Page 2026 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 August 2014
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aimed at his wanting bigger electorates so he can get more Greens in this place. I think Mr Coe is providing an eloquent dissection of the Greens’ real motives by pointing out the way that they behave electorally. Is that what you are doing?
MADAM SPEAKER: I have to say that it was a fascinating discussion and I was lost in it myself but I was starting to wonder about the relevance of it. I would ask that perhaps Mr Coe could bring that point to a conclusion so that we could continue the debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill.
MR COE: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Given Mr Rattenbury’s mention of the old parties, the old, evil, nasty parties—he happens to be in coalition with one of them—I think my comments before were relevant in trying to get to the nub of the motivation for Mr Rattenbury’s contribution to this debate and why it is he thinks that seven is moral but five is immoral, 16.66 per cent nasty and 12.5 per cent pure. That is what it comes down to. That is what it comes down to for Mr Rattenbury. Who knows where his delineation is between good and evil when it comes to quota sizes. But given the Tasmanian Greens have won a seat in each of the five member electorates in Tasmania, if the Greens here work hard enough and they convince enough people they too can match what their colleagues in Tasmania did and win a seat in each electorate.
The challenge is always up to the candidates and to the parties to prove to the people of Canberra why they should be elected. While 12.5, 16.6 or 50 per cent are perhaps crude numbers, we do have to choose a number somewhere. It is never going to be perfect but to claim one is perfect and one is not I think is a bit of a stretch. The opposition, as Mr Hanson has already articulated, will be supporting this bill. We call on Mr Rattenbury and the Greens to reconsider their view on this matter.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (5.12), in reply: I thank members for their contributions to this debate this afternoon and the clear support across both sides of this chamber to amend the Electoral Act to provide for five electorates of five members at the next ACT election in 2016.
I would like to address the process that the Electoral Commission will need to proceed to from here once this bill is enacted today. Before I do, I will respond to criticisms of the five-electorate, five-member model. In many respects it is to reiterate the points made by Mr Coe. The Greens should not make the perfect the enemy of the good. The fact is that we are retaining a proportional representational model, a model that provides for the election of members based on the proportion of the vote that they are able to obtain determined through a quota, divided, which is the number of electors divided by the number of positions being elected, in essence.
The fact is that minor parties have continued to be effectively elected to this place under a model that provides for one electorate of seven and two electorates of five. The Greens have demonstrated their capacity to be returned in five-member electorates both here in the ACT and in Tasmania, the other jurisdiction that has a Hare-Clark proportional representational system—indeed, one that has had, for decades and decades, a system that returns members from five electorates. Tasmania
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