Page 855 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
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Part of the problem that the Government faced at the time was that they had kept this debate very tightly under wraps. They had not said, "Look, we are preparing a Bill on the electoral system and we think that we should put into that Bill a form of ticket voting above the line". There would have been no problem with that. In fact, I repeatedly invited Ms Follett to rule out options of that kind in this place. I asked her at least two questions. I think Mr Moore asked her a further question on the subject, or it might have been Ms Szuty. She was often asked in the media about these matters and she repeatedly gave the bland assertion that she was interested only in Hare-Clark as decided in the referendum. There was never the taking up of an opportunity to say, "We have in mind Hare-Clark, but we have these additional overlaying ideas to put in there as well". We never saw that, and I think, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, that that was quite disgraceful behaviour. The people of the ACT deserved more notice than they had of this idea and their reaction, understandably, was that they were pretty miffed about the whole thing.
There were many elements of the Bill not placed before the referendum or brought forward before its tabling. How-to-vote cards is one such element, for example. Anybody familiar with the Hare-Clark system would be forgiven for thinking that Hare-Clark meant no how-to-vote cards. How can you have a plausible, easily understood how-to-vote card in the context of a rotating ballot-paper? People's names are being moved around the ballot-paper. How do you describe a particular order when the ballot-paper will not reflect the order that appears, almost invariably, on their how-to-vote card? You simply cannot. If the intention of the Government was simply to provide for some kind of advice to the electors to reflect what was said on the ballot-paper, which hardly seems to be necessary, and also seems hardly to be credible, then I have to say that this was not the intention that was clearly put forward in the December version of the Bill. It was something quite different.
So, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, what we have had here from the beginning to the end has been what Mr Berry would call a web of deception. There was an attempt quite deliberately to mislead the people of the ACT until December of 1993 and to the last sitting day of the Assembly for 1993. There was then a two-month break when people could not have the chance to ask questions in the Assembly. There was no chance for there to be debate on the Government's proposals at that late stage to put forward a totally new electoral system, the Rosemary Follett Hare-Clark system, unlike anything in the world. There was as little opportunity as possible for debate before it was put in that form in the Assembly. I say, once again, shame on the Government for that kind of deception.
The referendum of 1992 approved the system of PR consisting of three electorates. The result was overwhelming, with 101,986 voters casting votes in favour of Hare-Clark, and 54,156 voting in favour of the Labor preferred single-member electorate system. If the opinion polls are to be believed, that was a major turnaround in the views of the electorate. At the early stages people were more familiar with single-member electorate systems. They were obviously prepared to vote for them in about the same proportions that they were later to vote for the Hare-Clark system; but as the debate went on people
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