Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Committee Stage

In committee (resumed on motion).

New clause 36A.

Mr PICTON: I move the amendment standing in my name:

Amendment No 16 [Picton–2]—

Page 12, after line 9—Insert:

36A—Repeal of section 115

Section 115—delete the section

This is to introduce new clause 36A into the bill which would repeal section 115 of the act. Section 115 of the act provides:

115—Limitations on display of electoral advertisements

(1) A person must not exhibit an electoral advertisement on—

(a) a vehicle or vessel; or

(b) a building, hoarding or other structure,

if the advertisement occupies an area in excess of 1 square metre.

We are proposing to remove that restriction upon the one square metre rule for electoral advertisements on various structures or vehicles.

This is something that has been raised previously by electoral commissioners. If you go back to the 2014 election report from the then electoral commissioner, it was recommended that this be addressed. In that report, the electoral commissioner said in relation to the limitation of display of electoral advertisements:

There is confusion amongst candidates and registered political parties relating to the current provisions as they are not subject to such restrictions during federal election campaigns. The provision is cumbersome to administer and the source of many complaints. Consider removing the provision.

As the commissioner then said, I understand that there are a number of issues in how this is implemented and lots of debates and complaints about how that should happen. People have sought to get around this.

I significantly remember the Minister for Police, the member for Hartley, and the very prominent billboard in the heart of his electorate at that very notorious intersection. I think both he and perhaps his predecessor, the former member for Hartley, had leased out a building space in that area right underneath the massive billboard so as to enable that to be a campaign office and hence be able to use the billboard in that particular area, which would not be allowed if it was not technically a campaign office.

I also remember this being discussed in the course of the last election in regard to the Jay bus, as people might remember.

An honourable member: The Jay bus, yes.

Mr PICTON: There were a lot of good times on the Jay bus, I have to say. That had to be designed very specifically to make sure that all the signs that were on the Jay bus were one square metre. There was a one square metre sign about health, there was a one square metre sign about jobs, there was a one square metre sign about climate change and the like, which there was some discussion about, if I recall, at the last election.

This is always subject to debates and discussions. The Attorney has already talked about how the Electoral Commissioner is inundated with complaints during campaigns and that having to adjudicate them becomes quite a massive task. As the Attorney said, she put in a mountain of complaints herself against former Senator Nick Xenophon. A lot seemed to dwell on whether people have been in keeping with this one square metre rule.

There is one particular practical difficulty in how this is going to apply in the coming election campaign that I think makes this issue even more urgent to debate. It is something that the Attorney has previously touched upon, sometime eons ago, in a debate around the fact that were likely to have a federal election around the same time as the state election.

Therefore, there will be discussions as to what is the nature of a state election poster or advertisement and what is the nature of a federal advertisement or poster because the federal rules do not have this requirement of one square metre. I stand to be corrected, but I think that this is rather unique; if not unique, it is one of the few places around the country where this provision applies. We are going to be in an interesting environment, where it is very commonplace for federal candidates and federal political parties, as well as other interest groups, campaigning organisations and lobby groups and the like, to use billboard advertising in the course of a federal election campaign, whereas that is prohibited under this provision in the state campaign.

This is going to raise some interesting questions because, if you put up a poster that says 'Vote Labor' or 'Vote Liberal' and it is 10 metres by 10 metres, is that state election material or is that federal election material? I am not sure that the federal court system would look too kindly upon there being a ruling from South Australian government instrumentalities by the state Electoral Commissioner that that should be not allowed in the course of the federal election act, which would specifically say that type of campaigning could be allowed.

I think we are sailing into unprecedented and uncharted waters in how the interaction between those two systems will work. Obviously, there will be some very clear demarcations. If you are putting up a 10 metre by 10 metre poster saying, for example, 'Vote John Darley for the Upper House', that is very clearly going to be a state election. But where you have that crossover between most of the political parties that have a role at a state and a federal level, coming up to those campaigns that will be happening potentially simultaneously, that is going to create quite the issue I am not sure we have a proposed solution for how it should be managed.

I think it is worth noting that, when we have federal elections in South Australia, we do see billboards being used, but I would not say there is a huge overabundance of the use of billboards. It is a factor that some campaigns choose to invest their campaign funding into, but I think if you look back in history not that many campaigns would devote a significant amount of their resources, from either party or any of the minor parties, into billboards, as opposed to television, online advertising, radio advertising or the like.

I remember a number of times when I helped my local federal member of parliament, Amanda Rishworth, who had a very good prominent billboard at the bottom of the hill at Main South Road.

Members interjecting:

The CHAIR: Order! I missed that, I must apologise. I am sure this committee is being undertaken in good spirit, but I did miss that.

Mr PICTON: I will update you later, sir, on how the Attorney-General does not regard me as attractive.

The CHAIR: Heavens! Is that a personal reflection?

Mr PICTON: It would be a personal reflection, but I am sure everybody is relieved on all sides in regard to that matter.

The CHAIR: I think we might leave this right there.

Mr PICTON: I think that is a very good idea. I would not comment on the attractiveness of the member for Kingston. I would comment on her hard work and diligence and her margin, which has increased and increased—I do not think probably all due to the fact that she had one billboard for those elections, but it is a significant expense.

It raises the question of why we have this provision in there to begin with. What is the public policy merit of saying, 'You can bombard somebody's letterbox as much as you like, you can bombard their Facebook feed as much as you like, you can bombard their television screens as much as you like, but you cannot put up a poster.' I think there is a question as to why that needs to be put in place. Even if you accept the Attorney's arguments with regard to the separate proposal, which she is putting forward in relation to corflutes—I do not share those views—the issues she is putting forth about environment, etc., I do not think quite carry the same in relation to a billboard that is already erected and already in place. Nor is there any additional visual interruption because the billboard would already be in place.

Proceeding with this amendment would carry a number of benefits. One is that it alleviates a lot of pressure on the Electoral Commissioner to devote to much more important tasks, as has been noted in the 2014 report. It helps to address that federal-state issue that we are about to encounter in relation to how to interpret what is a state poster and what is a federal poster, which I think is going to be very difficult to do. It also addresses the question of why this provision needs to be there in the first place.

This will help to reduce those disputes. It will help to address the federal election issues. I think it raises a separate issue, which we may all discuss further when we get to the other bill in the house with regard to funding disclosure, about that interaction between federal and state when it comes to expenditure. What will be a federal or a state advertising or campaign expenditure has very different rules, and there is certainly no funding cap at the federal level. I think we need to consider that as well.

In summary, this will seek to remove the restriction we have at the moment in South Australia, which is, if not unique, one of the only places in the country where such a restriction would apply, make our election process simpler and address any potential federal issues that might occur and ease the pressure on the Electoral Commissioner.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Can I thank the member for Kaurna for bringing this amendment to the bill. It is an important amendment, not just for the reasons the member for Kaurna highlights about the recommendations of the Electoral Commissioner and the capacity for the commissioner to apply the strictures of the current regime but for some important other considerations that I would like to tell you about, Chair.

In doing so, I want to recount a brief story about one of my former constituents, who has now passed away. His name is Alex. He passed away about three years ago, well into his 90s. He had the rare and extraordinary distinction of being married for 25 years and then, unfortunately, losing his wife to illness. After that time, he managed to find love again and was married to his second wife for another 25 year period. They both lived very happily in my electorate, up until close to their final days, before their ailing health caused them to go into care.

Alex was a migrant to Australia from Scotland. It is his history in that regard which caused me first to meet him because he, like me, is a member of the Clan Campbell Society of South Australia. When he worked, his profession in Adelaide was as a typesetter. I am not talking about what a graphic designer might claim to be typesetting. This was real typesetting, taking a physical letter and placing it in a row with other letters in preparing to print a document, as it was done in the first half of the 20^th century.

We as members of parliament and candidates at elections I guess have a tangential interest in typesetting because, aside from the photos, which we pay some attention to, the other part of the corflutes we are interested in is how our names fit on them. I can remember having a brief conversation with him about whether typesetters had a rule of thumb when it comes to public signage, not so much about the font that is used but about the size of letters and their legibility to a regular observer.

It was fascinating to me to understand that there was a rule of thumb typesetters and signwriters used to apply when it came to sizing letters for signs in order for them to be legible to casual observers or passers-by. You might be interested to know, Chair, that that rule of thumb was roughly for every 10 feet of distance a letter would ideally be at least an inch high or higher, depending on the distance. For example, if you are 150 feet away or 45-odd metres, you would want letters to be something in the order of 15 inches high. As candidates subject to other bills that are before this place, we rely on signage to let constituents know not only who we are, putting a face to the name for example, but also the fact that we are candidates at a coming election.

