Page 3356 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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I well understand that there were amendments made to the Australian Capital Territory (Electoral) Act to prevent the ACT territorial government from contracting out to the AEC. Why was that done? It certainly had nothing to do with sense. What sense is there in prohibiting the ACT Assembly from arranging a contractual deal with the AEC if we choose to? That is the point: We did not have to if we did not want to; but why should we be prevented, by Federal legislative amendments, from going to the experts, the Australian Electoral Commission, and saying, "We think, because you are the experts, because you have had the experience twice already, because it would save money for the people of the ACT, that you would be the best people to run any future ACT election"?
With this Bill, prior to the amendments that will be passed, we are asked to give a blank cheque. We do not know how much it will cost. It is unfortunate that the people of Canberra initially were not given the opportunity to have a say on the electoral system that they most preferred if they were going to be forced into having local elections. Who would justify preventing a third referendum question? I must admit that at the time I tried to raise the matter again and again, but it never seemed to get reported in the media, unfortunately.
If we are to have an electoral commission, why not work towards having the AEC do the job? Why not go along to the Federal Parliament and ask them to be good enough to remove the recent amendments that blocked the right of this Assembly to determine how we should run an election in the ACT? If we feel that it saves money, if we feel that it saves time, if we feel that it saves duplicating functions, as was mentioned again and again in the report that I mentioned earlier, why do we not have that right? I look forward to hearing from Ms Follett or anybody on the other side, during the debate and the debates in the detail stage, on why we do not have that right. What is the cost of the way we are going as against the way we should have been able to go with the Australian Electoral Commission?
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (8.15): We have before us a Bill brought forward by the Government to take the first step in implementing the decisions of the referendum that was held concurrently with the last election. I think that members will know from the lengthy amendments that Mr Humphries has circulated that the Opposition does not agree entirely with the Bill and we are proposing to change it considerably. To some degree I have some sympathy for the sorts of things that Mr Stevenson has said. If we had a clean slate it might well have been that we would have sought to have the Australian Electoral Commission, or some other body, conduct elections on our behalf in the future.
Unfortunately, Madam Speaker, we have to live with the world as we find it, and the world in which we find ourselves in our own local situation is to some degree bound by Commonwealth legislation. We are not free to make up our own minds on many things. We were not free to decide, in the final analysis, whether we would have self-government or not. I know that Mr Stevenson would like to have seen a negative vote in connection with a referendum on that issue. I happen to believe that the decision to grant self-government to the ACT was the right one, so I disagree with Mr Stevenson on that point.
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