Page 1230 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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I thought that Mr Berry put very well the fact that the vast majority of Canberra voters have never even thought about this issue. As Mr Stevenson's poll shows, with all the faults of Mr Stevenson's poll, there was no reaction. His survey people said that we cannot possibly have how-to-vote cards as it is forbidden under Hare-Clark. How would they know? As Mr Berry has said, most people would not have a clue. I find it absolute nonsense that people, especially Mr Westende, are putting forward that the voters of the Territory are expecting to have no how-to-vote cards. They are not expecting any such thing.
Mr De Domenico also, I think, in particular, has a very low opinion of our voters. He treats them as completely ignorant. The fact of the matter is, Madam Speaker, that voters choose whether or not to take a how-to-vote card. Over the years that I have handed them out I have had many people refuse to take one. That is their right. I certainly do not harass voters, and my party has a policy of absolutely not harassing voters. Ms Szuty has not been around too many polling booths if she thinks that is what occurs. It is obviously counterproductive to harass voters.
The fact is, Madam Speaker, that many people do want a how-to-vote card. Many people need the information that is on it. Once they have it they can still choose. They still have absolute freedom of choice as to whether to follow that how-to-vote card or to do something entirely different. People exercise that choice. They exercise it in private, in secret, and that is their right. In my view, most of the arguments put forward for banning how-to-vote cards are extremely shallow. There has been no issue of substance put forward. I would urge members to do what the Canberra community, I believe, is expecting us to do, and that is to reject Mr Humphries's amendment.
MR HUMPHRIES (5.47): Madam Speaker, in support of my amendment let me say that the Government has tried to make a virtue of the millstone around its neck, which is to introduce into the Hare-Clark system this graft-on, this element which it knows in its heart of hearts will be very incompatible with that system. Indeed, I make a prediction, Madam Speaker. I believe that this coming election will be the first and the last election in which how-to-vote cards are allowed in the ACT. I am quite certain that, when voters in the ACT see what how-to-vote cards produce in that election, when they see how many informal votes are caused by how-to-vote cards, and when they see voters who do not have a good understanding of how the system works scratching their heads and looking bewildered when they cannot reconcile a how-to-vote card with a rotated ballot-paper, people will get the message.
Mr Connolly: People will decide that next time they want above-the-line votes to make it simpler.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Connolly, I would not speak, if I were you. We are doing you a favour with this. You, in your heart of hearts, would be saying, "Yes, yes, Dennis; vote yes to this amendment, vote yes to this amendment". Madam Speaker, this system is a system which is an integrated whole. How-to-vote cards are very much not part of the Hare-Clark system. That very same public meeting to which the Chief Minister referred was also characterised by an important speech by Terry Aulich. Terry Aulich was the Labor senator from Tasmania who was a former member of the Tasmanian Parliament, in which capacity he was Minister in charge of the Electoral Act. He made a very
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