It has always been of some interest to me, as somebody who has the distinction of having a moderately long surname, how well my name can be crammed in the allowable space for a public advertisement for the purposes of a state election. One square metre does not provide much capacity for someone of even Anglo-Celtic origin, like me with an Irish last name of Mullighan, to find its accommodation within one square metre. It has vexed me greatly about how this might be remedied, and of course it is for that reason that I am keen to support this amendment.

I am conscious that some other members might not feel so passionately about this. There are some members, like the current member for Taylor, who is pretty well off in this regard. They can afford to have very large sizing of their relatively short both first names and surnames on their billboards. But for those of us who do not have the luxury of a very brief name—like me, the member for Croydon, the Leader of the Opposition, or the member for West Torrens, or even the member for Elizabeth—we struggle to find an appropriate way that we can advertise to our constituents that we are running for election again.

Speaking from relatively recent experience, it can even be a frustration to the Department of Treasury and Finance, whose responsibility it is to superintend our electorate office arrangements, to find appropriate signage outside our electorate offices to balance both what they believe might be acceptable to the local council and the by-laws that apply to signage in our particular areas, and what is reasonable. So I am guessing that the Attorney and the government are likely to oppose the member for Kaurna's amendment, but it seems clear to me that that has been done for base political reasons—because they tend to enjoy the electoral benefit inherent in their by and large having shorter names than we do over on this side of the chamber.

There is one exception of course: the member for Stuart finds himself at a distinct disadvantage from the current arrangements. I say to you, sir: who will stick up for the member for Stuart in the course of this debate? Well, I will proudly. Every letter of his proud Dutch heritage, just like my Irish heritage, should be able to be accommodated on an appropriate advertisement. I put to you, sir, that one square metre is simply insufficient in order for us to adequately communicate our last names.

So, yes, I do agree that there are exceptions on both sides, that while the Liberals might enjoy an overall benefit in one regard, the exception is the member for Stuart, and on our side, of course, the existing member for Taylor has the opposite problem to the member for Stuart. Some might say that is the reason the member for Taylor is not continuing on, because he does not want to create waves in the consideration of this amendment bill, let alone for this particular amendment that the member for Kaurna brings.

But I put to you that this is long overdue reform, and reform put even by the relatively—and I am talking about in length, rather than, as the Deputy Premier referred to him, in terms of attractiveness—modestly named member for Kaurna and how he can find ample accommodation on his corflutes. While people like me—and even the member for Ramsay who has an inherent interest in this with a surname of similar unfortunate length to mine—find it very difficult to fit our name on a corflute.

Mr Picton: That's why I don't go with 'Christopher'.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Exactly! The member for Kaurna has to cut short the effort that his parents put into naming him because of the strictures of the electoral law. I notice that my electoral neighbour, the member for Colton, has to do the same thing with his first name. He has to effectively annex the second half of his first name just so that he can try to communicate the minimum amount of information so that people might know who he is. The member for Cheltenham has the same problem. He cannot use the full extent of his first name.

Mr Szakacs: And they can't say my last name!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: And he says they cannot say his last name, and then he has a third problem on top of that: the length of the name of his electorate. It is extraordinary. Some people might think that the die has been unfairly cast against the member for Cheltenham in that regard. I do not want you to think that this line of argument means that I have some unfair advantage in the length of the name of my electorate because it does not quite make up, unfortunately, for the length of my first and second name.

I put it to you, sir, that one square metre is grossly insufficient for us. Of course, this is all of great humour to the member for Hurtle Vale. We have seen how she represents her name on her corflutes; seven letters in total, or, as 'The Four Yorkshiremen' would say, 'Luxury!' when it comes to a corflute. But I do not have that luxury and neither do many other members. I would urge you, sir, to give this serious consideration in casting your support or otherwise for these amendments. I congratulate the member for Kaurna on bringing this forward. It goes a long way to recognising the diverse heritage represented in many of our surnames and gives them greater accommodation when it comes to making displays for the purposes of advertising ourselves for election.

The CHAIR: Thank you, member for Lee, for that fascinating dissection of the surnames present in this place. Wonderful!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I indicate, in respect of amendment No. 16 standing in the name of the member for Kaurna, that the government opposes the repeal of section 115, which would have the effect of abolishing the one square metre restriction on the size of posters, corflutes and electoral advertisements generally. I just place on the record that at no time was I assessing the attractiveness or otherwise of the member for Kaurna in my previous contribution. I was merely comparing him with the federal member for Kingston, which overlaps his electorate, and identifying that if I had to see a double life-size poster of either of them I think I would find the member for Kingston more attractive.

Mr Picton: I think that is a judgement. I agree with you.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: You can take it as you like. I am just getting over having to have 20 years of looking at a double life-size picture of Christopher Pyne. So there is actually some attraction to this proposal.

The member indicates he is not quite sure why we had it, and I do not know either, but the whole act was 1985. We had a new era in relation to electoral matters. It coincided approximately with the time of the early eighties, when we had the introduction of this then newfound idea of having corflutes everywhere, which is going to be the subject of another bill in the parliament.

Nevertheless, it was born into that legislation and has served us well, in the sense of providing that restriction. I am advised that in the last two elections there have only been 11 allegations of breach of the one square metre rule; three of them failed to reach any threshold of guilt in relation to the last election. There were eight, I think, that were fined or given some kind of penalty. Eight warnings were issued and three were found not to breach the act. With that bit of information, that is as best I can help with history.

What I do want to remind the member is that, if this was such an offensive area of restriction in relation to advertising, I do wonder why the previous government after the 2014 election took no notice of the electoral boundaries commission report which recommended its abolition—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Well, if we are looking at life-size posters—nevertheless, in 2014 the Electoral Commissioner had recommended that this be got rid of and, for whatever reason, the then Attorney-General or whoever had the passage of electoral reform in the Labor Party at the time did not take it up and did not take up a lot of those, and I have made comment about that before, but this was one of them.

There is a consistency argument, though, that has been raised by the member for Kaurna and I hear that. It was almost the same plea I put to the then Attorney-General when we discussed the introduction of public funding in elections and how helpful it would be and how sensible it would be that we have the same structure of regulation around public funding as applied in the federal election so that we could have some consistency and this would be for ease of operation, enforcement and compliance of political parties and candidates.

He took the view that it did not matter how different it was to be in the model he had come up with, which we now have and which we are about to look at amending. He wanted to have something that was bespoke and he got it. So I am always rather puzzled that sometimes I come in here and there is a powerful argument submitted for the consistency and argument to ensure that we minimise confusion for the elector and now we are looking at a situation where there is to be a removal of this.

I would hazard a guess that the introduction of corflutes into the seascape of pictures and identification during election campaigns precipitated this desire for the then Bannon government to introduce this legislation which this government is now asking to repeal. With that, I indicate that we do have this restriction. If it is the will of the parliament that we get rid of it, then I look forward to seeing life-size billboards and posters.

I would suggest that it would be inappropriate for us to do that without having a serious discussion about corflutes. If we were to have life-size pictures the size of Stobie poles of the member for Kaurna—it is starting to look like a frightening prospect actually and I am cementing my view to oppose this amendment. It just seems to me that we need to have a more comprehensive discussion about what is going to be out there.

Obviously, all of this advertising material has to be authorised and there is a process for that. But the restriction, I think, has served us well while we have had the sea of corflutes around. If we are going to change that, I think we would need to be looking at it as a package in relation to how we would address that. With those comments, I indicate that I oppose amendment No. 16.

Mr SZAKACS: I rise in support of the member for Kaurna's amendment. As I spoke about a little earlier, I have been the authorisation officer for a number of different strategies across the years. It is something that is of particular interest to me. I note the contribution of my colleague the member for Lee especially speaking about the systemic prejudice against white Anglo-Celtic members of parliament who we know.

In a bit more of a serious manner, I will seamlessly move into my discussion and my personal preference of various federal election strategies and tactics around materials that we cannot implement here in South Australia at a state level. Bunting, of course, is one of those. We need to talk about new and more environmentally friendly ways to use bunting, but nevertheless bunting is—

Ms Cook: Rice paper.

Mr SZAKACS: Rice paper, that is right. Let's hope that we never have rain on election day. As a redhead, I hope for rain every election day. March election days are an absolute killer for me and I have no doubt that my dermatologist will one day tell me that as well.

Bunting is one of those things that does provide a degree of uncertainty. The major parties largely know the rules. Certainly, I have never heard of a complaint of any material substance against a major party regarding the existing regulations, but there is amongst Independents and minor parties a degree of confusion.

