Why you should be at least as interested in the other ballot paper
On 28 November, Victorians will cast two votes. One will help decide who forms the next government. The other will help decide how that government is held to account.
Most election coverage focuses on the Legislative Assembly, the lower house, where government is formed. Who will be Premier? Which party will win? Which seats will change hands? Who will be my local member?
These are important questions.
But there's another election taking place, for Victoria's Legislative Council, and the result there will be just as significant.
The Legislative Council is our upper house. It has 40 members, with five elected from each of Victoria's eight regions. That’s the other, big ballot paper.
Unlike the lower house, the government typically doesn't hold a majority in the Legislative Council. And as the ABC’s election analyst Casey Briggs said recently, that means that: ‘Regardless of which party or parties wins government in the lower house, they are almost certainly going to have to negotiate every bill through a diverse Legislative Council chamber’.
And this is the power of that other ballot paper.
All bills must pass both houses to become law. Members of the cross bench (that is, neither government nor opposition) often have a highly influential role in both houses, but especially in the upper house where the government has lower numbers. There are multiple examples of cross bench members negotiating important changes to bills to better represent the needs of their constituents.
And there’s a second, equally compelling reason for people to pay attention to their vote on the big ballot paper.
A critical role of the upper house is its review function. The Legislative Council has a responsibility to investigate government decisions through parliamentary committees, and to hold ministers and their departments to account. An effective upper house not only improves legislation, it can expose problems, demand evidence and give communities a voice beyond the government's parliamentary majority.
But it’s not enough for the Council to possess these powers. It must be willing and able to use them.
I wonder how many Victorians are aware that Premier Carroll was found to be in contempt of the Parliament on the final sitting day for failure, as the leader of the government, to produce documents requested by the upper house.
Think about that for a moment.
Our Parliament had formally requested information to help it perform its function of scrutinising government decisions. It reported that 46 orders for documents were overdue and that hundreds of identified documents had been withheld. This is not just parliamentary admin work. This is how a government is held accountable to us – its electors.
Whatever your political persuasion, that should concern you.
It’s easy for any political candidate to throw around words like ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’. Our Legislative Council is where this actually happens. And accountability is not just a once-per-election-cycle task. It’s a responsibility that demands attention every week, every month, every time significant decisions are made about public money, services and our communities.
An effective upper house member is one who’s prepared to support good government legislation, improve legislation that needs work and demand answers when the public interest requires them.
And it’s easier to do that without the straitjacket of ‘party discipline’.
We spend a great deal of time deciding who should run Victoria. We need to spend a little more time deciding who we trust to keep an eye on them.