SPEAKING at a country newspaper conference in Adelaide last month, the former Member for Blair in Queensland, Cameron Thompson, highlighted a unique aspect of the Australian electoral system that we as voters would do well to remember.
Although many people find it annoying, frustrating and even hard to understand at times, the preferential voting system used for Australian federal elections offers the opportunity to not only select the person we want to win, by putting them first but also the person we don’t want to win, by putting them last.
While you may not be successful in having your “first preference” for the local seat of Monash elected to office, one thing is for certain, the person you put last on your ballot paper will never get access to your vote in a preferential count.
And in this election, just as it was for Mr Cameron when he won the new seat of Blair for the first time in 1998, against a concerted challenge from Pauline Hanson, Labor and the Nationals; the count here in Monash looks like going deep into preferences.
In fact, with credible challenges by two well-known independents, Russell Broadbent and Deb Leonard, the candidate you put second last could be just as important as who you give your number 1 vote to when early voting centres open on Tuesday, April 22.
So, who is going to win it? That’s up to the voters but polling suggests that any one of four candidates could win it here; the Liberals’ Mary Aldred, Labor’s Tully Fletcher, independent Deb Leonard or former Liberal now independent Russell Broadbent.
And the preferences of Greens’ voters and the other small party and independent candidates will be important.
You’d expect both the ALP candidate and the Liberals to attract 25 per cent of the first preference vote each and it will be up to either Deb Leonard or Russell Broadbent to gather enough of the preferences through the count to get past one of them if they want to win the day.
But you can’t have a say unless you’re enrolled to vote and the voting rolls close at 8pm next Monday, April 7.
