What’s missing from some of the discussions about the likely electoral impact of a Muslim party or a Muslim Vote political movement turns on a full understanding of preferential voting in the Australian federal voting system.
The Australian electoral system is unusual in two circumstances.
First, voting is compulsory – even if Australians vote out of habit. Second, electors have to fill out all the squares on the House of Representatives ballot paper. The candidate who gets an absolute majority, or a majority after the distribution of preferences from one or more candidates, wins.
Traditionally, the focus on preferential voting has been on how minor parties and independents distribute preferences. However, as the primary votes of the major parties decline, and those of minor parties and independents increase, preferences of the major parties matter more than ever.
A glance at the teal independents’ success in the May 2022 election illustrates the point. Six teals won seats from the Liberal Party with primary votes well short of an absolute majority: Kate Chaney (Curtin, 29.5 per cent), Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, 34.5 per cent), Monique Ryan (Kooyong, 40.3 per cent), Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, 38.1 per cent), Allegra Spender (Wentworth, 35.8 per cent) and Kylea Tink (North Sydney, 25.2 per cent).
After the distribution of preferences, what’s now called the twocandidate-preferred vote was: Chaney 51.3 per cent, Daniel 52.9 per cent, Ryan 52.9 per cent, Scamps 52.5 per cent, Spender 54.2 per cent and Tink 52.9 per cent.
Spender had the biggest victory of the six. But all defeated Liberal Party incumbents due to Labor and Greens preferences.
If a first-past-the-post electoral system prevailed in Australia, as in Britain, the following Liberal MPs would have been returned: Celia Hammond (Curtin), Tim Wilson (Goldstein), Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong), Jason Falinski (Mackellar), Dave Sharma (Wentworth) and Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney). In other words, it was the preferences of a major party (Labor) and a minor party (the Greens) that made it possible for teal independents to win.
The same is true of Dai Le, the independent member for Fowler.
She scored 29.5 per cent of the primary vote to Labor’s Kristina Keneally’s 36.1 per cent – but prevailed with a 51.6 TCP vote. Le benefited significantly from Liberal Party preferences.
Last Tuesday, Sky News ran a special investigation titled “Clash of Faiths: The Fight for Muslim votes”. The reporter was Jonathan Lea. He interviewed Ziad Basyouny, an Egyptian-born medical doctor of the Islamic faith who has announced he will take on sitting Labor member Tony Burke in the southwest Sydney seat of Watson.
Burke, the Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, is likely to be the most senior member of the Albanese Labor government to be seriously challenged by a candidate who believes, among other things, that Labor should take a tougher stance against Israel in the Israel- Hamas war in Gaza.
At a press conference, Basyouny declared: “Please, you’ve got to listen to us – otherwise we will come after you.” In response to a reporter’s question as to “Who’s we?”, Basyouny replied “independents”.
Interviewed after the press conference, Basyouny was asked by Lea: “Are you not concerned there is a conception here of you – that you are a representative of the Muslim (Vote) movement?” Basyouny replied: “I am the representative of every voice in Watson.”
At the 2022 election, Burke won 51.9 per cent of the primary vote. It would take a massive change of voting habits in Watson for Basyouny to defeat the sitting Labor member. He would need at least 30 per cent of the primary vote and then pick up the remainder necessary to win via preferences.
It’s quite likely that the Greens would preference Basyouny ahead of Burke. But it would make sense for the Liberal Party to preference Burke ahead of Basyouny and the Greens, even if Labor declines to return the favour in seats where the Liberals are running against teals or other independents.
And then there is the fact that there is no one Muslim position in Australia. As Anne Aly, the Labor MP for Cowan, commented to Lea, there are Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims, and more besides.
On the same program, Jamal Rifi, a medical doctor, said this about the Muslim Vote movement: “They have little understanding about the ramifications of what they are doing – not (only) in southwestern Sydney but across the nation.” Rifi argued that the movement was “very divisive” and that this was the opinion of “the majority of people” he had consulted with.
Rory Stewart, the former Conservative MP in the House of Commons and a one-time British diplomat, is soon to visit Australia to promote his book, Politics on the Edge.
Stewart is perhaps best known in Australia for “The Rest is Politics” podcast, which he presents with Alastair Campbell, a former staffer to British Labour prime minister Tony Blair.
Interviewed by Patricia Karvelas on ABC Radio National Breakfast last Wednesday, Stewart said he believes “Britain can learn a lot from Australia”. He added: “I think we can learn a lot from the teal independents.”
This is doubtful. More than a decade ago, some senior Conservative ministers visited Australia to look at ideas for electoral reform in Britain. In the event, this came to naught. While both Britain and Australia retain their own electoral systems, neither nation is likely to learn from the other.
Take the seat of Leicester South in the recent United Kingdom general election. Independent Shockat Adam defeated the sitting Labour MP, Jonathan Ashworth, by 35.2 per cent to 32.9 per cent, whereupon Adam held up a keffiyeh and declared that his victory was for the people of Gaza.
The Conservatives, Reform Party and Liberal Democrats candidates received some 20 per cent of the primary vote. Under a preferential voting system this could well have been enough votes to see Labour prevail over Adam, who presented himself as a Muslim candidate.
The evidence suggests it is most unlikely that a Muslim Vote candidate, proclaiming to be an independent, will defeat a Labor MP in the forthcoming election.

Early this year, the contents of a WhatsApp group for Jewish creative professionals and academics, set up in Australia after the October 7 attacks in Israel, leaked and fell into the hands of pro-Palestinian activists.
