Page 3912 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 19 September 2017
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indeed paying off and we will continue our focus in these priority markets that will include Indonesia and India in the future as well.
Discussion concluded.
Adjournment
Motion (by Mr Gentleman) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Bogey Musidlak
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.57): I want to pause tonight to reflect on the life of Boguslaw, known as “Bogey”, Musidlak. Bogey died suddenly on 27 August. As he was a long-term Canberra resident, I think it is appropriate that this Assembly notes his passing, as we all owe our election to his vision and foresight.
As Malcolm Mackerras said in a recent obituary, Bogey was the father of Hare-Clark in Canberra. Bogey was the president for many years of the Proportional Representation Society, an organisation which has come about to further the use of the single transferrable vote. The eyes of many members will glaze over, but the single transferrable vote is a very important thing. It is used most commonly in Australia, more commonly in Australia than anywhere else in the world, and it does produce very fair electoral systems. Malcolm Mackerras’s obituary, and also Malcolm Baalman’s online obituary earlier this month, spoke warmly of the importance of the work that was done by Bogey Musidlak in promoting proportional representation and the single transferrable vote in Australia and specifically in Canberra.
Bogey was born in September 1953, and he came to Canberra as a resident in 1976. He had a Polish father and a Ukrainian mother, who met in a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. For those who knew Bogey—I knew him well, and my husband, Lyle, also knew him well; he worked very closely with him during the 1992 Hare-Clark voting system referendum—Bogey was an unusual character. He was a bit of a hoarder but entirely driven. During the electoral system referendum, his effort and drive were the principal things that saw Hare-Clark become the preferred electoral system in the ACT.
When there was discussion in 1991 about whether we should change the electoral system, the options that were put forward were Hare-Clark and single-member electorates. At the time when it was first mooted, the Canberra Times reported that its poll had shown that there was 25 per cent support for the Hare-Clark electoral system in the ACT, but by the time of the referendum in February 1992 74 per cent of Canberrans had voted for Hare-Clark. This, which has been described by Malcolm Mackerras as the miracle of Canberra, was mainly the work of Bogey Musidlak.
But 1992 did not see the end of his work. When the first draft electoral bill came out, following the referendum, there were attempts by Labor to hijack the election result with a proposal for above-the-line voting, which is the antithesis of the single
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