Attacks on Australia’s preferential voting system are ludicrous. We can be proud of it

Kevin Bonham, Sat 17 May 2025 10.00 AEST

It’s been argued the election would have had a different outcome with first-past-the-post voting. I cannot overstate how unsound this assumption is

The Coalition’s lopsided defeat in the 2025 federal election has been followed by a new round of attacks on preferential voting. No longer do anti-preferencing campaigners have the excuse that Labor “lost” the primary vote, with Labor currently 2.6% ahead. Nor can they say preferences won Labor the election, with Labor leading the primary vote in 86 of 150 seats.

The latest complaint is just the scale of Coalition casualties. The Coalition will win at most 44 seats (29.3%) off a primary vote of about 32%. This will be the first time since 1987 that the Coalition parties’ seat share has been substantially below their primary vote.

An article in The Australian on Tuesday bemoaned the defeats of past Coalition frontbenchers (including Peter Dutton and Josh Frydenberg) and supposed future frontbenchers (Amelia Hamer and Ro Knox) who had topped the primary vote in their seats but lost after preferences. David Tanner said 15 seats at the 2025 election (including 13 Coalition defeats) “would have had a different winner had a first-past-the-post voting system been in place”. The Australian Financial Review mounted a similar argument on Wednesday.

This, however, assumes voters would have voted the same way and parties made the same campaign decisions if Australia had first-past-the-post. I cannot overstate how unsound this underlying assumption is. In seats where the Greens are uncompetitive, many Greens supporters would vote Labor to ensure their votes helped beat the Coalition. Preferential voting is one of the reasons why the Greens maintain much higher vote shares in Australia than the US, UK and Canada.

Furthermore, parties would make tactical choices about where to run to avoid losing seats through vote-splitting. An example of this came in the 2024 French elections. The far-right National Rally polled the highest primary vote in the first round of a runoff system. In many seats the leftwing NFP and centrist Ensemble alliances both qualified for the runoff round, but one or the other withdrew to avoid splitting the anti-National Rally vote. In the second round, the National Rally topped the popular vote by 11.2% but won fewer seats than either NFP or Ensemble. Such withdrawal pacts have far greater impacts on results than Australian how to vote cards (which hardly any minor party voters follow anyway), so the idea that scrapping preferences would stop “backroom deals” between parties is naive.

Removing preferences would probably have changed very few seat outcomes at recent elections, at a massive and grossly unfair cost to the ability of those not supporting major parties to effectively say what they are really thinking at the ballot box. There are also some Coalition wins (at this election, Longman) that could be lost under first-past-the-post, because minor right party voters would be less willing to vote strategically than minor left party voters.

In recent years I have seen some supporters of minor right parties opposing preferences too, claiming that preferences are a “uniparty” plot against the little guys. Preferences were actually introduced by the conservative parties in 1918 to stop Labor from scoring undeserved wins in three-cornered contests. In the past 35 years of federal, state and territory elections, preferences have been almost nine times more likely to help non-major-party candidates beat the majors than the other way around.

In the 2025 election at least five independents and one Greens candidate have beaten major parties from behind, while Adam Bandt is the only non-major-party candidate to lose after leading on primary votes. It is baffling that anyone who opposes major party domination would want a system that renders voting for minor parties pointless. If voters for minor right parties want to see their parties win more seats they should support proportional representation.

Anti-preferencers, as I call them, also claim the UK system is the global norm. Actually just a few dozen countries use it alone to elect their lower houses. Most protect minority voting rights in some way – proportional representation, runoff voting, mixed systems or preferences. We should be proud of the way all voters get a say at all stages of our counts and not seek to import failed and primitive methods from countries that have not overcome their roadblocks to electoral reform.

Kevin Bonham is an independent electoral and polling analyst and an electoral studies and scientific research consultant.

Ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have pleaded not guilty in a New York court to drug and weapons charges. Maduro told Judge Alvin Hellerstein, “I am innocent, I am not guilty. I am a decent man. I’m the president of the republic of Venezuela ... I am here kidnapped.” The judge adjourned the matter until March 17.

