Page 1225 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Do not give me this nonsense about your infatuation with the Tasmanian system and so on, and this nonsense about a belief in the community that they were going to get the Tasmanian system. I do not know anybody in the ACT community who has voted in Tasmania, and I do not think anybody in the community would know what happens in Tasmania. I do not think they have ever heard of the upper house in Tasmania - or not many of them anyway. What if you went out in the street and said, "What about the 17 single-member electorates that make up the upper house in Tasmania? Do you want that here in the ACT as well?". I can tell you that if Mr Stevenson went out there with one of his polls the answers would be, "No, no, no, no. We do not want the Tasmanian system here in the ACT because it involves not only the Hare-Clark system but an upper house as well. We have one house; we do not need two". If you are going to peddle your rubbish about how much we want the Tasmanian system, you really have to look at that issue. You have said to the people out there, "What you really voted for was the Tasmanian system". Well, they did not. They did not ask for an upper house, did they, Mr Stevenson?
Mr Humphries: It is hardly part of the question. The electoral system is what we are voting on.
MR BERRY: Okay, the electoral system; the combination of the Hare-Clark system and single-member electorates. That is the Tasmanian system. You cannot say one thing and mean another. What Mr Moore and the Liberals have been on about is to confuse the electorate from the start. Of course they do not like how-to-vote cards because it would maximise the Labor vote. Of course they do not want it. The Liberals do not like it because they cannot see at any time in the near future that they would have a vote which would get them a majority in this place; so they want to confuse the electorate too.
I will go back to that point I raised earlier. When people want to know how to number their boxes they take the piece of paper gratefully. The more difficult the decision is, the more gratefully they take the piece of paper to work out how they can vote Labor, Liberal, or some other way. If they have made up their mind at home, or made up their mind not to vote at all, they say, "No", and no amount of talk will make them take a piece of paper. The issue is, "Take it or do not take it". Do not give me this nonsense that people ought to be more aware of what is going on in the electorate. Do not give me this nonsense about the Tasmanian system. The nonsense that you people peddle is all about trying to confuse the electorate. I say: Give them all the information they want just before they vote. If they do not want to use it they will say, "No". But do not deny them the opportunity, and that is what you are setting out to do.
MR MOORE (5.26): Madam Speaker, when Mr Berry stood to speak he said that he does not understand the complexities of the rest of the electoral system but he understands this part. The reality is that he understands it at the same level as he understands the rest of it - at a very shallow level. At face value, what he is saying appears to make some sense, unless you understand the system. When you understand the system you know that the fairest and easiest way that a Labor voter can vote - one who wants simply to vote Labor - is to write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 1 to 7 in Molonglo. That will be a fair and appropriate vote for Labor, because that is what they want to do.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .