Page 1430 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 6 May 2008
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were letterboxed before the people who were doing the defaming pulled their heads in. Without a provision like this, there would be nothing really to stop someone letterboxing the whole of Canberra. It would take two or three years through the civil law—far too late for the poor candidate who had been unfairly defamed. It would seem now, having had a quick look through the government’s amendments, that that at least is an area where common sense will apply, and it is sensible, in our view, to keep that provision, for the reasons I have stated.
There are some elements of this bill which we certainly will be supporting. There are elements, for example, to streamline reporting requirements. There are elements to update the definition of “electoral expenditure”; to standardise disclosure thresholds; to create efficiencies in relation to postal voting; to simplify the authorisation requirements for published material; to protect persons whose names form part of the name of a political party; to prohibit taking photographs of completed ballot papers; to ease requirements in relation to publishing of certain addresses; and to make a series of minor and non-contentious technical changes and corrections.
It is a big bill and there are some things in there which I think will assist democracy in the territory rather than hinder it and so those are the amendments that we will be supporting. But we certainly will not support any self-serving, ill-considered and undemocratic elements of the bill, some of which I have outlined earlier. There is just no way. It does not do justice to anyone in this Assembly; indeed, the government is putting a slur on itself for putting ill-conceived, self-serving and undemocratic elements in this bill.
This is a government that used to want to see single-member electorates and finally realised that two-thirds of the community did not want that. It persisted with how-to-vote cards in 1995 and then changed its mind in 1998 and let the whole extent of Hare-Clark flow through—and flow through very successfully. It benefited us then. You got the benefit in 2001 and 2004. The Hare-Clark system has had sensible changes in the past, like Robson rotation, and then the enhanced Robson rotation, so that not just everyone got a chance to be on top of the ballot paper; all the numbers were jumbled up so you could not get any artificial flow-on just by the luck of the draw, as happened with a few people, who suddenly got lots of votes from other people who bowed out, who leapfrogged candidates who might have been 500 or 600 votes in front of them.
It is a system that I think has served the territory well. It is a very fair system. Michael Moore describes it as the fairest system in the world; it enabled independents like him who have community support to get elected. I think he would have had trouble getting back in in 2001. He saw the writing on the wall then and pulled the pin; nevertheless, he got in under a system such as this and he served four terms as an independent. It is fair in terms of ensuring the basic percentage vote in terms of people who want the vote for parties recognised in some way.
It provides choice in terms of members of the community being able to go to not just one elected representative but several. Despite the good efforts of, say, some backbenchers, for example, in government, there is only so much they can do in terms of getting their government to change unpopular decisions, and that is where non-government members and opposition members in the same electorate can help
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