Page 3348 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
ELECTORAL BILL 1992
Debate resumed from 14 October 1992, on motion by Ms Follett:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.34): Madam Speaker, I do not need to tell the Assembly what a significant and important piece of legislation this is. Members of the Assembly were all involved in one way or another in the events that led up to the introduction of this legislation, obviously some more than others; nonetheless, the importance of the occasion has to be noted. This is the first of two pieces of legislation, I understand, that will be brought forward by the Government to put in place an electoral scheme for the ACT which reflects the wishes of the population of the ACT as outlined at the time of the referendum on 15 February this year. That referendum, as members are well aware, overwhelmingly indicated the support of ACT electors for a new electoral system, a Hare-Clark electoral system, for use in the ACT. That is a system which entails the drawing of boundaries for the purposes of those new Hare-Clark electorates.
The Government has taken the position, and it seems to me a sensible position, that it is important to proceed as quickly as possible with the process of having the boundaries drawn for those new electorates, even though details of voting and counting under the Hare-Clark system are yet to be put in place in legislation. Although it would have been nice to have dealt with the whole package at one time, I think this is not an unacceptable approach, given the importance of resolving that other question as quickly as possible.
Obviously, all of us who sit in this place will wish to know where we stand, or where we hope to sit, under the new arrangements, and we will therefore be looking at seeing how that new system affects us. I think it is also important, Madam Speaker, for us to be able to know with some certainty that we will have responsibilities to particular localised parts of the ACT. There was great discussion during the last campaign about the need to make candidates and members of the Assembly more responsible to local communities within the ACT and not consider that the ACT is a single, large, amorphous body of people which has no distinctions as between one part of the Territory and another in terms of the aspirations and needs of the people who live there. This process of setting in place electorates will allow us, as members of the Assembly, a much greater chance of responding directly to the needs of people in our own chosen areas which we represent.
Madam Speaker, I have been reassured by some comments that the Government has made recently about its desire to proceed to the next stage of enacting the Hare-Clark system as outlined in the referendum options description sheet which was put before the people at the time of the last referendum. I think Ms Follett said, in response to a question I asked the other day, that any rumours to the counter effect had been started by me. I think there was some exaggeration in that. Certainly, I have heard many things which - - -
Mr Moore: Only a little bit.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .