Group Ticket Voting: Going, Going ... ? (Rolling Thread)

GTV repeal has passed Assembly.

Will go to Legislative Council in sittings of 11-13 August.

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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.  

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.  

Not-A-Poll Reset 2 of 2026: Allan Resigns

It's another success for voters in the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll as the outright majority favourite was indeed the next leader to depart, improving the record of Not-A-Poll to 8/15 including six of the last seven.

When I opened voting on 13 February there was a spirited initial battle between Jacinta Allan and Angus Taylor with the lead swapping a few times over several hours.  In following days Allan built a large lead with for some reason a lot of votes for her on 18 and 20 February.  Over time this grew into a majority.  Allan was a promising bet because her dire leadership ratings and her party's wobbly voting intention polling suggested there were two different ways she could go, and nobody else seemed especially likely to go before the Victorian election.

Allan formally resigned but was facing an active challenge that appeared very likely to succeed.  Had Allan resisted (assuming she had sufficient signatures) there would have been a member ballot in which she would have needed an overwhelming margin to defeat Ben Carroll.  

Allan is the first ever female Australian Premier to be in effect rolled by her party.  Five previous female Premiers lost elections, one resigned under corruption investigation and one resigned while not under active pressure.  At Territory level two female Chief Ministers lost elections (one after also being temporarily out of the job through a mid-term change of office), one lost a no-confidence vote, two resigned without threat of challenge (one to move to federal politics) and one resigned in disgrace.  One is still there and Lia Finocchiaro is the only federal leader of an Australian government.  For the first time since February 2015 there are no female Premiers.

Filling the very big shoes of Daniel Andrews, Allan took over at a time when there was remarkably little leadership satisfaction polling.  The only reading in her first year in office was a net -6 from Redbridge after only a few months in the role.  By the time personal ratings for Allan were seen again she had been in office for almost a year and a half, and every net rating for her from then on was net -28 or worse, culminating in a final net -46 from Newspoll (the worst for any state Premier in Newspoll's history).  

I think Allan to some degree bore the brunt of dissatisfactions with her ageing government that went beyone her own leadership, but she was also seen as lacking cut-through and unwilling to act on Victoria's longrunning union corruption crisis.

In preferred leader polling (which favours incumbents) Allan initially had satisfactory leads over John Pesutto but these soon shrunk to inadequate and Pesutto even managed a pyrrhic 1-point win in his final poll as leader.  Allan trailed Brad Battin in every poll during his leadership by an average 8.8% and Jess Wilson by an average of 16.1%.

There is very strong history that unpopular state Premiers either lose or are removed.  The writing has been on the wall re Victorian Labor's likely fate if Allan took them to an election for well over a year, obscured only by the possibility that the Coalition's national malaise would save them.  And yet it has taken til four months from the election for Labor to do something.  If they had a messiah they would surely have done so before.

Ben Carroll takes over seeking to buck a different pattern.  Governments under their third Premier or Chief Minister of a term tend to lose, frequently heavily.  The last exception was the CLP in the NT in 1987, and that was in the days when the NT was practically a one-party territory.  Four months generally isn't long enough for a new Premier to establish themselves, so it won't be easy for him.  Some particularly awkward lines from interviews from the last round of leadership speculation in June are also already appearing as the easiest of attack ads ever made.  

Will anyone else go before the election?  Angus Taylor has yet to lead the Coalition to any serious recovery in their polling and there remains talk that Andrew Hastie might be lurking awaiting a go, but maybe not that soon.  Jeremy Rockliff's minority government has had more lives than a cat but has recently lost two ministers to integrity and misleading-the-house matters and the Premier himself has been censured; how long will his heart be in it and what will the parliament do next time? If you meet people involved in ACT politics the subject of Andrew Barr moving on at some time is never far away, but perhaps the recent resignation of his Deputy would make him more inclined to continue to ensure the party can re-stabilise.  Anthony Albanese has ordinary ratings but doesn't seem likely to go anywhere soon, and nor do any of the others.   There was however some recent federal speculation about Peter Malinauskas, which he was quick to hose down.  Over to you, voters; I suspect I'll be back for another episode sooner rather than later!

Tasmania Redistribution: The Franklin Renaming Fiasco

In 1984 there was a proposal to rename the electorate that is now called Lyons (and was then called Wilmot) "Truganini".  For a little while this was being reported and discussed in papers, there was widespread opposition and the change was withdrawn.  Wilmot became Lyons instead.  I was twelve years old at the time and I remember this in broad outline.  But I wonder if the Augmented Electoral Commission's corporate memory goes back this far.  

Unfortunately we yet again have had a redistribution proposal for a Tasmanian electorate to have an Aboriginal name where that proposal has been supported out of pretty much nowhere and sparked significant opposition.  Last week's boundary announcement has seen 272 written submissions, most of them opposing the proposed replacement of the name Franklin with Tongerlongeter.

I want to contrast this with the process that led to the replacement of the name Denison with Clark.  By the time this change was made in the 2017 redistribution, there was a very well organised movement to change Denison to Clark.  This proposal had been active in the previous cycle and by the 2017 cycle its adherents included several prominent Tasmanians, judges, current and former politicians and there was even a petition supporting it.  It is true that the new name was not endorsed until the Augmented Electoral Commission stage but by that stage the proposal was so well known that anyone with anything to say had said it, and the change of name attracted only three further objections, I don't think any of them from Tasmanians.  People might have agreed or disagreed with the change but people knew why the change was being proposed, why Clark if there was a new name, and why there were objections to Denison.

Victoria 2026: The Election Where All Sorts Of Things Can Happen!

Victoria Aggregate Labor 26.0 Coalition 27.3 Green 12.8 One Nation 23.7 others 10.3
(polls are probably underestimating "others" vote)
2PP estimate 52.0 to Coalition vs ALP, shadow-2PP ALP 50.1 vs One Nation

Currently Coalition would be likely to govern in minority with One Nation support, with One Nation seat tally around the mid-teens

One Nation and Labor seat numbers are highly dependent on Coalition preferencing decisions

Both major parties are still capable of majority government with a modest swing from current primaries

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It's been forever - largely because of the amount of work I had on in the first half of the year - since the last time I looked at Victorian state polling in the leadup to this year's election in any depth but finally a good time to do so has arrived.  What I see, at the moment, is a picture with a lot of possibilities.  Arguments can be made on current polling that the Allan Labor Government, while currently behind, is not far from surviving.  Arguments can also be made that it is not far from losing the election so badly that it may not even be the second party.  For now this is a really difficult election to model - much harder than South Australia - but perhaps by polling day things will get a lot clearer.  This one is a rather mathsy modelling article that has been rated 3/5 on the Wonk Factor scale.  

Is Group Ticket Voting Really On The Way Out In Victoria?

The last week has brought the encouraging news via both The Age and The Herald-Sun that Victorian Labor is preparing legislation to scrap Group Ticket Voting at the last possible chance before this year's election. According to the reports, the legislation will be brought in in the sitting week starting July 28, and would presumably pass both houses quickly in order to meet the VEC's August deadline.  

Let's hope this is finally it for all this nonsense!  I understand the smaller parties may be reluctant to vote for a new system under which their chances of winning any seats are greatly reduced for now thanks to the Bracks Government's entrenchment blunders, so I'll cut them slack so long as they refrain from making false claims in defence of their position.  But if any major party stands in the way or does nothing this time then there is no excuse for them not caring about democracy.  

Tasmania Redistribution: Announcement Day Live Thread

Today could be a momentous day in the history of Tasmanian electoral boundaries!  Or it could be a nothing-ever-happens.  Around mid-morning today there will be a boundary announcement.  If the announcement is either the same as the draft boundaries or only slightly different then that's it and the new boundaries will be official for federal elections after 8 October.  It usually takes several months for them to then be adopted at state level via legislation, so an early state election before, say, mid-2027 would not necessarily be on the new boundaries.  

