Would Scrapping Group Ticket Voting In Victoria Help One Nation?

On this website I have frequently covered Victoria's ongoing failure to repeal the use of Group Ticket Voting in state Legislative Council elections.  Victoria is now the last state that still has this system, which has been scrapped everywhere else after being gamed by preference-harvesting.  In the current cycle the Electoral Matters committee in an outstanding report recommended the scrapping of Group Ticket Voting way back in July 2024, and the government has still not responded officially to that recommendation.  The clock is ticking in terms of time for the Victorian Electoral Commission to implement the changes required to move to a different system, and the Commission has said the decision must be made by August.  After recent issues involving service delivery by state electoral commissions I suggest the sooner the better.

Last week there was reporting by the Guardian this week that one Labor MP had said current Premier Jacinta Allan "had appeared reluctant to [scrap GTV] as it would benefit One Nation."  Separately I understand that the view that scrapping GTV would benefit One Nation is also espoused by some Labor lower house MPs.  Irrespective of who actually holds that view, this article is to explore this claim.  

The Guardian's article does not say why anyone holding this concern might hold it, and in the absence of any actual claimed mechanism it is not that easy to counter.  However there are at least three well known myths about how Group Ticket Voting is supposedly bad for One Nation in the modern age.  Here they are and here is why they are wrong.

1. The Howard era ringfence

In the first heyday of One Nation, Group Ticket Voting in the Senate was famously bad for the party.  What would happen is that the major parties, Democrats and Greens would put One Nation last and this would more or less starve the party of preferences.  In 1998 One Nation was overtaken in two states where they were leading in the race for the final seat as a result of the major parties preferencing each other above them.  In 2001 Pauline Hanson lost in Queensland where she had a large lead over the Democrats but the strong flow of group ticket preferences between left parties saw them easily overtake her.  Basically unless One Nation polled a quota in its own right in those days it couldn't win seats under GTV.

However, this hasn't been the case for a long time.  One reason for this is that there are these days more minor right wing parties that will give One Nation group ticket preferences on principle.  Another is that over time the Coalition parties stopped putting One Nation last.  The party won three seats in the Western Australian 2017 election under GTV (two of those from well short of quota and one of those from way behind the Liberals) and also won off 3.72% of the vote in Northern Victoria in 2022, overtaking four parties with higher quota totals (more on that below).  Also, in some of the classic cases where One Nation were overtaken, it may well have happened had voters chosen their own preferences anyway.  

2. The impact of exhaust

This argument was seen in some circles (not particularly federal Labor, who tended instead to wrongly claim that One Nation wouldn't win seats at all in the new system) in the leadup to 2016 Senate reform.  The claim was that scrapping group tickets would advantage One Nation because One Nation candidates who polled modest primary votes but were struggling on preferences would benefit from some votes going to exhaust and would hang on in situations where other candidates might have caught them had voters given full preferences.  

This argument has been completely discredited.  It has repeatedly turned out (Malcolm Roberts passing numerous candidates in Queensland Senate 2016, One Nation winning two seats from behind in 2025, One Nation nearly beating Nick McKim in Tasmania Senate 2016 etc) that One Nation do not crawl on voter-directed preferences in the manner claimed.  Instead they tend to gain on other parties, though not as quickly as they would if excluded minor right wing parties sent Group Ticket preferences their way.

3. Glenn Druery's spin

Glenn Druery frequently claims that One Nation do badly under Group Ticket Voting because he can't stand them and so he makes them do badly.  Druery has an obvious financial interest in the survival of Group Ticket Voting and yet his remarks are often reported by media without any independent assessment of them, and then they feed into political bubble talk and may be believed by politicians.  In fact what Druery says on this subject is misleading at best.

In the latest example, Druery has said "I am happy to say I will use all my expertise, my contacts, my experience, to do my best to stop any racists, cookers or crazies from getting into the Victorian parliament," However, at the 2022 election, most of the nine parties with a reported connection to Druery (not including the two who ratted on him) generally preferenced One Nation ahead of Labor, Liberal and Green candidates.  Group Ticket preferences of seven of the nine parties actually reached Rikki-Lee Tyrell in Northern Victoria, and these preferences combined caused Tyrell to win.  

Druery's claim to reliably obstruct "racists, cookers or crazies" is also not true.  Groups favoured by his networked preference deals in various state and federal elections have included no shortage of anti-vaxxers, pro-gun campaigners, xenophobic "conservatives" and others who would be classed in the racist/cooker/crazy spectrum by those who tend to use such labels.  Not One Nation as such, but between them candidates with every view One Nation has ever held and then some have been on board.  Indeed while Druery might claim he could use his influence to wreck One Nation , it clearly didn't stop Shooters Fishers and Farmers and Labour DLP from sending their preferences One Nation's way in Northern Victoria (these two being the most crucial as even had the other seven all put Labor above One Nation, Tyrell would still have won).  The fact that his alliances include parties that Druery can't or won't stop from preferencing One Nation because of who they are and who votes for them tells us everything we need to know here.

