Page 1141 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
One could very easily understand that to mean that they do not have the option to number as many candidates as exist in that electorate. That, I would suggest, would probably be the strongest argument; not to say that we will put the directions in but we will not require them to be followed. I think that both points should be made. They were not made by anybody else, but they should be.
MR HUMPHRIES (12.20): Madam Speaker, my party is prepared to support these relaxed formality provisions. I am flattered that the Chief Minister has attributed these provisions to comments that we made; but I think, with great respect, that she is giving me more credit than I deserve. The Chief Minister has made another very pertinent change in the structure of the Bill, and that change is what has led to this amendment, not what I have said. The change she made was the change to remove above-the-line ticket voting.
Members will recall that the structure of the Bill with above-the-line ticket voting was that, if there was a possibly informal vote below the line but a formal vote above the line, the formal vote above the line would count as the elector's vote. By making the requirements for voting below the line as strict as possible, the effect is to make it more likely that an informal vote will occur below the line. Hence it drives voters above the line. So it was very much in the interests of the Government, when it had above-the-line voting, to ensure that the formality requirements for below-the-line voting were as tight as possible. Now that the Government is removing ticket voting above the line, its interest suddenly changes. It now needs to make it as relaxed as possible in order to ensure that all those potential Labor voters who might cast votes below the line do not have their votes invalidated by mistakes that they might make. So, Madam Speaker, I think that it is very flattering of the Chief Minister to attribute these changes to me. I wish that I had the same influence in other matters, such as how-to-vote cards; but I do not think that I do. I do not think that my comments were particularly influential either on above-the-line voting generally; it was the reaction of the community which caused the Chief Minister to change her mind on that subject.
I might also point out briefly that these provisions do make the formality arrangements in the ACT for Hare-Clark quite different from what they are in Tasmania. In Tasmania you need to cast votes 1 to 7 without omissions and without repetition in order to have a formal vote. We are departing from that fairly dramatically in this respect. My party generally has taken the view that we should closely follow Hare-Clark as in Tasmania, but in this respect we feel that there is no strong argument for preferring the Tasmanian model. We believe that this is an improvement on that. It seems to me to make a lot of sense to allow people to have the most chance they can have of recording formal votes. I think the argument that we should have strict requirements is not a very strong one. It is better to have requirements that allow most voters to get in a formal vote.
I also point out that doing that has a consequence on the method of counting the votes, and, in particular, how you deal with exhausted votes. The Chief Minister had some comments to make about that at the end of the in-principle debate. She accused my party of pulling away from the Tasmanian provisions on transfer values, which we have done, of course, in consequence of the fact that we are changing the formality requirements.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .