Legislative Council 2023: Murchison

This is my guide for the May 6 elections for the Legislative Council seats of Murchison.  On Wednesday I released a survey of the Council's recent voting patterns.  Yesterday I released a guide for Rumney and today a guide for the fizzer in Launceston. There will be live coverage on the night of May 6th.  

The Legislative Council currently stands at four Liberal, four Labor and seven independents.  Three of the independents are conservative, three are well to the left of Labor and one (Ruth Forrest) has moved from the left to the centre in recent years.  While the Liberal Government therefore has a relatively easy time of it and wins the majority of contested votes, it still needs to convince someone from the left or centre to support it on major legislation. 

This particular guide can have a stronger than usual disclaimer that I will include my own opinions in these guides from time to time, and if anyone doesn't like that they are welcome to GYOB.

One More Nightmare: Group Tickets And The 2021 WA Upper House

Sorry to be so ranty about this, but I think that it has to be said.  The 2021 Western Australian Legislative Council "election" is a bad joke.  Voting systems should give voters real choices about how they vote and should only reward parties with serious voter support.  WA politicians have failed and disrespected the voters by doing nothing at all to deliver this.  Instead voters are still coerced, eight years after the 2013 Senate farce, into propping up another dishonest Group Ticket grift party fest.  If you can do it without making a mistake, vote below the line.

As noted four years ago (sigh) Western Australia's upper house has the worst voting system in the country.  The chamber is grossly malapportioned, with votes in two bush regions being worth nearly four times more than votes in Perth suburbs.  

Voters can vote by putting a one above the line, in which case their vote may be sent goodness knows where as a result of backroom preference deals and deliberate preference harvesting.  They cannot give preferences between parties as they can in the Senate.  The only other way in which it is permitted to vote formally is to vote below the line.  If you do this you must number every box (about 54 on average) and if you leave any box blank or skip or repeat any number in the sequence, your vote is informal.