Page 3381 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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Clause 30
MR HUMPHRIES (9.30): Madam Speaker, I move:
Page 8, line 32, before "Commission" insert "augmented".
This is simply a reproduction of earlier amendments we have made about the augmented commission.
Amendment agreed to.
MR MOORE (9.31), by leave: I move:
Paragraph 30(b), page 9, line 8, omit "102%" and "98%", substitute "105%" and "95%", respectively.
Madam Speaker, the reason for changing this from 102 per cent and 98 per cent of the expected quota is to provide the Electoral Commission that we have so carefully chosen with the power to be able to take community of interest into consideration. I would still expect that the Electoral Commission will move as close to 100 per cent as it possibly can in dividing the Territory into those three electorates. My understanding is that currently the two electorates in the ACT have a variation of some 0.6 per cent. It is quite clearly the intention of any Electoral Commission to do that as best they can. However, if the result of that would mean, for example, that a line was drawn through the middle of Holder, with all the rest of Weston Creek being in one electorate and half of Holder being in another, that would be inappropriate. Hence the idea is to give more flexibility to that Electoral Commission.
MR HUMPHRIES (9.33): I indicate the Liberal Party's support for this amendment, Madam Speaker, although not after considerable debate and discussion in our party room about this.
Mr Connolly: Tell us more.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is all you are going to find out, I am afraid. Madam Speaker, the concern was not that we had any objection to providing for flexible boundaries that would encompass, hopefully, whole townships rather than parts of townships only, but rather the latitude this might give to a commission to provide for rather significantly different sized electorates; that is, electorates which varied from the quota provided for in that formula referred to - that they have a certain tolerance from the formula, based on their having either five-seventeenths or seven-seventeenths of the total electorate of the ACT within their boundaries. I do not need to mention that, if the Government can engineer to have a smaller number of electors required to elect a single member in areas where it has a stronger vote, clearly it will have a better chance of getting the numbers to govern the Territory than would be the case if that situation were reversed. So, there is a concern about that.
However, given the strong protection we have now built into this Bill on the appointment of a commissioner, we are satisfied that there is considerable protection in there; enough to make us believe that that kind of problem is a remote one and that it is more important to try to make sure that, artificially, parts of the Territory are split up when naturally they would be expected, in the minds of electors, to be in the same electorate.
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