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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3008 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

There are some side benefits in four-year terms, but I do not think they hold much water. The first one is that this will be a cheaper system. There will be significant savings to people. The extension of that argument, of course, is that the cheapest way would be to have elections every 10 years or every 15 years. We accept that democratic processes are quite expensive. That is something that we simply wear as part of an accountability process. It would also be far cheaper to have fewer members in the Assembly and no staff for members not in government. All of these things that would save money would also take away the accountability of members. Much as I appreciate that four-year terms would save on costs, I do not believe that that in itself is a good enough reason to support this measure.

Mr Speaker, it has been interesting to look at the arguments against four-year terms. In fact, I should say "argument". To the best of my knowledge, that argument has been effectively put by one particular organisation, the Canberra Times, in two spots - in an editorial on Tuesday, 27 August, and on the same day in a debate that I had on ABC radio with Crispin Hull, who according to the moderator of that debate was responsible for the editorial. The only other negative comment that I am aware of, apart from that made by the Canberra Times, was in a letter to the editor by somebody who, no matter what I do, almost every time writes a letter to the editor to say how terrible what I have done is. There are always those sorts of people. It was a fairly brief letter. I can see other members thinking that they have to approach this man and get him onside for the party.

Mr Humphries: You have only one. You are lucky.

MR MOORE: Mr Humphries interjects, "There is only one". Of course, we all know better than that. This particular person wrote on this issue, but of course there is a range of such people and we all know them. The editorial talks about the fact that we entrenched the Hare-Clark system, but it also states:

It means a referendum or a two-thirds majority in the Assembly are required to change it. The entrenched elements are: Compulsory voting, a minimum five members per electorate, Robson rotation, no party voting and optional preferential voting.

It continues:

Unfortunately, no-one thought that fixed three-year terms needed entrenching against politicians putting themselves before the people.

It goes on to say that in other places where this has been put to referendum it has failed. The other thing that comes through in that editorial and in the debate is that this would be a self-serving method for politicians. I must say that this would have been a far fairer editorial had it also recognised that there is a self-serving element as far as the Canberra Times is concerned. The more often we have elections, the more money the Canberra Times makes. The reason they make more money is that their advertising increases substantially. It is not only about money. The more often there are elections, the more copy the Canberra Times has. It is quite clear that the Canberra Times does particularly well out of elections in a series of ways.

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