Page 1223 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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Ms Szuty said earlier that she believes that Canberrans have an expectation that the Tasmanian system will be followed as closely as possible. I stood up earlier and made a specific point on the formality of a vote. If we followed the system as closely as possible we would require that the only formal vote is one that goes at least to the number of candidates in each of the electorates. Otherwise, the vote would be like it is in Tasmania - informal. We are not doing that. Why are we not doing that? Because it was not brought up in the referendum. Yet I raised a strong case about the instructions on the ballot-paper. On balance, I would probably favour saying that we should have made the vote formal only when they put 1 to 5, or 1 to 7, and so on.
On this particular situation - the specific point was not covered in the instructions prior to the referendum - I have already read the results of the survey. Having no boxes above the line was covered. A majority of people support party tickets - we surveyed that question - but let me make that point again in case you were not aware of those results. The question was:
Should there be voting tickets for parties, groups and independents? (a voter can mark one square only to vote for the list of candidates as registered by the party, group or independent).
The results were as follows: 54 per cent said yes, 28 per cent said no, 8 per cent were not concerned, and 10 per cent said that there was not enough information. So there was a majority; not a large majority, but a majority nevertheless. As this was contained within the instructions, I will vote against that.
As for how-to-vote cards, I understand the arguments of Ms Szuty and Mr Moore and some of the Liberal speakers. I have raised those and a number more myself at different times. However, I far more support the right of people to make the decision. Once again, one can always second-guess as to why people voted that way. Mr Humphries would say that it was because they were not sufficiently aware of the Hare-Clark system; yet people have stood in this Assembly and said that that was one of the most intensive campaigns ever to hit Canberra. That is true. That contradicts the argument that they were not aware of the Hare-Clark system. It was an enormous campaign, and it was well waged, I suggest. It is a pity that it was not waged for one electorate and Hare-Clark, which is a good proportional representative voting system. The people have chosen to have how-to-vote cards handed out. A proposition was made to me that it would be better, if they are going to be available at polling booths, to have people who wanted to do that set up little stands. Someone could go over and take whichever card they wanted rather than have people going up to them and handing one to them. It is an interesting suggestion. Who knows, one day it may be accepted by the people of Canberra. I would be happy to give them that choice. I think it is a reasonable choice.
I think people can understand that I am limited by space on my survey sheet. When you look at my survey questions I think you will agree that we could not fit any more questions on there. I usually make full use of all the space. Asking people to fill out more than one page is difficult. I have done it; but I try not to do it too often, particularly when there is a lot of detailed information on the first page. I will vote as I indicated earlier. If the people of Canberra wanted to change their vote, or wanted to have a vote
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