No democratic process is perfect. Going back to the ancient Greeks, through the Magna Carta to the US civil war, societies have struggled to find arrangements that allow plurality of thought whilst equally ensuring a majority of the population peacefully and fairly determining the laws of the land. How does one ensure the greatest number of individuals have the final say? Even amongst the modern Westminister-inspired democracies, the actual voting methods are disparate and flawed. Is first-past-the-post better than preferential voting? Should voting be compulsory or not? 2020 gave us the horror scenario in the United States of an arguably ‘stolen’ election, where lack of voter ID and Covid-inspired ballot harvesting procedures certainly encouraged if not promoted electoral corruption.

Even in a system as old and as stable as our own, the result of the unique citizens conference at Corowa in 1893, which adopted a mixture of the American and British systems under a constitutional monarchy, there have been changes and modifications, most notably the increase in the number of Senators at the behest of Bob Hawke’s Labor government. More recently, voters have been offered choices such as avoiding the ‘tablecloth’ that is the Senate candidate list by only voting above the line.

Although this magazine firmly believes Peter Dutton and the Coalition can (and must) win the forthcoming federal election with a healthy majority, the polls suggest a hung parliament of one flavour or another is the more likely outcome.

For the vast majority of Australians, voting is a simple binary choice: Labor or Liberal, and that is it. In most people’s minds, the main game is who controls the House of Representatives, forgetting of course that no bills become law without a majority in the Senate.

There are 76 senators and so a majority of 39 is required for every piece of government legislation. The Coalition currently has 30 and Labor 25, leaving both well short of a majority. The remaining 21 senators make up the ‘crossbench’.

The first crossbench senators of any significance appeared in the 1950s. The breakaway Democratic Labor Party typically held around six out of 60 senators for two decades.

Then came Don Chipp and his Australian Democrats who began with the mission of ‘keeping the bastards honest’ and who peaked at the 1998 election when they had nine senators and held the balance of power. They haven’t won a senate spot since, with typical Democrat voters shifting to the Greens, who had one senator in 1998 but today have 12 of our 21 crossbenchers, if you include former Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe. Labor strategists recognise they cannot function without the Greens, despite endless protestations to the contrary.

But if the crossbenchers to the left are basically united, the opposite is true on the right side of politics, where, perhaps not surprisingly, there is a disparate group made up of libertarians, anti-globalists, climate sceptics, vaccine sceptics and so on. What the Guardian or the ABC would call ‘far right’, many Australians would simply call ‘common sense’.

What is required is a mirror image of the Greens. Although these minor parties may disagree on some issues, on around 80 per cent of matters they would be in furious agreement, especially on key topics like freedom of expression and net zero.

During the last election, this magazine called for a ‘glorious coalition’ of these parties in the Upper House to counter the Greens. There is no question that on most culture war and economic issues, there exists in this nation a natural 60:40 majority towards the right side of politics, as we saw in the Voice referendum.

Regardless of the result in the Lower House, it is critical that the Senate starts to better reflect the will of the people. The leader of the Libertarian party in the New South Wales parliament, and a former Liberal party heavyweight, John Ruddick, believes it is possible to use our electoral system to guarantee a right-leaning crossbench in the next federal parliament.

He proposes a ‘Grand Primary’ for what he calls the ‘minor-right’ parties, such as One Nation, the Libertarians, the Trumpet of Patriots and so on. He suggests: ‘The six states each convene a Grand Primary to be held in a capital city town hall. The purpose of which is to elect the minor-right’s best Senate candidate in each state. All rank-and-file members of all minor-right parties will be invited to attend and hear an address from the Senate candidate from each of the participating parties followed by a debate and Q&A. The finale will be for all members to vote and the winner declared the minor-right’s lead Senate candidate in their particular state. Ideally the other five candidates required on a Senate ticket would represent a spectrum of the minor-right parties (AEC rules permit up to three parties being named on a joint ticket). This strategy has the best chance to deliver a powerful minor-right presence on the Senate’s cross bench.’

A glorious coalition indeed. Democracy thrives on good ideas implemented well. It’s up to the minor parties to decide whether this can be one of those.