ELECTORAL (OPTIONAL PREFERENTIAL VOTING) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 18 October 2012.)

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (11:13): I commend the member for Fisher for never, ever giving up. I cannot think how many times, even in the short time that I have been here (11 years), this topic has come back like a little penny. The member for Fisher should be commended for his tenacity in fighting for something he believes in.

In Australia we have compulsory voting, as it is often described. In fact, we do not have compulsory voting: we have compulsory attendance for the purpose of being identified as having turned up. We can take the ballot paper, we can not take the ballot paper, we can scribble on it, we can properly complete it, we can throw it in the bin if we like, we can eat it, we can do anything we like with it, but we have an obligation by law to turn up and have our name crossed off. If we do vote, though, we have a system of rules which apply. We have a system which has been identified over a very long period of time, and it has changed over the life of our state—which is now nearly 176 years—to determine what is the best way to get the most democratic outcome. That system which currently prevails has been through a long gestation period, and now, for the election of each of us in our 47 electorates, the system that has been determined as being the most democratic is a preferential system.

Many people, probably in our own constituencies, and members will have had this put to them, say, 'Why don't we just have a first past the post?' The person who gets the most number of votes out of myriad candidates who stand, even if they get only 10 per cent of the total vote with 20 other candidates all getting two or three votes each, that person should be the person who represents that district.

Of course, we have boundaries now and we have a system that goes with it, and this is one of the difficulties when you start to unravel bits of it. We have a system also where our 47 seats, as much as practicable under our constitution, have to aspire to have, with the electoral boundary changes after each election, as near as possible a similar number of people. It fits in with the one-vote-one-value principle.

In any event, the preferential system, as distinct from the first past the post, says that it would be more democratic for the whole of the electorate to be able to have an opportunity to identify and have recorded and have it endorsed as to what their most preferential choice would be, and that then works on the system where, if you do vote and your candidate gets less than the aggregate of the bottom two, your first preference falls away but you do not get ignored. You as a voter have the opportunity to say, 'I will have this other person as my next preference, and if he or she doesn't get up then I'll have the next person.'

The idea is pretty simple. It means that, at the end of the day, unless your candidate dies between the time of voting and the time of the final determination of who wins the ballot you will have had a say in who your local member will be; and I think that, on balance, that is a good system, a preferential system, because ultimately the most preferred candidate who achieves the majority vote of the total of the electorate is the person who represents them here in this place. That is the purpose of the preferential system.

What has happened, I think, in recent years—well, I should not say just recent years because I can recall for a long time that, for those advocates who are strong on voluntary voting, for example (and my own party has expressed a strong view in respect of voluntary voting), and consistent with that, there ought to be an optional preferential voting system so that you are not obliged to go down the list.

This optional preferential voting system is a bit of a hybrid. It is a bit like saying, 'You don't have to pick all the others.' You can just say, 'I just want Bob Such as the member for Fisher and I don't want any other donkey'—and I am not suggesting that he is a donkey—'or any other person coming along and saying that I will accept them. I don't want any of these others. They don't stand up to the standard of the member for Fisher, and so I only want Bob Such. I'm only going to vote for him and I am not under any obligation to identify any other preference.' Well, that is a hybrid. It does not work. It does not, in my view, fit with all the other rules that are there in place to identify, on balance, the most democratic outcome, and therefore the opposition will not be supporting this.

I will say that we have healthy debate on our side of the house on these things because some of our own have expressed the view that perhaps this is meritorious, perhaps we have been a little hasty in rejecting this as the optimal outcome for choice in voting. However, the observation has been made that the optional preferential voting, allowing voters to decline to preferential candidates, may reduce the informality rate by making it simpler for voters to complete a valid ballot—and that is the other argument that is presented, that you minimise the risk of people stuffing up their vote and inadvertently casting an informal vote. So, we have to try to make it simpler for them so that they do not muck it up.

I am always amazed at how many people we have reported back to us after elections of all types who lodge informal votes or write mischievous statements, sometimes quite defamatory statements, on ballot papers. I must say in the last couple of elections in the scrutineering I have done I have not seen anything that is even vaguely funny on the ballot paper, but certainly for those who are a bit older we can remember some rather curious descriptions of candidates or the opinion of the voter who, of course, has defaced their ballot paper with some obscene or colourful statement and whose vote is then declared to be invalid.

