Page 2421 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
but I am just putting it on reference that when I become the Attorney-General, as I hope to after October, it will be one of my chores to ensure that we have a root and branch review of the Electoral Act to ensure that it is clear and that there are not impractical distinctions.
The question here is about the definition, in section 198 of the Electoral Act, of electoral expenditure. It includes a whole lot of things which are pretty bleeding obvious, including broadcasting an electoral advertisement, publishing an electoral advertisement and displaying electoral material. I do not have a problem with any of these sorts of things. It includes a consultant’s or advertising agent’s fees relating to electoral matters mentioned in specified paragraphs and the distribution of those materials. And then we get to:
… carrying out an opinion poll or other research undertaken to support the production of electoral matter mentioned in subparagraph (i) to (vi); but … does not include administrative expenditure.
I defy anyone to determine whether a particular opinion poll is undertaken to support the production of electoral matter. In practice, opinion polls will never be taken with that exclusive aim. I would say that to take a random sample of 1,000 or 2,000 people, ring them up and say, “How would you be voting if there was an election held today?” does not give you any information that would help you fashion an ad, a pamphlet or anything of that sort.
There are sorts of polling that might be done. That would be the sort of thing where you have a focus group, you run an ad past them or you run some messages past them and you see how people respond. But opinion polling does not do that. Opinion polling asks people: “If you had to vote today, how would you vote? And of the people that might run in the election, do you recognise their names?”
The real issue will be that political parties will have to go to the Electoral Commissioner with their polling material and say: “Here is a poll that we ran. It cost us $30,000 to put it in the field and it had five questions. This question, this question and this question were about voter intention. They had nothing to do with formulating policy anywhere. But in this question over here, we asked people what their views were on light rail and the VFT. We subsequently formulated a policy on light rail and VFT and we used that information. Therefore, of the six questions and the $30,000 that we put in the field, one of those questions relates to this, so we propose to put forward $5,000.”
Then the Electoral Commissioner has to moderate whether or not that is actually what happened. It is not his job. He should not be asked to do that. Electoral commissioners should not be asked to do this. One of the things that the Electoral Commissioner has said to us on a number of occasions is: “Make our job simpler.”
An example of one of the things that we are going to do tonight that will make the Electoral Commissioner’s job simpler is about administrative expenditure. The government’s proposal, on the advice of the Electoral Commissioner, who gave the same advice to me, was: “Don’t have an acquittal system, because we have to go
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video