Page 4675 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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justification for the modified d'Hondt system. The Senate system, as they saw it, has all the advantages of the modifications made to the pure d'Hondt system, and they went on to set out the advantages of the Senate system which could replace the d'Hondt system.
The difficulty with it is that the modified d'Hondt system does favour major parties. It was designed to favour them, and it certainly is set up that way. The last election was a great shock to Labor and Liberal alike, I think, in that, even though they had set out to take advantage of that, they were not able to do it. However, with a more normal response from the electorate at another election it may well be that the modified d'Hondt system, with its 5.56 per cent cut-off, could have that effect.
In arguing in favour of the Senate system, the Electoral Commission stated that single-member electorates are not acceptable to the majority of citizens and went on with some of the political realities. But the political realities are not, I believe, the critical factor here; we need to attempt to turn around the attitude of people to this Assembly and to the second Assembly. I think the second Assembly, like ours, will start at a major disadvantage if it is elected under what is widely recognised as a shonky and discredited electoral system.
Therefore, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think it is appropriate for us to send to the Australian Parliament a clear message that members of this parliament believe that the time is appropriate for them to make a minor modification to a Bill that is before their parliament and to bring about a system that is much more acceptable to people in the ACT, that is, the Senate electoral system.
I think it is inappropriate for us to debate today the Hare-Clark system and single-member electorates system which has been the subject of much debate in this Assembly, as indeed it has been in the community. I would be prepared to debate it if people want that. But the issue here is quite different; it has to do simply with the 1992 election. I make it very clear that this is not a system that I personally advocate as a continuing system for the ACT; it is simply a system for the 1992 election. We could have a proportional representation system, which, as the Electoral Commission says, is very similar to the d'Hondt system but which is without the warts and has the ability to count the votes in a very, very short time.
I think it is important to recognise that, in making this recommendation, the Electoral Commission also suggested that they would want to make some very minor modifications to ensure that people's votes would be deemed to be counted, even though they did not mark all squares on the ballot-paper. I think that would be an important modification. One of the good things that came out of the last election under the d'Hondt system, for those who were scrutineering, was that people who had put only a single
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