GTV repeal has passed Assembly unanimously.
Has passed second reading in Legislative Council and committee stage completed. On to third reading.
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There is more encouraging news on the Group Ticket Voting front today with the Allan Carroll Government finally amid the chaos introducing a Bill to scrap group ticket voting in the Victorian Legislative Council, called the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026. This rolling thread will follow what happens with this Bill during the week and what is in it. (A note that I am tracking the registration of deceptively named parties for the Victorian election in this prior post.)
What is known so far is that the Bill will "remove group voting tickets from Legislative Council elections and prescribe a new method for voting above the line, requiring electors to number at least five groups in order of preference. The bill will also make other consequential and miscellaneous amendments to clarify and improve the operation of the Electoral Act and the electoral system in Victoria."
This establishes that the Bill will support a semi-optional Senate-style preferential system (possibly the simple "five above or five below" option), presumably with savings provisions for voters who number fewer above the line boxes. This is the sensible choice as it encourages preference flows compared to a fully optional preferencing version as in states with lower quotas.
The Bill is scheduled for second reading in the Assembly tomorrow. Annoyingly in Victoria Bills are not publicly displayed on the website until they get to that stage and therefore I have still not seen the text of this Bill. A copy would be very handy if anyone has one! Both Houses sit for only three days this week so I expect the Bill to be passed by Thursday if it is to be passed this week. The Bill is expected to need Coalition support to pass the Legislative Council.
I will follow what happens with this Bill with updates through the week.
Tuesday 9:30 pm: The Bill is listed third under Government Business for second reading with the sitting starting at 9:30 am Wednesday.
Wednesday: The government just moved to change the completion time for the Bill in the Assembly to 7 pm tonight! This is presumably to allow time for it to go to the Council tomorrow as the previous arrangement would not have allowed time to do this this week. [UPDATE: A source has advised that this is at present the government's intention.]
11:26 The Bill is circulated. The second reading speech is incorporated into Hansard and the debate (none so far) is adjourned til later today (unclear when yet). The Bill is available here and I am reading it now.
11:45 The Bill provides for the scrapping of Group Ticket Voting with changes to be in place from this year's election, taking effect from the day after Royal Assent. As expected it puts in place the "5 above or 5 below" proposal. The same savings provision as in the Senate will exist to cover votes that have incomplete numbering or breaks in sequence above the line (eg just-1 ATL votes will be counted). However there is a minor difference with the Commonwealth regime. Because Victoria has registration of how to vote cards, a registered how to vote card must comply with the formality directions and therefore a just-1 how to vote card (as used by the Liberals on the ACT at one Senate election for instance) will be illegal. (A 1 vote and a direction to number at least 4 other boxes will be fine).
2:43 Debate has resumed and James Newbury (Liberal) is speaking. An advance warning in case anyone says it: the claim that Sack Dan Andrews sent preferences to Labor in 2022 is an urban myth. Newbury has stated that the Liberals support reform. He says they were provided with a briefing on Sunday. He is saying that the Liberals are taking the other amendments on Labor's word.
He has claimed that Labor under Andrews supported GTV because it enabled stacking the Council with minor left MPs. That's close to the truth but not quite; in fact what GTV did was send seats that should have gone to the Greens to random not-necessarily-left candidates, giving Labor both left and centre/right/random pathways to get bills through.
Newbury has stated that the Opposition will support the speeding of the Bill through the Assembly today and the Council tomorrow.
2:54 Mathew Hilikari is now correcting Newbury's comments about who GTV advantaged. For so long I did not think I'd ever hear such an excellent speech from a Labor MP on this issue.
3:01 Emma Kealy (who has had good form on this issue for some time) also now speaking for the Opposition. She has said Sack Dan Andrews preferences in Western Metro went to Labor. In fact they never reached Labor as they remained with Bernie Finn until he lost at the end of the count. However they could in theory have reached Labor ahead of the Greens and Liberals.
3:09 Dylan Wight now speaking.
3:17 Tim Read (Greens) now speaking for what he says is the 16th time he has spoken on the issue! He has correctly noted that GTVs have not yet been abolished from Melbourne City Council, so after tomorrow that could be the last place that they still exist. He talks about how he has done everything possible to fix this including a stunt with a $55,000 actual seat. Even gets a bit emotional at the end, might not be the only one.
