Page 858 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
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Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, my party has made its position quite clear. We do not believe that the many features of this present Bill reflect the wishes of the people of the ACT as expressed at the referendum of 1992, and unless those provisions are changed in the course of debate in the detail stage of this legislation we will not be supporting it. I cannot commend the Bill to the house at this point. I would like to wait and see what happens. If the Government has any sense of decency about it, it will ensure that those key elements of the electoral system are reflected and honoured in what comes forward, and it will make sure that in future it does not attempt to so egregiously flout the expressed opinion of people in this Territory.
Some people talk about majority wills and opinions being expressed, and all sort of devices. I use that expression more sparingly because I do not believe that we can very often divine what people actually want. I do think on an occasion such as this that we can say with considerable certainty what the people of the ACT have approved and what they have not approved, and the changes which to some extent my party and to some extent the Chief Minister will be putting forward in this place will go some way towards making sure that what we vote for at the end of this debate is what the people of the ACT voted for; but that is yet to occur. I await the detail stage before I can have confidence that the opinion expressed by people is finally going to be honoured in the outcome of this legislation and the debate.
MR STEVENSON (3.32): "The health of any democracy, no matter what its type or status, depends on a small technical detail: the conduct of elections. Everything else is secondary". Those words were stated by Jose Ortego y Gasset in his The Revolt of the Masses back in 1930. It is fair comment.
Let me first of all talk about the referendum on the ACT electoral system. To do that, I need to discuss the Hare-Clark system. That system has its origins in the Hare-Ware system, a system that was proposed in the 1890s. It was a quota-preferential system. In the early 1900s the Hare-Clark system was spoken about. It was also a quota-preferential system. It was for multimember electorates.
I have said that the referendum was a fraud. I have said it in the house; I have said it often. Why I have said that needs to be looked at again, although I gave the reasons in detail when we debated the Electoral Bill. Let me look at the definition of "fraud" in the dictionary. The dictionary refers to "a dishonest trick" and "a fraudulent contrivance", among other things. I suggest that the 1992 referendum was a fraudulent contrivance, because it asked only two questions. Those two questions were to do with a system of 17 electorates or a system of three electorates. The system that we currently have, a single electorate, was not allowed as an option. I suggest that not to allow the people of Canberra to vote for a single electorate, particularly when that is the system we already have, was fraudulent. Were there any other reasons, although not needed, to allow people to have that choice? There were. In a statement on 4 July 1991 before the Senate, Senator Bell referred to a reply dated 30 May from the Electoral Commission to questions by him. It started off saying:
Dear Senator Bell
I refer to your letter of 29 May 1991 ...
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