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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2056 ..

We have had a number of registered ballot groups. I am not too sure if the Michael Moore group was one, but we certainly had the Osborne group. Some members here, certainly members of the Labor Party, did not like that and some other members probably did not, either, but those members were put in by the electorate. They formed a group in 1998 which got two members in. The electorate did not like them in 2001 and out they went, all part of the very strong democratic system we have here. We certainly will be opposing the government’s attempts to take out the ballot groups as well.

Just to give a quick indication of what we will be doing, Ms Dundas pointed out that she had an amendment. We had a round table discussion which I found particularly useful. We had several round table discussions, but I am referring to the latest one. Ms Dundas has a very sensible amendment in relation to postal votes and persons sending them back direct to, I think, the Electoral Commissioner rather than to a party. We do not have any problem with that; we think that it is quite transparent.

We do not, however, agree with moving the column for Independents and putting it in the general ballot—I will speak more about that at the time—and we do not agree with dropping the number of members for a political party to below 100. Several other amendments will be coming up. We are quite comfortable with Mrs Cross’s idea, which I note is for this election only, of enabling parties to register after the cut-off time of, I think, 30 June or 1 July. I note that she does not intend to have it to go beyond this electoral cycle.

That is an indication of what we will be doing with the amendments. We are happy to support the government’s bill, with those provisos, and will be opposing Ms Tucker’s bill.

MS TUCKER (10.35): This long-awaited bill implements some recommendations of the Electoral Commissioner following his review of the processes of the last election. This is a regular review and is an important part of keeping our electoral system working well for democracy. That is not to say that we necessarily support without debate the recommendations of the commissioner, but I would like to acknowledge the importance and usefulness of the report, which sets out arguments and analysis each time.

While the delays on this debate sometimes have been frustrating, sometimes almost amusing, I think that it is worth noting that the decisions to adjourn the debate have been made at times because of the need for everyone to understand the range of amendments proposed. Everyone here has amendments in one form or another. We have just had some more from Mr Stefaniak which, I have to say, I do not like—not that I do not like the amendments, but that I do not like getting amendments at this point in time.

I think that these delays in the past have been largely sensible and good process. When we are considering changing the electoral system, we should make sure that we know what we are doing. However, we are nearing the time when it would be too late for these changes to be put into effect for the forthcoming election, so it is certainly time to have this debate.

The Greens support the bill in principle and most of the substance of the bill. We will, however, join the opposition in opposing the removal of non-party groups and we will be

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