By Denis Hay
Description
Party preselection controls Parliament by deciding candidates long before voters cast a ballot.
Introduction: The hidden election before Election Day
Most Australians believe democracy begins on election day. This article explains how preselection controls Parliament, often more decisively than the election itself. In practice, the most decisive political contest occurs months or years earlier, inside party rooms and faction meetings. Preselection controls Parliament by deciding who appears on the ballot, especially in safe and marginal seats. By the time voters are asked to choose, the outcome is often already shaped.
This is why governments can change while policy direction stays remarkably similar. The issue is not voter apathy. It is structural control.
Understanding how preselection controls Parliament is essential to understanding why reform so often stalls.
Problem
The reason preselection controls Parliament lies in how candidates are filtered long before voters are involved.
Systemic causes
Preselection controls Parliament through internal party mechanisms that operate beyond public scrutiny. Major parties tightly manage candidate selection using factional quotas, loyalty tests, and executive oversight. This structure explains why candidate selection overrides public opinion. Candidates who challenge party leadership, question donor influence, or advocate reforms outside party consensus are rarely endorsed.
Local party members may vote in preselections, but final authority often rests with state or national bodies. In disputed cases, party executives can override local results entirely.
This system ensures discipline, not representation.
Who benefits
Those who benefit most are party leadership groups, factional organisers, and major donors. MPs owe their careers to party endorsement rather than voter approval. Once preselected in a safe seat, accountability shifts upward to the party hierarchy rather than outward to constituents.
This dynamic is reinforced by safe electorates. As explained in the Social Justice Australia article Why Safe Seats Undermine Australian Democracy, when electoral competition disappears, preselection becomes the real election, and voters lose meaningful leverage. Because preselection controls Parliament, MPs are rewarded for party loyalty rather than voter advocacy.
Impact
Real-world effects on Australians
When preselection controls Parliament, policy outcomes narrow regardless of public opinion. Strong voter support for action on housing affordability, political integrity, gambling reform, media concentration, and public ownership repeatedly does not translate into legislation.
Voters experience:
- Policy stagnation despite clear public demand
- Growing distrust in politics
- A sense that voting changes little
- Declining participation and engagement
This environment encourages disengagement while protecting entrenched power. When preselection controls Parliament, policy outcomes become disconnected from public demand.
Why independents often reflect public sentiment more accurately
Independent and community candidates usually appear from local dissatisfaction rather than party ambition. They are often motivated by specific, widely shared concerns within an electorate, such as access to hospitals, environmental protection, planning decisions, or government integrity.
Because they are not bound by party platforms or factional discipline, independents can align their positions directly with constituent views, even when those views cut across traditional political labels. Their accountability runs horizontally to voters rather than vertically to party leadership.
However, these candidates face structural barriers created by the major parties.
Major parties receive help from public funding formulas that reward existing vote share, permanent campaign infrastructure, paid staff, established donor networks, and constant media exposure. Independents must build recognition, funding, and organisational capacity from scratch.
Once elected, independents also face disadvantages in the House of Representatives. Major parties control committee representation, speaking time, legislative scheduling, and procedural access. This reinforces the belief that only party-aligned MPs can be effective, even when independents demonstrably influence outcomes.
This contrast highlights how preselection controls Parliament, while independents remain accountable to voters.
Solution
Policy options
Long-term reform requires weakening the gatekeeping power of party preselection. Options include:
- Greater transparency in party endorsement processes.
- Binding local ballots without executive override.
- Fairer public funding access for non-party candidates.
- Parliamentary rule changes to ensure equal participation.
These reforms would restore voter influence before election day, not just on it. Any serious reform must address how preselection controls Parliament, not just election day mechanics.
How voting choices affect party power
Even before formal reform, voting behaviour matters. Australia uses preferential voting. This means voters control how power flows, not just which candidate they mark first.
A growing number of voters now choose to:
- Rank community and independent candidates first.
- Preference smaller parties ahead of major parties.
- Place the two major parties last on the ballot.
This approach does not require supporting a specific party or ideology. It is a structural response aimed at weakening automatic major party dominance and restoring competition.
When major parties can no longer rely on default preference flows, their incentives change. Preselection power weakens. Responsiveness increases. Changing voting patterns weakens the way party preselection controls Parliament.
Australia’s monetary sovereignty as the enabling tool
Australia is a dollar sovereign nation. It has the financial capacity to fund electoral reform, civic education, independent media, and integrity institutions using public money. The constraint is political choice, not affordability.
A Parliament shaped by genuine voter choice is more likely to use that capacity for public purpose.
FAQs
Is preferencing major parties last a protest vote?
No. It is a strategic use of preferential voting to increase competition and accountability.
Does voting independent waste a vote?
No. Preferences always flow. Independent votes influence outcomes even when the candidate does not win.
Can independents really change Parliament?
Yes. Minority parliaments have historically delivered stronger accountability, transparency, and policy negotiation.
Final thoughts
Preselection controls Parliament by shifting power away from voters and toward party machines. Until this changes, elections alone cannot deliver consistent reform. Understanding how power works is the first step to reclaiming it.
Democracy does not begin on election day. It begins with who is allowed to stand. Until voters challenge the structures through which preselection controls Parliament, elections alone will not deliver change.
