Page 638 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 July 1989
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an electoral system. I have checked through the Electoral Commission reports, and each year it gives us the comment on what its main functions are. I do not read into any of those functions the right to criticise a system that the Government has set into place. Certainly there are requirements to report and to inform but not, once established, to criticise what the Government has done, the system that has been imposed on it - not by the Government, incidentally, but by the Parliament.
If the commission had reservations - and I can accept that it would and it is entitled to - those reservations should have been included, as I am sure they will be, in a subsequent report, the report for 1989-90. That is where the criticisms should be placed - not out in the public arena, not out there sowing some great concern amongst the community and contributing to the negative vote in that election.
Once the Parliament had established a policy and it was in place, it was the commission's role to conduct an election campaign; no more than that. The commission had to put into operation an electoral system that was admittedly complex and had to take steps to cover that, but it appears to me as a participant, along with the people here and another hundred people outside, that it set out to frustrate the system.
Look at the way the commission did the count. I will repeat that it was done fairly and accurately, carefully and slowly, at a snail's pace. Could it have been any slower? Certainly not. Okay, it was complex. I keep repeating this, and I want to make the point that there was a need for care and we accept that. There is no problem about it, but I think the way it did it also showed the commission's sheer stubbornness.
I am not aware that any overtime was ever worked. Perhaps there was, and I may catch up with that at some stage. This was also a period when I think there were three long weekends. There were a number of days in which there was a public holiday. The commission staff did not work on those days. Some of my colleagues in this chamber - perhaps the Liberals more than others, who have been involved in elections over long periods - would know that counts do take place on holidays. Counts take place on Saturdays, on Sundays, at night time, and there is nothing uncommon about that. But did that occur in this election campaign? Nowhere that I am aware of. I do not think there was any overtime. Certainly there was no significant amount of overtime.
I think the returning officer did his job well within the constraints of the policy under which he was forced to work. But what a unique situation. The returning officer lived in Sydney. I do not blame him, but I understand he went home most weekends - and why would he not? But what an outrageous situation, for a returning officer to be
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