Page 1228 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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I do not think that a member of parliament can go off and do what he likes. You always have the option of resigning if there is some direction by the people that you do not want to accept. If you are a manager of a business you can say, "Look, I am simply not going to do that; I resign". However, prior to that, you should do what the law requires, and you should do what the majority of the people, in our case, require, or, in a commercial case, what the owner of the business requires. By all means advise them. I do my best. I stood up again and again and talked about this. I think the PR system is a wonderful idea. I just think it is unfortunate that we will not have it in the ACT at the next election. We will have different ones in three electorates, but we will not have proportional representation.
I am not sure how many people understand this. People who were concerned about education, or health, or law and order, and who voted for a party or group on the ballot-paper that was standing up for those areas in the first election would have had a member elected with 5.56 per cent. In the second election, with 5.56 per cent, they would have had a member elected. In the third election, the 1995 election, they might get three times 5.56 per cent. Mr Connolly just waves. You can wave goodbye to someone who had proportional representation in the electorate. He is quite right. As Mr Connolly, Mr Lamont, and the rest of them know, it was done deliberately. I know that they do not want the people to find that out. That is understandable. It is okay for Mr Connolly to nod. I will not even mention it for Hansard. We understand why they do that. I know why most people in this Assembly are voting for different things, and I will bring up one or two points later on. I know that it is not to do with the will of the people. In many cases, not every case, it is because they think their particular power clique will get better support.
Mr De Domenico: Not us on how-to-vote cards. We are quite prepared to go to the people and say, "Vote for whoever you like".
MR STEVENSON: That is a reasonable point. I was going to bring that up. You deserve to be commended for that. I could not think of any reason why you might want it otherwise.
It is worth mentioning something about how-to-vote cards that has not been brought up. There is a potential problem with how-to-vote cards and it is something that we should bring to attention. This is a yellow and black card. It says, "Thinking of voting Democrat?". You see that up at the top. Towards the bottom it says, "Maggie Deahm". If I was a voter I might have grabbed one of these and thought, "Yes, I was thinking of voting Democrat. Maggie Deahm is good enough. I will tick Maggie Deahm". But if I had stopped and thought about it, I would have read, "Thinking of voting Democrat?", and then, in smaller print, "If you are casting your No. 1 vote for the Democrat candidate, be sure to give your No. 2 vote to the Labor candidate, Maggie Deahm". It is what you call a deeming vote. It is when you think you are voting for the Democrats but actually you are voting for the No. 3 Labor candidate, Maggie Deahm. Is that not interesting? It says, "Number all squares. Your preferences will count. Maggie Deahm will stop the GST". But who will stop the corruption? Who will stop someone deliberately putting out something like that, designed to encourage - - -
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