The activists posted snippets on social media, along with the names, photos and social media page links of many of the group’s 600-odd members.
Before long, members of the chat group faced online and in-person harassment – including threats and vandalism – repercussions that for some have continued several months later.
The incidents touched off a ­national debate in Australia, where the government subsequently said it would seek to curb doxing, the sharing of people’s personal details with malicious intent. Anti-doxing legislation is expected to be introduced in the country as soon as this month.
Throughout the crisis, it has remained a mystery how the chat thread leaked in the first place. The events were set in motion in January by a New York Times reporter, according to a Wall Street Journal review of the incident and statements from the Times.
The reporter downloaded about 900 pages of content from the chat thread and shared it with the subject of an article she had worked on. Later, the information wound up in the hands of the ­activists.
A New York Times spokeswoman said in a statement that the company reviewed the matter and took “appropriate action” against the reporter, Natasha Frost.
“It has been brought to our attention that a New York Times ­reporter inappropriately shared information with the subject of a story to assist the individual in a private matter, a clear violation of our ethics,” the spokeswoman said.
“This was done without the knowledge or approval of The (New York) Times.”
Frost, who remains on staff at the paper, said in a statement provided by a company spokeswoman: “I shared this document with one individual. Its subsequent dissemination and misuse happened entirely without my knowledge or consent. I was shocked by these events, which put me and many others at terrible risk. I deeply ­regret my decision.”
The reporter’s role in the chain of events that led to the harassment raises questions about the ­responsibilities of journalists to guard sensitive information they come across in their reporting, and the real-world consequences when such information leaks widely.
The repercussions of the leak could be significant. If Australia enacts a new law, it would follow a small number of countries that have made doxing explicitly illegal, according to Christoph Schmon, international policy director at civil liberties non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In the US, there is no federal law against doxing, though privacy statutes provide some protections for victims, and a handful of states have proposed anti-doxing measures.
The war in Gaza has been a sensitive topic for many newsrooms. At The New York Times, publisher AG Sulzberger and executive editor Joe Kahn have been stressing the importance of reporters remaining impartial in their behaviours and setting aside their personal views, following incidents management deemed troubling, including the leak of materials related to Middle East coverage.
The WhatsApp group whose contents Frost leaked was created in late October 2023, and was intended to provide support in an environment of heightened anti-Semitism following the October 7 attacks. It is made up of people with varying political, cultural and religious leanings.
Some consider themselves to be Zionists, a word often used to describe Jews who are staunch supporters of Israel, while others don’t, according to members. Frost, who was invited to the group in early November, was among its earliest members.
While a group administrator indicated in the chat that it wasn’t intended for political debates, there were instances when chat group members veered into advocacy. That included discussions on how to bring comments made by pro-Palestinian activists to the attention of their employers or publishers, when they were deemed by members to be anti-Semitic.
In December, some members of the group shared a call-to-action to challenge the impartiality of Antoinette Lattouf, a writer who had been given a five-day gig hosting a radio morning show for the AABC. Members of another Whats­App group, for Jewish lawyers, also engaged in a similar effort
The ABC cut the gig short, and in January, Frost co-wrote a story about the internal tensions around its decision. Lattouf has said she was terminated unlawfully, while the ABC in a statement said her use of social media “had not complied with a direction,” which Lattouf has denied. She declined to comment for this article.
Several days before the story, Frost texted an administrator of the WhatsApp group to say that she was leaving the group to avoid, among other things, any perception she would violate the privacy of its members. She said it was likely she would write about Lattouf.
Around the time The New York Times story was published, some details from the WhatsApp group began to leak out online on a youth-focused news and entertainment site. As more material from the chat began circulating via the pro-Palestinian activists, members of the WhatsApp group began to face harassment. Joshua Moshe, a shop owner and member of the group, said he and his wife started to get threatening phone calls and emails calling them baby killers and genocidal maniacs.
A woman who left an expletive-laced voicemail followed up with a text message showing a photo of their five-year-old son, Moshe said. His family’s gift shop in Melbourne was vandalised several times, including with graffiti and stickers displaying a crossed-out Israeli flag labelled “boycott”.
As traffic waned and they became more anxious, they moved the store to a new neighbourhood. Several months later, the threats have persisted, including abusive comments on the shop’s social media posts. The shop’s Google profile was edited by web users to add incorrect information regarding its location and hours of operation, an issue recently resolved by Google, according to Moshe.
Siana Einfeld, a high-school teacher at a Jewish school in Melbourne and another member of the group chat, said people called the school to tell them that she was “complicit in genocide”. She also received threats, prompting her to install security cameras in her home.
Both Einfeld and Moshe contacted the local police.
Another person in April filed a police report in Australia that mentioned Frost, according to a version of the report viewed by the Journal.
“We are concerned that the information shared may make us targets for future terrorist attacks or lone-wolf attacks,” the person wrote in the report.
Administrators of the Whats­App group also sent a note to The New York Times, since reviewed by the Journal, asking for help identifying the third party with whom Frost may have shared the contents of the group chat.
New rules under consideration in Australia include a criminal penalty for doxing, and giving ­people a civil option to act against others who dox them.
Free-speech experts say that protections against the publication of personal information may create positive change to ­prevent real harm. But they said that an anti-doxing law, if too broad, could interfere with legitimate gathering and dissemination of news.
The Australian government is committed to taking action to combat doxing, which would complement other reforms to strengthen privacy protections, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has said.
“The idea that in Australia, someone should be targeted because of their religion, because of their faith … is just completely unacceptable,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told radio station 2GB in February. “This is not the Australia that we want to see.”