Page 1231 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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impassioned plea at that meeting to retain the ban on how-to-vote cards. His view was that how-to-vote cards are damaging and, indeed, are opposed to the whole concept of Robson rotation. That is the position in Tasmania, and he knows it, and so does the whole Labor Party.
Why has the Labor Party in Tasmania not moved at some stage while in government for how-to-vote cards? Why will no member of the Tasmanian Labor Party in parliament there argue for how-to-vote cards? Because they know that the electors of Tasmania would not forgive a party that wanted how-to-vote cards. The Labor Party in Tasmania has the prerogative to issue how-to-vote cards. It can do so before polling day. But the Labor Party in Tasmania, I understand, does not do so because people respect and defend their own right to make that choice. The Labor Party knows that it would be on dangerous ground indeed were it to try to tell its own voters how they should approach the Robson rotation. It does not dare. After this first election, Madam Speaker, if this amendment fails tonight, I am sure that even the local ALP will not dare.
This is not about the right to receive information. People have the right to receive information before election day. The Chief Minister can put how-to-vote cards into people's letterboxes and write to them a personal letter of the kind that I received from her before the last election, giving them information and giving them a how-to-vote card, if she wants. It is about generating confusion or not generating confusion on polling day through the issuing of how-to-vote cards. She knows full well that the High Court decision on freedom of speech does not in any way threaten how-to-vote cards. If it had, there would have been a move, presumably, from someone like her against the how-to-vote cards in Tasmania. That has not happened, and it is not going to happen. People are going to need as much information as they can get. People getting information of that kind at the last minute on polling day will be damaging. It will be destructive; it will achieve nothing.
We are not proposing banning how-to-vote cards outright, because we do not believe, first of all, that there is any need to do so. How-to-vote cards are allowed in Tasmania before polling day; they are allowed here before polling day. Our position on this is not identical to, but is close to, the position in Tasmania. Her party, whether this amendment succeeds or not, can distribute how-to-vote information; and people will be able to digest that and understand it before they get to the polling booth. They will know how the system works. They can contrast this information with the information that they are getting over the media and so on about what the information actually means for them, and how much they have to rely on those cards to cast a formal vote for Labor. That makes a great difference. That makes a huge difference in the operation of this system.
Mr Stevenson talked about the problem of shonky how-to-vote cards, and he is absolutely right about that. You cannot have any adequate protection against shonky how-to-vote cards before polling day.
Mr Lamont: Will you put out how-to-vote cards?
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