Commission of Inquiry on Electoral Reform Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 3 July 2014.)

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (11:15): I am quite pleased to be able to speak on the Commission of Inquiry on Electoral Reform Bill. This is a very important bill for the people of South Australia and I think those opposite know why. Because secretly in their hearts they know that they were actually misled on their way into the chamber; they belong over here. They belong on this side because barely one in three South Australians thought they were good enough to be in government and the people of South Australia expected that their will would be exercised in the formation of government in South Australia and they did not get that. They did not get that and that is very unfortunate.

The situation we have here is one where it may not even be a matter of intended consequence. I am not suggesting that there was some nasty conspiracy to deprive the people of South Australia in four out of seven of the last elections of the people that they actually wanted to be in government. It does not need to be a conspiracy; it is just the way the system has provided us with a government.

What would ideally be in the best interests of the people of South Australia, I suggest, are two things that we do not have at the moment. First, the situation where the will of the people of South Australia is expressed by those who form government or opposition in this chamber and the second is by having a system where the majority of votes leads to a party being in government or opposition as the case may be.

You then end the nonsense which inflicts so many systems like ours, but ours more than most because of the nature of demographics and the nature of where the votes lie, ours more than most which sees a cluster of seats on one side of town and a cluster of seats on another side of the town deciding who forms government. Therefore, without necessarily being conspiratorial about it, but you can see it happens, that is where the money goes, that is where the projects go as election policies because something is not pork-barrelling when it is an election policy commitment.

It is fair that the people of South Australia can see what is going to be put forward or against. It is fair and it is demanded, in fact, by the system that we have. It does not necessarily lead to good outcomes. I certainly do not begrudge the member for Colton or his community for having a nice new police station, but you will note if you look in the budget papers that it is the only new capital work based on a police station in South Australia and I do not think it is coincidental that it is in one of the three most marginal seats. It is good for the people of Colton and good for the local police station. I stand to be corrected—I am sure the member for Colton can tell me—but I believe they are getting one extra officer and I am sure that will assist the local area.

What would be best for the people of South Australia is if you could have a system that enabled the people of South Australia to make a value judgement on parties free from those sorts of local considerations that change the course of an election.

It may well be that the Labor Party and the Liberal Party might decide on a system where who wins Colton is not going to change the government, it is how many votes people get. It may well be that both parties still offer in their election promises a new police station at Henley Beach. It may well be the case, but that should be based on a decision of what is in the best interests of the community as a whole and what is in the best interests of policing for people in Henley Beach, for people in Adelaide, for people in Remark and for people in Whyalla. Whether a seat is safe or marginal should have no impact.

How do we get there? We believe that the bill offered yesterday by the government is not sufficient to achieve that purpose. It may well have positive contributions to make to other aspects of electoral matters. A commission of inquiry is something that is set up to have a look at our systemic issues in South Australia and what is going to deliver the best electoral system for South Australia, a statutory commission free from political interference because it is not about the Liberal Party or the Labor Party or the Greens or the Callithumpians. It is about the South Australian people getting an expression of their democratic desire sitting here in this parliament and able to deliver a government that is in the best interests of the people of South Australia and in the best interests of a democratic outcome.

With those words, I think that a commission of inquiry is necessary and this bill will create that. I urge the government, who in their heart of hearts, as I said, want this, because I am sure they want to no longer be the party of only one-third of South Australians. I am sure in their hearts that they want to be a party of the majority of South Australians. The Treasurer tells us all the time that if the system was different then they would campaign differently. The Treasurer tells us that if the system demanded you get a majority of the votes then the Labor Party would campaign accordingly.

I am sure that the members for Taylor, Little Para—all of them—would love to get a majority of South Australians on their side. In fact, it happened once. In 2006, they did get a significant majority of the two-party preferred vote and they even broke 40 per cent in the primary vote. It was a great day for the Labor Party. However, in the other six elections out of the last seven they have not been able to convince the people of South Australia, yet five of those times they have sat on the Treasury benches. I do not think that is what they want in the hearts, so I am sure that if they think about it—if they give themselves a good, hard look in the mirror, they will think about it hard and they will vote for this bill.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (11:20): Madam Deputy Speaker, we had an interesting debate on the government's supposed remedy to matters electoral last evening, and it was an interesting debate, because a number of things were claimed in the house and I want to disabuse a number of members of the claims that they made. I will use as my source the 1991 report of the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission.

