‘Is this what compliant looks like?’: Victoria’s crossbench conflict (original) (raw)
Two days after Labor’s 2018 election win, Daniel Andrews was downcast at the prospect of losing independent Fiona Patten from Parliament. “I think that is a loss to the Parliament,” he said, adding that he would be happy to offer Patten a government job to “make the place fairer and stronger”. Patten ended up clinging to her seat, but Andrews’ words cemented the view of Coalition MPs that she is too closely linked to the government’s agenda to call herself an independent.
Patten, along with Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick and Greens leader Samantha Ratnam, are Victoria’s three most important crossbenchers. They vote commonly with the government and have given it a majority in the upper house for state of emergency extensions and its pandemic bill, which was negotiated exclusively with the trio before being derailed.
“I mean, [Patten] was offered a job by Andrews. The cosy cabal gives Andrews very close to total control of both houses,” says David Davis, the opposition’s upper house leader.
After the Premier himself, these politicians have become public enemies one, two and three for Victoria’s growing anti-government protest movement, an amorphous group fuelled by the economic and social harm caused by lockdowns, opposition to vaccine mandates and vaccines themselves, and infused with conspiracies imported from Donald Trump’s America as well as violent political imagery.
As a former sex worker, a proud former CFMEU member with two trans kids, and a social justice-minded woman of colour, it is difficult to separate Patten, Meddick and Ratnam’s personal stories from the vitriol they attract from some on the right. But a perception has formed that they allow Andrews to force his agenda through with little scrutiny.
The three MPs feel the imagery and threats — which began during last year’s state of emergency extensions but worsened amid the pandemic bill debate — are far too close to turning into real acts of violence. Police have advised Patten to refrain from walking home alone, Ratnam says she has never been more frightened and Meddick had protesters show up at his home.
Victoria’s shadow treasurer David Davis.Credit: Penny Stephens
The crossbenchers say Liberal Party MPs have contributed to the escalation by engaging with the protesters, but Davis rejects this. He says threats to MPs are not new — he had a brick thrown into his home during an election — and the group merits political attacks on their voting record.
“We would be culpable, we would be failing in our duty to protect Victoria because these independents are putting our recovery at risk [by supporting the pandemic bill],” he says. “If they’re like an extension of the government unit, that should be called out. It is bad for democracy.”
An Age analysis of upper house voting since the last election shows Meddick votes with the government 83 per cent of the time, followed by Patten at 74 per cent and Ratnam at 62 per cent, slightly less than the Transport Matters Party at 63 per cent.
No crossbenchers have secured anywhere near the amount of legislative wins, inquiries or funding as the group of three, in particular Patten and Meddick. Some MPs say they have been bought by the government, but if politics is about outcomes then the three could argue they are the most effective legislators who don’t sit around the cabinet table.
As the government shifts its focus to other crossbenchers to get its pandemic bill across the line, a deeper question arises: Why is crucial legislation being shaped by a swag of little-known independents elected on tiny primary votes, many of whom owe their places to a voting system which is open to manipulation and that only Victoria still uses?
Getting outcomes or rolling over?
Much of Labor’s social policy agenda has been pursued in concert with Patten. In the Andrews government’s first term, she was central in the opening of a drug-injecting room in Richmond and pioneering the country’s first euthanasia law, which Andrews had initially opposed when he came into government.
She meets the Premier about twice a year to discuss her agenda, has won sex industry decriminalisation and led the inquiry into spent convictions which prompted legislative change. More recently, she secured government support to establish a loneliness minister and led the campaign to raise the age limit of foster care to 21.
MP Stuart Grimley (left), of Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, campaigning earlier this year for veterans to get trauma dogs with the late Ron Fenton and his trauma dog, Yogi.Credit: Eddie Jim
“Derryn Hinch called me a compliant MP. I look at my record and say, ‘is this what a compliant MP looks like? Getting extremely controversial issues into legislation?’,” she says. “We nudge the government in the right direction and I’ve been able to achieve the policies we went into Parliament to do, which frankly many thought were impossible.”
Patten says she’s achieved results because of her willingness to pick up the phone to the government: “It wasn’t because of the government coming to me.”
If the Reason Party leader’s trophy cabinet of policy wins requires an extension, many of her crossbench colleagues are on long losing streaks. Stuart Grimley, who represents Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, has for three years been unsuccessfully lobbying the government to provide defence force veterans with dogs at a potential cost of less than $200,000. Sustainable Australia’s Clifford Hayes can’t recall many wins, and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party MP Jeff Bourman says a “tiny percentage” of his wishes are granted.
Animal Justice MP Andy Meddick.Credit: Eddie Jim
“I got some money for a study into deer numbers … [but] I refuse to do quid pro quos with them; my vote is not for sale,” he says.
Meddick happily admits he rarely votes against the government. He says he would pursue his philosophy of “collaborative politics” no matter which party held government. “I’m a leftie, I’m a progressive and they are a progressive government. Generally speaking, I agree with most of what they bring,” he says.
His list of animal welfare policy achievements is lengthy. Meddick has successfully advocated for at least 20 funding allocations worth tens of millions of dollars and won five changes to regulation, including banning glue traps. In 2019, he was appointed to the board of VicHealth.