In any event, should we be trying to find a system that makes it good for the people who simply cannot do it properly? I am concerned at the number of informal votes. I am concerned when people turn up once every four years for this place and once every three years for the federal elections and just cast their vote with scant indifference to the outcome. It concerns me because I respect those in our community who are committed to ensuring that their representative is a good representative who do consider the policies and the proposals that they are espousing or fighting for, and the calibre of candidate who is to represent them, and they give it some considered determination before they cast their ballot. I respect those people, even those who do not vote for my side of politics.

I think it is important that we have a civic duty to make sure that we take advantage of this opportunity we have for democracy to be able to vote for our elected representatives, a right which many people around the world fight for and which, frankly, too often we take for granted. So I am not into having an electoral system just to make it easy or to cover for those who are just too ill informed or will not deal with the fact of what the rules are in relation to voting. It is not that difficult.

If there is an identified problem by the Electoral Commissioner with voters not understanding the form, then frankly that is an education program that needs to be outlined. To be honest, I do not know about other members here, but I would have to say that generally there is a very low threshold of knowledge about how the voting system works for the parliament and generally people in the public just want to know that they have a vote and that whatever the rules are they will follow them, and they will then identify the candidate of their choice and they will follow those rules. They are not looking into the whole constitutionality of the processes here. For those reasons, the opposition will be opposing this proposal.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (11:24): I will be very brief. I indicate that I will be voting against this motion. I believe that the system we have in place now works exceptionally well and, when we say there is some informal voting, I think that in a country where we have compulsory voting, the number of informal votes is fairly minimal and does not really have an effect. I believe that under the preferential system we give the people the opportunity to vote for the person they would most prefer to have represent them rather than a situation where you could have an election where, say, 20 per cent of the people determined who was going to represent them in that seat and 80 per cent of the people in that seat were completely against that person, so I just say that it is not broken so let's not try to fix it.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (11:25): I will close the debate. I thank members for their contributions. As I have said before, I think it is important that we canvass all sorts of issues in here, particularly ones that are very germane to the concept of a democracy. We do not have a pure democracy; anyone who thinks we do is kidding themselves. We have a system which is essentially dominated by the two major parties, and I think it will continue to be so. I think independents come and go because the system generally does not favour people becoming an independent and remaining one in our parliaments.

This bill is trying to create an optional preferential system. It does not get rid of preferential voting; it is optional because a lot of people object to having to cast a vote for someone they detest. Whether it be the Communist Party, the DLP, one of the fringe parties or whatever, people object to having to cast a vote for someone whose policies they strongly dislike, and so it does not get rid of the preferential aspect, it just says that that is not mandatory.

Members who have been involved in organising elections, apart from just standing, know that we have a whole lot of variations. We can have a registered ticket so that the vote of people who did not quite indicate what they wanted can still be counted. We have the situation of above-the-line voting which many people, if not most, go for in upper houses because they do not understand the system and they just go for the simple way out. They do what they are told by the party and they vote above the line.

That is not really a good indicator of a commitment and an understanding of what our system is about. It is one thing to cast a vote every four years at state and local level, and three years at federal level, but the other big issue is that people have no real say in between elections. I am not a fan of citizen-initiated referenda because I think they can lock in some silly notions fuelled by a media campaign based on hysteria and a posse. But what we do not have at the moment is a system where people can have an ongoing input that is meaningful and listened to.

People say 'Politicians listen all the time.' They listen and then they act on what they want, not necessarily on what the electors want, and there is no easy way of knowing what electors want between elections anyhow. I think the evolution of our electoral system overall is a pretty good system, but it is not perfect, and it can be modified and improved over time. I think all members and everyone involved in the political process and the wider community should keep an open mind and actively consider and discuss ways of improving our system to make it function even better as a democratic system.

I understand that this bill will not get up. I thank the members who have contributed. I think it does enlighten us to hear different views and I come back to the point that this bill does not discard preferences, it does not require them to be mandated in the sense of every single candidate getting an indication of support or otherwise from the voter. I understand what the fate of this bill will be, but, as I said at the start, it is worth discussing these things because the worst thing in a democracy is for elected representatives to be complacent and think, 'Yes, we've got the answers to everything; we've got the perfect system.'

That is what people have said in past times when they have operated pretty hideous systems, so I think people need to keep an open mind, and I think we should have an ongoing reform process to look at the way in which elections are conducted, the processes and all aspects of them as we have done to some extent in terms of electoral boundaries. I think we need an ongoing process to make sure that we have the very best system that is genuinely democratic and gives people a meaningful say.

Second reading negatived.