Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026

Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Second Reading
11 August 2026

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

I rise to make a contribution to the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026. The bill makes a range of administrative and campaign finance amendments to the Electoral Act 2002 and some consequential changes to the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Act 2026.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan Region):

On a point of order, Acting President, I note that there have been a number of rulings on political logos and branding for members of Parliament, and I note that the member’s water bottle has a political party logo on it. I just seek your clarification on whether that is allowed under the standing orders.

ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora):

I uphold the point of order. It might have been an oversight, but there certainly have been multiple rulings by our current President and by Mr Atkinson as well, so I think the item needs to be removed from view.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

I only have it here, Acting President, because as you may have noticed, I am masked up with the flu. So if Mr Mulholland is happy I continue to rehydrate, I am sure I can keep an off-camera angle.

ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora):

It is a matter of whether the Acting President is happy, and I am happy with that.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

Thank you, Acting President. Such small things that matters such as this can pivot upon.

These reforms have already been fully explained by other members, and Legalise Cannabis have no issues with those provisions. However, the amendments to the Electoral Act 2002 that seek to abolish group voting tickets without addressing the electoral reform of the regions are deeply concerning. As they stand, these amendments will render it virtually impossible for minor parties, independents and new entrants, the fastest growing participants in the electoral landscape, to be elected to the Legislative Council. Instead the reforms will effectively lock in the old parties – the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Greens – parties whose primary votes have at best plateaued or more often have in fact been in decline.

Before proceeding further I want to make it clear that Legalise Cannabis indicated our support for the removal of group voting tickets during the 2022 election campaign, and we have held consistent to that position ever since and that remains our position now. So it is not about removing GVTs but how it is done and what they are replaced with. The provisions in this bill are both inadequate and undemocratic.

In the 2022 election roughly 28 per cent of voters voted for a candidate not belonging to the four old parties. Labor polled at 33 per cent, the coalition at 29, and then the next largest group was that 28 per cent who voted for other than the big four – way ahead of the Greens on 10 per cent – and that figure is growing exponentially. In 2014 it was 19 per cent; by 2018 it was 22 per cent. It is the strongest signal of the electorate’s growing mistrust in the old parties, and it is happening both here in Victoria and nationally.

So obviously this has been recognised as a threat by those old parties, and what do they do? They collude in a deal to consolidate their power and to eliminate those independent and diverse voices from the Parliament – the very voices that Ms Purcell was talking about in her excellent submission prior to my own. And in so doing this bill validates the concerns of those very people who have lost faith in the major parties. They see the cynicism. They see the dirty deals being done dirt cheap.

It might result in a good outcome for those old parties in the short term, but it is a tragedy for democracy in Victoria, and it may very well contribute to One Nation holding the balance of power in the next Parliament, as that 28 per cent who would vote for alternatives to the old parties feel that they have no other way to express their disenchantment with the status quo. What is more, it is highly likely that this percentage will be even greater come the 2026 election.

There is no question that the upper house voting system in Victoria needs serious reform. During the 2022 election much attention was paid to GVTs, preference deals and payments to the preference whisperer Glenn Druery. All major parties, including Legalise Cannabis Victoria, publicly supported comprehensive reform of voting arrangements in the Legislative Council.

In submissions to the inquiry into the conduct of the 2022 state election by the Electoral Matters Committee (EMC), of which I am a member, the issue of voting arrangements in the Council came up again and again, and the inquiry suggested a number of ways that group voting tickets could be abolished while still retaining the diversity of voices in this Legislative Council, including increasing the number of members for each region or having the same number of members but reducing or eliminating the regions and electing all members from the state as a whole.

Victoria is, as we have heard ad infinitum throughout this debate, the only Australian upper house to retain group voting tickets. GVTs were abolished in New South Wales in 2003, in South Australia in 2018 and in Western Australia in 2021. But here is the rub: these jurisdictions also abolished their regions, allowing voters to vote in one statewide electorate. That is how a range of minor parties and independents are still able to win and retain seats in those parliaments. It might be irritating for the old parties, but it is a win for democracy.

Heaven forbid that I preach to the politically savvy veterans of this place, but it is called proportional representation. It may be politically inconvenient to the old parties, but it is at the very heart of our democracy.

Is it not an extraordinary coincidence that in the 2022 election Legalise Cannabis Victoria received about 5 per cent of the vote and we have 5 per cent of the members in this place. The Greens got 10 per cent of the vote, and surprise, surprise, they have 10 per cent of the members here. The numbers for the larger parties are likewise generally consistent with their share of the vote.

It is a bit inconvenient, and yes, you can point to the micro-parties here as being overrepresented individually, but collectively they are generally numerically consistent with the remaining pool of votes that went to the dozens of micro-parties and independents. They have as much right to be here as anyone.

I would fully get behind an upper house voting system that abolished the regions as well as GVTs. Such a system has great merit and would give those 28 per cent of voters an alternative to the major parties they clearly disdain. But this bill instead cherrypicks from the present system, abolishing the group voting system but retaining the regions and handing themselves – the old parties, the big parties and the other major parties – an unbeatable advantage.

I listened with interest to the contribution of the member for Tarneit in the other place, the former chair of the Electoral Matters Committee, and he talked about the report’s suggested two-stage approach. He said:

… get rid of group voting tickets and get rid of them now … we do not have time to lose … then let us come back in the next term and have a conversation about what the structure of the upper house looks like … that requires a referendum, and as we know, there is no time for a referendum between now and the state election.