Often, there are complaints made by those Independents, third parties and minor parties against some of the materials used by major parties, particularly against third parties and trade unions that use corflutes and various different materials on election day or before election day. Often, these third parties and individuals cannot quite work out that, whilst the trade union movement and the Labor Party are very close, having formed over 100 years, we are actually distinctly and politically independent, so when a trade union puts up a corflute and the Labor Party puts up a corflute, it is not the same person putting up the corflute and therefore it is not two metres by two metres.

In my view, there is also a degree of public service that can be improved by increasing the square metre space of these various materials, as the member for Kaurna has proposed. We know that more and more people are, and are likely to be, voting before election day, so enabling political candidates and political parties to use space more broadly to advertise that is certainly something that I think is of merit.

Unfortunately, one of the corflutes that I used in my by-election campaign, reminding people of the by-election coming up, received a complaint. Upon the complaint—not because of size but for another reason—the Electoral Commission asked us to remove it and of course using our best endeavours we did so, but there are other public services and public service initiatives that I think can be improved by increasing the space.

I am sure the Attorney would agree that there is also the ability for political parties to better convey their message, whatever that message may be, unlike the member for Lee who is interested in those larger surnames. There could be political messages as well and there is one particularly that I am picturing now. Mr Chair, you will have to work with me on this one because I cannot show you, as it would be unparliamentary.

There is a nice landscape billboard that I can see now that I think would be of significant public service. Right in the middle of that is the Premier and above in big red text is 'Steven Marshall's rotten government.' There is a nice landscape with Steven Marshall, the Premier, right in the middle. To his right is the member for Waite and above his head is a quote, 'Drunken pest caught.'

To the member for Waite's right is a photo of the member for Schubert and above the member for Schubert's head is a quote, 'Resigned amid scandal.' To the member for Schubert's right is the Minister for Water—of course, known as the capitulator thanks to the significant investigative work of the royal commission—and the quote above the Minister for Water's head would be 'Sold out SA on the Murray'.

To the right—there is more; I mean, you can see, now, why we need to look at this square metre space, because without the landscape two by one, three by one or nine by four maybe, on a nice big billboard as you are driving down South Terrace or driving through the member for King's electorate or driving through the member for Colton's electorate or driving through the member for Elder's electorate, there would not be this nice big billboard that I think is only proper for us to use as the alternative government.

So to the right, again, of the water minister's photo is the Hon. Terry Stephens from another place: 'Resigned amid scandal'. Coming back to the middle of the nine by four or ten by six billboard, just to the left of the Premier is the current Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and above his head is: 'Multiple bullying allegations'. Just to the right of the Minister for Transport is the member for Narungga: 'Criminal charges'. To his right is the member for Chaffey: 'Resigned amid scandal'. I think we are probably going to need a bigger billboard for the member for Chaffey because there are quite a few things we could talk about relating to the member for Chaffey. He might have lost his ministry, but he will always have his air pods.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: It would need to be the size of Texas.

Mr SZAKACS: It would need to be the size of Texas, that's right. We would need a big billboard for the member for Chaffey. Of course, right on the edge—we cannot forget him, even though it is very easy to forget him—is the new Agent General for South Australia in the UK: 'Resigned amid scandal'. So if nothing else, from my perspective I support this amendment because as a public service it is only fair that we are enabled to use these larger billboards to tell the story of Steven Marshall's rotten government.

Ms COOK: I support the member for Kaurna's amendment. The contributions have been diverse and interesting and brought to mind a few other things. We have talked about names and the length of names and how they fit nicely or not onto corflutes. As time goes on in our state, we become a much more diverse and multicultural community. Having been to many citizenship ceremonies and made many friends of people who have come to live in Australia, particularly from the subcontinent, I just cannot imagine what it would be like trying to fit some of the names from India, Sri Lanka or Pakistan onto some of the corflutes. I believe that at a citizenship ceremony I went to recently one of the names had 18 letters in it. So I think you would be struggling significantly to be able to fit that named tidily on there.

One of the members—I cannot recall who it was—was talking about the previous member for King, now member for Taylor, Jon Gee. It has often passed my mind how tidily the words 'King Gee' would have fitted onto a corflute for the previous election had it not been for all the movement of the boundaries.

In all seriousness, getting back to the importance of being able to get the message out or be able to show people who it is that they are actually voting for in elections or looking for representatives on a poster, there is a big discrepancy between what the feds put out and what the state members and candidates are able to put out. I am sure the member for Kaurna would have talked about the federal member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth, who is an incredibly diligent and hardworking federal member in our southern suburbs. She, I believe, has used an actual billboard to be able to promote her position and that she is up for election in South Australia.

Of course, we do not have that luxury; although, with the sizing and the shape of corflutes, people have become quite creative. I remember last election, there were some very long corflutes—narrow, but very long—that some of the parties had put up, and they take up the whole Stobie pole as such anyway. They do really dominate those opportunities that you have to place some signage.

Even though you cannot currently exceed that size of the one metre square, people are using ones that optimise the use of the space available. I do not see any harm in our being able to increase the size. I thought that was a very good visual representation that the member for Cheltenham was trying to offer us in terms of providing some use of a larger sign to be able to tell a story leading into the election.

The other one that comes to mind was used by the member for Kingston at one of the polling booths in the South-East a few years ago, when some rather extraordinary practices came to light from a candidate who I think was standing for Nick Xenophon's team. I cannot remember the full scope of what it was this gentleman used to do, but it was some kind of acupuncture therapy that was supposed to stimulate fertility by inserting needles in very delicate places on a woman's anatomy, if I recall, something that we could not find a lot of scientific evidence or validity for regarding those very strange practices. I do remember some commentary that was a bit odd around it. That story was told at the polling booth using a rather large sign.

I am not suggesting that should be the story that is told or hung on the Stobie poles around the electorate, but I do think there is opportunity that we are missing if we do not take the opportunity now while the bill is open to be able to knock that clause out and be able to provide for some more creative and imaginative pieces of advertising that we could use during the election campaign. We get swamped by dozens of pieces of material within our letterboxes and what have you, and I cannot see that some of these signs are any more offensive than that. With that, I would support the member for Kaurna in his amendment.

Mr HUGHES: Who would have guessed in 2014 when I was elected to this place that I would be getting up to speak to an amendment about the square metreage of signage. This is clearly a very important amendment. In a former life, I used to actually design posters and print posters on behalf of bands down here in Adelaide. I would be very perturbed if I were just restricted to a mere one square metre—the bigger the better when it came to promoting some of the bands that I was involved with.

Of course, I come from an electorate that is incredibly large. It is 1¼ the size of Germany in land mass. Everything in the seat of Giles is large, and signs should be as well—or at least we should not be restricted when it comes to the size of signage. It is something to make an impact in such a large electorate with communities scattered far and wide.

It is not just the size of the electorate; it is what is contained in that electorate. The biggest opal mining community in the nation, indeed in the world, is in my electorate. They deserve big signs up in Coober Pedy. The biggest copper mine in the country is at Olympic Dam. They deserve big signs. We have the biggest uranium mine in the country. They deserve big signs up at Olympic Dam and Roxby Downs and, of course, where the biggest structural steel producer is in the nation—the people of Whyalla deserve big signs.

Once upon a time, we did have the biggest shipyard in the nation in Whyalla. Bigness is at the heart of the electorate of Giles, and I would not want to see a restriction on the signage used to get the message across in the seat of Giles. When you have more than a square metre to play with, you can do all sorts of imaginative stuff. There are some very creative efforts around the place, whether they are on billboards, whether they are on smaller signs, but over that one square metre. I do not think we need this restriction, and I am sure that we are going to eventually get to argue in this place about the merits or otherwise of corflutes. With that small contribution to big signs, I will now regain my seat.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: I rise to support the amendment in the name of the member for Kaurna. This amendment, obviously, is supporting the ability to have electoral signs that are larger than one by one. It is an opportunity to remind us about the power of pictures and how we visually process photos and colours a lot more quickly than many other things. The reason I think it is important to support this amendment is that we know that the electorate is making their decisions on how they are going to vote later and later. Within the bill before us, we are encouraging people to vote earlier, but just because they can vote earlier does not mean that they have made a decision. They are probably going to be voting earlier out of convenience because they might be working on the Saturday.

When we want people to be thinking about that choice, we in this house probably think that people know how they are going to vote and that they vote consistently most of the time. It is simply not true. We would also like to think that everyone knows that the next election is on 19 March, and I can tell you that most people do not. Most people do not know that we have a fixed four-year term, and they do not know either that we might be having an election at a similar time to the federal government. They do not think about us as much as we think about what is going to happen leading up to the election.

When someone is standing in line at the pre-poll on the Saturday of election day, we want to make sure when they are making this decision that they have all the information that they need. We want them to know who our candidate is. Yes, my corflutes are 10 years old. I do look a little bit older now, but my name is still the same and my seat is still the same. I want them to be able to recognise me and hopefully know that they have had an interaction with me in the last four years.

