Page 419 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 1991
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I have not heard anything in this debate tonight which is inconsistent with the view of all the parties and groups in this place that there should be preferential voting. Indeed, Mr Berry's forecast amendment to this motion talks about single member electorates incorporating preferential voting. I assume from those comments and what has been said earlier tonight that the Australian Labor Party supports preferential voting and it considers it an important part of any fair electoral system. All I can say to that is, "Hear, hear".
All the Australian electoral systems incorporate preferential voting. Therefore we are placed in the position of deciding whether we can accept in the ACT a system which is completely at variance, completely at odds, with every other Australian electoral system. For the last two years we have been the butt of people's jokes because of the peculiarities of our electoral system. I have no desire to go into another election being ridiculed or denigrated because of the way in which we do things in the ACT, and particularly because I do not think anybody in this chamber seriously supports the idea that we should have a system which does not provide for people to cast preferential votes. In those circumstances it really seems odd that we should be encumbered with a system which none of us support and which none of us should be expected to support.
Mr Speaker, if the ALP really does support a fair electoral system - and its members have made much of it this evening and elsewhere - it has to support this motion, and it has to support every part of this motion, including paragraph (3). The Federal Government is proposing for the ACT a system which opposes, presumably, the policy of the local Australian Labor Party. Where is their guts? If they are genuine about their position on fair electoral systems, if they really are prepared to go to the people of the ACT and say, "We will stand up for and we will fight for fair electoral systems", then they have no option but to support this motion.
If I might indicate my view on what the Federal Government is doing, I have to say that there are some hopeful signs. Mr Simmons, the Federal Minister, this morning apparently indicated in a radio interview that he supported the idea of moving the electoral system into the hands of the people of the ACT. He has also indicated, I believe, at an earlier date, that he would be demodifying the d'Hondt system and introducing a pure d'Hondt system which, as I have said, includes no provision for preferential voting. We have, I think, Mr Speaker, no choice but to oppose the latter and support the former.
I believe that preferential voting is fundamental to any democratic electoral system, and I really find it hard to see why the Federal Government is supporting a move to remove it; certainly, the touted reasons give me no enlightenment. The only reason, after all, why self-
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