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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3009 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

It is disappointing that the self-serving argument, if it had to be used, was applied in this way. It seems to me that a self-serving Assembly would be one that put up and supported an electoral Bill to change four-year terms, if we had them, or an Assembly that said, "The Electoral Commissioner said that the most sensible time to have elections is October. Therefore, instead of having our next election in February 1998, we should change our Electoral Act and have our next election in October 1998". We actually have the power to do that, but that would be self-serving. That is why I believe that nobody - and this has been confirmed in my discussions with members of this Assembly - would support that.

To propose that the change be at the election following the next election is not to be self-serving. That time would be very inconvenient for members who did not get elected in 1998. They would be in the cold for four years instead of three years. Mr Speaker, this could apply to somebody like you who was not elected to the First ACT Assembly but was elected in the two elections after that. Had four-year terms been in place, then the period in which your activities were not so strongly involved in politics would have been four years. I think those arguments hold very little water. The only logical argument against this sort of legislation is to ask, "How accountable are members?". That is what this legislation is all about. It is about a balance between holding the various members accountable and, as I said in presenting the advantages of this legislation, allowing a government to get on and do the business that is in the best interests of the community.

The other issue that was raised was the issue of a referendum. I touched on it before. When we have entrenched legislation - and the editorial referred to the entrenched elements - this Assembly also has the power, rightly so, to modify that, provided it is done with a two-thirds majority. In other words, in entrenching our legislation, we understood and the people of Canberra understood that there were going to be times when minor modifications needed to be made and that they really ought not to be the subject of a referendum. As I see it, this is a minor modification.

Four-year terms were proposed in a series of ways. Our self-government legislation was originally drawn up with four-year terms. As I see it, a series of mistakes were made in that legislation. The first one was that we went to the first couple of elections under the d'Hondt system. I have heard the argument that if we had not gone under the d'Hondt system we would not have gone under any electoral system and there would not have been self-government, so perhaps it served a purpose. Nevertheless, it did not deliver what was in the best interests of the people of Canberra, and that seems to be broadly recognised. The original proposal was for four-year terms, but in the negotiations it was said, "As it is a new parliament, let us start off with a three-year term". I believe that was at the instigation of the Democrats, although I may be corrected on that.

When we did our own Electoral Bill here, it was originally drawn up with four-year terms. In fact, in a round table discussion on that Bill we debated whether we should introduce four-year terms without the issue having been canvassed in an election period. In that debate and again prior to the last election I said that I would pursue four-year terms. I believe Mr Humphries said that he was in favour of four-year terms at that stage.

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