OPV Return Could Hand Queensland Seats to One Nation, Experts Warn

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli's commitment to restoring optional preferential voting (OPV) for the 2028 state election is drawing fire from polling analysts who warn the system could inadvertently deliver a string of regional seats to the surging One Nation party.

Under OPV — sometimes called the "just vote one" system — voters are not required to number every box on their ballot. While proponents argue this protects voters from being forced to preference parties they dislike, critics say it fragments the non-major-party vote in ways that can produce unexpected winners.

Deputy Premier Jared Bleijie has sought to reassure voters there will be no backroom preference deals, but Labor has accused the LNP of playing a strategically reckless game with the state's electoral architecture.

Public policy expert Dr Scott Prasser, a professor who has written extensively on Australian electoral systems, says the debate cuts to the heart of why parties ever support particular voting methods in the first place. "Political parties and leaders, when they support a particular voting system, it's for a political reason," Prasser told 4BC Mornings. "The most thing politicians want is to stay in office or to win their seat. Once you understand that, you understand what's going on."

Prasser traced Queensland's tangled voting history to illustrate the point. Labor governed under first-past-the-post for decades precisely because it prevented the Country Party and Liberal Party from combining their vote through preferences. After the 1957 election, however, the party shifted to compulsory preferential voting to end the damaging split between non-Labor conservative forces — a move that mirrored the federal system.

The Fitzgerald Inquiry era brought another shake-up. The Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC) recommended OPV despite most major parties preferring to retain compulsory preferential voting — even future federal treasurer Wayne Swan backed CPV at the time, against his own party's stated platform.

OPV was ultimately abolished by the Palaszczuk Labor government in 2016, with minimal parliamentary debate. Prasser's assessment of that decision was blunt: Labor wanted to lock in Greens preferences flowing to the ALP, and a swift switch to CPV secured that pipeline.

The arithmetic concern with OPV is straightforward. If a major party holds 48 per cent of first-preference votes but the remaining 52 per cent is spread across several smaller parties and independents who exchange preferences, the larger bloc can still be defeated — effectively leaving nearly half the electorate without meaningful influence on the final result.

Prasser personally favours full preferential voting, arguing it allows voters to lodge a protest with a minor party first preference without wasting their vote. "You can say to the major parties 'up yours, I'm going to vote for a minor party' — but your second and third preferences still count, so you're maximising your influence," he said.

With the 2028 election still two years away, the political landscape could shift considerably. For now, the OPV debate serves as an early test of whether the Crisafulli government is guided by electoral principle or, as Prasser suggested with dry humour, something rather more familiar in Queensland politics.