That was the first boundaries commission that sat and redistributed the boundaries post the insertion of the fairness clause into our Constitution Act following the 1989 election where the Liberal Party, having won 52 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, failed to win enough seats to form government. That was seen as something that needed to be corrected. There was a select committee formed, chaired by the then deputy premier Don Hopgood, the fairness clause was inserted by legislation brought by Don Hopgood, and then the state had to have a referendum, as is required by the Constitution Act. I will read from the boundaries commission report following the insertion of the fairness clause. Paragraph 14.1 states:

The Commission is satisfied that there is an imbalance against the Liberal Party in the South Australian electoral redistribution process.

The 1991 boundaries commission acknowledged that there was an imbalance against the Liberal Party in the South Australian electoral redistribution process. The report analyses that, I guess, imbalance, bias—I have referred to it as a gerrymander, some people have referred to it as a bias. The commission in 1991 chose to call it an imbalance, but they did recognise and did acknowledge that it was very much more difficult for the Liberal Party to win an election in South Australia than it was for the Labor Party. I would claim that the exact same situation has indeed continued on over the intervening years and we find ourselves in a situation where the Liberal Party is still disadvantaged.

It was interesting last night when, I think it was the member for West Torrens, claimed that it was not anything other than the fact that the Liberal Party kept making mistakes, kept campaigning less effectively than the Labor Party, continued to pick poor candidates, run poor marginal seat campaigns, etc. Indeed, that is the argument that has been run by the Labor Party for a very long time, and it is commented on in this very report from 1991. I quote again from that report at paragraph 14.14:

The Labor Party claimed during argument that its better campaigning methods, better candidates and better policies (presented in better targeted marginal seats) resulted in a greater ability than the Liberal Party to win metropolitan marginal seats. The Commission is not in a position to pass judgment on this particular claim other than to say that it is satisfied that there is more to the problem of imbalance than the claimed better personalities, policies and campaigning methods.

The districts boundaries commission of 1991 certainly highlighted in its report that those claims do not stand up to scrutiny. Those claims do not explain the inability of people who wish to have a change of government in South Australia to achieve that outcome. The commission of 1991 certainly recognised, firstly, that there is a bias and, secondly, that that bias is more than what is claimed by people like the member for West Torrens, who claims that it is not something with intrinsic within the way our electoral system works, it is all about the Labor Party just being better at campaigning with better candidates. I think the comments made by the commission back in 1991 remain just as valid today as they were then.

I now come to another comment that I made. I understand that the Electoral Commissioner before the upper house select committee into matters electoral made the comment along the lines that we have in South Australia the Westminster system, that the party that wins the most seats forms government—it is about winning the most seats—and that the two-party preferred vote should not be a determinate of who wins the vote. I made the comment that the constitutional act of South Australia, following the insertion of the fairness clause, does indeed oblige the boundaries commission to take into account the impact of the two-party preferred vote.

Again, from the 1991 commission, the one that looked very closely at the new clause, looked at all the legal aspects of it and then the application of it and has written extensively in this report about it, the commissioner told that upper house committee that the phrase 'as far as practicable', which is part of the fairness clause—they have to achieve that outcome 'as far as practicable'—basically gave the boundaries commission an out. The 1991 report, with regard to the phrase 'as far as practicable', paragraph 15.5.2 states:

…the phrase cannot be interpreted in a way which dilutes the Commission's obligation to the point where it is entitled to give no weight at all to it or decline to comply with it.

The boundaries commission in 1991 certainly understood its obligation, certainly understood the meaning of the fairness clause and understood its obligation. As I pointed out in the debate last night, the boundaries commission 2012 report clearly shows that the 2012 boundaries commission failed to understand either the import of section 83(1) or the commission's obligation to comply with it.

I would call on the new boundaries commission, when it is formed, to go back and read all of the 1991 report, because it might learn something which it obviously has failed to understand in recent times. I repeat, that the 2012 boundaries, when the boundaries commission rethrew the vote of the 2010 election when the Liberal Party won a clear majority (51.6 per cent of the vote), when they rethrew those votes box by box across the new boundaries, the Labor Party still won.

They still won that artificial count on the new boundaries—25 seats. They did not win a simple majority or a just majority of 24 seats, they won 25 seats on those new boundaries. Quite clearly, the boundaries commission has failed in its duty under the Constitution Act, in my opinion. I used the word 'gerrymander' to describe what the boundaries commission in 1991 refused to call a bias, refused to call a gerrymander. I still stick by the word 'gerrymander' because I think the gerrymander was locked into our electoral process in 1975. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debated adjourned.