Well, the major parties created a flawed voting system and refused to reform it as long it was serving their interests. Its the flawed system that turned our house of review into a barnyard serving a veritable kaleidoscope of interests.
And as long as the patently flawed system remains, so will the self evidently flawed outcomes.
If we would end this nonsense, which all but makes Parliament an unworkable cacophony, we need to end compulsory preferencing!
Optional preferencing ought to allow the voter to just vote one, or end his/her preferencing, at say three?
I mean if we have a first, second and third choice, that's surely enough to satisfy true democracy?
Alternatively, we could have primaries to eliminate everyone except the two most popular candidates for a seat or senate quota?
The senate could be protected, just by requiring all candidates to win at least 10-20,000, first preference votes, or at least 30% of a full quota, before they could claim/count any second or third preferences.
And it would be even easier, if all preferences simply terminated or entirely exhausted at the third!
In all seriousness, if we had just three choices, who is going to waste a choice, on lets have a party, party!
Rhrosty.

Philip. An interesting article questioning the 'knee jerk' reaction of quite a number of the 'commentariat', Whilst lament the seeming loss of 'democracy' in results that are unexpected.
I note with interest that the 'roo-poo' candidate, the 'Gun freedom' candidate, the sports enthusiast etc, including the sex party and a host of others seem to pursue the same agenda. Freedom, less government, less direction from the moral elite etc. People who like to go camping in 4x4 vehicles, people who like to go fishing with mates.... All have the same theme, wanting to move away from the Labour/green 'nanny state' agenda.

I would suggest that the result has been a clear mandate from the electorate for the government to nudge to the 'middle right' of the political spectrum.

It would appear to me that the result has been a very accurate reflection of the will of the electorate.

Joanne Nova articulated this result recently in a most worthwhile article in the 'Australian'.
What a, pitty the MSM could only target the 'gun' platform of the Liberal Democrat candidate and completely ignore all the rest of the platform. Lazy.

Mr Lillington is looking at a very narrow subset of the issues, which enables him to mount a spirited defence of the status quo, while missing the target almost entirely.

"The anger was taken out on our preferential voting, proportional representation electoral system which apparently should only appoint members of larger parties who embrace acceptable policies"

That's just editorial, so we can safely ignore it. The anger was of course directed at the disparity between the electors' choices, and the final result.

Problem one was accurately stated - "successful micro parties generally received only a miniscule primary vote".

This egregious misuse of the system was parried with:

"Elsewhere in the democratic world, some questionable candidate may win the most votes while still having only a minority at say, 35%. The remaining 65% of voters are then stuck with who they see as an objectionable representative. Here, the counting goes to second, fifth and perhaps even 65th preferences until the majority can agree, albeit begrudgingly, on a compromise candidate".

Ah. So it is better, the author contends, that 99% of the voters are "stuck with who they see as an objectionable representative", than 65%.

Not sure how that works, either in mathematics or in logic. The key assumption, that through this process we somehow reach a "consensus", is totally fallacious.

And this is simply outrageous.

"In fact, the reason he would be successful as a compromise candidate, being bland, anodyne and harmless, is probably the same reason few would want him as their primary preference."

Isn't it far, far more likely that it was because the candidate was seen as being only a millimetre or so short of being a danger to civilization itself?

To be fair, objections on the basis of confusion of party names are of course completely invalid. It does however suggest that we either teach people that they should actually read the blurb before casting their vote, or - as has been successfully employed in other backward nations - given each party a pictorial representation, like an elephant, or a tortoise, or a wombat.

That would help.

Thanks for the Joanne Nova mention Prompete. Yes a very good article.

Also in the upcoming edition of Spectator Australia, there is an in depth preview of the winning Liberal Democrats candidate.

With the recent news of the Sex Party apparently winning a Senate seat in Tassie we will now have them, plus the Motoring Enthusiasts Party, Australian Sports Party, Liberal Democrats, Family First, Nick Xenophon, Palmer's United Party, the Democratic Labor Party and the Greens to be a bulwark against the traditional Coalition / Labor duopoly.

What a great time for democracy in Australia when a lot more people have their representative seated at the nation's table.

P.L.

Red herring, Edward Carson. Even if by chance you might be being facetious...

>>What a great time for democracy in Australia when a lot more people have their representative seated at the nation's table.<<

At issue is the means by which these fringe-dwellers became elected in the first place.

If it were a true reflection of "the will of the people", we should indeed rejoice at the diversity. But frankly, it ain't.

Great article indeed.

It is a celebration to see this variety of new faces in parliament representing real people - still rather a small celebration but it can teach voters that they don't need to be automatons, so hopefully by the next election no dinosaur candidates will be elected and in 6 years only real people will be represented.