We also want them to know about our policies and the differences with our policies. We want them, while they are standing there, to be able to clearly identify the differences, not just between the names of the candidates but between the policies that we stand for. We want them to know about government performance. We want them to be thinking about how that government went over the last four-year term. Is that important to them? How is the economy going? What has been invested in schools?

We know that this time people are angry. People are angry about ramping. People are angry that our paramedics are having to be ramped at our hospitals. My constituents are really angry that when they go to the Lyell Mac hospital, even on a Tuesday night, in emergency they are standing there for hours upon hours. We want to make sure that people are aware of government performance, and when they are standing there getting ready to vote or in the lead-up to election day, let's make sure we are clear about the differences, not just the difference between Labor and Liberal but the differences between all the parties that are vying for votes.

Of course, we might want to talk about personal characteristics: the fact that I live in my electorate, that I have been the member for some time, that I have a record here and that I have evidence to show what I have contributed to the seat. We also want to show and share with people our commitments to the future, our vision, and we want to do that with information that is easy to accept and condense, and visually is the best way we can do that, and we want to do that with pictures and a few words.

What I am really quite concerned about are the inconsistencies with the federal rules and the potential for confusion. All of us here know that the federal election could be held as late as May 2022. What if in March we have a big red billboard that says, 'Vote Labor'? Under these rules, that is not allowed, but what are the rules going to be considered under: federal or state? Given that they are likely to be at a similar time, these are things that we should be asking ourselves: what is going to be the difference?

This is an opportunity to talk to the electorate. We would like to think they are engaged now. We would like to think that they have probably made their decision already, but that is simply not true. I am going to remind my constituents that this government axed the Adelaide 500. They axed a much-loved event and guess what? I am going to have a picture with a car on it and I am going to have a picture of the crowd who enjoyed that event and I am going to remind them of the $45.9 million that it brought into this state in 2019 and the fact that this government axed the event with nothing to replace it. I am going to remind them each and every day up to the election and I am going to put it on a picture and they are going to see it as they go to vote. I rise today in support of the amendment of the member of Kaurna and encourage you to support it.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I also rise to support the amendment of the member for Kaurna about the one square metre rule. As someone who has worked on state campaigns and federal campaigns, I have never been able to understand why we have different rules for federal campaigns. You can put bunting around, and colleagues of mine have had billboards up around the place, and it just does not make sense to people that you are restricted to the one square metre.

This gives the government of the day a very unfair and undemocratic advantage because governments of the day can use taxpayers' money to advertise government initiatives and government services on billboards that can be associated with the political party that is in government. Let's take a look at those big 40-metre long trams that we see go past this Parliament House every day every 10 minutes or so. I have seen them covered in political advertising, paid for by the taxpayers, dressed up as government advertising but actually all about supporting the government of the day and promoting the government of the day.

On one hand, you have the government being able to put their messaging all over a 40-metre long tram that goes from the Entertainment Centre all the way down to Glenelg and back every 10 minutes, every day of the week, yet the opposition is thwarted from doing anything bigger than something that is one square metre. That is a total disadvantage to the party in opposition or an Independent who is trying to make their way into parliament.

Let's do away with this one square metre rule and create an even playing field for all contestants in a political battle, because this is a democracy and this should be fair for both sides of politics—in fact, all sides of politics: the governing party, plus those Independents and other party members who might want to run against them.

When we look at the last election in the US and federally, we see that campaigns have a campaign bus that gets around. There was the Trump bus, the Biden bus and the Clinton bus before that. In Australia, federal politicians have been able to get around on their bus, so we wanted to do a Jay bus at the last election. We had to break up the bus into little, one square metre panels that we could put our messaging on.

We were out in the regions. I know the bus did a nice tour of Kangaroo Island; I was on it. It was a very comfy bus too. It had beautiful plush leather seats, a coffee machine and a fridge down the back. We had a great time on that bus as we went around Kangaroo Island and down on the Fleurieu Peninsula. But why could we not just have it all painted in one message, which you would normally do, instead of having to divide it up to meet some rule that makes sense to no-one?

I think that is a terribly unfair thing to do. It is not in keeping with where standards have gone, where electoral practices have gone. If we look around the world and see how often buses are used now in terms of not just getting the candidate or the leader of the party around the state or around the electorate but also sending that message, it is a really good thing. People like seeing a big bus turn up, saying, 'This is what we are going to do in your area.' If you paid the big bucks for the bus, you might as well be able to put the message on there that you want.

At the last election, I had to divide all my messages up and put them up on lots of different poles. I had the one about the Myponga Bowls Club, the great grant that we gave them so that they could put in an artificial green down there, which the club had been asking for for years and years. Myponga is one of the wettest places in South Australia. Not only was it bad for the condition of the green but it was bad for visiting teams that would come to Myponga.

They would bowl at their normal rate that they might bowl at Noarlunga, McLaren Vale, Aldinga or Victor Harbor, and it would go about four metres because it was a heavy track. Conversely, when Myponga would play away, they would give it a bit of grunt as they let go of the bowl and they would be in the gutter at the other end. It made for an unfair playing field, which is exactly what this one square metre rule is all about as well: it is an unfair playing field.

I think of the other posters I had up at the Myponga playground. I could have put them both on one poster if I could have gone bigger than one square metre, but no-one can read signs that are only one square metre. You cannot put much writing on it because when people are driving along, particularly on somewhere like Main South Road that goes straight through the town of Myponga, they cannot see a whole lot of writing. If you could have two or three square metres, you could put more messages on it because you can fit more on in that font and typeface and size that you need.

The Myponga playground was really important, but I could not fit it on the Myponga Bowls Club, so I had to do another one. Then you go to a bit further up Main South Road, and I had to do signs that talked about our announcement that we had committed money to build a birth to year 12 school at Aldinga for 1,650 kids. All I could fit on there was that Leon Bignell is delivering a birth to year 12 school for Aldinga. I would have liked to have said it was going to have 1,650 kids and it is going to be the centrepiece of the Aldinga community. I would have liked to be able to elaborate a little bit more, but when you are only given one square metre it is pretty hard to put all that stuff on there.

On some of the signs, I could not even fit the name of the Labor Party, because it was really important that we had to get the message out in that little confined space. Sometimes it is like those very talented people who can write whole sentences and paragraphs on a grain of rice. This is the sort of challenge we are faced with. On that stretch of Main South Road, not only did I want to tell everyone that we had come up with the money for the B-12 school for Aldinga but I also wanted to tell them that in that very same budget—the 2017-18 budget, the last Labor budget—we had also funded the duplication of Main South Road from Seaford to Sellicks. I could not fit it on the school one, so I had to do separate posters about it so that people could actually read it.

Again, people are driving past, and you need to attract their attention and they need to be able to read what it is that you are doing, what it is that you are proposing to do for that electorate in the next four years, so that they know who they are voting for, so that they know that one party, the one that I represent, is offering a lot and the Liberal Party is offering not much at all.

That is why it suits the Liberal Party to have this. I remember their posters. They did not have any achievements. All they kept saying was 'Vote for Steven Marshall and the Liberal plan.' That was all they said. Every sign was exactly the same. It was just that. They have nothing to say. They have no reason to give voters to make them vote for them. They are quite happy as long as they can fit the words 'We've got a plan' and Steven Marshall's name on it. That is all they care about. We have a good story to tell. We have an amazing pedigree, an amazing track record.

When I look at the almost 16 years that I have been here, we need really big signs to fit in all the stuff that I have done for the local area. We had the ones about the McLaren Vale overpass. That was a game changer for the people of McLaren Vale because it was a very deadly intersection as you came out of Main Road, McLaren Vale, particularly if you were turning right onto the Victor Harbor Road. I wanted to tell everyone that that was me who got that. It was $18 million, and I pestered Pat Conlon time and time again that we needed this important safety measure, and we finally got it.

I wanted to put those posters up around the place: what have the Liberals ever done for the south? Nothing. It is the forgotten south. Maybe that is what they can put on their one square metre: 'Liberals, we don't care. Liberal, the forgotten south.' Yes, that is what you get when you get Liberal governments.

Mr Odenwalder: The one-way expressway.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Yes, the people who gave you the one-way expressway. There is not much to brag about when you are the Liberal Party. We have a lot of good things to say and we need massive signs to be able to put it all down. I must say, there will be a bit of explaining to do, by me, on the Stobie poles in the lead-up to the 2022 on 19 March next year. How do I put on one poster the fact that the Liberal Party and the Premier would not stand up to the people who wanted to dump PFAS in McLaren Vale?

