Page 4680 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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by the Electoral Commission. They did not like it when it was introduced. They said so often, and during the count they set out to prove their point. Admittedly, they were given, especially via the modifications, a difficult system; there is no question about that. But that count did not have to go on as long as it did.
Mr Moore commented that his wife had worked there and that the electoral officers whom she saw worked very hard. I know that that is the case, but I do not think they were required to work any overtime; they did not work at weekends; there were a number of holidays intervening in that period, and they were not rostered on for those. The fact is that the count went at about half the pace that it could have done.
Mr Duby: It is like Gallipoli - the soldiers did a good job, but the generals stuffed it up.
MR WOOD: I think that is a very accurate statement, Mr Duby, and they stuffed it up deliberately. So, I am not at all convinced by any recommendation of the Electoral Commission.
Mr Moore: Will they not do the same again?
MR WOOD: Will they not do the same again? I am concerned about that, yes. Since they have the responsibility in the forthcoming election, I hope that they do not do the same thing again.
Mr Moore did not really explain why he wanted the Senate system. He gave the d'Hondt system a fair shake - that is not difficult to do - but he did not particularly promote the Senate system. I was sitting here waiting for Mr Moore to tell us how the count is to go. The Senate count is no less complex than the d'Hondt count. The Senate count as applied to the ACT ballot would probably take as long as the d'Hondt count, especially as it has to fill 17 positions. I do not know that there is any advantage, in terms of time, in opting for the Senate system.
There certainly is one advantage, which Mr Moore failed to suggest, and that is that there is no cut-out point in the Senate count; you do not have to claw across that critical 5.6, or whatever, per cent. So, for Mr Moore, the Senate count would be a distinct advantage, and I suggest that this is the only reason that he has been promoting the Senate system.
The reference in the MPI is just a piece of political grandstanding because we all know that now it is too late to change the system that is to be used for the next election. If Mr Moore was serious, he could have proposed this at any time during the year, when there was some hope that influence could be brought to bear on the Federal Parliament. At this stage, it is clearly too late. I would point out to Mr Moore that a committee of this
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