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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2609 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, let me say categorically that the Liberal Party will not be placing Pauline Hanson's One Nation party last on our how-to-vote card. Of course, neither will the Australia Labor Party, because it will not have how-to-vote cards. Neither will anybody else in an ACT election, because, Mr Speaker, as members in this place well know, only a bit over two years ago, in one of the first Acts of the Third Assembly, we banned how-to-vote cards. There will not be how-to-vote cards for anybody to put anybody else last, much less their own candidates first. It was a particularly silly and, might I say, uninformed comment by that particular Labor frontbencher.

Mrs Carnell: Their campaign director?

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes. Mr Speaker, let me make something else clear. First of all, in indicating that they were going to put the One Nation party last, the Labor Party may have been promising more than it could deliver anyway. As far as I am aware, the Labor Party has never numbered any candidates outside its own list of candidates in any election, anywhere, that I have ever encountered. So, Mr Speaker - - -

Ms McRae: Why do you not worry about what your party does? You are a disgrace. Are you going to put them last on the Federal ticket?

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Humphries has the call. Ms McRae, be careful.

MR HUMPHRIES: Clearly, Mr McMullan was indicating what the Labor Party intended to do in this particular election, and he was obviously promising more than the Labor Party could deliver. Mr Speaker, an important point needs to be made as well. Even if the Australian Labor Party were somehow to issue a how-to-vote card or a voting intention ticket to its supporters, it is entirely illusory to suggest that recommending to voters for the Australian Labor Party that they should vote last for the Hanson One Nation party would have any effect whatsoever. Notwithstanding Mr Berry's assumption of leadership of the Labor Party, I think I will stick my neck out and say the Labor Party will win at least one seat in the coming ACT election. Perhaps I am going too far. This wild abandon sometimes creeps into my head and I make these wild predictions, but I think the Labor Party will win at least one seat in the coming election. If they do, of course, there will be no capacity to distribute preferences outside the Labor Party, since all the votes that will be cast for Labor candidates will stay within the Labor ticket; so, numbering Pauline Hanson last on the ticket will have no effect whatsoever.

Mr Speaker, if Mr McMullan wants to grandstand and beat his chest about how much he and his party detest Pauline Hanson, that is fair enough. My party would be quite happy to do the same thing and match the Labor Party rhetoric in that matter; but we certainly will not be promising things we cannot deliver, and that is to put information on how-to-vote cards that we all know will not exist at the next election in February next year.

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