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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 3769 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

produce and display and then dispose of hundreds of pages of plasticised or laminated material. It cannot be recycled, because it has been laminated. It is going to undermine the environmental benefits of our how - to - vote ban.

It has also been put to me that there is no effective way of preventing tampering with how - to - vote material. Some members of the community may wish to deface or destroy how - to - vote material provided in the polling booth, whether for the sake of allegiance to a particular party or candidate or because they dislike the process or politicians or because they consider themselves comedians. The bill recognises this by creating an offence of tampering with a folder, but how effective is that going to be?

Are you going to be sure of catching the person who puts extra numbers on the how - to - vote folder? What happens when somebody comes forward and points out that there has been a folder in the polling place for three hours which people have been referring to and, lo and behold, at the end of the day when votes are counted at that particular booth, some 20, 25, 30, 40 or 50 ballot papers are filled out in that erroneous way? What does that do for the integrity of polling at that particular booth? The bill does not go far enough to provide safeguards commensurate with the seriousness of the risk.

The bill provides that the commissioner must make the folder available in a manner that minimises the risk of defacement, obliteration or removal of the material or folder. However, provided the commissioner takes reasonable steps to comply with these requirements, the election is not invalid. It is not clear what would be considered reasonable steps in the circumstances. That has not been defined in the bill. Even with the lamination, it is possible to mark the folders. When you mark the folders, you will have material, purportedly provided by the polling official, by the Electoral Commissioner, that will potentially confuse voters because it has inaccurate information. This is a very dangerous step.

Obviously the measures Ms Tucker has talked about would also add to the cost of elections. The cost would be higher because of the need to laminate or plasticise the pages for each of the 2,300 voting booths used in polling places in an ACT election. You would have 2,300 folders.

I have also been advised that fees charged under the scheme may have a discriminatory effect. In introducing the bill, Ms Tucker noted that the Electoral Commissioner will be able to charge candidates a fee for the display of how - to - vote material. In the absence of any further funding to enable the Electoral Commission to meet the increased costs, such a fee would need to be set on a cost recovery basis.

The commission has estimated that the implementation of the bill would cost around $40,000. Therefore, the fee from the 10, 15 or 20 parties or candidates who might take advantage of it would need to be fairly high to ensure that costs were recovered. For example, in 1998 there were 41 groups and Independent candidates who would have been entitled to an A4 how - to - vote card under this bill. The cost per card would have been around $1,000.

Alternatively, if the fee was charged per candidate, for the 108 candidates in 1998 the cost would have been around $370 per candidate, which would have amounted to $6,290 for each party fielding 17 candidates. We spent much time last night and yesterday

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