3:25 Will Fowles (IND ex-ALP) now speaking. He also supports the Bill so it may well go through unopposed.
3:32 Debate adjourned but not sure there will be any more of it before the vote.
5:55 Hearing that there has now been a delay and the Bill won't be considered by the upper house til next sitting week in mid-August. Unconfirmed by government at this stage. Grrrr. I assume this is still within the VEC's requirements that the legislation be passed "by August" (they did not say when in August and would presumably start implementation upon knowing the repeal had passed the Assembly with bipartisan support) but would appreciate certainty on this point.
6:10 Read who has been fantastic on this issue is giving his valedictory speech including references to the $55,000 chair.
Thursday 30th: I'm not expecting further action today but will keep half an eye on it in case there is any.
9:36 The Bill has been introduced in the Legislative Council, with the first reading passed and the second reading moved, and debate adjourned "for one week". So no action today. Also it is confirmed that the Council will resume on 11 August as scheduled so debate will pick up in that week and I will resume that thread then if there is nothing to add in the meantime.
Sat 1 Aug: I've seen the Bill is first on the list of Bills for 11 August.
Monday 10 Aug: There's been some interest in what would actually happen if GTVs were removed without reforming the regions given the change in polling since the last election. I covered this to a degree in the specific case of One Nation but some broader comments may be useful.
Firstly, it won't be easy for parties other than Labor, Coalition, One Nation and the Greens to win seats but there are possibilities for it to happen somewhere. In their weaker regions the Greens might in theory get jumped by Legalise Cannabis or perhaps Victorian Socialists. It's also possible that there could be a region where nobody has much in the race for the last seat (as would have happened with Northern Metropolitan last time) especially if One Nation continues to come off the boil. But if these parties won more than one or two seats between them that would be surprising.
Secondly one concern about this proposal has been that the Greens have tended to do very well in simulations without GTV and with eight 5-member regions. But with the rise of One Nation, while the Greens are still protected from terribly unfair results like 2018, it's less likely that they still overperform. One Nation as an extra player taking seats makes it harder for the Greens to win seats off half a quota.
While it's not ideal that a party might poll 3-5% statewide and not win any upper house seats, it's still way better than keeping Group Ticket Voting. Voters will be able to freely, easily and effectively control their own preferences and MPs with no mandate will no longer get elected on tiny vote shares.
Note: I understand that Legalise Cannabis will introduce an amendment to defer the abolition of GTV (because they don't trust the major parties to do anything about the regions afterwards). They are also introducing an amendment to "make preference-for-profit illegal" (it will be interesting to see how that is worded.) These amendments will fail if the major parties agree to defeat them.
Tuesday 11 Aug: the Council sits from midday today, I am not sure how quickly matters might proceed. As a warmup here's an excellent article by Antony Green about the bizarre come-from-behind results under Group Ticket Voting, most of which would not have occurred in any other electoral system on earth.
12:15 The Council is suspended for an hour following a condolence motion.
1:00 Glenn Druery has been detected whinging and self-aggrandising about the impending repeal. His comments don't deserve lengthy attention on this thread but I am dealing with them on twitter and blusky.
1:20 Question time on now.
2:50 Still plowing through the other waffle segments.
3:00 Finally! We are on, Evan Mulholland (who has long been excellent on this issue) speaking. His speech includes a list of numerous undemocratic seat outcomes under GTV and points to Labor's poor form in dragging their heels on Group Ticket Voting for so long.
3:30 Rikki-Lee Tyrrell (One Nation) is up and confirms that One Nation will support scrapping GTV. Tyrrell spoke for only a few minutes (and spoke very sensibly about the basic reasons for supporting reform). Party leaders appear to get 30 minutes so the debate may go for some time.
3:32 Sonia Terpstra (ALP) now speaking. Also referring to how group ticket voting elected MPs who were elected on tiny vote shares through buying a seat via preference harvesting (but doesn't explain why Labor did nothing about this system for so long.) Refers to Tim Quilty and Catherine Cumming getting elected on tiny vote shares but actually Quilty got 3.78% and Cumming got 6.82% (she might have won anyway). Also incorrectly says Cumming was DLP, she was DHJP.
