Page 1242 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (6.21): Madam Speaker, I will be opposing Mr Humphries's amendment, and I do so on very simple grounds. I will read to the Assembly from the Referendum options description sheet, page 2, where it says:
Seats will then be allocated to the candidates using the Hare-Clark system of proportional representation, as used at elections for the Tasmanian House of Assembly ...
Surely nothing could be clearer or more prescriptive than that. What Mr Humphries is proposing in his amendment does not fit the bill. It is not, as Mr Humphries admitted, as used at elections for the Tasmanian House of Assembly. We have had a number of debates on what is or is not acceptable as an amendment to the referendum options description sheet. I want it to be very clear that what Mr Humphries proposes is contrary to an expressed and prescribed method that is spelt out in this sheet. Madam Speaker, it is not that it has been omitted from the sheet. It is not a matter that was not dealt with in the debate on the Hare-Clark system. The matter that Mr Humphries proposes to amend is one that was prescribed by the referendum description sheet, and described very specifically; so members should be very clear about what it is that they are opposing.
Madam Speaker, the proposal that Mr Humphries is putting forward would have the effect of increasing the effective value of some voters' ballot-papers, and that in turn could change an election outcome. I want members to be very clear about that also. Mr Green has given me some very lengthy examples of how an election outcome could be altered by Mr Humphries's proposed amendment. I am not going to go through those examples. For one thing, I am no expert in these matters and I would have trouble getting to grips with these examples. I also believe that there would be other members who might not find them too enlightening. However, Madam Speaker, I would appeal in particular to Mr Westende who, in the debate on how-to-vote cards, told me that everywhere he went in Canberra people begged him to ban how-to-vote cards because they all understood the Hare-Clark system so well. I would ask Mr Westende: Is it the case that, everywhere you go, all these people who understand the Hare-Clark system so well are also begging you to change the definition of "transfer value" during the scrutiny because they find the present system unsatisfactory? I very much doubt it. Madam Speaker, as I say, my grounds for opposing what Mr Humphries wishes to do are that it is specifically prescribed in the referendum options sheet and it could change the outcome of an election in a way that was not envisaged at the time this referendum was taken.
MR MOORE (6.25): Madam Speaker, I rise to respond, first of all, to the Chief Minister's comments about the Tasmanian system. I think the first and most important point is that this amendment is consequential upon our changing the formality rules that apply to the counting of an election. It is clearly consequential upon that. In other words, had we not changed those formality rules the counting system in Tasmania would apply more appropriately. More importantly, the Chief Minister has, I believe, misrepresented what is in the description sheet in that what she read is exactly what is in the sheet but it does not end with a full stop; it ends with a semicolon.
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