Minor Party Alliance

The Minor Party Alliance (MPA) is a collaborative undertaking of small Australian political parties, created by Glenn Druery's "Independent Liaison" business, which assists in organising preference meetings and negotiating preference flows between minor parties (often referred to as micro-parties) in Australia.^[1][2] The aim of the Alliance is the election of Alliance candidates to Australian upper houses based upon the accumulation of their primary votes and the registered "above-the-line" (or "group voting ticket") party preferences to reach an electoral quota. For the Australian Senate, the quota for a half-Senate election in each State is normally 14.3%. The MPA effectively aims to "game" the electoral system, an act it believes to be justified, based upon their perception that the Australian electoral system is unfair and heavily biased against minor parties.

To stop preference deals like those made for the 2013 federal election, when a number of minor party candidates with very small primary votes were elected to the Senate, changes in the group voting rules were made in time for the 2016 federal election. Under the new rules, instead of placing a "1" above the line on Senate ballot papers or numbering every box below the line, voters can number 1 to 6 above the line in order of their preferences. Due to this, minor parties were no longer able to swap preferences in the same manner.^[3]

As of November 2022, only Victoria has group ticket voting that enables similar preference deals being organised for the state upper house, with a similar preference deal between minor parties standing for the Victorian Legislative Council made at the 2018 Victorian state election.^[4][5] The proliferation of minor parties is attributable to the law that by contesting an election as a party, rather than as an individual, a candidate can accept votes above as well as below the line.^[6] This enables them to be a part of preference deals, which would not be possible as an independent.