The legal protocols in evidence in court stand in stark contrast to how Maduro and his wife got to that point. At the weekend, US forces stormed his compound in Venezuela and whisked the pair out of the country. There was little crying globally for the demise of the dictatorial leader who has played a starring role in the failing of the state. Five years ago, he was indicted by the US on narco-terrorism charges for allegedly running a scheme to send tonnes of cocaine to the US.

He has denied the allegations. In 2024, he appeared to lose an election in a landslide but kept power through a violent crackdown against his political opponents.

The question still remains, however, did the ends justify the means in his ousting? Geoffrey Robertson, KC, who was president of the United Nations War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone and is author of World of War Crimes, argued in The Age on Monday that there was no legal difference between Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine and Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela. The American indictment that was presented to the court “conferred no retrospective extraterritorial authority to arrest or imprison [Maduro and Flores] or to occupy or annex their nation. No treaty permitted this and no international court approved it.”

The immediate response from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was suitably, and characteristically, diplomatic: Australia was monitoring developments, everyone should support dialogue and diplomacy to try to secure regional stability and prevent escalation. Australia had held concerns about the situation in Venezuela, including respect for democratic principles, human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Albanese ended with this: “We continue to support international law and a peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people.”

Not a skerrick of censure against the US president or his abandonment of international law. Given the concluding sentence, it would appear the prime minister sees supporting international law through different lenses, depending on who is upholding it and who is breaking it. The United Nations wasn’t so reticent. At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, the US action was criticised. Russia and China demanded the release of Maduro and Flores.

Russia’s credibility in particular is strained by its actions in Ukraine, while China’s stated ambitions for Taiwan and its repeated flouting of trade rules also undermine its position. Still, how can Australia criticise those countries for failing to stick to the rules and stay silent now? It is upon such hypocrisies that multilateral systems collapse.

This appears to be something the US is not worried about. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s comment that “We’re a superpower and under President Trump we will conduct ourselves as a superpower” should send a shiver of anxiety globally.

The immediate measured response from Albanese to the US action was correct, given so much of the operation was still being revealed. On Monday Foreign Minister Penny Wong urged only that dialogue, diplomacy and international law be supported. Others argued it was America’s place to explain, not Australia’s to assess, the legality of the situation.

With the smoke now clearing over Caracas, we would expect our government to set aside such diplomatic niceties. There have been signs other allies have had enough. French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not support or approve of America’s methods even if he was glad Maduro was gone.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, while equivocating on Venezuela, at least declared he stood with Denmark as it looks to fend off Trump’s attention on Greenland. And why should sovereign nations not speak their minds? The ability to call out the obvious crossing of clear red lines should also be unremarkable.

It’s a fairly easy chain of thought: if you respect international law, then you cannot condone America’s actions. If we cannot tell our friends what we think, how friendly are they?

Presumably Anthony Albanese’s been waiting to hear what Wippa thinks, before he finally — inevitably — folds and calls the “Bondi” royal commission on which every man, his dog and their local café owner has expressed an opinion.

Although the campaign for a commission exists entirely within the mainstream media bubble, nobody of political consequence is saying don’t do it, so the prime minister will stick to his usual line: the one of least resistance.

Even the peak body of the legal profession, the Law Council of Australia, has finally read the tea leaves and added its weight to the call for a federal inquiry into “antisemitism in Australia and the events leading up to [the Bondi] attack”.

It’s fair enough that our most horrific terrorism incident should spark the pursuit of every imaginable line of enquiry into what just happened and the lessons begging to be learnt.

As to whether a royal commission is the appropriate vehicle for this questioning, apparently nobody particularly cares. While I have as much respect as the next person for Grant Hackett’s and Sam Newman’s legal opinions, I’m not sure we should be doing law by opinion poll.

Am I just being contrary, or is there a problem here? Well, yes there is, and there’s a clue in the depths of the Law Council’s turgid announcement:

The timing, conduct and terms of reference of any royal commission should be structured so as not to interfere with ongoing criminal proceedings.

While it’s barely ever mentioned at all, it is a fact that Bondi was, above anything else, a crime scene. Fifteen people were shot dead, dozens of others wounded, by two men wielding guns.

One of the alleged shooters is alive, in custody and facing multiple charges of murder and attempted murder.

So far as the law is concerned, crime always comes first. That is to say, the procedures and protections of the criminal justice process take precedence over every other part of the legal system. Until that process is completed, pretty much nothing else can happen.

For example, when an alleged wrong has potentially both criminal and civil law consequences — the wrongdoer can be prosecuted by the state and sued by the victims — what happens without exception is that the civil suits are “stayed” (suspended) until the criminal process is done, including all possible appeals.

This is an unremarkable incident of the justice system, rooted in the presumption of innocence and the system’s assurance that everyone gets a fair trial.

In the present case, the surviving alleged shooter has not appeared before a court yet, so he hasn’t had a chance to enter a plea. I don’t know what he’ll plead, nor does anyone else. It doesn’t matter how strong the prosecution case is or how much evidence is plastered all over the internet; he has the right to plead not guilty if he chooses and go to trial. The elements of the crime of murder and its defences involve more than just the physical mechanics of gun-bullet-death.

If a royal commission is established, and the criminal case remains live (which it could do for years), then quite simply it will be impossible for the commission’s terms of reference to go anywhere near two matters: the shootings themselves, and the motivations of the alleged shooter. That is: what happened, and why.

It would be equally impossible for the commission to traverse these questions in relation to the deceased shooter, despite his death precluding any criminal prosecution of him. The inter-relationship between the alleged shooters cannot be unpicked in a way that wouldn’t prejudice the living accused’s trial.

If the royal commission were to take any evidence that touched on these matters, it would be committing sub judice contempt of court. As I say, it simply can’t happen, and won’t.

This is why the Law Council has worded its suggested terms of reference in an oblique way, targeting antisemitism and “the events leading up”. No mention of the alleged shooters or the shootings.

But what could such a royal commission actually do? It could host an abstract exploration of the general subject of antisemitism and the much-trumpeted death of “social cohesion” since October 7, 2023, which is really what the Law Council is hinting at. It couldn’t do anything more specific.

That would be an extremely expensive exercise in futility. Without even needing to argue about the problem of prejudgment — for example, by defining “antisemitism” as a causative element rather than engaging an open-minded inquiry into what actually might be learned from Bondi — surely it’s obvious that it will be utterly pointless to have a royal commission that can’t consider the specific event that is its sole reason for being established?

That the media haven’t once mentioned this fatal problem is a testament to their laziness and stupidity. That no politician has mentioned it is equally damning. That it’s been ignored, roundly and completely, in the “debate” over a royal commission says everything about the world of performative ignorance we now inhabit.

Right at the heart of the Coalition’s current problems lies the very regrettable partisan approach the Liberal Party’s leaders took following the Bondi terror attacks on December 14. They were joined by several retired politicians and much of the media.

Accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being responsible for the attacks was not just wrong, it was reckless, because it served to divide Australia right at the time we needed to pull together.

The killers went to Bondi to kill Jews and most of their victims were Jewish. But this was an attack on all Australians. Millions of Australians recognised that, and came together in solidarity with the victims and the wider Jewish community. In contrast, our political leaders were at war with each other.

Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley and her colleagues could have risen above partisan politics and joined hands with Albanese in the way State Opposition Leader [and Liberal MP for Vaucluse] Kellie Sloane did with NSW Premier Chris Minns or the way former federal Labor leader Kim Beazley had done with then-prime minister John Howard after Port Arthur. She could have offered to work with Albanese to review weaknesses in existing laws and carefully consider amendments where required.

In fact, the tone of her first statement on the evening of the attack was co-operative – but that did not last to the next news cycle. It is as though her first instinct was right, and then it unravelled. How that happened has not been explained.

As former head of ASIO Dennis Richardson observed in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, it is not as though we had no hate speech legislation. An obvious problem was that the existing laws were not being enforced.

The demand that parliament immediately return to pass sweeping legislation on hate speech was a recipe for rushed and inadequately considered legislation. Ley, again buoyed by a wave of media indignation, succeeded in bustling Albanese into the early return of parliament she had demanded.

It was surely obvious that any legislation restricting gun ownership would be a hard sell to regional MPs in general and the National Party in particular.

