Page 4687 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives change the legislation to have a Senate election system in place. One does not have to go too far to work out why. As was alluded to by Mr Wood, the simple fact is that the Senate system does not have that automatic hurdle of one-eighteenth of the valid vote being required before you are eligible to win a seat.
We have all heard of the famous story from New South Wales of a person - I cannot remember the gentleman's name, but I believe that he was an Independent Green or something along those lines - who was elected to the Senate some years ago with a primary vote of 1.5 per cent. A number of preferences flowed to him from a whole cacophony of other also-rans who got less than 1.5 per cent, and eventually he managed to sneak up and get over the quota.
Mr Humphries: Robert Wood was his name.
MR DUBY: He was Robert Wood, I am informed by Mr Humphries. He was able eventually to obtain a quota and become a senator, if only for a brief time.
It is not hard to see why Mr Moore, in particular, would be very, very concerned about running an election campaign which requires you to obtain 5.56 per cent of the vote on the first round. We all know - I am quietly confident and prepared to have a wager with Mr Moore now - that he will not achieve that quota. But he might have a measure of success under a Senate system, as would a whole lot of other players.
It is not just Mr Moore's interests that are being served by this debate; it is also the interests of the Labor Party. They are opposed to the introduction of a change from the d'Hondt system because they see just that - change. They are hoping that in the 15 February election there will be a series of minor parties which, in effect, will savage each other, with the result that none of them will achieve that magic 5.56 per cent vote. That would be a real tragedy for the Territory as well.
At the last count, I think there are going to be something like 10 minor parties. We have the Residents Rally, the Democrats, the Hare-Clark Independence Party, the Canberra Party, the Canberra Unity Party, the New Conservative party and the Harold Hird party. Listen to the names that are coming out of the woodwork. They go on and on. If each of them was to achieve, for example, only 4 or 5 per cent of the vote, none of them would have a candidate elected, no matter where their preferences flowed, and, as a result, the field would be left open to the two major parties, Labor and Liberal.
Dr Kinloch: Two of the three major parties.
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