Paul Murray: Political party agendas remain obscured despite WA voters taking advantage of preferential voting

Last weekend’s local government elections confirmed that WA voters have embraced the optional preferential voting system which was introduced at the 2023 polls.

It replaced a first-past-the-post system in which winners relied only on the votes they could garner directly. The most popular candidate won.

Optional preferential was always going to make local government even more party political. But it has some benefits.

A quick analysis of last weekend’s returns suggests most voters know they don’t have to mark all the boxes — as they are forced to do in the elections that determine who forms government at the State and Federal level — and can avoid giving a preference tick to candidates they don’t like. That’s important.

Full preferential is unnecessarily draconian and leads to far too many unwanted consequences.

And it’s patently undemocratic to force someone to cast any ballot favouring a candidate they oppose.

The optional system means voters do not have to mark the box of candidates or political parties they would not want in office in a fit.

Optional preferential was adopted in the recent WA Upper House election after Labor pushed the changes through parliament to get rid of preference harvesting rorts that put a candidate into the Legislative Council in 2021 who polled only 98 primary votes.

WA voters have also been using the optional preferential system in the Senate since 2016, brought in with the support of the major political parties to outlaw blatant rorting by preference whisperers that was stealing seats from them.

So why do the major parties block optional preferential voting as the norm in all elections in Australia? Why is it not standardised, giving all voters the right to determine how their preferences will be used?

This is how the WA Electoral Commission describes optional preferential voting: “Under OPV, if no candidate achieves a majority of the first-preference votes, the preferences from the least successful candidates are distributed to the remaining candidates.

“If a voter has not indicated further preferences for candidates who are still in the count, their vote is “exhausted” and not included in the next stage of the count. This process continues until a candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes that are still in the count, declaring them the winner.”

Notre Dame University political expert Martin Drum said the contests he had reviewed from last weekend suggested an exhaustion rate around 40 per cent as successive lowest-ranked candidates were omitted when their preferences were distributed.

That meant nearly half of all voters had exercised their right not to mark all the boxes on the ballot paper.

There was evidence that electors were using the ability to choose just a few candidates of those on offer — or only one — to vote tactically, either according to instructions or on their own volition.

Drum said that the successful implementation of optional preferential voting in both local government and the Legislative Council — suggested by a Malcolm McCusker-led committee of which he was a member — provided a “reasonable argument” for its extension into Lower House elections.

As the percentage of voters moving away from the major parties increases — and with it the number of minor party candidates and independents grows — it becomes more important to allow voters this choice.

The WAEC’s review of the 2023 local government elections did not report any problems with the introduction of optional preferential, with a lower percentage of informal votes than two years previously.

It also said nothing about the growing presence of party politics in local government which has obviously become amplified by the ability to share preferences, not available in first-past-the-post.

One problem arising from OPV is that while few local government candidates are openly endorsed by political parties, a great many are running undisclosed, potentially with hidden party agendas.

The Cook Government seems more interested in making local government elections compulsory, to boost turnout, than in making them fairer. Electors deserve transparency.

One of the best turnouts in recent years has been in Fremantle, which recorded the highest metropolitan participation rate in 2023 with 36.3 per cent, even though it was down from 46.7 in 2021.

This year, with a battle for mayor between incumbent Hannah Fitzhardinge and one-term councillor Ben Lawver, the turnout was around 38 per cent, but led to an historic spill.

Low turnouts in local government mean few votes are needed for a win.

A low-key ground game, that doesn’t excite too much interest from people other than those targeted, can be highly successful.

American-born Lawver, who as a Maritime Union community organiser previously campaigned against Labor’s Westport project at Kwinana in favour of retaining the Fremantle docks, soundly beat Fitzhardinge in a five-cornered race, leading her by 3315 to 2680 (635 lead) on the primaries, and 4441 to 3589 (852) after preferences.

Lawver has worked as a research assistant for Labor Senator Glenn Sterle since 2021 after leaving the MUA.

Fitzhardinge as recently as February declared a conflict of interest at a council meeting as a Labor Party member, having worked as an adviser to former Labor Premier Geoff Gallop between 1998 and 2004.

Despite his work affiliation to Labor, Lawver’s campaign was heavily supported by backers of independent Kate Hulett who nearly unseated two ALP incumbents in this year’s State and Federal elections in Fremantle.

The distribution of preferences under OPV in the mayoral race was interesting: First out was Mark Woodcock whose 1008 votes went 215 to conservative candidate Marija Vujcic, 146 to Fitzhardinge and 126 to Lawver.

But 414 of Woodcock’s votes were exhausted, suggesting “progressive” voters avoided marking his box. Tactical voting.

When Vujcic’s 1806 votes were distributed in the final round, 620 went to Lawver, 408 to Fitzhardinge and 778 were exhausted, indicating both some tactical voting against the incumbent mayor and a similar avoidance of Vujcic by “progressives”.

Much has been made of the intervention of the MUA in the final days of the campaign with a hit job on Fitzhardinge in an advertising wraparound in the Fremantle Herald, but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of votes had already been cast by postal ballot.

The MUA employs Lawver’s wife, but he denied knowledge of the advertisements.

They belted Fitzhardinge for allegedly supporting AUKUS and, in an ironic hark back to the toppling of former Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi, accused her of accepting $3000 in gifts on a ratepayer-funded trip to Europe and a $1000 football ticket from builder Dale Alcock.

As the Freoview blog noted the day after the election: “Ben Lawver promised to . . . stop freight trucks from driving to and from Fremantle Port empty, stop AUKUS, and stop the port move to Kwinana. Let’s hold him to account!”

Who said local government was just about footpaths, rates and rubbish?

While the internecine and murky Labor machinations in Fremantle were fairly well-known in local government circles, party politics were less clear in other contests.

One raised with me was in the City of Joondalup’s south-west ward where former Greens candidate for the Federal seat of Moore, Matthew Count, and the area’s Legalise Cannabis candidate at the recent State election, Samantha Law, took on longstanding Liberal strategist Colin Edwardes.

Law, the only one explicitly running under a party endorsement, polled 1233 primary votes against Count on 2196 and Edwardes’ 1780. Her preferences went 532 to Count, 182 to Edwardes and 519 were exhausted, suggesting a sophisticated use of OPV.

What surprised Edwardes’ team was that Count had very little visible campaigning. They suspected he had access to a substantial database from community campaigns backed by the Greens against things like plastic bags and Woodside’s gas developments.

This would have allowed direct email messaging and doorknocking of those on the database within the ward, cheap and very effective. As were the preferences flowing from Law.

While Count’s Federal Moore campaign saw him directly calling for “our gas industry wound down for climate reasons”, his local government offerings focussed on grassroots community issues.

Count’s material said he wanted the council to be open and transparent, but Law was the only one who presented as a party-linked.

Count denied to me that he used a database available through the Greens. He said he had no head office party financing or help for his campaign, although Greens members had supported him.

Whether or not most people who voted for him knew of his Greens affiliation is impossible to ascertain. The same goes for Edwardes and the Liberals.

Optional preferential voting can make local government polling fairer only if candidates are required to disclose party affiliations in their pre-election declarations.

Voters are entitled to make a fully-informed choice when they cast their ballot and this would not be the case if they end up voting for a party-linked candidate who presents as independent.

The party politicisation of local government is now irreversible.

Wide-scale party endorsements and routine how-to-vote cards can’t be far away.