”Being able to pick up the phone and speak to government ministers is really important,” he says. “I’m on a taskforce for safe spaces for LGBTIA youth in Geelong. That sprang out of a conversation with the Health Minister after a period where we had a spate of youth suicides. He said ‘you’re now running a taskforce, go and find out [how to ameliorate the issue]’. We ran that out of my office.
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“People misunderstand the crossbench. They think I’m meant to be an alternative opposition. I’m there to get things done for my constituents.”
One of Meddick’s crossbench colleagues, who sought anonymity to speak frankly, said they would “need more than my two hands to count the number of times [Meddick] has got a pet project funded after a controversial bill”.
His opponents in Parliament point to a $500,000 funding announcement for Wildlife Victoria’s call centre as an example of a quid pro quo. Meddick appeared with a government minister at the announcement — a luxury rarely afforded to non-government MPs — which occurred around the same time he provided the government with a key vote on its contentious fire services reforms.
Meddick rejects allegations of trade-offs, claiming they are levelled by “ineffective” crossbenchers. “I don’t do horse-trading,” he says. The opposition referred Meddick to the anti-corruption commission because his daughter got a two-week paid position at the firefighters’ union in the same year the bill passed, but Meddick said his child had won the position on merit.
It is not uncommon, a government source confirmed, for ministers or advisers to have parallel conversations about unrelated policies when negotiating with crossbenchers on contentious legislation.
The issues on which Meddick and Patten oppose the government tend to be those on which the pair sit to the left of Labor, for example offshore gas policy or criminal justice reform.
The negotiations over the pandemic legislation, which will be debated in Parliament next week after Adem Somyurek derailed its progress, are a case study in the crossbenchers’ relationship with the government. The government took the unorthodox step of negotiating only with the group of three after Patten asked for pandemic-specific laws to replace the less transparent emergency laws the last time a state of emergency was extended.
Ratnam explains that the group secured many improvements in the new bill, including protection of QR data, reduced fines, the publishing of public health advice and better oversight. While these were clear improvements, the crossbenchers’ subsequent set of amendments — which followed an outcry from legal groups — were an indication that they may have given the government too much leeway. Only when the proposed bill saw public scrutiny were some of its flaws highlighted.
Whispers and distortions
The closeness between the three crossbenchers and the government can be explained at least partly by shared ideologies.
“Daniel Andrews is on the left of the ALP and he feels most comfortable speaking to the far-left three in the crossbench,” independent MP Catherine Cumming says.
Crossbench MP Catherine Cumming at the freedom rally last week.Credit: Jason South
Cumming is one of three upper house independents, along with the two Liberal Democrat MPs, who have regularly attended anti-vaccine mandate protests and cast doubt on the efficacy of COVID-19 inoculations. One might wonder how the upper house of Australia’s most progressive state has more Liberal Democrats (who polled 2.5 per cent of the statewide primary vote) than Greens, who only have one Legislative Council member despite polling 9.5 per cent of the vote.
The answer? Group voting tickets. Victoria is the last state in Australia using a voting system that allows parties to choose where preferences flow when someone votes above the line on a ballot paper. The method enabled Glenn Druery, the well-known “preference whisperer”, to bring disparate micro-parties into blocs to share preferences and leapfrog parties that had actually gained many more votes. About eight of the 11 MPs elected as independents owe their seat in Parliament to Druery.
‘It distorts the will of voters’: Greens leader Samantha Ratnam wants group voting tickets scrapped.Credit: Jason South
The Transport Matters Party’s Rod Barton and Liberal Democrat David Limbrick were elected with a primary vote of less than 1 per cent; Sustainable Australia’s Clifford Hayes was only marginally more popular. The Greens are the biggest losers: they polled nearly 10 per cent of the statewide vote but dropped from five seats to one, which equates to 2.5 per cent of seats in the upper house.
“It distorts the will of voters,” says Ratnam, who wants the system changed and says it leads to voters unwittingly giving their first preference to a party on one end of the political spectrum and having their preferences shared with parties at the other end. “It’s good to have a diversity of voices but you could argue our crossbench is not representative and not diverse because the majority are centre-right individuals and parties.”
Former Coalition premier Jeff Kennett agrees and wants a review of group voting. “There’s an extraordinary number of people who don’t represent anyone,” he says. “I’m not opposed to the election of independents at all; it’s a good thing. But the way in which the operation is running now means people who aren’t supported by the public are sitting in Parliament because of the voting system.”
Analysis by University of Melbourne psephologist Adrian Beaumont indicates the Victorian upper house would be a different place if it used the same voting system as the Senate. The government would have 19 seats (up from 17), the Coalition 14 (up from 11), the Greens four (up from one). The number of independents would fall by four and the majority of the crossbench would be Greens.
Beaumont says getting rid of group voting would lead to a more democratic upper house that reflects the will of voters. “The Greens, in particular, were ripped off … [and] a plausible reason for why the state government hasn’t attempted to abolish group voting is that they dislike the Greens and would prefer in general to negotiate with various crossbenchers,” he says.
An Andrews government spokesman said the government “has no plans” to abolish group voting.
Meddick argues Beaumont’s research highlights the current system’s advantages. He acknowledges MPs being elected on tiny vote shares is perverse but says a large crossbench with members spanning different interest groups gives these communities a voice and forces the government to compromise.
“The calculations would have left it open to the government to form an informal coalition government with the Greens in the upper house and lock out everyone else,” he says.
Some of his colleagues would argue a similar arrangement is already in place.