Good and bad in our voting system.

(From Canberra Times)

P REFERENTIAL voting one of Australia's electoral innovations.

The House of Representatives has been using it since 1919. It has general acceptance among the parties and among academics. It also has its particular advocates, such as the ANU scholar Dr Benjamin Reilly, who rates it as a beneficial addition to the electoral armoury of any country as a mechanism for expanding voter choice and for producing more consensual outcomes.

Preferential voting initially benefited the Coalition parties. It enabled them to compete against one another without the danger that it would enable Labor to win in conservative seats as might happen under first past the post.

From 1949 it was introduced into the Senate to supplement the other new idea, proportional representation. It was still seen as fairly benign. But it was used to startling effect by the Democratic Labour Party from 1955 onwards to direct preferences away from the Labor Party.

When the Australian Democrats emerged in 1977 they chose to use double-sided how-to-vote cards that left the preference decision to the individual voter, to emphasise their identity as a centre party.

In 1990 Green and Democrat preferences played a major role in keeping Labor in office. Labor strategists successfully appealed directly to minor- party voters for their second preferences.