Twice this year, I’ve put together upper house voting guides, looking through the at-times weird and wacky policy platforms of some of the minor parties out there.
Digging through the policies does put the fear of God into you, praying some people don’t get anywhere near positions of power with their promises of banning anyone from thinking about an abortion or everyone having their own nuclear reactor in the backyard, or whatever other fringe beliefs they have.
Yet, come election time, I always find myself hoping for a well-populated crossbench.
Once again, we have got one — with 11 crossbench Legislative Council members (including two in Northern Victoria) ensuring Labor needs at least six votes to pass any legislation.
Obviously, there are some parties I hope never get on to said crossbench, but other people would feel the same way about the parties I might vote for.
That’s democracy, baby, and nearly every time I will take a crossbench full of unruly, strange views over one party having total control of both houses of parliament.
We’ve seen the new Federal Government have to consult with the Greens and independents in the Senate.
During the pandemic, the Andrews Government needed to consider the Legislative Council crossbench before it could rush through legislation.
In both instances, the upper house is doing its job — it is a house of review, and when one party controls both houses there’s not a lot of reviewing being done.
Victoria’s upper house voting is a mess, with preferences flowing all over the place, meaning millions of votes are up for grabs for people with the cash to employ so-called ‘preference whisperers’ to net them seats they have no right to win based on how many votes they receive.
We see this over and over, as minor party members of the upper house serve one term before shuffling back out like Abraham Simpson at a burlesque house.
To me, this seems like voters know they don’t want major parties representing them, but are unable to control which minor parties scrape in.
Reform of the upper house is sorely needed, and I’m never going to pretend to know how that reform should go.
However, if the reform is left solely in the hands of the major parties, the crossbench may be wiped out.
And that’s no good for democracy at all.