other member of his party. I, however, question his association with the Aussie Battler Party, especially as he does not appear to have made any statement on the changing policy platform or the fact that their preferences tend to favour pro-gun parties despite his advocacy for gun control.

The lead candidate in Eastern Victoria is Vern Hughes, a serial candidate who seems to stand for a different party at each election. He started out on the far left and has since worked his way through a whole bunch of other minor groupings. It is no longer clear what on earth he stands for other than trying to gain office through whatever party will have him.