Alternatively the Augmented Electoral Commission could recommend substantively different boundaries, which would result in further rounds of consultation.  I have seen no variations from process that would suggest there is any intent to do this so far, but I am not sure if that should be taken as a sign that it's not happening.  

My previous articles are here:

Clark Must Expand But Where?

Draft Scraps The Franklin Divide

The Reaction

Once the announcement is up I will be posting details of what has been decided.  I'm not Ben Raue or William Bowe so please do not expect new margin calculations from this source.  However I will have summaries and comments about the decision, whatever it is.  

DemosAU: Could Hare-Clark Help One Nation Shift Tasmania To The Right?

DemosAU Liberal 28 Labor 21 One Nation 21 Greens 14 IND 12 SF+F 2 Others 2

Seat estimate if these vote shares were recorded in election "held now" Lib 10 ALP 9 ON 8 Grn 4 IND 4

After a previous state poll which did not explicitly include One Nation, DemosAU have now included them in their Tasmanian state polling for the first time.  The party, which has been advertised for state registration, debuts on 21%, similar to the 19% it recorded in the May EMRS.  But if we add the Liberal and One Nation votes in the EMRS poll, we get 44%.  In the DemosAU poll, it is 49.

This raises a thought experiment.  Yes, we know One Nation is trashing the Liberal vote everywhere and that they would win seats from the Liberals in Tasmania right now.  But what if, by taking votes from Labor and increasing the overall right vote, they ended up taking a fourth seat for the right in Bass (where the right nearly won four last time anyway), a third seat for the right in Franklin (ditto) and - though this I think would be the hardest part - a third seat for the right in Clark?  (That's on the current boundaries; if the proposed new boundaries are accepted I expect similar scenarios to emerge).  

It's a very long way to the next election, or is it?  After the historic censuring of Premier Rockliff, as prospective Senator Stansfield notes in the latest Poll Position pod, at some point there will be another scandal.  And at that point Labor will have painted themselves into an even tighter corner than before. If they don't want to force another election that nobody wants and that now also floods the House with One Nation, they can either form a government nobody understands, or look comically impotent as they pass meaningless censure motions or do nothing.  

Tas Liberal Senate Turnover As Duniam And Askew To Go

I had a piece in drafts almost ready to release for weeks about this, but perhaps just as well I didn't since further developments have rendered the draft somewhat out of date.   The last few weeks have seen major news in the leadup to the expected 2028 half-Senate election with the Tasmanian Liberal ticket to lose both its incumbents.  Incumbent since 2019 Wendy Askew was to retire at the end of the term but will now resign in coming weeks while incumbent since 2016 Jonno Duniam will quit by the end of this year.  Askew's successor will get something like 20 months and Duniam's successor about 17 in the Senate in the lead-up to the next election, assuming it is on schedule and not early. 

The preselection currently underway is for the next election but I would expect that the top two candidates will inherit the seats of Askew and Duniam unless there are twists regarding availability.  

While it may seem disastrous for the Liberals to be go in with no incumbents, in some ways it is an advantage to them compared to if just one incumbent departed now.  The party now has more flexibility in planning a 2028 ticket from scratch without, for instance, feeling pressured to choose a female candidate as the sole winner of the vacancy race as might have been the case had only Askew departed. 

Essential Report Microblogging Disclaimers

Frequently I post federal polling results and calculations to the microblogging sites Twitter (X) and Bluesky (links to my accounts in sidebar); here is an example I posted today:

The standard items I include are the primary votes for all parties, any two-party preferred or Labor vs One Nation "shadow 2PP" issued by the pollster, and what I call "my conversion".  "My conversion" is a 2PP figure I get by applying my own estimate of 2025 election preference flows to the primary votes released by the pollster, and is the figure I use in my Labor vs Coalition 2PP aggregate and my Labor vs One Nation 2PP estimate, both of which can be seen on the sidebar together with a link to the methods page for them.   I have been including primary vote changes recently because of interest in whether One Nation is going up or down, but probably won't keep doing so for long.  (In fact the one shown has a typo in it, the Greens are down 1 not up 1).