There has been some talk about the VEC information that it will supply about parties. It will be just information about who registered the party, it won't tell voters anything about the party's policy or preferencing recommendations (though those are visible through registered HTV cards).
3:47 David Davis (Liberal) up now. Poor old Rod Barton getting quite a pasting over his pandemic bill vote here.
4:10 I was out for a bit and following debate on my phone; Jeff Bourman (Shooters Fishers and Farmers) was next. He foreshadowed an amendment to delay the Bill taking effect (as Ettershank has also done outside the House) - in his amendment it would take effect a few days after the election. He made a couple of spurious claims. Firstly while the purpose of going from single seats to PR was about making the system more diverse, it was never the intent of Group Ticket Voting that parties be elected on very small vote shares. Rather, the intent of GTV was a simple high formality voting system for parliaments that would not enact superior optional-preferential or semi-OPV systems. Victoria should never have brought in GTV given the issues with harvesting that were already becoming apparent, but did. Secondly Bourman suggested all second-place-on-ticket major party candidates should be nervous because they depend on group tickets for their election. But that actually applies to party tickets (which remain) not to cross-party preferencing tickets which are being abolished.
Ryan Batchelor (Labor) now speaking in favour. There's a fair bit of partisan fighting about the Liberals in the past opposing electoral reform. I will say that the Coalition weren't particularly useful on GTV in the 2018-22 term either, with some individual exceptions. But for Labor to claim any credit beyond being dragged kicking and screaming after years of inaction on this one is rich.
4:15 Ann-Marie Hermans (Liberal) making the same point as I did in the previous sentence.
4:20 Georgie Purcell (AJP) will be voting against. Complaining about the bill being rushed through at the end of the term but does anyone really believe the crossbench would have been cooperative on other matters had it been sooner?
4:50 David Ettershank (Legalise Cannabis) talks about this benefiting the old parties (Labor, Liberal, National, Green). Orange elephant in the room says hi. Correctly points out that GTVs are still in use on Melbourne City Council.
Points to the high rate of ATL voting despite publicity about GTV scandals in 2022, however voting below the line remains an inefficient preferencing method for most voters - and also we STILL do not know how many voters tried to distribute preferences above the line only to have those preferences erased.
Ettershank refers to the Centre for Public Integrity which has released a statement calling for the Bill to be slowed down. The problem here is that Group Ticket Voting is a proven integrity risk to elections (WA 2013, Druery sting video etc) and allowing the election to proceed with GTV would present new integrity risks through misleading party names like Free Palestine. The core provisions in the Act are a debate that has gone on for many years.
5:15 David Limbrick (Libertarians) up now. Any real libertarian would believe voters should have the right to easily distribute their own preferences at party level.
5:22 Sarah Mansfield first speaker for Greens. Correctly points out among other good points that the argument that political diversity justifies keeping GTV is effectively an argument for sortition.
5:35 Rachel Payne (Legalise Cannabis) up now. Raises the issue that ON could currently easily win the balance of power and a dozen or so seats, but they are easily winning most of those on raw quotas under GTV anyway, so there's no evidence that keeping GTV would stop them getting the balance of power (or if it did, most likely that balance would just be shared with other minor righties like the SFF or DLP).
I do sympathise with the idea that a referendum to fix the Council's structure should have been held first. But suppose that referendum passed then GTV wasn't scrapped, that would have been a disaster. So the referendum would have to be in effect on both changes at once, and then if it failed because of some populist backlash then that would have been interpreted as a vote for keeping GTV. I do agree with Legalise Cannabis that there is a big risk that reforming the structure will go in the too hard basket next term. However I view scrapping GTV now as overwhelmingly important.
5:55 Second reading division on now.
6:00 I didn't get the exact vote (following via subtitles on phone - edit: understand it was 33-5) but it has obviously passed as we are in the committee stage. Comments from the major parties suggest all amendments will be defeated.
6:25 Various questions are being asked, generally by crossbenchers opposed to this change. Jeff Bourman (SFF) asking why the government did not run an awareness campaign on how voters could vote below the line to route around group ticket voting. Quite aside from the BTL voting provision being inefficient and the impossibility of educating nearly every voter who would need to hear the message just imagine the message that would be sent by an Electoral Commission awareness campaign that Group Ticket Voting is the electoral system but you need to learn to route around it because it is awful and corrupt, and here's how. Any sensible person would respond with "just get rid of it then".
