Ministerial Statement

ELECTORAL (LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL VOTING REFORM) AMENDMENT BILL

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (17:36): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Today, I will introduce a bill to amend the Electoral Act 1985 in order to address the very legitimate concerns about gaming and preference harvesting behaviour seen around the country during the recent Senate election. Independent commentators have expressed alarm at the prospect of this behaviour continuing to occur. The bill that I will introduce proposes modest changes designed to ameliorate the problem, but the bill is not a comprehensive solution in and of itself.

There has recently been some discussion about the introduction of a form of optional preferential voting. This discussion has apparently foundered on the inability of the Electoral Commission to be practically capable of implementing any such reform in time for the 2014 election.

There is an uncomfortable collision between a system that embraces both proportional representation on the one hand and exhaustive preferential voting on the other. The tension between these has now been fully realised by individuals and groups who seek to manipulate the outcome of elections by, in effect, gaming the system. There is an alternative that has not been adequately considered thus far, that being the Saint-Laguë system of vote counting utilised by many European countries. Such a system would effectively eliminate exhaustive preferential voting and reverse the count process from being bottom up to top down.

In such a system, preference harvesting would be impossible. Parties and groups would need to secure substantial public support in their own right. They would not be able to rely on complex backroom deals and mathematical algorithms to manipulate the voting system. I have prepared a draft bill which I am advised would deliver such a system in time for the 2014 election. The counting of such a ballot would be child's play and present no challenge whatsoever to the Electoral Commission.

I seek leave to table this draft bill today in the hope that agreement can be secured between the houses for this draft bill in its entirety to be included amongst such amendments as may be made in the Legislative Council. I also point out that should this draft bill be adopted by the Legislative Council a number of the measures in the bill introduced today would be rendered irrelevant.

I again make it plain that I welcome discussion with all parties and members about this important issue over the week ahead in the sincere hope that we can firmly address this problem in a long-term fashion. I am convinced that this solution, if adopted, would produce a simple, fair, logical and game-proof method of electing members of the Legislative Council. I urge the Legislative Council to give this draft bill its urgent and favourable consideration.