Page 416 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 1991
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MR WOOD (9.08): I sat here for some time and held my seeking of the call until after Mr Collaery had spoken because he had indicated earlier that he was going to drop the bucket on us - they are not quite his words - after Mr Connolly made his comments about self-selection, quoting what Mr Collaery had said on radio. He was going to throw all sorts of things back to us and put us in our place. Now, what has he done? He has read a very fine statement on the origins and, dare I say, the present position of the ALP. Things have not changed. We are still, as then, seeking support from all sectors. As we had then, we have a wide range of policies, appealing not just to the unions or the small farmer groups and other groups that Mr Collaery hinted at. We are still egalitarian. We are still interested in reform and we still have a very strong base with the unions.
That is a summary of what Mr Collaery read from that statement. It is nothing at all in the nature of the threat that he made after Mr Connolly's speech. He was going to show somehow, I thought, that we are also self-selecting. It is certainly far from the case. I know, as the ALP gears towards its own preselection for this Assembly, that it is far from being self-selective.
Mr Speaker, this debate has taken quite a time, bearing in mind that I do not think there will be any dissent from Mr Moore's motion. I want to indicate my support as part of that of the Australian Labor Party for the referendum proposal, and I have two reasons for that. One probably has been reasonably well covered tonight, and that is that we need a referendum to settle a most difficult question. I believe it is the case that the type of electoral system for the ACT may be settled in no other way than a referendum. Because of the varying views of the political groups, both here and on the hill, there is no clear way that we can establish a system because there is no clear majority anywhere to do so.
I note that there is some derision from across the chamber about the ALP's consistent proposal for single member electorates. I find it very hard to see how any argument against a single member electorate system can be sustained when it is so commonly used in Australia and throughout the world. I will say again, as I have said before in this chamber, that the concern for single member electorates expressed by the Liberal Party says very little about their confidence of winning seats in this town. Hence they want to go to some other system where they will feel more secure. I might say that while the ALP favours the single member system, there is no doubt in my mind, as we have talked around this, that the Labor Party is as confident of winning the same number of seats under any system, whether it is Hare-Clark or the d'Hondt system.
But there is another reason why we need a referendum that I believe is even more important, and that is that we have to establish a system that will be accepted and will hold in
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