LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ELECTIONS) (VOTING AGE) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 18 October 2012.)

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon) (10:51): The member for Fisher has called for the Local Government (Elections) Act to be amended to allow those aged 16 and 17 to vote in local government elections.

The Hon. R.B. Such: If they wish.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Well, the member interjects, 'If they wish,' so of course it would be voluntary, as voting for local government currently is in South Australia. I commend the honourable member for his interest in the local government system in South Australia. This is not the first time that the honourable member has called for an amendment to the Local Government (Elections) Act 1999 to allow voluntary voting for 16 and 17 year olds. He has put a similar motion to the house in 2008.

The Hon. R.B. Such interjecting:

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Yes, it was the Australian Labor Party that amended the commonwealth Electoral Act to allow 17 year olds to enrol to vote.

The Hon. R.B. Such interjecting:

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: That is when I was a ministerial staffer to a cabinet minister.

An honourable member: Was that before or after The Advertiser?

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: After. The purpose of that was to enable 17 year olds to be in a position to vote on their 18^th birthday if that were the federal election day; they could provisionally enrol. I think very few 17 year olds avail themselves of that, but it is something that was made available to them owing to changes made by the then special minister of state, Mick Young.

I think the struggle in local government is not really to persuade 16 and 17 year olds to vote. I think the struggle is to persuade anyone under the age of 65 to vote. My experience of local government is that two kinds of people vote in local government: one is people aged 65 and above, people who are retired and vote and who take an interest in civic affairs; and people living in the countryside, who, judging by turnout rates, are far keener to vote in local government than people living in metropolitan Adelaide.

The government does not support the honourable member's bill. The amendment will serve to leave our local government elections out of step with federal and state election voting age requirements which, we believe, will cause confusions. Indeed, it will necessitate the construction of a separate electoral roll in order to enrol these 16 and 17 year olds, and has the member for Fisher turned his mind to whether enrolment would be compulsory?

We now have quite a struggle to get people aged under 30 to enrol to vote for state and federal elections. When I was Attorney-General we had to invest quite a lot of taxpayers' money in campaigns and various devices to try to get 18 and 19 year olds and people in their 20s to enrol to vote for the first time, so I do not think the member for Fisher will be bowled over in a rush of teenagers wanting to avail themselves of the right he proposes to give them.

The Hon. R.B. Such: The ones that are pushing, a lot of them are young Labor people.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: That may be so. I was a political geek.

Mr Williams: Nothing has changed.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Indeed, nothing has changed.

Mr Williams: Why are you speaking in the past tense?

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: I was waiting for that.

The Hon. S.W. Key: You were a political geek before geeks were invented.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Thank you. I was keen—

The Hon. R.B. Such: That was when Barton Road was just a dirt track.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Barton Road was on Colonel Light's original street plan for Adelaide, and you can see it if you look on the map in the Queen Adelaide room, as I did last week. I can recall I was so keen to exercise my right to vote as soon as I could that on a rainy Adelaide winter's night coming home from the football, in my uncle's wartime RAAF jacket with the number of my favourite player on the back, I got off the train and went to the polling booth to vote in a local government election. The returning officer gave me a ballot paper with two names on it and said, 'That candidate has withdrawn.' That was my introduction to voting.

The 2010 local government elections were the first to be held since this parliament passed changes to the Local Government (Elections) Act, changes that were designed to improve both the processes of local government elections and voter turnout. I am not sure that those changes we made—and I was in cabinet at the time—were necessarily for the better, because it had the effect of reducing the number of people on the supplementary voting roll for local government to a very small percentage of the former numbers that were on the voting roll, the supplementary roll.

The idea was to make it more democratic by giving proportionally more power to people on the House of Assembly roll and then reducing the number of landlords and business people on the local government roll. I will admit that the supplementary roll was often hopelessly out of date and the people who were enrolled to vote on behalf of businesses had often left the employ of the business or indeed had died since they were enrolled.

