It was difficult to complete successfully, and informal votes were commonly around ten percent.
[7] The Hawke government introduced group voting tickets (GVTs) for the Senate 1984 election.
[9][10][11] Group voting meant political parties chose preferences, and not voters.
Instead of just giving guidance to their supporters in a how-to-vote card, they could control the allocation of preferences.
GVTs encouraged the formation of single-issue microparties, who harvested votes and then distributed preferences, often to destinations their voters might not have expected.