Senate Voting Reform: How Above-the-Line Preferences Changed and Who Benefited

The Rules Changed. Ask Yourself Why.

In March 2016, the Australian Parliament passed the most significant Senate voting reforms in three decades. The changes were sold to the public as a crackdown on the notorious "preference whispering" system - a shadowy world of backroom deals where micro-parties could funnel votes between each other and land a senator on less than 1% of the primary vote.

The problem was real. In the 2013 Victorian Senate count, Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party won a Senate seat with just 0.51% of the primary vote, carried there by a labyrinthine preference chain negotiated by Glenn Druery, the self-styled "preference whisperer." The public were rightly frustrated.

But the cure, as critics warned at the time, came with its own serious side effects - and those side effects were suspiciously convenient for the parties doing the curing.

What Actually Changed

Before 2016, voters choosing to vote above the line on a Senate ballot paper were handing their entire preference flow to their chosen party's registered Group Voting Ticket. You ticked one box and the party machine decided every subsequent preference on your behalf - often through preference deals you never knew existed.

The reforms, passed with support from the Coalition, the Greens, and Nick Xenophon's team, changed the system to:

• Above the line: Voters now number at least 1 through 6 among party boxes
• Below the line: Voters number at least 1 through 12 among individual candidates
• Group Voting Tickets were abolished entirely
• Savings provisions allow ballots with fewer than six above-the-line preferences to still be counted

On paper, this gives voters more control. And to some extent, it does. But the consequences for who actually wins Senate seats have been dramatic.

Who Got Hurt - and Who Got Helped

The 2016 federal election, the first under the new rules, demonstrated the impact immediately. The crossbench - once a chaotic but diverse collection of micro-party senators - was significantly reduced. Many minor parties that had previously benefited from preference harvesting were wiped out.

But here's the part the major parties don't advertise: the primary beneficiaries of the new system were the major parties and the Greens - the exact parties who voted to pass the changes.

The crossbench nearly halved in size within two election cycles. The chamber became, in practical terms, easier for major parties to manage.

The "Donkey Vote" Problem and Preference Exhaustion

One of the most significant and underdiscussed consequences of the new system is preference exhaustion - where a voter's ballot runs out of valid preferences before all Senate seats are filled.

In the 2016 election, the Australian Electoral Commission reported that in some states, more than 20% of above-the-line votes exhausted before contributing to the final count. This means a substantial number of Australians cast a Senate vote that ultimately didn't help elect anyone.

Critics including psephologist Antony Green - who actually supported the reforms - acknowledged this tradeoff. Voters who previously had 100% of their preference value distributed now risk losing their vote's influence entirely if they don't number enough boxes.

For minor party and independent voters, this is a particularly bitter pill. People who deliberately vote outside the major parties are statistically more likely to have their votes exhaust.

Why Did This Policy Persist Against Opposition?

Small parties opposed the changes loudly. The Nick Xenophon Team, despite voting for the bill, later expressed reservations. The Palmer United Party, Family First, and a coalition of micro-parties warned the changes were self-serving. One joint submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters described the rushed timeline - the bill passed with less than two weeks of parliamentary debate - as a deliberate strategy to prevent proper scrutiny.

So why did it pass? Because the three parties with the numbers to pass it - the Coalition, Labor, and the Greens - all stood to gain from a simpler Senate where their vote shares translated more efficiently into seats. This is one of the clearest examples of incumbents writing the rules of the game in their own favour.

What Would Voters Actually Choose?

Polling on Senate voting reform has been limited, but the underlying question is telling: when Australians are asked whether politicians should be able to design the electoral rules that govern their own election, the answer is an overwhelming no.

This is precisely the problem that direct democracy is designed to solve. When the people who benefit from a policy change are also the people who vote to implement it, the public interest gets lost.

Under a genuine participatory democracy model:

• Electoral reform proposals would be put directly to voters, not decided by the parties most affected
• The tradeoffs - preference exhaustion, reduced crossbench diversity, barriers to entry for new parties - would be honestly presented and debated
• Australians would decide for themselves whether "cleaning up" preference deals was worth concentrating power back in the hands of the major parties

It's worth asking: if 18 million enrolled Australian voters had been given a direct say on these Senate changes in 2016, would they have designed the same system that three incumbent parties designed for themselves in a fortnight?

Most Australians would likely say no.

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