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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 7 Hansard (17 October) . . Page.. 1745 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

The amendments that flow from that are my amendments Nos 3 and 4, and they are simply consequential upon it. Amendment No. 3 would allow the Electoral Commissioner to display within polling booths the material that has been provided by parties or candidates. In effect, it removes such display from being an offence under the Act. Amendment No. 4 would allow the Electoral Commissioner to provide to declaration voters at the prepoll centres the material lodged by parties or candidates. Again, it is an adjunct to my amendment No. 1, and I commend it to the Assembly.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. Mr Moore is about to breach standing orders. I think he ought to be warned about the display of political material in this place.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The Chair is many things, but it is not a clairvoyant. I really do not know what Mr Moore is going to do.

Ms McRae: Mr Speaker, on the point of order: If I brought in any piece of paper and stuck it on the wall, I believe that you would rule it out of order. If nothing else, there is a piece of paper there that is clearly out of order.

MR SPEAKER: I am afraid that the Chair cannot see what you are talking about, Ms McRae.

MR MOORE (4.10): I shall make it clear for you, Mr Speaker; then you will be able to rule. In speaking against the amendments and their sloppy drafting, I was going to demonstrate the size of the how-to-vote card that I would be able to present in each of the polling booths. I used this as a piece of electoral matter at the last election, and if we were to pass the amendment that has been put forward by Ms Follett I would have no trouble at all in running off a how-to-vote card this size. I did one this size last time; I would probably do one double the size next time, or perhaps treble the size. I think the Electoral Commission would find itself in some difficulty as to how it was going to handle such how-to-vote cards. How many people or groups ran at the last election in Molonglo? There may well be a great number of these, and the suggestion that the how-to-vote cards could go up in the polling booth is one that would really test the Electoral Commissioner. What we have is an amendment that really is not particularly practical.

The whole point of the exercise here is that Labor is having trouble facing the fact that their system of preselection, which entices people to vote in a specific way that maintains their factional control, is under threat. It is indeed, because this piece of legislation, which we have just passed in principle, ensures that power is transferred much more effectively to the voter, and in their case to the Labor voter. Therefore these amendments will undermine that process and are simply not necessary in the first place. Secondly, as I believe I have demonstrated quite effectively by the unusual move of bringing into this place a big piece of what could be a how-to-vote card, it is also not practical.

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