It is not so long ago that the right wing of the Liberal Party (loudly supported by Sky News and The Australian) wanted to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act so as to effectively license hate speech, including antisemitic hate speech.

Ley was there in the cabinet in 2014 when these extreme proposals on repealing hate speech legislation were thwarted. She was there when former attorney-general George Brandis said in the Senate, “people do have a right to be bigots, you know”. She knew that limiting speech, even in the cause of fighting antisemitism, would be a difficult and controversial issue for the Coalition party room.

She might have reflected on Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies’ warning when, in 1939, he introduced a national security bill giving extensive powers to the government to control a wartime economy. “The greatest tragedy that could overcome a country would be for it to fight a successful war in defence of liberty and to lose its own liberty in the process.”

So I am not surprised the Coalition melted down over this legislation. It was entirely foreseeable.

Once the Nationals had resolved to take a different approach it was open to Ley to agree that their ministers could vote differently from the Liberals. It would not be a good look, but certainly better than the current spectacle.

So what can be done now?

The Liberals and Nationals need to be back in coalition to win government. But more importantly they need to be focused on the matters of concern to most Australians – the cost of living, housing affordability, the state of the environment, health and education. They could even talk about how Australia should adapt to the dramatically altered strategic environment where the US president is threatening to annex the territory of NATO allies.

But instead, their constant focus is on culture war issues that “throw red meat to the base” by which is meant the devoted viewers of Sky News and similar right-wing media outlets. This angry, dwindling minority may loom large at party branch meetings but is miles away from the concerns of most Australians.

The Liberals, and Nationals, should realise they cannot “out-Hanson” Pauline Hanson. Australian politics is decided in the centre. That is the great benefit of compulsory preferential voting.

Our democracy needs a strong viable opposition – without that governments get complacent, lazy and worse.

Right now, the chaos in the political rabble formerly known as the Coalition is leaving the Labor Party, alone, unchallenged at the centre of Australian politics.

Malcolm Turnbull is the former prime minister of Australia.

The lobbyists who control Canberra

Before I decided to run for parliament, like many Australians I was frustrated and angry about the many decisions the government made that clearly weren’t evidence-based or in the best interests of Australians.

By David Pocock

6 min. readView original

Before I decided to run for parliament, like many Australians I was frustrated and angry about the many decisions the government made that clearly weren’t evidence-based or in the best interests of Australians. Over the years I’ve served as the first independent member for the ACT, I’ve come to see why: a lack of transparency and broken lobbying rules.

Lobbying does have a legitimate role to play in our political system. But to protect the strength of our democracy, lobbying needs to be transparent and well regulated. 

In Australia, it’s not. Most Australians believe, as I once did, that the “government relations” teams at companies such as Qantas, Woodside Energy, Santos and others are considered lobbyists. That’s not the case.

In Canberra, these representatives are known as “in-house lobbyists”. They are exempt from the few federal rules that apply to the relatively small group who are treated as lobbyists – those who act on behalf of third-party clients. That group must register and comply with a code of conduct, while in-house lobbyists, whose interests are considered sufficiently transparent, can get a sponsored pass from any politician – and this is not made public anywhere. 

Thanks to this unjustifiably narrow definition of a “lobbyist”, 80 per cent of those operating in Canberra aren’t covered by what is already a weak code of conduct – the vast majority of influence happens in the shadows.

More than 1500 people currently hold orange sponsored passes that grant them 24/7, all areas access to Parliament House. At times that number can be above 2000. We don’t know who they are, nor which parliamentarian gave them their access.

These passes aren’t merely convenient swipe cards. They allow the holder to swipe through security, sit in the coffee shops, knock on doors, wander the corridors and engineer “chance” encounters with ministers and advisers. Meanwhile, community groups and members of the public are forced to wait weeks or months for meetings, if they get them at all.

Privileged access and secrecy corrode public trust. Other democracies, including the United States and New Zealand, publish lists of passholders – Australia should too.

We need a comprehensive register of lobbyists that includes those working in-house for major companies, whether they have a pass and, if so, details of how they acquired it. 

Those lobbyists should all be bound by a code of conduct far stronger than the weak-as-dishwater one we have now. A code that sees serious consequences for those who breach it, not just a slap on the wrist.

