In her excellent recent book From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting, Judith Brett makes reference approvingly to democracy sausage, meaning the sausage sizzles which are now a feature of many polling places on election day. These fund-raising stalls are a celebration of the happy way in which Australian democracy has adapted the conduct of elections.

By contrast in other political science writing democracy sausage has an alternative meaning as the mechanical and unreflective way in which Australian parliamentary “sausage machines” produce decisions, when dominated by one of the major parties. This is especially so when one party possesses the majority on the floor of the chamber to push through what it wants by executive fiat.

Brett’s book shows how democracy sausages are the symbolic culmination of the proud history of the Australian contribution to electoral and voting practice around the world, including the secret ballot (known as the Australian ballot), women’s right to vote and to stand as a candidate for office, compulsory voting, preferential voting, Saturday rather than weekday voting, independent electoral administration rather than party political manipulation, and other innovations. It is a proud story, only partially recognised until now, to which there have been many contributors. These include not just members of parliament from the major political parties, but also notable public servants, including the second chief electoral officer Ryton Campbell Oldham and the 19th century South Australian electoral officer, William Boothby.

The image of the sausage machine is, however, more problematic. Do we really want our democratic decisions produced in this limited way? Would it not be beneficial to the common good for the parliamentary sausage machine to be revitalised by an injection of new ways of doing things? Brett’s wonderful account stops short of such speculation because her interests are electoral and voting systems rather than parliamentary politics. But the two aspects of democracy sit naturally side by side.

Australia’s democratic arrangements are the scene for the forthcoming New South Wales and federal elections. A great deal hangs on the performance in them of small parties like the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, challenging the major parties, especially the Nationals, in rural NSW state seats, and a bevy of mainly middle-class Independents standing in otherwise safe seats held by the Liberals in federal city seats.

New voices are both beneficiaries of and potential contributors to improving our democracy sausage. The first of these, the secret Australian ballot, brings benefits to all candidates for election by civilising our political practice on election day. It was first used in 1856 for the initial Victorian colonial elections. The secret ballot, which we now take for granted, all but eliminated the lack of privacy, violence and intimidation of vulnerable voters which made up the worst aspects of polling day before the introduction of an effective secret ballot.

Compulsory voting was first introduced for the federal parliament in 1925. It has had widespread benefits, including immediately eliminating the gender gap in voting turn-out by encouraging more women to vote. Its long-term benefit has been to enable political parties in Australia, compared to other countries like the USA and the United Kingdom, to concentrate on campaigns and communication rather than just ‘getting out the vote’. Brett argues that independents such as Kerryn Phelps, at the by-election for the seat of Wentworth in October 2018, also benefit from compulsory voting by being able to take on a major party at short notice with much more of an even playing field than would otherwise be the case.

The benefits of votes for women surely now speaks for itself though it was hotly contested at the time of its introduction in South Australia and Western Australia in the 1890s and federally in 1902. Brett highlights the forgotten nuances of the story its introduction, including the alleged consequences for the main political parties and for the balance between urban and rural seats. Australia has moved at a glacial pace to take advantage of allowing women candidates, but few would argue against the positive contribution that women MPs have made. Unfortunately access to voting for Aboriginal Australians is a much more dismal story, described by Brett as shameful. Aboriginal Australians were disenfranchised even in those states where they already had the vote by the same 1902 legislation.

Preferential voting, introduced federally in 1919, following similar initiatives taken earlier by some states, was introduced essentially to accommodate the rise of the Country Party. Without it the urban and rural conservative political parties. would have been disadvantaged in a first-past-the-post contest. With it, in a byelection in Corangamite, Victoria, the Labor candidate, Jim Scullin, later to become prime minister, lost to the Farmers’ Union candidate after the distribution of the preferences of two other non-Labor candidates. Scullin had topped the poll (42.5 per cent). Preferential voting immediately had the desired effect.

Preferential voting makes a well-targeted independent campaign more likely to succeed. Independents can occasionally win under the first-past-the-post system, but standing in a safe seat with the aim of finishing second on primary votes and then receiving the second preferences of the third-ranked and other candidates makes success more likely. That’s how the members of the House of Representatives cross-bench have got there.

Once elected independent and minor party voices enhance the qualities of our parliamentary sausage-machine. Independents bring new ingredients to the policy-making process, thus enlarging the possibilities of more varied and nutritious policy meals by breaking down the standard major party fare.

John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University