Fortunately I was able to argue for maintaining the supplementary roll for the Adelaide City Council electorate, because, of course, the people on the supplementary roll for the Adelaide City Council elections are the only people who have an interest in making the city and North Adelaide attractive for people who live outside the city and North Adelaide, making it attractive for them to come and spend money in the city. If people like councillor Anne Moran got their way, every obstacle possible would be placed in front of people who live in the suburbs accessing the City of Adelaide and North Adelaide for the purposes of employment, study and entertainment; but that is another story altogether.

The Hon. R.B. Such interjecting:

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Indeed, I think councillor Moran was angry that some of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital was going to be built on the rail yards, because she had a long-term plan for the railway lines to be returned to parkland, in which case I do not know how we were supposed to get from Keswick, Bowden or Ovingham stations into the Adelaide Railway Station—perhaps by flying fox.

Mr Pengilly: She was never game to stand for Lord Mayor, was she?

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: She wasn't game to stand for Lord Mayor and she wasn't game to take the Liberal preselection for the state district of Adelaide when it was available and at a time when, unbeknown to us all, the Liberal candidate was going to be successful. So, congratulations to the current member for taking the preselection at a time when councillor Moran of Mills Terrace did not have the guts to take it.

The review of local government elections that preceded the legislative change was based on extensive consultation with the local government sector and South Australians more broadly. This review considered many aspects of the 2010 local government elections and, most notably, voter age was not a matter considered at this time.

I think the reason it was not considered is that very few of the submissions to the review of local government elections actually advocated 16 and 17 year olds voting. I think only three submissions out of several hundred received were in favour of lowering the voting age. Indeed, the Local Government Association considered this motion of lowering the voting age at its annual general meeting on 26 October 2012 and the motion was overwhelmingly defeated.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (11:01): I indicate that the opposition does not support this piece of legislation that the member for Fisher has brought to the house. We oppose the bill. I have listened to the member for Croydon's comments and some of the reasons he provided the house on behalf of the government are not dissimilar to the reasons for the opposition's opposition to the bill.

I do note that the member for Croydon did not mention the fact that the City of Prospect moved a motion. The Mayor of the City of Prospect, who I understand is a friend of the ALP, moved a motion at the Local Government Association's annual general meeting last week calling on the LGA to investigate whether there is sufficient evidence across local government to call on the South Australian government to reduce the age to enrol and nominate local government elections to 16 years of age. I understand that that motion was voted down from the floor of the LGA AGM on Friday.

It is pretty clear that the local government sector, that sphere of government, also does not support the member for Fisher's proposal. I may be corrected on this but I understand that the member for Fisher has on five previous attempts, in one form or another, looked to amend the age of voting in either local and/or state elections and each one of those attempts has been opposed and voted down here in parliament.

It is well recognised that the age of majority is 18 and, with that, comes certain rights and responsibilities. One of those rights and responsibilities is to enrol to vote and at every state and every federal election it is compulsory to attend a polling booth and have your name crossed off the roll and, once that has taken place, an individual person can choose what they do with the ballot papers and so on.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: You knew something wonderful happened to you when you got elected, but you didn't know how it happened.

Members interjecting:

Mr Pederick: That's nasty; don't even respond.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: I'm not going to. As I indicated, in relation to the member for Croydon's comments, some of the arguments he put forward on behalf of the government are similar to our reasons for opposing it. We think it would be confusing to have different ages for individuals to be entitled to vote across the spheres of government. Something that the member also alluded to that the member for Fisher may not have considered was the mechanism in terms of creating a database.

That was something that I also put my mind to, but my thinking went to the actual cost involved of establishing and maintaining a separate roll for 16 and 17 year olds around South Australia. As a consequence, who would bear that cost? Would the state government be expected to bear that cost, or would the local government sector be expected to bear that cost? I am not sure whether the member for Fisher has turned his mind to that aspect as well. I think I have outlined a number of reasons why the opposition does not support the bill, and we look forward to a vote on it today.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (11:06): I wish to make a brief contribution on this. I must admit that there are many challenges in being a parliamentarian, but one of the great things is actually Wednesday mornings, and particularly Thursday mornings; the retorts that occur across the chamber enlighten my day and make me a lot happier.

