Page 440 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 1991
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Very likely, it would be the single member electorate system. You simply do not do that overnight. It may be the Hare-Clark or even the modified d'Hondt - although that could be done rather more quickly. We have run out of time to get a referendum going and still get the electoral system that we want. There is another time factor as well, and that, I believe, is that it would be undesirable to have that referendum coming closer and closer to the next election, as it would inevitably be.
I do not believe that this Territory again needs a destructive campaign against self-government that would accompany that referendum. I believe that it is most sensible that that should come after the next election. I think we need the stability - such as it is - of the current system; the current d'Hondt system or demodified d'Hondt system. While it is not popular and is not widely accepted, at least it is there now. Let us move ahead in that way and put the referendum off till later.
I raise as a matter of misrepresentation some remarks made by Mr Kaine that follow a pattern of remarks made by members on the Government side. The Government, as it endeavours to disguise the rifts which fracture its own ranks, continues its tactic of attempting to claim divisions within the ALP. Tonight, as it has done before, it tries to single me out and claim that I am somehow separate from my colleagues. Mr Kaine tonight suggested that in some way I would be dealt with for, as he said it, "dissenting from what Labor does". I rise to repudiate what he says. I express my views freely and forcibly in the party. I am very happy to work with the party in all the ways that the party works. Any suggestions from Mr Kaine that I am dissenting, or will be punished, are simply quite incorrect.
MR JENSEN (10.28): I just wish to make a couple of brief comments in relation to this matter. Mr Speaker, in the system proposed - - -
Mr Connolly: They are never brief.
MR JENSEN: Wait your turn, Mr Connolly, and you will find out. In the system proposed by Mr Simmons, it would be possible for a large percentage of the votes to be lost; in other words, to have no relevance whatsoever. For example, let us say that there are six independents who run in that particular election. If those six independents, for example, each got 4.5 per cent of the votes, it would mean that none of those candidates would be elected. Those who cast the votes - some 27 per cent in this case - would be effectively disenfranchised. At least the d'Hondt system we were elected on allowed for voters to have a second and subsequent preference distribution.
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