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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1644 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

was a vote against party-machine domination; it was designed to allow the electors themselves to choose which of the candidates put up by the party they would have represent it.

Party machines, of course, do not trust the people to pick people in the right order. The Labor Party in Canberra, for example, is dominated by a hard-Left element which has specialised for years in producing candidates who, however ideologically sound and however many branch meetings they have attended ...

Mr Kaine: It is a powder puff hard-Left element.

MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps. The article continues:

have proved themselves electorally unattractive repeatedly, sometimes even in the party itself. Even at the moment, for example, there would always be a risk that almost any old Labor candidate - even, horrors, one from the Right - could win more votes than Wayne Berry, or that Labor candidates without strong factional support, such as Bill Wood, might get a popular vote ahead of candidates anointed by the left.

Mr Kaine: Like who?

MR HUMPHRIES: Like who, I wonder. Who indeed? Mr Wood might be counting on that leapfrog effect at the next election, due in nine months' time. It goes on to talk about the promises made at the 1992 election to support the outcome of the referendum. Then it says:

One can hardly be held to promises made to people who prove to be liars and cheats.

That is a reference to our colleagues opposite. Mr Speaker, I think the reality is that those opposite have no abiding commitment to the Hare-Clark electoral system; they have demonstrated that repeatedly on occasions such as this by promising to support Hare-Clark. But then to gut one of the most important elements of that system - that is, that the electors choose who take casual seats, not the party - is simply not consistent with that first statement. But, above all, the thing that astonishes me about this position is this: What kind of vote of no-confidence in Mr Corbell and Ms Reilly is the Labor Party's move against countback? They are here because of countback.

Mr Moore: And only because of countback.

MR HUMPHRIES: And, as Mr Moore says, only because of countback.

Ms Reilly: How do you know?

MR HUMPHRIES: Let us be realistic about it, Ms Reilly. Would you be here if your party had selected who would get the seat? I think you and I know that you would not be. I can read her face, Mr Speaker. It says, "Thank goodness for Hare-Clark countback".

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