Page 444 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 1991
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MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (10.37): I would not be as confident as the Leader of the Opposition is as to whether the Australian Labor Party fully opposed Senator Hill's amendment. I suggest that she read the Hansard of that debate on 24 November 1988. I will not labour the point.
The colonies that made up the pre-Federation Australia were the first polities in the Westminster system to battle through the gerrymandered systems that were such a problem to early parliaments in the British world. We remember that Charles Dickens, in Pickwick Papers, wrote about a gerrymandered election under that system - and that was at a time when the Benthamites, the Chartists and all those groups were going on about the sort of system that group opposite would like to plunge us back into. They would like to undo the precedent setting electoral systems that early democrats in this country set up for our political structures.
A lot has been said today in denial of what has been suggested as the probable effect of single member electorates. The Leader of the Opposition quite candidly admitted that she expected that single member electorates would give her power - that is, 10 seats. That admission is on the record. It will hang around her neck at the next election like a millstone, because if ever a principal electoral issue has arisen out of today's debates it is the fact that if you vote ALP at the next election you risk plunging us into single member electorates. They have pledged themselves to it. I pledge myself, at the next election campaign, to exposing you at every turn, at every turnstile, on every soapbox in this town, on what you, the Australian Labor Party, propose to do to our community. You have made full admissions today. It took hours to get them off you. We finally got them from the Leader of the Opposition. She did it. It will hang around your neck like a millstone, I promise you.
The Labor Party's tactics today in question time were abysmal. You got led up the garden path and Mr Berry stood up and queried what - - -
MR SPEAKER: Relevance, please, Mr Collaery.
MR COLLAERY: It is not relevant, Mr Speaker, but I got most of it in. Mr Berry tabled, if I recall, pages 181 to 197 inclusive of the transcript of an important matter before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. He did not table page 199, which is the next page - because it is double printed for economy reasons. Let me read from the top of page 199. This bunch opposite are pretty shrewd. At the top of page 199, the next page, I say this, in response to a question:
The Labor Party in the Assembly -
and we are talking about evidence we were giving when we were struggling under your minority government here -
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