Saturday’s Queensland
by-elections showed again the effect of optional preferential voting. In
Chatsworth, for example, the Greens and One Nation had a little over nine per
cent of the vote between them, but not much more than half of that flowed on
to the major parties: 44% of the preferences just exhausted. In Redcliffe,
with a bigger field, it was 56%. Each year, it seems, more and more voters
take the option of “just voting 1” and not allocating
preferences.

Because the Greens are by far the largest component
of the minor party vote, this trend works against Labor. If they have to
allocate preferences, Greens voters generally give them to the ALP (even if
their how-to-vote cards make no recommendation), but many seize the option
of ignoring both major parties when it is available. If Queensland
still had compulsory preferences, Labor would have put up a better showing
in both seats, although not enough to win either of them.

The
fact that compulsory preferential voting now counts in Labor’s favour has led
to some speculation that the Howard government will consider abolishing it at
federal level. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters is still
working on its report on the conduct of last year’s federal election,
and a number of submissions have canvassed the introduction of
optional preferences, as in Queensland and New South Wales.

But from the Coalition’s point of view, there is one insuperable problem with
optional preferential voting: it puts a loaded gun in the hands of a
recalcitrant Coalition party. Without it, three-cornered contests are a
nuisance but not a major problem. With it, they can be dynamite, and the
threat of bringing them on allows the less scrupulous Coalition partner –
usually (let’s face it) the National Party – to hold the other to
ransom.

John Howard has enough trouble with the Nationals as it
is; he is not likely to be attracted to moves that would increase their
bargaining power.