What could really happen?

Current Victorian polling suggests a reasonably close race in the lower house (especially given how favourable the 2PP pendulum from 2022 is for Labor, meaning they could potentially lose 49-51 or perhaps even 48-52 and still cling to office) but it is a different story upstairs no matter what the system.  The relative closeness of the lower house race is because the conservative primary vote is split close to evenly between the Coalition and One Nation and the preference flows between them are relatively weak compared to those from the Greens to Labor.  This means a large chunk of the right-wing primary vote will land with Labor as preferences.

In the upper house however more of the primary vote for the Coalition and One Nation would be likely to be locked up in quotas of winning candidates, and less would be distributed as preferences.  Whatever the system on current primaries there is a real prospect at present of a combined Coalition and One Nation majority or blocking majority (20/40).  Perhaps this will last, perhaps not.

The Guardian report says that Druery says that without GTVs, based on current polling One Nation could win 13-16 of the 40 seats.  On current polls I don't think they would get above the range 11-13, and also they would clearly win most of those (potentially more!) under Group Ticket Voting anyway.  Their average support level is about 1.5 quotas per region (25%).  Their support tends to distribute quite unevenly around states when they do well and I would expect them to land below 1.3 quotas in at least three regions, at which point winning a second seat without Group Tickets is extremely difficult.  To win three seats in a region without Group Tickets would require a vote in at very least the high 30s (probably 40s) and the SA election provides no reason to believe that could be sustained across a whole region. 

One scenario to watch out for if Victoria keeps group tickets is this.  If the combined vote of the Coalition, One Nation and supportive right micros reaches 50% in a region, and the Coalition and One Nation in effect cross-preference each other, then the Coalition and One Nation would win three seats in the region.  At the moment this is the median statewide outcome in polling, especially noting that in South Australia, One Nation did better in the upper house than the lower.  There could be cases where Group Ticket Voting helps the right by locking in a third seat in regions where preferences would otherwise exhaust or leak to Labor.

At this stage we don't know if the Coalition would send GTV preferences to One Nation, but it has done so consistently ahead of Labor given the opportunity in recent elections.  The federal Coalition even recommended Senate preferences to One Nation in 2025 where it could easily have avoided recommending either way.  If you are involved in a contest for winning government and wanting to be able to govern effectively, why would you throw seats to the opposition major party?  I suspect if GTV is retained the Coalition will put One Nation above Labor even if it is well down the list.

In general Group Ticket Voting disadvantages any party with a large vote share (be it Labor, Coalition, Greens or One Nation) simply because preference harvesting can cause losses to micro-parties that don't get as many votes.  But I don't think One Nation are especially vulnerable to this in the way that the Greens were in 2018.  One Nation are likely to have a wide range of remainders over quota in different seats.  In a GTV context this makes them worth doing deals with (in the way the Greens are generally not) and means they can win off low portions of an extra quota.  They might on the other hand poll below a quota in, say, Southern Metropolitan, and be at risk under GTV of losing to a preference spiral, but I also think that One Nation will - if they do well - have sucked so much vote share out of the right wing side of the micro-party lineup that it will be harder for such spirals to work on the right anyway.  Preference spirals might be more of a risk for Labor who could find themselves sitting on one point something quotas in a brace of regions and at risk of being jumped by Legalise Cannabis or others.

Anyway if anyone at all in Labor does have a concern about GTV favouring One Nation this is a discussion that should be had in the open where the reasons for the concern can be stated fully and analysed.  Barring that it just sounds like another excuse to kick the can down the road.

The wrong question

Finally while it is probably futile to say it I will say that whether abolishing Group Ticket Voting would favour One Nation is not the right question anyway.  If someone's argument for keeping Group Ticket Voting is that it might help some random with no real voter support beat One Nation to a seat that One Nation deserves based on actual voter support, then the person making that argument is actually against democracy, and whatever they may think of themselves they are actually worse than One Nation.

The right questions are:

* what will give voters effective and easily exercised control at party level over their own preferences?

* what will keep MLCs accountable to voters rather than to preference harvesters and luck?

* what will ensure preferences go only where voters send them, and not to places that they do not know?

* what will stop squalid scandals about seat-buying and fake front party names from bringing Victorian elections into disrepute?

* what will protect the Victorian Legislative Council from having votes corrupted by MLCs being afraid to anger an unelected consultant?

* what will prevent a repeat of the circumstances in which the 2013 WA election was voided?

* what will stop the election of MPs with no real public support?

And the answer to all of these questions is getting rid of Group Ticket Voting.