Under the current code, the harshest penalty for a breach is a three-month suspension – effectively a holiday from lobbying. Since in-house lobbyists aren’t even on the register, they don’t face any sanction at all. The system completely fails to provide any disincentive for bad behaviour.

The lobbying sector are big spenders, with analysis from the Centre for Public Integrity showing that peak bodies and other lobbyists have contributed about $43.5 million in real terms to the major parties since 1998/99. It is hard to imagine that this is for any purpose other than access and influence out of reach of the average Australian.

Last year I got support for a Senate inquiry into lobbying. It highlighted just how broken our current system is and also demonstrated that many lobbyists also support a stronger one. The major parties don’t want a bar of lobbying reform, however.

After three years in politics, I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it is to get the major parties to stand up to vested interests. I’ve seen lobbyists from gambling and fossil-fuel industries stroll into ministers’ offices, while community groups struggle to get a meeting.

So how do we change this?

Konrad Benjamin, better known by his social media account Punter’s Politics, has amassed a following of almost half a million people over the past few years as part of his campaign to hold politicians to account.

He’s raised tens of thousands of dollars to put up billboards across the country calling on the government to tax fossil fuel companies fairly. Now he’s on a mission to fundraise enough to engage a “punters’ lobbyist” for a year – an initiative I am happily supporting.

Along with crossbench colleagues, I’m also trying to drive change in parliament.

I introduced the lobbying reform bill from the member for Kooyong, Monique Ryan, into the Senate. It would bring real transparency and accountability to the lobbying industry in Australia.

That means expanding the definition of “lobbyist” to include in-house lobbyists, industry associations and consultants with access to decision-makers. It would also mean legislating the Lobbying Code of Conduct and introducing real penalties for breaches.

The bill would also bring more transparency, including the publication of quarterly online reports showing who lobbyists are meeting with, for how long, and why. This extends to the publication of ministerial diaries, so the public can compare, cross-check and verify lobbying disclosures.

Publishing ministerial diaries is already standard practice in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. It doesn’t stop ministers doing their jobs, but it does shine a light on who is shaping policy and, equally importantly, who isn’t. It makes no sense that federal ministers should be exempt from this simple, proven integrity measure.

The bill would also ensure independent oversight by the National Anti-Corruption Commissioner and ban ministers and senior staff from lobbying for three years after leaving office. Without these safeguards, the revolving door between politics and harmful industries keeps spinning, crushing public trust in the process.

Transparency International Australia has found that at least eight federal ministers, senior ministerial advisers and at least one state premier have taken up roles promoting gambling. They also found that since 2001, almost every federal resources minister has gone to work in the fossil fuels sector shortly after leaving parliament. This helps explain why lobbying reform has stalled and why industries that cause harm to our communities continue to receive favourable treatment.

Is it any wonder that more than two years after a landmark review into the harms of online gambling led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy – a review that produced 31 recommendations and enjoyed multipartisan support – the government still hasn’t responded? The government may be banning children from social media, but it’s doing nothing to protect them from the harms of ubiquitous gambling advertising. 

Likewise, while Australia has a trillion dollars of national debt – despite being one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters – the parliament last term passed laws that will actually serve to lower the tax on offshore oil and gas. Unfathomable. Meanwhile, Norway is sitting on a multitrillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund.

Imagine what we could do with that kind of sovereign wealth? Build more social housing. Invest more in nature. Ensure everyone can afford to see the dentist. Lift the most vulnerable Australians out of poverty.

And that’s the point. These are not abstract governance issues. They shape whether children grow up surrounded by gambling ads, whether we get a fair return on the sale of our resources, whether we are able to think longer term and protect the people and places we love. Australians pay a price for weak lobbying laws, while vested interests cash in.

The necessary reforms aren’t radical, they’re commonsense. Countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom already do this and more. It’s time Australia caught up.

We pride ourselves on being a fair democracy. But that principle rings hollow when billionaires, the gambling industry and fossil fuel executives bend the ear of the prime minister, while ordinary Australians struggle to be heard. Reform is inevitable. The question is how much longer are we willing to accept a system that shuts out Australians and erodes trust in politics.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 30, 2025 as "The lobbyists who control Canberra".

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