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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4413 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

One other hypothesis not canvassed in the report but which may explain some of the difference in voting is that, as we know, the ACT government is not as interesting to all the electors of Canberra as the Federal government. Perhaps a few more people are inclined to vote in a Federal election and a few more people chose, against the law albeit, to stay at home rather than register a vote. On the figures provided by the Electoral Commission there could have been 10,000 of those people who were not interstate, who were not "address unknown", who had not moved permanently interstate, but who, for some reason or other, chose not to vote and presumably were issued with an infringement notice. It seems to me that the case is not made out for a change in the election date.

Mr Speaker, there seem to me to be some very good reasons why we should be cautious about changing the election date. Not the least is the Financial Management Act which we passed. This requires the Government to bring down a budget by 30 September. On this election date we would be having an election in the ACT less than a month after the date by which under the Financial Management Act a budget is required to be brought down. I think it is totally unacceptable to be in a situation where a budget might be brought down less than a month before the election date and not be subject to any of the normal scrutiny of the Assembly.

One solution which I think has been canvassed is to force the Government to bring down its budget in the first half of the year, but we have not had that debate yet. There are some very good reasons for not bringing down budgets in the first half of the year, not least of which is that, given the level of openness of this Government, we would have no idea how the Government had gone in delivering on its previous budget at the time we were expected to vote on its next budget. Mr Speaker, these are quite serious problems, and they are problems which I think we ought to be considering before rushing into a decision to change the election date to October. Every time we have had an election in the ACT we have had it under a different electoral arrangement. In 1994 the Labor Party proposed for debate in this place the idea of four-year terms. At that stage it was rejected on the basis that there was not a mandate among the Assembly members to vote for four-year terms and that it was therefore inappropriate to do so. Mr Speaker, I believe that we have had this debate. I believe it is time that we stopped tinkering with the electoral system - whether it is election dates, electoral methodology, or terms of parliament - and got on with the business of governing. We cannot keep playing with these things. We have to let the system settle down and we have to get on with the job of governing in the best interests of the ACT.

Mr Speaker, the Labor Party sought to adjourn this debate until people like the Government had time to make up their minds what they wanted to do. The Assembly did not want to adjourn it. Given that the Government are so confused about their own position, given the lack of debate about some of the significant consequential issues arising from this, if there is an in-principle vote at this stage, given those unresolved issues, the Labor Party will have to vote against this Bill. Mr Speaker, we believe that there is a better way of handling this issue than the way it has been handled. I would urge the Government, if they are as undecided as they appear to be at the moment, to admit that they do not know what they are doing and to adjourn the debate.

Debate (on motion by Mr De Domenico) adjourned.

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