Page 4827 - Week 15 - Thursday, 8 December 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I would like to quote a particularly telling sentence from Mr Humphries's presentation speech to this Bill. I do not often do this, Madam Speaker, but I believe that this sentence states quite succinctly the views of various members of this Assembly. He stated:
This Bill's objective is to put key elements of the electoral system well out of the reach of majority governments.
Unfortunately, this entrenchment Bill has been necessitated by the Government's attitude to the Hare-Clark electoral system - a feeling by members of the community and members of this chamber that the current minority Labor Government cannot be trusted on this issue and, therefore, that a majority Labor government could not be trusted either. I have stated, Madam Speaker, that I understand the motivation behind Mr Humphries's presentation of this Bill to the Assembly today. I have spoken of the fear that is genuinely held that a Labor government would again seek to tamper or interfere with the principles and provisions of the Hare-Clark electoral system, as the community understands it.
The Chief Minister has proposed two amendments to the Bill that we are considering today - the first, that voting in an election shall be compulsory, and the second, that the numbers of the Legislative Assembly shall basically remain the same. They are both issues which, I believe, this Assembly could debate at length; but I, like Mr Moore, am sympathetic to the need for the Assembly to pass this legislation today, and I indicate to the Assembly at this time that I will be supporting those amendments.
MR STEVENSON (4.14): Madam Speaker, people should have the right to have a say on these and other important electoral matters. The amendments raised by members of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party are, indeed, important matters that go to the very democratic principles of electing members to this unwanted, unnecessary, undemocratic and unconstitutional State-like Assembly. Ever since I first heard that this thing called "self-government" was going to be forced on the people of Canberra, back in 1988, I thought that the people should have a say on it. I realised that people had had a say on it - and they said no. That was a politician-initiated referendum - a PIR - as against a citizen-initiated referendum.
There had been a referendum back in 1978, and it asked reasonable questions. There was a slight problem, because added to the end of the questions were the words "for the time being". So, if the people voted against what the Federal politicians wanted, they could say, "Well, they only said 'for the time being'". The difficulty was that the questions were posed by politicians. That is always fraught with difficulty, because PIRs normally favour politicians. It is not unusual. We understand that. People in Canberra understand that politicians have particular agendas and they vote that way to try to maximise their power. People always have a chance to do something about that; but they do not have much of a chance with politician-initiated referendums, because the questions are usually rigged, as they were in the two referendums that Canberra has had.
So, what is the principle? The principle is that people should have the right to have a say on these electoral matters. There is no doubt about that. The Assembly has the power to give them that right. The people may not want to have a say on these particular electoral matters. We do not know. But we have the power to place in the hands of the people the right to determine the questions - electoral or otherwise - that they want to have a say on.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .