Page 868 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
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Mr Stevenson is not so pure himself. He has just handed out some documents relating to one of his Dennis polls. When I look at some of his questions I wonder why he framed them the way he did. For example, question No. 4 said, "Should ballot papers provide for", and then he has four alternatives. I can think of another alternative. Again, give them a blank piece of paper with five boxes on it and say, "Write in there five names that you want". Why did he not ask them that question? The fact is that Mr Stevenson had a pre-conception about the answers that he wanted. He framed his questions accordingly, to get the answers that he was looking for. A lot of people argue that referendums do the same thing. The answers you get depend on the questions you ask. I repeat that there has been no ground swell of public opinion that would suggest that the referendum was wrong - that it asked the wrong questions or that it gave the wrong answer - so we should set that aside and get on with dealing with the matter.
I come now to the Bill that the Government has put before us. The second thing that does not surprise me, but perhaps confounds me, is the lengths to which people will go to avoid doing what the community said they wanted. Mr Stevenson wants to manipulate it to suit himself. He said, "There should be a single electorate". Why would he say that there should be a single electorate? It would suit Mr Stevenson to have a single electorate because it enhances his chances of getting elected. He wants to manipulate it now and he says that we should not have three electorates; we should have only one.
Who knows how much further the Chief Minister is going to go, because I already have four different colours of paper here, four different sets of amendments to the Chief Minister's own Bill, and we have hardly begun to debate it. There are lots of colours in the spectrum that she has not used yet. Presumably we will get lots more amendments as the debate goes by and more and more issues are brought up as to where the Chief Minister is departing from the spirit and intent of the referendum.
The bottom line, as far as I am concerned, is that in the referendum the people said, "We want the Hare-Clark system as put in place in Tasmania and practised there - not above-the-line party voting, not below-the-line party voting, not how-to-vote cards, not party determined or party dictated voting orders and preferences". None of those things are part of the Hare-Clark system as practised in Tasmania; yet we have a Bill that tries to distort all of those things. Why is it that the Government and Mr Stevenson cannot accept the verdict of the people at the time of the referendum? They made it quite clear what they wanted. Why are you trying to manipulate the system? I can only presume that it is all dictated by self-interest, not by what the community wants. You are saying, "Let us have some hybrid system that works but distorts the result of the referendum and gives us something different, because it suits us". Madam Speaker, I will not buy that.
I am quite clear in my mind as to what the referendum question asked. I am quite clear in my mind as to the decision of the people when they voted in that referendum. I will not accept and I will not vote for a Bill that attempts to distort that and to produce an outcome that somebody sees as being in their interests. All of these things that have been referred to as changes from the system as it is instituted in Tasmania are not on unless we go back to the people with another referendum and say, "We have had some second thoughts and we think it should be worked this way. Do you agree?". Maybe Mr Stevenson can be involved in the process of framing the questions. But I do not think we want to do that. I do not think anybody in this place wants to do that.
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