Page 988 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 April 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
There are two problems with Ms Follett's provisions. One is that Ms Follett's proposals in the existing Bill are party based. The concept of preventing people nominating frivolously or when they are not likely to get much support is diminished in the case of people who nominate in party blocs. Consider an example. If there is party A with, say, eight candidates, and next to party A in the last column on the right is Independent B, party A's candidates have to obtain between them an average of a quarter of one per cent of the first preferences in order for the whole of party A to have all eight deposits returned. Obviously a very small number of votes needs to be obtained by individual candidates, relatively speaking, in order for all those candidates to get their deposit returned, whereas candidate B next-door needs to obtain in his or her own right a full 2 per cent of the vote. That is a very unfair arrangement.
To take another more pertinent example, say there are two columns side by side. One column is for a party in which there are, say, eight candidates, and the column next-door is for a set of grouped non-party candidates, of which there are also eight. Both are identical in many other respects in the course of this legislation, but column A needs to obtain only 2 per cent of the vote for all of them to get their deposits returned, while column B has to have, on average, 16 per cent of the vote to get the deposits returned. That is quite ridiculous.
Madam Speaker, it seems to me that, if the idea of legislation like this is to prevent people from nominating when they do not have a real chance of being elected, it should apply to all candidates and should not be based on the question of whether candidates are inside or outside parties. I think that in the past there have been examples of parties nominating far more candidates than they can possibly hope to get elected. It is also possible, under these arrangements, for parties to disrupt the electoral process by nominating extraordinarily large numbers of candidates because, as long as between all those candidates they achieve this primary vote of 2 per cent, they will recover all their deposits. To take this one step further, someone said to me the other day, "If you could find 1,000 candidates to nominate for a party, and each of those candidates voted for himself or herself, you would be sure to get your deposit back". That is just about right under the arrangements. Can you imagine how disruptive having 1,000 candidates on the ballot-paper would be?
Mr Moore: It is not that easy to find 1,000 candidates, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: I have never tried, Mr Moore. I was not in the Residents Rally, but I will take your word for that.
Madam Speaker, the other major problem with this arrangement is that it depends on the primary vote of candidates, whereas the suggestion that I make is that it should be based on the vote the candidates have achieved at the point where they are excluded. Naturally enough, if members of a party happen to do what members of the Labor Party would like their voters to do, that is, follow a certain ticket, and everybody in, say, the Molonglo electorate were to vote 1 Rosemary Follett, and then very few candidates voted 1 Mr Lamont, or 1 Mr Connolly, as is the intention of the Labor Party, or will be, then, naturally enough, it would discriminate against individual candidates within parties.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .