MisterFrog

Wait NSW uses first past the post in state and local elections?

A search later: it's preferential, but optionally so. https://elections.nsw.gov.au/candidate-handbook-nsw-state-by-elections/counting-and-results/legislative-assembly-voting-and-counting/examples-of-ballot-papers

I dunno if I'm a fan of less than 5 preferences being mandatory.

We must resist first past the post voting at all costs.

I think the other guy was a former pollster for the liberals, who along with the guy sitting next to him (former pollster for the Labor party) both work for the ABC now.

That was my recollection anyway

Unless Australians are comfortable with sending a much larger number of lower house members, that would make the electorates get much bigger than they currently are, and I would guess removing local representatives would not be a popular move.

I'm not entirely convinced that 1 liberal and 1 Labor would be locked in everywhere. I think the change in electoral system would produce governments much more representative of how people vote. It would change us to a system where forming a coalition is practically expected.

5 does seem like a reasonable working number of members to send as a combined "delegation" from an electorate, but that'd be the maximum desirable, in my view.

With 225 members and sending 5 from each electorate, that would reduce the number to only 45 electorates in the whole country.

Something, I'm totally fine with, I think federal electorates ought to be much larger than state or local electorates, but it would probably be a hard sell to many people.

Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this :)

The lower house single-member electorate voting system does still favour larger parties, it's just way, way, better than FPTP.

https://oercollective.caul.edu.au/aust-politics-policy/chapter/electoral-systems/

Relevant part starts at "Majoritarian (or ‘winner takes all’) systems" about a third of the way down.

This has been the case of a while in Victoria already. Makes sense to me, and hardly much of an imposition since you have to renew your driver's licence from any country eventually anyway.

And yeah, if you're just visiting or on a temporary visa, no probs

I reckon we ought to increase the number lower house seats to 225 seats by combining electorates in groups of 2, and sending 3 candidates from each.

That ought to fix the representation issues we currently have in the lower house, without entirely removing the local nature of lower house electorates.

Say what you will about any party, but when you see a party routinely get 10-13% of the vote, but only manage to get 0.66 to 1.33% of the seats, it's kinda hard to argue we couldn't improve the system any further.

Even taking preferences into account, I think our current system favours larger parties too much because of single-member electorates.

Though, I am very grateful for the system we already have. Thank Christ we are not the US or UK (or Canada).

Aluminium used for drink cans is dubious because, once again, plastic (liners to prevent the drink from corroding the cans)

The Juice Media are forever questionable to me for recommending the teals as a blanket "not shit candidates", despite some of them, not unsurprisingly, being against workers rights.

100%. I'm also really glad mandatory voting remains popular

This was my favourite part of tonight hahaha

Scotty from marketing, a whole lotta words, not much substance.

Thank you to our forebears for this at least, giving us preferential voting so that no matter what we think might happen, we can still vote by our heart!!