Please – this sudden urgency is so utterly contrived and laced with political opportunism. There has been ample opportunity and time to hold a referendum. Reform of the upper house voting system has been under consideration in this state since at least as far back as 2015, but nothing was done in 2015. Nothing was done when virtually the same recommendations that came out of EMC in 2018 came out from the inquiry in 2022. Still nothing was done.

What we find is the big parties have waited until 1 minute to midnight to put up this bill, even though the VEC, the Victorian Electoral Commission, told them that time was of the essence two years ago. They have let the clock run down, knowing that it would force the separation of voting systems from regional distribution and a one-off political sugar hit. Or will it be one-off?

If these GVT changes are so urgent and it is so utterly morally repugnant for it to remain in place, why was there no urgent action to stop GVTs from being used in the last City of Melbourne election, only about 18 months ago? The simple answer to knowing where preferences go is apparently the heart of this issue, and it is a valid question. What was the response? The response was that a booklet was provided with the ballot paper to document the preference flows, and thus it was made transparent.

But of course, we would not want to take a simple, obvious and proven recipe; we would prefer to go the path that is being proposed here today. Seriously, does anyone really believe that whoever forms government after the next election, having rid themselves of these pesky minor parties and the independents and having pulled up the drawbridge to exclude those independent voices, will allow for their return? Who will be left in this chamber to advocate for its restructure? Will stage 2 of the reform process ever come to pass?

Now, it has been argued, and it is correct, that we recently passed section 182 in the previous electoral reform bill, and that establishes an independent inquiry into the electoral regions and related questions.

But we all know the fate of so many of these independent inquiries over decades and over successive governments of both colours. If the findings of those inquiries are inconvenient, they are either ignored or they are metastasised into some unrecognisable form. There is absolutely no requirement for any government to accept the recommendations of such an inquiry.

I recently received correspondence from the father of modern Australian political science and psephology Professor Malcolm Mackerras, and he said that no-one seriously believes there will be any second step. Instead the need for a referendum will become an excuse to have no further reform, and they will rely upon the assertion that this 2026 legislation was itself a genuine democratic reform.

It is nothing of the kind – beautifully summed. The only way to ensure that a fair democratic system prevails is to abolish group voting tickets and the regions simultaneously. To that effect, we will be supporting an amendment from Mr Bourman during the committee stage to delay the commencement of the GVT reforms and to link them to the reorganisation of the regions. Democracy is and should be vibrant and dynamic, and sometimes it may be a bit messy.

It is an inconvenient truth, for example, that strangely, despite a flood of publicity about Glenn Druery and GVTs and preference whispering in the 2022 election campaign – and let us remember it was front page on all the papers; it was in all of the electronic media – more than 90 per cent of Victorians chose to vote above the line. Despite all of the crashing democracy, all of the threats that were published and all of the cries, the overwhelming majority of Victorians went with the system as we know it.

Of course the attack on small and emerging parties and independents is not limited to this bill. In the last electoral reform bill, which I spoke about previously, three other changes were passed that significantly reduced the ability of citizens to form and operate smaller parties and for those parties or independents to compete in an election.

Firstly, we saw the number of members required for party registration go from 500 to 750 – a 50 per cent increase. Secondly, we saw the number of people required to support someone to run as an independent for the lower house increase from six to 50 to support that nomination. And thirdly, we saw the time requirement to have a completed party registration lodged with the VEC increase from 120 days to 180 days.

I would like to raise another issue with regard to the separation of voting systems from regional distributions – and Ms Purcell alluded to this before. We know that the Electoral Matters Committee recommended adopting the inclusive Gregory method in the next election. I am not going to attempt to try and explain what that means, but it is a different way of weighting preferences in the count of the vote. That change could not be accommodated, because the VEC said it did not have the time to do that.

They could squeeze in the request of the big old parties to abolish GVTs, but they could not do the referendum and they could not do the inclusive Gregory method. It is entirely possible that if a fulsome discussion around electoral reform does occur in the next Parliament and an alternate configuration is agreed upon, that may in fact necessitate further changes to the voting system.

What a triumph that would be – two different voting systems in two successive elections, when it could have all been done in one hit if the voting system and the regions were addressed concurrently. Do it once; do it right – but no.

This question about rushing reform is not simply shared by those who will be crushed by it. Those who have been watching this debate will doubtless remember that in both the previous electoral reform bill and this reform bill a leading role has been taken by the Centre for Public Integrity. They are, I think it is fair to say, an impartial body. I think it is fair to say that they enjoy broad respect across the community, and if I may read from a media release that they put out this afternoon:

The Centre for Public Integrity urges the Government and Parliament to slow down the passage of the Bill, release an exposure draft for public and expert consultation on its specific provisions, and ensure it is subject to robust parliamentary committee scrutiny before it is put to a vote.

That does not leave much to the imagination, does it? It is pretty clear where the Centre for Public Integrity is standing, and it is not simply, as has been suggested by some other speakers here, being put forward for improper purposes.

There is real opportunity for reform of the upper house voting system that would bolster our democracy and possibly restore some faith in those voters who find the machinery of our major political parties abhorrent. But this bill is so contrived, it is so very opportunistic and cynical, and it is these very qualities that continue to drive the growth of new, smaller parties that speak directly to the people, often only a subset of the electorate but people who wish to express their political preferences. It is our democracy. It is our proportional representation system.

I fear that in the future, if this legislation goes forward in its current form, this will no longer be known as the Legislative Council. It will be the ‘old parties club’ and the sign out there that says ‘Members only’ will have a whole new meaning.

We understand that the passage of this bill is guaranteed. The deals have been done, but nonetheless, Legalise Cannabis Victoria will not be supporting this bill. We will also be pursuing changes to it.

[Council divided on Bill]

[Bill passed 33 votes to 4]