Page 3364 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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Paragraph 44(2)(f), page 15, line 17, before "Commission" insert "augmented".
Paragraph 44(2)(g), page 15, line 19, before "Commission" insert "Electoral", before "Commission's" insert "augmented".
Paragraph 44(2)(h), page 15, line 22, before "Commission's" insert "augmented".
Paragraph 44(2)(i), page 15, line 24, before "Commission" insert "augmented".
Paragraph 44(2)(j), page 15, line 26, before "Commission" insert "augmented", before "Commission's" insert "augmented".
Subclause 46(1), page 15, line 35, omit "the Commission", insert "an augmented Commission".
Clause 47, page 16, line 12, omit "the Commission or of", insert "an augmented Commission or".
clause 48, page 16, line 15, omit "Commission or of", substitute "Electoral Commission, an augmented Commission or".
I might mention, Madam Speaker, that amendment No. 45 on the sheet that I have circulated is proposed new clauses to be inserted in the Bill.
Madam Speaker, these clauses come together because they relate basically to the same thing. They deal with a change in the structure of the process whereby boundaries are drawn by what was originally called the Redistribution Committee and then the Electoral Commission in the Bill as it is presently drafted.
What the ACT Government has done in bringing forward the Bill in this form, as I understand it, is to adapt the present Federal model for drawing legislation and eliminate the element of retaining local technical experts from the first stage of redistribution into the second stage. This was removed by the Government, I understand, because it believed that the requirements that exist in the Federal sphere, for having local people in particular States involved in drawing boundaries and then retained so that they can advise the final commission stage on what to do with those boundaries, were not required in a small jurisdiction like the ACT. That is quite logical.
Madam Speaker, we believe that it would be appropriate to have a structure which retains those technical experts for their own sake. We are talking here about the Chief Surveyor of the Territory and the Chief Planner; people who have a high degree of expertise in the way in which demographics in the Territory work and the topography of the Territory, and in how those electorates might be structured, bearing in mind particularly the factors referred to in clause 30 of the Bill - community of interests, means of communication and travel, physical features and so on. We see great value in those sorts of provisions.
If I might explain it briefly to the Assembly, we would have at the first stage the Territory's Electoral Commissioner, the Chief Planner, the Chief Surveyor, and a fourth person, referred to I think in clause 32, representing, if you like, a broader community interest, who would make an initial appraisal of what the boundaries should be. That body would then be augmented - hence the augmented commission which appears in my amendment No. 3 - by two other people, the chairperson of the Electoral Commission and the third electoral commissioner. This augmented body of six people would then make a decision about the boundaries for the Territory's electorates.
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