We have $850 million of food, wine and tourism money that goes into our local economy and thousands and thousands of jobs, yet the Liberal Party would not intervene and tell the EPA not to consider dumping PFAS in our pristine food, wine and tourism area. How am I going to put all that just in one square metre?

How am I going to explain the fact that the Deputy Premier and the Planning Commission wanted to have a secret little review into the very important legislation that we got through this house, with the objections of the Deputy Premier, when she said that were going to bugger up the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale? How are we going to tell that story to the people of Mawson when we are confined to one square metre? It is quite detailed to go into all of those issues. Some of the other signs that I had down there included the Kangaroo Island skate park that we put up at the last election. I would like to have put up all the stuff that we had done—

The Hon. Z.L. Bettison: Much loved.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: —much loved. I got about five front pages on The Islander over the year between when we announced that and when it was actually built. There is one particular photo I remember. The photographer said, 'Okay, one, two, three, we are all going to jump up.' Jay Weatherill was there, I was there and a bunch of about 30 kids. I must have jumped a little early, and I am the only one up in the air. They ran it on the front page. It is one of my favourite photos. Timing is everything and I totally stuffed that up. These are the sorts of things that people want to know.

They get to an election and they say, 'Well, this is a compare and contrast. There's this lot and there's this lot. What have they done for us?' We want to be out there telling them exactly what we have done. If we can get a 40-metre long tram and put our stuff all over it, we will do that, if we are allowed. We had the Jay bus; it will now be the Malinauskas bus. Just try to fit Malinauskas on the side of a bus. Jeepers, we will have to get a bigger bus.

We are really being confined here, by only having this one square metre rule. I commend the member for Garner for bringing it in because it is something that for 16 years I have just thought made absolutely no sense at all. I know that the people of Kangaroo Island were really excited when we announced the skate park and they saw it being built and everything else, but just put the sign up on the Stobie pole and remind everyone.

The people of Willunga were really impressed to see my signs up everywhere, saying that we got that money for the Willunga CFS. So we had the Willunga CFS up, we had another poster because we could not fit all the good news on the one poster because we are limited to one square metre and we had to have another one that said we had delivered $500,000 to women's sport in Willunga. There are all these extra posters because we cannot fit all the awesome news on the one square metre, so we had that poster.

When you went over to McLaren Vale, there were lots of posters up there about the money we gave the school so they could get a new air conditioner—that was under that awesome plan Fund my Neighbourhood. I cannot work out why the present government got rid of that because that actually delivered millions and millions of dollars in fairly small grants of up to $150,000, so not that small. These grants went to community organisations and bodies that were really keen on something and they did not fit in all the other grants that were offered. They were easy to apply for: you could just nominate it and then you just had to get your mates or your town or whatever to vote for it.

We were there with all these signs up about I think the McLaren Vale netball club and the McLaren Eagles footy club—for their women, I think they received $260,000 for women's change rooms—so we had some really good stories to tell. As I said, we had to divide all the messaging up onto these posters that we had to put around the place.

The CHAIR: Member for Mawson, I am just going to interrupt because, even though it is not in your view, we have had the clock on. I am just bringing the member's attention to standing order 364, which states that in committee the speaker may not speak for more than 15 minutes on any one occasion. You have one minute 40 seconds to go.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Sir, could I just get you to reset it because I did not know—we cannot see it—and could I have my 15 minutes over again. I think the member for Hammond seconded me there: he loves the sound of my voice. The member for Hammond is a speaker after my own heart, someone who can get up and talk passionately about their area for minute after minute after minute, and I am disappointed that I only have one minute 40 seconds to go.

Mr Picton interjecting:

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I have been given some very good news by the member for Kaurna, that I can give two more speeches later on, so I will look forward to that—maybe we can even get back to the fact that Cummins in your electorate, Chair, has some of the finest vanilla slices in the entire world. I think we got onto that here one night in here on some matter of importance.

The CHAIR: That would be digressing.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: It would be. What is going on with the clock? The place is falling into rack and ruin, that we cannot see this.

The CHAIR: Well, we could put it up if you like, it is not usual that we need it, member for Mawson.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Really? Are you saying I am verbose? I would not be offended if you did.

The CHAIR: No, I am not saying that—a wideranging contribution.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Excellent, and it is a wideranging one, a very important one.

The CHAIR: There is the clock, member for Mawson.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Look at that, and what a wonderful thing it is too, the way it just ticks away. Are those TV screens bigger than one square metre? I am struggling to see that, which is another good reason for us all to support the member for Kaurna's amendment, that we just change this silly rule and get on with it, the more the merrier—all these things that we can put up on our posters to explain to people just how good we are and just how rotten those Liberals. At the end of the day, that is what democracy is all about: it is a contest. We can all get on pretty well.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Well, it is a contest of ethics, too, sometimes. I think we need to be able to tell our stories in a longer version, a little like the 15 minutes I just took then. Thank you very much for your time.

The CHAIR: Time which has now expired.

Mr ODENWALDER: I intend to be a little less verbose than the member for Mawson. I rise to support the excellent amendment from the member for Kaurna arising from recommendation 24:

There is confusion amongst candidates and registered political parties relating to the current provisions as they are not subject to such restrictions during federal election campaigns. The provision is cumbersome to administer and the source of many complaints. Consider removing the provision.

Clearly, the Electoral Commission sees this as overly burdensome. Clearly, in order to run their operation more efficiently, they would like the removal of this provision. I have not heard a very good explanation of why the government would not be supporting this amendment. I am not sure if the Attorney has spoken on it yet, but I assume they will be opposing this very good amendment.

There are a couple of things beyond simply the burden this places on the Electoral Commission, which they have identified in their report. The first of these goes to enfranchisement. This is a theme we will be returning to again and again because this goes to the government's motivation behind some of the measures in this bill. I am thinking particularly about the measure to reduce the available time for young people, particularly, to add their names to the electoral roll.

If we look at South Australia historically, and indeed the entire world of the Westminster system, what we see is a gradual enfranchisement of the population. We have seen conservative forces trying to hold back, restrict the franchise, and we have seen more progressive forces fighting against that, trying to extend that franchise as widely as possible to those people who public policy affects.

We have seen it from 1851 at least here in this state. We saw first of all the one-chamber system where the Crown simply selected or appointed members to the chamber—no franchise at all. We saw gradual chipping away at this, with resistance from the conservative forces I should add. There was the gradual chipping away at the limits on the franchise, or in that case there was no franchise.

We saw the development of two chambers. It is worth noting that in the Legislative Council it took until 1973 and some 40 attempts to amend it before the ability to sit in the Legislative Council was given to people who were unpropertied. It was not until 1973 that that particular unfairness was remedied. I think it was 117 years from the first bill, which was brought in by the first minister or premier, or whatever they were called in those days, in 1856.

We are all familiar with the story of women's suffrage in this state. Again, we saw progressive forces chipping away at the conservative strongholds and trying to extend the franchise. We all know that from our school tours and it is a story we all tell and a story that is celebrated on these tapestries, which are considerably larger than one metre by one metre, I think. Their size is important because they tell a story.

This measure is, in effect, a remedy to some of the worst parts of this bill—the parts that we are opposing on this side of the house, because on our side of the house we support enfranchisement of as many people as possible who are affected by public policy made in this place. We also support engagement with the political system, which brings me to my next point.

The Electoral Commission, whether it is explicit in its report or not, clearly is worried about the levels of engagement, the dropping levels of engagement, with people's civic duties and civic responsibilities in this state.

I was amused to hear today that someone very close to me received a call from a social research company on behalf of the Electoral Commission of South Australia, asking a whole series of questions designed to undertake research to ascertain people's engagement levels with the electoral system and with the voting process and people's understanding of their obligations. The poor person who was assigned to call this person who is close to me was of course stuck on the phone for 30 minutes talking about the intricacies of the Electoral Act, and I think they will be more cautious about calling that number again.

It clearly shows that the Electoral Commission are concerned about the levels of engagement. We know that across the Western world engagement is dropping. Thanks to the progressive forces within our society, the franchise gradually has been extended—we have seen paradoxically a drop in the levels of engagement with that process. I think the member for Kaurna's amendment is timely. It remedies some of that engagement. If we need to and feel the need to, we can express ourselves in as large and public a way as possible to encourage people not only to vote for us but to engage in the electoral process itself, which is everybody's right and responsibility.

The third point I would make—and I did say I would not be verbose—is simply that some of us have longer names than others. I find my name in particular very difficult to fit on a corflute—it is a good Saxon name, or certainly Germanic.

Dr Close: Old English.

Mr ODENWALDER: Old English—wash your mouth out. It is Germanic. It is unfair, it is unfair to me, but what concerns me more is the unfairness to the Minister for Energy and Mining.

Dr Close: You want to give him a chance.

Mr ODENWALDER: I do want to give the Minister for Energy and Mining a fighting chance at the next election—I think he deserves it, I think he works hard.

Mr Picton interjecting:

Mr ODENWALDER: I understand. He certainly works hard to keep us in this place for as long as possible. It seems perhaps that his main motivation is not to get back to the people who represent him, but rather to stay on North Terrace. But I do not feel sorry for him and it is unfair to him that he has to fit that enormous name on such a tiny election poster and, if only for that reason alone, I urge members to support this amendment.

Dr CLOSE: I would like to speak in favour also of this amendment, which gets rid of something that should have been got rid of some time ago. Yes, Labor in government had that opportunity, having received a recommendation from the Electoral Commissioner. We could have, and I believe should have, acted on that, but simply because something has not happened in the past does not mean that it should not happen in the future.

Mr Picton: Probably the only mistake John Rau made.

Dr CLOSE: We will ask him one day what was going through his mind in making that recommendation. Putting it all aside, we now believe—and certainly the leadership group has formed this view—that it would be a good idea to listen to the Electoral Commissioner from his 2014 report and agree that the one square metre rule is simply not workable and has no real basis in principle.

Those who were riveted by the second reading speeches—do we remember them so long ago for this bill? The speech I gave started with the questions of what the principles of democracy are and then tried to apply this bill and the various amendments that were being contemplated to those principles. One of the principles that is really important is that people have information prior to making their decision, that they have knowledge that an election is occurring and that they have as much knowledge as possible about who they are voting for and what the alternative propositions are.

I would have thought that everybody would think that was a good idea—everybody in politics, everybody in serious politics. The major parties who want to govern actually want an informed electorate and for the electorate to make an informed decision. It is, incidentally, a reminder of the other principle I hold dear, which is that we all look to vote on the same day, if possible, accepting that that is not always possible, but as close as possible, because we ought to all be in possession of the same facts. That is to digress slightly, and I apologise for that.

One of the challenges I have found in coming into this place is how to deal with the very great complexity of the reality of how the world works, and therefore how good policy and deep politics works, with the way in which we are able to communicate with people. Complexity is the reality of how things work, but simplicity is where we are often pushed through the forces of marketing, through the way in which television news requires a 10-second grab, maybe a 20-second grab; the radio news might take an even shorter one. We are constantly being dragged away from the complexity of the reality into what I regard as quite difficult simplicity because you are reducing politics to very small atoms.

In this case, the idea that complexity is something that ought to be embraced is affronted by the idea of reducing any form of providing information to the public, including that any advertising associated with the election would be reduced to one square metre. As far as I can tell, there is no competitive principle against which one might say, 'Well, there is this competing idea that would also be good, so maybe we settle on the one square metre rule.' That is very reminiscent of COVID, isn't it? I am sure other people have made that point.

Why would one reduce the information available at any one time to one square metre? I cannot think of a decent 'let's communicate with the public about what is happening' assisting them in making a decision that is enormously important, that is, who is going to govern them for the next few years. Why would we reduce that? This legislation exists and, while the government has at this stage chosen not to remove it, we are offering an alternative, an amendment that would allow us to remove it.

Quite apart from the question of principle, there are of course some practicalities that would also argue for us to get rid of this additional complexity. Indeed, I note the rationale given by the Electoral Commissioner, the former Electoral Commissioner, in 2014. The rationale was in fact not based on the ideas of principle, which I have discussed, but the difficulty of enforcement and the confusion over it. There is a confusion amongst candidates and registered political parties relating to the current provisions, as they are not subject to restrictions during federal election campaigns. The provision is cumbersome to administer and the source of many complaints.

That suggests that there is confusion over the way in which this is currently operating that is also worth contemplating. I do not know when the last time was we had a state and federal election coming in such close proximity. There is not one that presses itself on my political memory, which of course is increasingly long. What we are likely to see without the support of this amendment is a ludicrous situation where a federal election billboard and a state election billboard will both be live. There will be two simultaneous campaigns and one will be subject to no restrictions in size and the other will be restricted to one square metre.

I believe I heard, as I was dozing lightly upstairs on my sofa, the point being made previously that there will be occasions when it is impossible to know which rule—or lack of rule—applies. Vote Labor, vote Liberal, vote Greens, vote whatever the Clive Palmer party is called at the moment—United Australia is it? United Kelly? That will be completely acceptable if it is deemed to be federal and completely unacceptable if it is deemed to be state, yet the parties will be operating in both elections completely legitimately.

So, although it is rare for us to have elections overlapping in the way in which we are contemplating will happen here, it is obviously feasible and points out a quite ludicrous complexity in our very restrictive provisions here. There is of course then the question, and I believe it was the member for Mawson who raised this and gave me pause for thought, about the implicit unfairness that advertising which is government advertising will be exempt.

I accept that government advertising will not have the face of Steven Marshall on it, so it will not be explicitly political in that sense, but who are we kidding? If there are big billboards talking about 'building what matters'—I am pretty allergic to slogans, but even I have noticed that is one of theirs—that will be advertising during an election campaign, much larger than one square metre, that will not be subject to the current legislation.

The opposition, which does not have a state Public Service in the position to roll out billboards advertising a slogan endorsed by the state opposition proposition for what will happen and what is happening, will be limited to one square metre. That offends the principle that, once we get to those last stages of an election campaign, the two parties ought to be considered as much as possible as being on equal terms; that the opposition and the government are no longer those entities entirely but are the Liberal Party, the Labor Party, and indeed the other parties—the Greens and so on—applying for the position of government in the next election.

It would seem to me that is a very powerful argument for the government smiling on this amendment—that they would recognise the unfairness. As I said, I wish that in government Labor had done this. It ought to have happened, but that does not mean it should not happen now. That is not a reason not to do it.

There is also a frustration I would like to share with the chamber about enforcement. I am not convinced that enforcement of these restrictions always occurs. It is the major parties that tend to self-enforce, to be more careful about obeying the laws, because we are the major parties, because we go from election to election, because often if we are not an incumbent in one seat we are an incumbent in the neighbouring seat. We have a greater sense of responsibility to obey the electoral laws and the other laws that surround advertising around election time.

In saying that, I do not mean to disparage any of the current minor parties that exist in this parliament. What I am referring to is a two-time candidate against me, a one-time candidate against the member for Lee, a one-time candidate in the by-election at Enfield—I think that is the full list—who was at the last election again a candidate for the seat of Port Adelaide.

I had been absolutely diligent in making sure that all the volunteers in my area knew there were restrictions on where we could put up corflutes, particularly making sure we were not causing distraction on major roads was essential, and that we needed to obey the law. We were absolutely scrupulous in how many we could have so that they did not cause too much distraction and in where we could place them.

Because it is the Labor Party and we are pretty active and strong up in my area, we got those corflutes up. A few days later, the corflutes from this other candidate started to pop up, and they were not restricted to the places we were restricted to. They started popping up right down the middle of Semaphore Road, picture after picture after picture, which was against the rules, and all the way along Victoria Road. They were done wherever it looked good to put one up, but it was not within the rules.

So I send my email to the local government and say, 'I think there is a candidate who is offending the rules,' and, 'We don't really enforce those rules,' was the response. So someone choosing to do the wrong thing because they do not bear the responsibility of being a major party is able to flout the rules. Could that also be the case—and I do not know if it has occurred, and obviously this rule has been in for some time—with these one square metres?

Could we have a rogue candidate who decides that they will put up a three square metre poster in the middle of—just to choose my electorate—Semaphore Road, and no-one enforces it, but we are deprived of doing it because we play by the rules because we are the major parties? I can see that that would be possible. This lack of enforcement is a particular bugbear of mine and it would be particularly irritating if it were to not enforce a law that we have tried to abolish, as it is, but been checked by this parliament.

We on the Labor Party side would like to inform people about the depth and complexity of the challenges before this state, and we would like to avail ourselves of all the opportunities legally to do that. To be deprived by what is really a silly rule to limit us would seem to me to be an idea that has long since gone, and we ought to support the amendment to abolish this rule, to listen at last to the former electoral commissioner, and to allow people to see something that is more complex and more sophisticated than can be crammed onto a one square metre poster.

Progress reported; committee to sit again.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: To the next day of sitting, sir.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: No, that is not agreed to and you know that.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Then vote against it.

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan: You are not actually allowed to move to adjourn it.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am not adjourning the house.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Just take a seat for a moment. Attorney, we need to have a motion from you as to when the committee is to resume.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I move:

That the committee resume forthwith.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Can I amend that motion?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You could move to amend it.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I move to amend the motion as follows:

That the committee of the house be suspended until the next day of sitting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: On motion, the next day of sitting and forthwith, in this situation are all in fact the same thing, are they not?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: My motion is that I move that the committee resume forthwith, right now.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for West Torrens has moved to amend the motion that the committee adjourn until the next day of sitting.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes, sir.

