Page 856 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
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began to realise that there were problems with single-member electorates in the ACT, and it was very clear at the end of the day that they would not succeed. Indeed, the referendum showed quite decisively that that was the outcome and that people would have a system which was proportional representation based and which was fair.
The job of this Assembly now is to give consideration to the wishes of the people as expressed in that referendum. This legislation is unlike other Bills. It cannot be changed lightly, in my view, by the members of this Assembly without seriously jeopardising the mandate that we have received from the electors. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I note that the Government even proposes to remove the preamble to the Act, which I would have thought was an essential kind of requirement when we are looking at an electoral Bill. We have a mandate to do certain things and we cannot do something different because it happens to suit us because of a rush of blood to the head. (Extension of time granted)
Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the preamble was inserted in the Electoral Bill which was considered by the Assembly in 1992 because it was not like other Bills. This is a piece of legislation which was, in a sense, not made entirely at the volition of the Legislative Assembly but made at the behest of the people of Canberra, speaking directly through a referendum. That preamble contains information which should be forever in the Electoral Act of the ACT because this is the touchstone on which our legislation is based. We have, in a sense, no right to depart from what was in that referendum decision in formulating electoral laws - unless, of course, there is a substitute view of the electorate formulated very clearly through a referendum, and that, I think, has to be taken into account. Anything short of that, certainly even a mandate at an election, so-called, to change something in the Electoral Act, would not be sufficient. If party X promises to do something to the Electoral Act which conflicts with the fundamentals of this Hare-Clark system, I would submit, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, that that would not be sufficient to allow it to do that. You would need to put something to the people in a referendum unless the matter was of such a minor nature that it could be legitimately dealt with by politicians rather than by the electors. So, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, my party will be opposing the removal of most of the preamble which is in the Electoral Act.
Social engineering should not be the touchstone we use to decide what should be in this Bill. The Labor Party's record in Canberra for sneaking legislation before this place without the proper mandate is quite well established. In banning circuses and introducing radical changes to abortion laws and all sorts of issues, this Government has acted without clearly telegraphing its position. Again, in this Bill, there are a whole series of issues which have not been properly put before the people in any open fashion. For example, I find it extraordinary that at no time during the referendum campaign, nor before the tabling of her Bill - the two years after the campaign and before the tabling of her Bill - did the Chief Minister intimate to the people of Canberra that she proposed to extend the term of the Assembly from three to four years. If the Bill had come up without any mention of that issue and the Assembly had gone quickly on to vote on the issue, say in February of this year, there would have been no opportunity for the electors to express some point of view about this matter. Given that the Chief Minister said that she did not actually get anybody telling her that they did not like her Rosemary rotation, her
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