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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2080 ..

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (12.05 am): The government will not be supporting this amendment either. This amendment is intended to provide that the ungrouped column of candidates be included in the random draw for column order so that it could appear in any position on the ballot paper. Currently the ungrouped column is printed to the right of all other columns. If there are more ungrouped candidates than the permitted maximum number of candidates, this column is to be split into two or more columns of equal length, or as near equal as possible. It is the view of the government that this proposal would simply serve to confuse voters. The purpose of the ballot paper is that it is a communication medium for voters. It is a recognised feature of both ACT and Senate ballot papers that ungrouped candidates appear in the right-hand column or columns. Voters wanting to vote for ungrouped and independent candidates would expect this.

If the ungrouped columns were to be included randomly anywhere in the ballot papers, voters might not be able either to find them or to recognise them for what they are. Always printing the names of ungrouped candidates in the same place is a longstanding convention. I suggest that including them in the random draw for positions may be more likely to lead to people not voting for them than otherwise. Another source of voter confusion is the fact that party candidates standing alone are listed in the ungrouped column, with their party name printed next to their own names, as opposed to party columns which get their party names printed at the top of the column. If the ungrouped columns are included in the random draw, party names of party candidates standing alone would be listed in the body of the ballot paper rather than in the right-hand column. Again I suggest this would confuse voters.

Including ungrouped candidates in the random draw for positions would seem to be of benefit to them only if it serves to allow them a greater share of an uninformed donkey vote. I do not believe there is a sizeable donkey vote in the ACT that would benefit some column positions over others—it is certainly not big enough to give unknown candidates any chance of winning a seat. That an ungrouped candidate can win a seat in the ACT from the right-hand column was proven in 1995 when Paul Osborne did just that. Given all these reasons as to why this amendment is not a good idea, the government will oppose it.

MS DUNDAS (12.07 am): I believe that this amendment goes to the issue of fairness for all candidates in an election. Our system of Robson rotation is designed to ensure that all candidates have an equal chance of being recognised by voters. In addition, the columns on a ballot paper are drawn by lot to ensure that each of the candidates has an equal chance of being listed first on that ballot paper, but in the current system this privilege is not extended to ungrouped candidates. I believe this amendment rectifies that situation and I am happy to support it. However I flag that if these amendments fail I will join the opposition to clause 13 as I have some problems in respect of how it relates to non-party groups.

MS TUCKER (12.08 am): This is obviously not going to be a successful amendment but I think it is worth supporting. I was just checking as to whether it would be confusing or not. Usually people who are Independents put “Independent” next to their names, so it is most likely that if there were a column of various names with “Independent” written beside them it would be clear that it was a column of Independents.

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