Three months out from an election: that’s apparently the perfect time to change the voting system, according to the Victorian Labor Government.

You may have heard that Victoria has changed how people will vote in the Legislative Council (our Upper House) from now on. The new system makes it much harder for minor parties and independents to win a seat.

Harder, but not impossible. The old parties have teamed up to raise the bar we need to clear to stay in Parliament, so we need to step it up too.

Victoria has now followed every other state by removing Group Voting Tickets (more about that later), but we’ve done it the worst way.

In NSW, SA and WA, GVTs were removed years ago, but the system they replaced them with still gives minor parties a fair go.

To explain all this, let’s imagine a pizza. In other states, you have one big statewide electorate, or one big pizza. This pizza gets cut into the number of seats available. Then at the election, slices (seats) are assigned according to vote share. If a party gets 30% of the votes, they get 30% of the slices (seats).

Victoria’s system doesn’t have one pizza; it has eight, because our constitution requires eight regions with five members each. So, our eight mini constitutional pizzas are cut into five pieces each, and for a party to win a seat, they need to get as close as possible to a fifth of the vote.

A referendum is the only way to make changes to the Constitution, which is why last week we insisted that removing GVTs should happen at the same time as a referendum to abolish the regions.

In the debate, the major parties shrugged and said we just had to get this done now, and a referendum might come later. Do we seriously think that will happen? How often do politicians change the system in a way that benefits others, rather than themselves? They will likely relish not having to deal with us pesky minor parties and independents anymore.

So, what are group voting tickets? Under the GVT system, parties decided who to direct their preferences to if they don’t get enough votes. These come into effect when voters vote 1 ‘above the line’, which has historically been about 90% of the votes.

Of course, voters have always had the option to choose their own preferences by voting ‘below the line’.

In principle, this system allowed like-minded parties to work together to exchange preferences, much like parties suggest preferences on their how-to-vote cards in lower houses across Australia.

Over the years, GVTs have become a perverse way to game the system, with tiny fake parties pooling their votes to elect someone, sometimes with a minuscule number of votes.

Worse still, some people have made a living out of doing the deals behind the scenes, so a seat in Parliament could be snapped up for around $55,000.

It’s undemocratic, and we agree that this practice had to end. However, it doesn’t justify rushing to the most restrictive system in the country right before an election. 

There were better alternatives and ample time to do it properly. The Government has squandered that time.

So, what we are left with is the most adversarial system for minor parties in the country, at a time when Victorians are crying out for people who do politics differently. 

Anyway, did someone say pizza?