One Nation's Senate victories show the 2016 electoral reforms were right
The argument against is that under the group voting tickets abolished by the reforms, parties would conspire to prevent One Nation winning Senate seats.
In 1998, Labor and the Coalition famously swapped preferences to stop One Nation electing senators on preferences in all states except Queensland where the new party polled a quota in its own right.
Elsewhere the major party deal resulted in the Australian Democrats electing several senators despite polling fewer votes than One Nation.
The problem with supporting party control of preferences is that elections are about electing representatives to represent the will of the electorate, not about engineering the exclusion of certain parties.
Majority view at the time might have been that keeping One Nation out of the Senate was good, but it is a view at odds with the idea that the Senate is elected by proportional representation, and a party with significant support should have a reasonable chance of gaining representation.
But what some viewed as the advantage of group voting tickets in keeping pariah parties out of the Senate was later undermined as preference deals became ever more complex.
A system that started as an institutionalised version of a how-to-vote card, slowly morphed into a monster with opaque preference deals that voters had no hope of understanding.
Instead of final seats being decided by voters, they were increasingly determined through preference deals arranged by preference "whisperers".
The tactic of preference "harvesting" developed where multiple minor and so-called "micro" parties would swap preferences with each other ahead of all larger parties.
And thanks to group voting tickets, these tiny parties with no ability to campaign or distribute how-to-votes, could still deliver 95 per cent of their votes as preferences into what became known as the micro-party alliance.
More and more parties nominated. Ballot papers hit the maximum printable width of one metre, requiring the Australian Electoral Commission to shrink the font size and issue magnifying sheets. In NSW at the 2013 Senate election there were 46 party columns on the ballot paper and 110 candidates.
Voters had two voting options, the arduous task of numbering preferences for every candidate below the line, or the easy option to select a single box above the line and adopt a party's unknown ticket of preferences.
Understandably, many voters took the easier option. With so many parties on the ballot paper, it became hard for voters to spot the parties they knew amongst flood of new parties with attractive and sometimes confusing names.
The nadir of the system was the 2013 Victorian Senate result when Ricky Muir of the little-known Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party was elected to the final Victorian seat defeating a Liberal candidate who started the count with more than 20 times as many votes.
Such a victory would have been impossible under a system where voters completed their own preferences. Ahead of the 2016 Senate, the Turnbull government abolished group voting tickets with a reform bill backed by the Coalition and the Greens but opportunistically opposed by Labor.
The new system abolished party control over preferences and introduced an element of option preferential voting. The ballot paper instructions were to number a minimum six party squares above the line on the ballot paper, or a minimum 12 preferences in candidate boxes below the line.
Elections since the 2016 reforms have seen the number of parties and groups contesting election halve, making it easier for voters to find candidates and parties they know.
But it also weakened the flow of preferences between parties. At the two half-Senate elections since the reforms, all Senate seats have been won by parties with the highest vote, or partial quota, at the start of the count.
The two victories by One Nation are the first half-Senate election since the reforms were introduced where a party has come from behind to win after preferences.
But neither victory was from a ridiculously low vote. Both the elected One Nation Senators polled more than two-thirds of the vote for their Labor opponent at the start of the count.
The flows of preferences received by One Nation may have been assisted by the party appearing in the preference recommendations on Coalition how-to-votes.
The smaller ballot paper probably helped voters notice One Nation while completing preferences.
Since the reforms were introduced, preference flows between left-wing parties have been stronger than between right-wing parties.
The 2025 Senate result could be a sign that supporters of small right-wing parties are learning that preferences can be their friend rather than their enemy.
One Nation's victory is a vindication of the 2016 Senate reforms in ensuring that Senate elections were decided by the votes and preferences of voters, not the opaque deals of preference traders.
One Nation's victories have denied Labor two extra Senate seats, Labor finishes with 28 seats rather than 30, but 28 plus 11 Greens still gives the two parties a Senate majority before having to deal with the other ten members of the cross bench.
But it may not be good news for the Coalition. One Nation now holds four seats that were previously Coalition seats.
The Coalition may have to work more closely with One Nation than some of its members would prefer, a situation that may exacerbate internal tension within the Coalition parties.
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