Ayes 21

Noes 23

Majority 2

Sitting suspended from 18:07 to 19:30.

In committee.

The CHAIR: We are still considering amendment No. 16 standing in the name of the member for Kaurna, which seeks to insert clause 36A.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: I would like to speak briefly on the amendment put by the member for Kaurna. While it appears to be quite a minor change, I think it is quite an important change and I will explain why. One of the important things in our democratic systems is that it has certain elements about it. It has an element of free speech. We are a pluralistic society; therefore, we actually welcome points of view and a whole range of different political views.

We have universal franchise; in other words, every person who meets the legal requirements—usually an adult citizen—is able to vote. We have free and fair elections and when you talk about free and fair elections, there are those sorts of regulations which actually promote free and fair elections and so we should have regulations which are quite minimal and do not impede free speech.

I think the member for Kaurna's amendment certainly promotes free and fair elections. It certainly promotes, I believe, free speech and, importantly, it promotes pluralism in the sense that it encourages different points of view. I will explain that. It actually came up in a letter to the editor in my local paper, The Bunyip, recently. One of my constituents was quite wrongly having a go at both parties—he should have had a go at the Liberal Party, but he was having a go at both major parties—on their views about corflutes and the government's position about trying to ban corflutes.

He was quite opposed to that. He said that for minor parties and Independents corflutes are an effective way of getting name recognition and getting the message across compared to other expenditure. He said if you abolish corflutes from major parties it is not a huge issue—they would have more resources from their point of view—and that abolishing corflutes in this case and restricting posters actually restricts the ability of minor parties and those Independent candidates from having their voice.

While I am actually a beneficiary of the two-party system, and I acknowledge that, I think if we believe in democracy and believe in those principles that uphold the pluralism of our society, we should encourage or enable or facilitate as many people as possible to get their political message across. It is not only minor parties or Independents; I think it is also important for other parties and also community organisations that want to get their message across at election time. Often, they do not have a lot of resources either.

I think this amendment is worthy of support because, as I said, it certainly meets the important criteria for a democratic society. It helps support the whole political spectrum in terms of views and it also enables minor parties and Independent candidates to get their message across for name recognition.

Given that we have expenditure caps now in this system, the issue that we might go out there and buy all these enormous billboards, etc., is clearly not the reality because we are still going to spend money on those traditional things we normally do and we still have to work within a budget. So I think that the amendment moved by the member for Kaurna poses no risk to our democratic system, it actually enhances it, and for those reasons I think we should be supporting it.

I think it is important that we do not fetter the process of our elections, that we do not fetter the way people get their message across. I will give a classic example where over-regulation actually fetters and impedes the political process. When I was first elected to this place, we had restrictions on the size of our newsletters. They had to be A3 folded to make a double A4-page spread, and that was it. If it was any more than that, you had to fund it privately. It was not funded by the global budget.

For some reason, some person had decided that this is how an MP should communicate with their electorate. It was an unnecessary bureaucratic rule, which unfortunately I got caught out by once and I had to pay for my paper myself. But the point is: why should some person say how I communicate with my electorate? Why should that not be my choice for how I do that? I am sure that every member here does it in different ways. I choose to do it a certain way which I think works for both me and my community.

The point I am trying to make here is that often we put these rules in place which do not serve any purpose and which are there for some historical reason. It is clear that our objective must be to ensure that every person who wants to be a candidate or any person who wants to influence the political process at election time—and by that I mean residents' groups, sporting organisations or whatever—should have the capacity to do so and should not be restricted.

Clearly, they should not mislead people, but in terms of the messaging and in terms of the size of that message I have no problem with how people do that. I certainly do not have any problem. The only reason you would have a problem is that you are trying to make sure the other parties or the other do not have the capacity to get their message across. With that contribution, I would certainly support the amendment.

Mr BROWN: I also rise to support the amendment moved by the member for Kaurna and, as I am wont to do from time to time, I would like to thank him for moving this particular amendment and to say that it is very well made. It also has been very well argued, not only by him but also by other members.

I think what we have heard so far in the debate on this particular bill for the government is this. This bill is mostly about modernising our Electoral Act so that the vestiges of the past that are no longer required are swept away and a new era will come forth where South Australians will be able to do things they want to do in ways they would like to do them. The commissioner will be able to administer the act in a fantastic way because everything the commissioner would like to see has been achieved and everyone will be happy about the way things are now done.

So it is in that spirit that I think people should consider removing the size restriction on material of one square metre. It is very much an anomaly in South Australia that we have this particular law. I know when I talk to my colleagues interstate about various aspects of campaigning and so forth, which I know that members of this house do from time to time when they talk to people from their own party and indeed from other parties around the country, people are always surprised to hear that there is such a restriction in South Australia. They always talk to you about, 'What do you do about billboards, for example?' and, 'What do you do about signage here and signage there?'

They are always very surprised to learn that we have a law in South Australia that restricts us to one square metre. Whilst we should not do things just because it is how they do them interstate—in fact, there are lots of things we do in South Australia that are rather unique to us, and that is a good thing—it is important that we consider having a nationwide consistent system when it comes to some things and I think it would be appropriate for us to remove the size restriction that we have on electoral signage.

Like many members, I am sure, I obviously try to encourage my constituents to contact me about a variety of issues and encourage them to be aware of where they can seek to contact me, and I would find it very useful to be able to put up more signage in my electorate on a regular basis, and larger signage indeed, so that people could do just that.

I would also find it very useful to do large signage to let people know about things that are happening in the electorate and to advise them of things that are going on. For example, as I am sure other members have raised, I know that the government have no such restrictions on signage that they do. There is no reason why they cannot put large signs up to tell them about different projects that they may or may not be doing at some stage in the near future.

For example, I know that they are always spruiking infrastructure projects that may or may not happen in this state that they have put forward in the budget on the never-never, that are years away but they keep spruiking them, so there is no restriction on the signage they can put up for that sort of stuff but, when it comes to local members being able to inform people about things that are going on in the local area, or indeed where they could find the member's office, provided the signage is not actually at the member's office, they are restricted by law from doing so.

There are various sites in my electorate where I would like to be able to put signage up to tell people about the services I offer and where people can find me, but, alas, I am restricted by law to one square metre.

I also know that, when it comes to election times, the one square metre rule can be quite restrictive in terms of whether you could put corflutes, in particular, right next to each other. I do not propose to get involved in the merits of corflutes as an entity, but let's just say that no-one is talking about banning political signage, full stop, anywhere in our state, so we can accept that there will still be something that we refer to as political signage.

The current law restricts those signs from being next to each other and, in fact, if they are within one metre of each other they count as the same sign. I know the member for Kaurna has already outlined, let's say, various creative interpretations of that rule that we have seen from various electoral commissioners from time to time. I think that getting rid of that particular rule would help to alleviate a lot of confusion that has gone on with how those rules are to be interpreted.

I also think that it would be of assistance to all sorts of candidates in campaigns and not just incumbents, although as an incumbent I am of course interested in supporting the rights of incumbents. I also think it would be helpful for smaller parties, and even indeed Independent candidates, to see this particular rule abolished so that they can compete with the big boys, so to speak, when it comes to campaigning techniques and that they are not overly restricted in the way they do things.

Also, Mr Chairman, I would like for all members, including you, who I know has quite a lot of popularity all over the state, but in one particular area of the state I know you have quite a lot of popularity, to imagine how instructive it would be for your constituents to be able to see your smiling face on a large billboard pointing out what you have done. I am aware, of course, Mr Chairman, that you are not contesting the next election, more is the pity about that.

But I will say that, even in the short period of time you have left, you would be able to let people know where you are, where you can be found and what services you provide. I think that your constituents would find that very useful, just as I am sure my constituents would find that useful in my electorate and the member for Kaurna would find that useful in his electorate, and indeed all members of this house would be able to provide that information to their constituents and they would find it very useful.

It is with those points that I again say to the committee that this amendment is very much worthy of support and that I hope all members will support it.

The CHAIR: If the member for Kaurna speaks, he closes debate on the amendment.

Mr PICTON: I am not sure that is the same in the committee stage, but I think I will close the debate.

The CHAIR: Maybe I am just encouraging you.

Mr PICTON: I am happy for that encouragement. I think I will close the debate. I think we have had some very worthwhile contributions from members, largely on this side, but also the Attorney made a contribution on this amendment.

