Victorian election Upper House results confirm Labor, crossbench domination - Polidicks

Daniel Andrews' dominance of Victorian politics continues, landing 18 of 40 Upper House seats, with enough progressive parties winning spots on the crossbench to potentially provide an avenue for any controversial legislation. Final calculations for the Upper House have been released by the Victorian Electoral Commission, and show as many members will now sit on the crossbench as they will in Opposition. Micro-parties scored well from complicated preference deals, with 10 MPs from seven parties to sit on the crossbench. The Coalition's shocking campaign continued, with the number of Upper House MPs slashed from 16 to 11. Derryn Hinch's Justice Party was the biggest winner on the crossbench, picking up three seats, with the Liberal Democrats winning two. They both picked up more spots than the Greens, who lost four MPs in the election rout, leaving party leader Samantha Ratnam as the only Green left in the Upper House. Ms Ratnam said the results showed the need for urgent voting reform in the Upper House. ... Read more at Victorian election Upper House calculation results confirm Labor..

Yep, Seemed a bigger win for third (or now clearly minor) parties too except Greens who are bring new issues (while mostly single issue only) into Victorian politics. Including few parties who didn't appear in article like Shooters, Fishers, Farmers Party just lost one seat, Reason party who retain their only seat while Animal Justice, Sustainable Australia and Transport Matters parties has won their new seat each thus make Victoria's Upper house into real multi-party system at last.

It’s hardly a ‘real’ multi-party system. It’s a bunch of horeshit that is derived from complicated preference deals. For those who are unaware: upper house elections in Australia are often contested by at least 100 candidates; the ballot paper can be as long as a literal table cloth in New South Wales and Commonwealth elections. In Victorian Legislative Council elections, voters are forced to either: a) vote ‘below the line’ by preferencing at least five candidates. But really, you want to preference as many as possible (dozens, minimum) to make your vote count, and hope that you don’t make a mistake when filling out the ballot. Or, b) vote for a single ‘above the line’ ticket. Voting for a ticket is like voting for a particular preset of preferences, so you don’t have to preference each individual candidate ‘below the line’ Most people are lazy and will vote ‘above the line’. Problem with that is the tickets are carefully designed by ‘preference whisperers’ who very carefully preference the list of candidates, to benefit whichever micro party gives them the most $$$. This partly explains why the Greens picked up only 1 seat with 9.7% of the statewide first preference votes, but Derryn Hinch’s party picked up 3 seats despite getting a mere 3.7% of first preferences. And then there’s the ‘Transport Matters Party’ which picked up a seat on only 0.6% of first preferences. It’s disproportionate and unrepresentative as fuck.

Even I get where you referring about criticized group vote ticketing, but... Wow, That comes out to just insulting for these voters who with some learning from each party's issues and help by under Single Transferable vote too to make their their half of State's Parliament into well real multi-party Parliament by effect from lower primary vote not just percentage.

It used to be much worse. Instead of picking at least five, you'd have to preference all 50 something below the line candidates if you chose to vote that way or else your vote would not be valid. If I recall, they changed the system when wierd preferencing gave a seat to some random bloke (who actually seemed like a decent guy) and the major parties threw a fit. I see nothing has changed. That being said, I think that if you're voting for one of the two major parties (and the Greens I suppose), then voting above the line for them counts the way it should.

Victoria always had a multi-party upper house. 10 of its 40 members sat on the crossbench before the last state election. Now it’s 11 out of 40. Other Australian upper houses are the same, except in Queensland and Tasmania; the former doesn’t even have an upper house, and the people who live in the latter are barely even human, let alone Australian. No idea where you got the thing about turnout from; all elections in Australia are mandatory, so the last state election probably had 99% turnout. To be honest, aside from your mention of ‘multi-party Parliament’ and ‘sub-regional turnout’, I cannot understand anything else that you wrote.

But 5 of 10 of crossbenchers were Green Party members before. While they was four more them get one seat each. ??? Well, Not really or fully until 2014 election as aforementioned those four more parties (with one that Australian Conservative seat was under Democratic Labor Party when after got elected) got elected with Green Party gain two more as begin making Upper-house more multi-party system.