Parliamentary Committees (Electoral Laws and Practices Committee) Amendment Bill

Final Stages

Consideration in committee of the Legislative Council's amendments.

(Continued from 11 February 2015.)

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I move:

That the Legislative Council's amendments be disagreed to.

I just want to make some general comments. Basically, we are not accepting the amendments, and I just wanted to briefly put on the record why. I think the member for Bragg and I are of the understanding that we will deal with this reasonably quickly and it can go back elsewhere. Following the 2014 election, the opposition argued that the electoral system in South Australia was unfair because, despite winning the majority of the two PP vote, the Labor Party was able to form government.

This bill was introduced in the House of Assembly in June 2014. It amends the Parliamentary Committees Act to establish the electoral laws and practices committee. This would be a standing committee of the parliament. The government intends this committee to be a non-partisan parliamentary committee that will inquire into and report on matters relating to electoral laws and practices. The committee will be non-partisan and consist of an equal number of members of both houses. This approach endeavours to ensure that the work undertaken by the committee exceeds political interests.

Having passed the House of Assembly, the bill was introduced in the Legislative Council on 6 August last year. The Hon. Mark Parnell moved a series of amendments so as to remove the entitlements of members of the committee to additional remuneration. These were supported by the government. The opposition, through the Hon. Stephen Wade, also moved amendments to the bill. All the amendments proposed by the Hon. Stephen Wade are opposed by the government. These are what he sometimes refers to as 'improvements'.

Those amendments are basically as follows: an amendment so that a minister of the Crown is not eligible for appointment to the committee nor the Parliamentary Committee on Occupational Health and Safety. This is another sort of vendetta that is being pursued. The government opposed this and continues to do so. The amendment is probably beyond the scope of the bill in any event.

There is an amendment that the date of proclamation on which this act will come into operation will only be after a report has been prepared by a commission of inquiry established by the parliament, and this is basically piggy-backing on an announcement made by the Leader of the Opposition. As a prerequisite, this must occur before this committee can get started.

The commission of inquiry bill was negatived in this house on 20 November last year. Mr Wade's amendment seeks to make the establishment of this bipartisan committee on electoral reform contingent on the findings of that partisan inquiry on the basis that that inquiry is being asked solely to look at how best to ensure the Liberal Party is able to escape the consequences of a poor strategy and campaigning.

Amendments also were moved removing the capacity of the minister to refer matters to the committee and replacing it with the ability for matters to be referred by motion of either house. The existing provisions within the committee's act allow for referral of matters to a committee by either house of parliament and, therefore, this amendment is not necessary. Further, the commonwealth Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters permits referral by a minister, as does, for instance, the Statutory Officers Committee in South Australia.

The absurdity of not permitting the relevant minister to refer something to this committee produces this result—that if I, as the responsible minister, wish to have the opportunity of consulting with this committee in order to fine-tune a proposal that I might be thinking of doing, I would be prohibited from doing that without receiving a motion from either house. Of course, given that I am the minister and that one of the consequences or the antecedents of my being the minister is that I am a member of the party that has control of one of the houses, why would you add the procedural step of my not just writing to the committee but having to get a resolution through here, which by reason of being the minister I could probably do, I would have thought. It seems a bit strange, but there are strange things that happen up there.

Basically, we are not happy with these amendments. We have accepted the Parnell amendment in the other place. We just want to have the thing go back up there to see whether we can have further discussions with the opposition and, in this instance, I would expect those discussions would be with the honourable member for Bragg and possibly the Leader of the Opposition. I look forward to that conversation.

Ms CHAPMAN: I indicate that the opposition notes the amendments made by the Legislative Council, in short making provision for no payment to be made to members of the proposed committee, excluding ministers from that role of being capable of serving on the committee and making some other amendments in respect of the resolution of either house being sufficient to identify the functions. I think that is the summary of that.

We think these are some enhancement to the process. It is fair to say that when the government first introduced this proposal through this bill, the Hon. Bob Such was a member of this house. I think it is reasonable, especially when it is directly under our attention that there is either a minority party or Independents, that obviously they need to be included in the discussion. That that situation has changed to the extent that the only two remaining Independents have now accepted commissions as ministers and, therefore, we consider consistent with the amendments in the Legislative Council that they should be ineligible.

The other more substantive offering from the Legislative Council is that the commencement of the operation of this committee should only be post a report being presented to the parliament into electoral reform to deal with the whole question of fairness and the necessary recognition that the majority of the statewide vote should be reflected in a capacity to form government.

It is already in the constitution but it clearly has not worked. In that regard, giving it that recognition, it appears to be a significant stumbling block between both the major parties. However, I note that the Attorney has extended the olive leaf to have a discussion about how we might best deal with the future investigation and orderly management of discussion in respect of appropriate electoral reform on an ongoing basis, so that we can ensure that this parliament functions well and that the government within it is fairly elected each four years (eight years in the other place).

What I do not want to see is if we are going to get into issues about constitutional reform as to how the parliament operates, including dealing with that rather pesky little section 10 of the constitution—which, from the Australian Labor Party's point of view, is not one they are comfortable with—which protects the equal power of each of the two houses of the parliament in a bicameral system. Obviously the ALP has some difficulty with that. If we are going to get into electoral reform and dealing with constitutional reform in this committee process it is going to get very complicated.

In any event, I hear what the Attorney is saying, and we are prepared to sit down and talk about how this can best progress because what has happened, while we have been discussing this process, is that alongside this has been debate on the question of having a fairness inquiry. That has been dismissed. It was an offering from our side of the house and was rejected by the government. Prior to that we had an upper house inquiry established that is now underway, and chaired by the Hon. Robert Brokenshire. Unfortunately, that has been boycotted by the Australian Labor Party members who were nominated and elected; they do not go along to that, so that is going along on its own.

More recently we had a motion presented to the parliament by the Premier, now wanting to get into what he considers the important issues arising out of the last two by-elections. So it seems that he is not even in line with what the Attorney-General is willing to do, and that is to establish a joint house committee, a standing committee, that can operate in an orderly fashion to look at reform in these areas. It seems the Premier is a bit of a cowboy over here on his own little jaunt.

We have the other house going along, without full representation of all the relevant parties, doing its bit. Our position has been crushed by the use of the numbers from the government, and we have this proposal of the government which we say—our position being unsurprising—has had some helpful amendments to the government's structure. However, we will work to it. I conclude my remarks.

Motion carried.

Sitting extended beyond 17:00 on motion of Hon. J. R. Rau.