6:30 Dinner break for one hour.
Time to look at the amendments. The Bourman amendments as well as changing the starting date seek to exempt a member or party from repayment of overpayments of per-vote entitlement if the party "loses a member of Parliament at a general election as a consequence of the removal of group voting tickets" or an independent loses their seat for the same reason. This is an extremely silly amendment because to establish that an MP lost their seat because GTV was removed one would have to establish that they would have won with GTV and to establish that one would have to know GTV preference flow allocations that would not have been made because GTV no longer exists. And whether voters would have voted the same way if GTV had been kept which is also unknowable.
The Legalise Cannabis amendments also defer the scrapping of GTV til just after the election. They insert a new clause to supposedly ban preference harvesting for profit under which it would be an offence to, for profit "provide advice or purport to advise, whether in writing or orally, a person or registered political party on how to allocate preferences for candidates or groups in an election." This would not work; Glenn Druery has already said he would continue to preference-harvest for free and what would probably happen if this amendment were passed is that preference harvesters would keep working on a notionally voluntary basis but find that winning minor parties were suddenly very keen to employ them as staffers. I am also reminded of a common problem with feral cat control that if you shoot the big feral cat in an area you get lots more little ones - it would lead to an abundance of amateur preference harvesters and party hacks doing DIY preference harvesting, often incompetently.
The Limbrick amendment seeks to require a review report on the impact of the changes after the election, a condition that already applies to the public funding changes in the Electoral Further Amendment Act 2026. It also requires that review process to consider the findings of the Electoral Matters review into the structure of the Council. This amendment would introduce electoral structure and result debates into a review process that is about a funding, disclosure and expenditure system. There is no reason to do this and it risks the panel that makes the report being too thinly stretched in relevant expertise and making mistakes. There is no reason why the impact of abandoning GTV and the structure debate cannot be dealt with through Electoral Matters.
7:50 David Limbrick is asking a lot of technical questions (some of them rather good) and Ingrid Stitt is answering for the government, in many cases on advice.
There has been mention of ticks and crosses. The regime is the same as the Senate - a tick or cross above the line is treated as a 1 and a vote above the line containing effectively a single 1 (even if it is a tick or cross) is formal.
8:00 Rachel Payne asking questions now.
Asks what evidence there is that voters understand the new system. Well the fact that they've used effectively the same system in four Senate elections already might be some of that.
Also asks about informal votes. Yes a 1 above the line is formal under savings provisions.
8:20 Limbrick asked some more questions, now on to Purcell. Some very repetitive questions between different speakers.
8:30 Limbrick talking about exhaust. I disagree strongly that votes not exhausting is a good thing about the current system, since the reason votes do not exhaust is that they are being sent places the voter has no idea about and would be vanishingly unlikely to have chosen. Exhaust rates were the subject of massive overhyping in the Senate reform process; exhaust has been far lower than opponents claimed and many of the vote values that do exhaust are partial values where votes have already helped elect someone.
8:45 I want to address the question just asked by Payne about the 2003 committee's comments on unintended consequences and piecemeal reform. The issue is that preference harvesting is itself an unintended consequence of what the 2003 committee negligently (given the already known issues with preference harvesting at the same time) supported.
8:48 We are through Clause 1 and on to Jeff Bourman's amendments.
8:56 Bourman's first two amendments were taken together and defeated with five votes in favour.
9:00 Ettershank amendment to ban preference harvesting for profit is up now and even Limbrick is against it. Mulholland (with a nice line about incarcerating non violent offenders) and Mansfield correctly note that the best solution to preference whispering is to get rid of group ticket voting. Only three votes in favour.
9:05 On to Bourman's third amendment (the one re refunding money) - as correctly noted by Stitt and Mansfield the amendment is unworkable for the VEC, as I've noted above. It should be also noted that members elected under GTV have sometimes ended up losing their seats even with greatly increased votes, as happened to the Shooters in Northern Victoria in 2018. This one also found only five supporters.
9:21 On to the third reading vote with all amendments defeated.
9:27 FINALLY! Legislation to repeal Group Ticket Voting has passed the Victorian Parliament.
I am now awaiting Royal Assent to confirm it is gone.