I can respect the intent behind the member for Fisher's bill, and as a person who worked in local government and sought to engage young people I understand that that is what it is all about: to try to encourage our young people to become involved in community affairs, to be better informed and to have that voting opportunity. There are problems with that, and that is why the member for Kavel was outlining the opposition's intention not to support the bill.

I do indeed hope that one day it is an opportunity that will be provided to our young people because I am a believer in the quality of our youth. I see so many examples of wonderful young people out there who will be truly great leaders in our communities, and I know they are engaged early, they want to be involved, and they want to have an opportunity to influence decisions.

It is obvious that voting is one of those great ways to do that because every vote is important. Personally, I hope there is an opportunity for change in the future, but I acknowledge that at this stage it is not right time. Again, I regret that we cannot support it.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (11:07): My approach is always that if something is not going to get support, let's get it off the Notice Paper. The reason for bringing this measure to the house is that I am passionate about our young people and I think a lot of them have much to offer, and there is a lot of lip service paid by politicians and people in councils about listening to young people. I think, most of the time, that is a hoax. The only time people are listened to is when the people have some power, and the only power in our system, basically, for everyone, is the vote.

Many countries around the world already have this, so the argument that it is not possible or practical is just silly—Austria is one, as is Brazil, and the Isle of Man, which I had the pleasure of visiting recently. There are very smart people on that island. They have a tricameral system of parliament, which works—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: What was the reason for the visit?

The Hon. R.B. SUCH: It was CPA, and I met members of the royal family there. The Isle of Man has a very smart system—a modified parliamentary system, a tricameral system. We have a 'try anything' system. They are very smart people, and they allow 16 years olds to vote and, as far as I know, the Isle of Man has not disappeared into the Atlantic.

One of the problems facing local government is relevance. I think that unless we have significant and major reforms in local government that very important sector—and it is an important sector—is going to be come increasingly irrelevant. It is also facing serious financial issues, but that is another matter.

If we look at who the elected members on councils are, we have to be honest and say that most of them are in the mature-age category. There is nothing wrong with that, but there are not too many people on councils who are under the age of 25. Generally speaking, councils are run by retirees or people who are close to retirement, so they do not reflect the community at large. This place does not fully either, but local government, I believe, has an issue. I think anything we can do to encourage young people to get into local government is worth doing.

What prompted me to take up this issue was a very young Labor person I met at a conference of talented and gifted students. I will not mention his name because I do not think it is appropriate. This young lad knew a lot more about politics than most people in the community. He is not able to participate by way of a vote in local government, yet someone who is senile with dementia in a retirement village or a nursing home can vote. How do I know? Because my late mother-in-law was close to that point.

Under our current voting arrangements, it is a farce that someone who is senile with dementia can vote. If you do not think that that is important, look at some of the inner suburban areas with nursing homes and look at how the voting is conducted there. What we saying to young people who are smart and want to participate is, 'You can't participate. You can get your driver's licence, you can join the military, but you cannot exercise a vote in local government.' I do not think that is a very sound argument.

The LGA conference last week rejected this. A motion was put by the Mayor of Prospect, David O'Loughlin, and then we had silly comments from some of the people who attended. One person made fun of it, with the heading reported in InDaily,'Councils not true "Beliebers"', with a play on words with 'Justin Belieber'. Most mayors who were on the wrong side of 16 or 17 put the argument that we have to be careful about what young people might do or say. Once again, what we see is a lack of confidence in the ability of our young people.

We have a lot of adults who cannot participate effectively because they do not really know what is going on. So why deny the opportunity to a 16 or 17 year old who is with it, who does know and who wants to participate? I think it is time for local government to embrace young people and stop ignoring them.

Second reading negatived.