Page 445 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 1991
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has refused to participate collegiately by sharing portfolios -
Mr Moore knows what I am talking about -
or joining a joint working government -
as Mr Kaine often mused about before the election. I said to the Federal committee:
That is the position we are at. Instability should be looked at there, but philosophically, in choosing an electoral system surely you have to make sure that the system itself -
let the record show that the Labor Party members are giggling their heads off -
does not dictate the political structure that results.
Again tonight we have those clowns with their mouths open, going to and fro like in a sideshow. I said:
Single-member electorates are almost self-predicting in what they are going to produce.
I said that then; I say it now. Let the community be warned of two things: Firstly, this Leader of the Opposition says that she expects to get power out of single member electorates. She has made the admission; it is in tonight's Hansard. Secondly, we know that when she had a minority government, with some tacit support from the Residents Rally, none of our policy requirements were ever put forward. She was stymied by her right wing at the time - or whatever was left of her left wing.
Let us get down to tintacks in this debate. The Labor Party is not going to get what it wants; it is not going to get single member electorates. But, if the power to set the electoral system is repatriated to us, we know that they have pledged themselves to concreting themselves into governing this Territory under that gerrymandered or Berrymandered system - or whatever their system is and wherever they have drummed it up from.
A lot has been said also about what the Residents Rally said. We said in our submission to that Federal committee, "The current minority government does not lead to stability in government". That was the essence of what we said. I believe - and I am sure other members share this view - that there is no stability in a gerrymander. It creates ill-will throughout the community; it creates what we had until the 1920s in early parliaments in this country, whereby the former imperial colonies had first past the post voting, which did not produce a satisfied electorate. People felt unhappy that, with 40 per cent of the gross
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