The One Nation party (which I am on the verge of restyling Wuss Nation after its sobbing about its poor supporters being traumatised by filling out ballot papers) has been attacking compulsory preferential voting in the leadup to the South Australian election.
Linked into this I came across a narrative from Pauline Hanson which I thought deserved detailed examination. Interviewed on Sky (and yet again, where else) Hanson told the tale of how in 1998 her party won eleven seats from scratch in the 1998 Queensland election and noted that it was optional preferential voting. Then she moved on to the 1998 federal election where although her party won over a million votes, all the other parties recommended preferences against One Nation and they didn't win any seats. Famously she lost Blair where the major parties cross-recommended against her.
She doesn't in this excerpt mention what became of those eleven Queensland seats. Every single one of those MPs quit the party or the parliament by the end of the 1998-2001 term, though One Nation did retain two of those seats and win a third with different candidates. But my interest here is, is there really any causal link between the current OPV/CPV debate and what happened in those two elections? Or are the explanations different? A warning that this article is very numbery and has been graded Wonk Factor 4/5.
