Page 1239 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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Madam Speaker, these are amendments which change the definition of "transfer value" as it appears in the Bill. We have already made it possible for people to have a formal vote if they make a mistake within the first five or seven numbers, even if they mark fewer numbers than the five or seven that is suggested on the ballot-paper form that we have just approved. The Government amendment to do that has been supported because it gives more voters a chance of effective representation. It does not punish them for inadvertence or for holding strong conscientious views about how many candidates to number.
It is quite possible that people will be voting 1, or 1, 2, 3 or whatever, in an election to achieve what they want from that campaign. With voters exercising that option, with more people having the choice of legitimately voting just 1, or 1, 2, 3 or whatever, there will be many cases of people's votes having the potential, at least, to exhaust themselves earlier than would be the case if the previous formality provisions had applied. I mentioned before that that is the major difference between the position which the Chief Minister originally put forward in her Bill and the position which is now the case with this Bill, having had those formality provisions relaxed. This amendment I put forward today relates to the transfer values, and it is consequential upon the attempt we have made to ease formality requirements. It follows, Madam Speaker, from the fact that we have more relaxed formality rules, that you must obtain at least a potential for a higher exhausted vote. In practice you will get a higher level of exhausted votes if you do not make other changes to adjust for that fact.
This amendment picks up exactly what happens in the other two places where the single transferable vote has been in use since the 1920s. These are the provisions based on the Republic of Ireland and Malta. What those places have in common with the ACT, and what they do not have in common with Tasmania, for example, is that they require only a single preference for a vote to be formal. I note, Madam Speaker, that the model for exhausted votes which the Government puts forward here in the context of the particular formality rules which are provided for in this Bill has no precedent. There is no jurisdiction or place I have heard of where the system the Government is putting forward applies - that is, these relaxed formality rules combined with these relatively tight exhausted vote rules. The approach which I am putting forward here is used elsewhere in Australia, however. It is used in New South Wales local government elections and those for the Legislative Council of New South Wales.
The important thing to remember is that each person in a poll has a single transferable vote. What is the point of making it easier to record a formal vote and then denying the full effectiveness of that vote by reason of the rules that you apply? By changing the definition of "transfer value" to make it on the basis of continuing papers rather than all papers in an election, we are doing two things. We are trying to fit, first of all, the non-transferable papers into the quota of the elected candidate without loss; so non-transferable papers stay within the place where they do the most good, or the only good they can - that is, with the candidate whose votes have already caused him to be elected. The second thing that it does is to distribute the surplus left over on the basis of the rest of the votes - that is, the votes which are not already exhausted.
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