Engaging question
If preselection is the real election, how should voters use their preferences to take power back?
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References
Australian Electoral Commission: Preferential voting and candidate nomination
Parliament of Australia: Parliamentary procedures and party structures
Grattan Institute: Electoral competition and democratic accountability
This article was originally published on Social Justice Australia
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I think we must be careful about how much we criticise our Government because when you look at the rest of the world, Australia is a very well run country. We should be careful that we do not throw away the good in pursuit of unatanable perfection. A greater number of small parties can, and has, created unstable Governments all over the world and has allowed dictatorial leaders to take control (Israel, for instance). Politically and economically, Australia is doing very well on the world stage compared to the USA, UK and other countries.
Excellent explanation Denis ….. I have found the difficulty is the unwillingness of regional yokels to understand these concepts.
The impact is even greater when a small group, dedicated to their own agenda of exploiting the political system, gets control of a minor party and appoints those individual members to pre-selection in any/every ”safe” electorate. Think NSW NOtional$ in noughties.
@ Garry Bates: Australia and various state governments have in the past been controlled by an INDEPENDENT CROSS-BENCH, resulting in the ”early retirement” and conviction, successfully appealed, of Premier Nick Goulash for improper conduct. Indeed, at one time in the noughties there were seven (7) INDEPENDENT MPs in the NSW Parliament.
Your ”dictatorial parties” usually occur when there are few alternatives, Consider:
a) the 1933-1945 democratically elected German government and those consequences (became one party);
b) the Putin governments in Russia since about 1990 (became one party);
c) the USSR from Stalin onwards (one party);
d) the TACO Trumpery Republican ”misgovernment” in Washington, (two parties).
Do independent candidates have to face pre-selection committees that are torn by irreconcilable differences as occurs in major parties? Seems to me that the larger the political party and subsequently the larger the parliamentary majority then the larger the disparity of opinion between members of that party. Hence leadership spills and party instability at short notice. Next election, state and federal, I will be voting for an independent.
Garry, I agree that Australia remains a stable and relatively well-run country compared to many others. That is something worth protecting.
My concern is not about chasing perfection or undermining stability. It is about strengthening accountability before small problems become bigger ones.
Criticising aspects of how power operates is not the same as rejecting the whole system. In fact, healthy democracies depend on citizens being willing to examine how candidate selection, safe seats, and party discipline shape outcomes.
You are right that fragmentation can create instability. But concentrated power can also reduce responsiveness. The balance is important.
The article is not arguing for chaos or for replacing government with dozens of micro parties. It is asking whether preselection processes should give voters more influence.
A well-run country should be confident enough to look at its own structures honestly.
That, to me, is not throwing away the good. It is protecting it.
New England Cocky, I appreciate the engagement and the historical examples.
I would just be careful about how we describe voters. People in regional areas are not the problem. Most Australians, wherever they live, are busy and rely on the information available to them. Structural issues in politics are about systems, not intelligence.
You raise an important point about minor parties being captured by small internal groups. That risk is real. Preselection reform is not only about the major parties. It is about transparency and internal democracy across the board.
On crossbench influence, history shows that minority governments in Australia have delivered both instability and reform. It depends less on numbers and more on the political culture at the time.
The core issue is balance. Concentrated power can become complacent. Fragmented power can become chaotic. The challenge is designing institutions that preserve accountability without sacrificing stability.
Mediocrates, independents do not go through the same formal preselection structures as major parties. They choose themselves to stand and then meet the legal requirements set by the Australian Electoral Commission. There are no factional ballots or executive overrides in the same way.
That said, some community backed independents do run local endorsement processes to show support and transparency, but these are voluntary and far less hierarchical than major party systems.
You make an interesting point about size and internal tension. Larger parties inevitably contain broader ideological differences, which can lead to leadership instability. Whether that is healthy debate or destructive factionalism probably depends on how it is managed.
Ultimately, voters have the option to support independents if they believe party structures are too rigid or unresponsive. Preferential voting allows that choice without wasting a vote.
The important thing is that people think carefully about how power operates before they cast their ballot.
@ Denis Hay: Our experience in NSW Northern Tablelands (NT) which is part of the New England (NE) feral electorate, has a slightly different experience to your above quote over the past 50 years.
The election of Richard Torbay INDEPENDENT to NT was well known about six (6) weeks before polling day, even by NOtional$ own polling. He received about 80% of the primary vote.
Similarly, the election of Tony Windsor INDEPENDENT for NE was well accepted at least three days before polling day. He was elected with 62% of the primary vote and was the first elected politician of that election.
Tony had previously represented Tamworth as an INDEPENDENT from the 1988 NSW election returned Nick Goulash (LIARBRAL$) with a hung Parliament containing four (4) INDEPENDENTS.
After a later election there were seven (7) INDEPENDENTS in the NSW Parliament for at least one term.
Presently there are 4/8 NSW electorates west of the Range having INDEPENDENT MPs representing the best interests of the voters rather than the monied interests of the munificent foreign owned multinational corporations.
INDEPENDENTS GET THINGS DONE FOR THEIR COMMUNITIES.
What do NOtional$ & LIARBRAL$ do??