I think there was a very clear demonstration, particularly from the speeches on this side, that it would be a worthwhile amendment to remove section 115 and to remove what seemingly is a provision that no-one seems to know exactly why it is there but that is in a way prohibitive of advertising and communicating in a way that is pretty unique around the country but is also not a restriction we have for many other types of communication that people can be bombarded with when they turn on their TV, when they open their letterbox, when they put social media on, when they turn the radio on—across all media in every way come election time, except for signs 1.1 square metres and bigger.

I would like to reflect on the Attorney's contribution, which basically acknowledged that there did not seem to be any particular rationale for why this restriction is in place. With all the weight of the advice of the Attorney-General's Department behind her, there did not seem to be any rationale that was put forward.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

Mr PICTON: I am sure that there are some records of what debates there were back in 1985. But if there cannot be a justification from the government as to why we have this clause, you have to wonder why the government is continuing to defend having it in place and why the Attorney is opposed to its removal when she cannot articulate why exactly it was put in place or what rationale there is for keeping it.

Her other contribution seemed to reflect upon her claim of an inconsistency on our behalf, whereas by pointing that out she really pointed out an inconsistency on her own behalf where she said that in previous debates in this house she had been arguing for federal consistency of laws but today is arguing against federal consistency of laws when it comes to this provision. Why is it that the Attorney in years gone past has been advocating for federal consistency but is now opposed to that, particularly as we are about to embark upon a potentially joint campaign period of federal and state elections? There is no explanation for why there is a massive inconsistency in the arguments the Attorney has.

So there has been very little reason from the government as to why they would oppose this measure.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

Mr PICTON: You can still speak.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Good, I was worried there for a moment.

Mr PICTON: No, don't worry. The Chair of committees was thinking this was a second reading speech, but you are right. So I think there is an inconsistency in that regard.

There was another contribution that I would like to particularly note, which raised very good points that I had not properly considered, I have to admit. That was the contribution from the member for Mawson. The member for Mawson raised a very important point I think in terms of the fairness and consistency of laws we have in this state. That is when it comes to government advertising.

If you look at government advertising, which we know is governed by a committee that is orchestrated through the Treasurer's office and that the Treasurer sits on, his staff sit on—they decide where the government advertising goes—you see that it is plastered all over billboards, all over buses, all over trams across South Australia and it is much, much larger than one square metre.

So you have a massive inconsistency between the government on the one hand, who are able to use taxpayers' funds to advertise on large billboards, buses, trams and the like and, on the other hand, the opposition, minor parties or Independents, who not just do not have access to taxpayers' funds to do that but are actually prohibited in law from doing that. So they have two hands tied behind their back in not being able to do the same thing that the government can do with taxpayers' funds.

We have all heard this pretty weak and I think hopeless slogan from the government about building better or what matters, or something. This is plastered on buses, this is plastered on trams, this is plastered on billboards and this is plastered on worksites and it is paid for with taxpayers' money, and it is much, much larger than one square metre. If an Independent or a minor party or the opposition wanted to do the same thing and put out a political message in the same way as the government's campaign of building back better, what matters, or whatever, that would be illegal under this section 115. That seems to be a gross inconsistency.

So we have a law—which is massively inconsistent with the federal provisions—which is going to be completely confusing, and the Attorney has given no comfort to the argument that that will be able to be worked through. If you have a 'Vote Liberal' billboard, does that fall under this provision or does it fall under the federal provision when you have two campaigns running simultaneously? How that is to be worked out I do not think anybody knows.

You have a provision where the Electoral Commissioner has said that it has caused issues in 2014, and I think the Attorney's rebuttal to that is, 'Well, you didn't do it then.' Very clearly, we are trying to do it now. The fact that you did not do it then is not an argument against why the parliament should not take action now. You have a provision that seems to have no rationale whatsoever. No-one has been able to articulate exactly why this provision is in place or what benefit it serves whatsoever, and then you have a provision that gives the government an advantage because they can use taxpayers' funds to do what any other person, any other organisation, any other political party cannot do by the nature of this section 115.

Removing this section will make for a fairer system. It will make for a system that is more consistent with the federal election process, which is going to be particularly important in the next few months in all likelihood. It will remove that anomaly, and it will remove what is—we have heard from the previous Electoral Commissioner—a significant number of complaints that they have received and dealing with the management of those issues. It will relieve some pressure from the Electoral Commissioner to deal with those things and to focus on very important issues, particularly in the context of the forthcoming election which we know is going to have a range of complexities associated with it.

The arguments that we have heard from this side absolutely back what the amendment does and further strengthen the arguments that I originally made, and the arguments that the Attorney has made give no reason whatsoever against this amendment. The only reason seems to be because she did not think of it. Hence, she is not going to support anything that she did not think of.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you very much, Mr Chair. It is good to see you giving the last few sittings in parliament a long, hard run late into the evening. I was thinking about this amendment—and I have been here a very long time—and I always found it quite strange why we were limited to one square metre. Why would you limit a parliamentary poster to just one square metre? To be honest, I cannot remember the reason we imposed that limit. It might have been an attempt to try and stop billboards. I am assuming it was something done in 1985 by the then Bannon government. There was obviously some ulterior motive—

Mr Brown: Small minds.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —yes, small minds—behind why it was done, and I have always found it frustrating. Why? It is interesting that in a campaign we try so hard in Australia to have this egalitarian view of campaigning where everyone has the same opportunities to say what it is that they want to do. As the member for Kaurna pointed out, quite rightly, here we are simply saying that an arbitrary number restricting the size of an election poster does seem a little undemocratic.

People can make political messages who are not candidates in an election campaign. They might not be on the ballot but might make reference to a political argument that is part of a campaign. They are not limited by their size, the government is not limited by their size in their advertising and, let's face it, every term we hear parliamentarians argue about government advertising because we know what it is. Government advertising is the last refuge of the scoundrel who has no policies.

What we have seen here is that 'building what matters' answers a question the government cannot pose. What is the question they are attempting to answer? Building what matters. The government will put up their QR codes and their billboards about building what matters in an attempt to reinforce a brand strength that they think they have, and they will try to exploit that. The opposition will do what we can to exploit what brand strengths we have, but the government is attempting to limit that here.

I have to say that that is intrinsically undemocratic. It is not important whether it was done previously or otherwise. The question is that we are faced with that proposition now. The member for Newland, for example, might want to put up a poster or a billboard on an intersection talking about what he thinks his achievements have been over the last 3½ years. Good luck to him. What is wrong with that? Then Olivia Savvas might want to put up a billboard displaying some other message. That is democracy.

We might want to put up messages about other things that are occurring in the political debate. We might want to point out in the seat of, say, Dunstan that land tax bills have increased dramatically as a result of the Premier's land tax changes, despite the fact that he made an argument at the last election that he would lower land tax, which ultimately turned out to be a lie.

This is the price we pay for a fair and democratic society. You cannot make the argument that it will encourage people with greater wealth or greater means to have a greater advantage, because we are all capped now in what we can spend. We have dealt with that issue to try to rein in the costs. The question really now is about expression. Let me put this proposition to the committee: what if we mandated the font size on direct mail letters? What if we mandated an envelope size or a DL size or a pamphlet size you could put in a letterbox? It is ridiculous, but that is what we have done with this advertising limit. It is archaic and does not belong in the statute book anymore. It should be removed.

I think members opposite agree with us, and I have come to the same conclusion my friend the member for Kaurna has come to, that they are just opposing it out of stubbornness because it was not their idea. We could have saved a lot of time if we just agreed on this amendment and we moved on. It does not really change the substance of what the government is trying to do, yet the government have a fixed view in their mind that this will somehow lessen their chances of re-election at the next election, which then goes to the other motive for these three bills, why we are here debating these bills on a Thursday night when the parliament was due to rise.

I point out a number of things. The government has given a commitment to the opposition that it would give us advance notice of sitting late and of suspending standing orders. That was not given for today and it is, I think, an indictment of the Manager of Government Business that he has abandoned the processes we had in place in this parliament. We were working quite well, I thought, after the darkness of the former member for Morialta when he broke a pair. We were able to re-establish the rules of engagement and we have moved on from there. Again, because of political necessity the Minister for Energy and Mining has abandoned that principle. I think that is a sad development.

What the member for Kaurna is really asking this parliament to consider, which I do not think in any way is controversial and probably something we could all agree on, is why we should limit the size of democratic expression. What is the argument that the government would propose that this is bad? Who are the beneficiaries? The beneficiaries are generally volunteer sporting clubs. They can charge a larger amount for an advertising billboard at a local sporting ground, or a local business can put more signs on top of their billboards. Yet the government seems to think that this somehow will break down the very fabric of our democratic process. It is, I think, very confusing.

It goes to a deeper point, that this Attorney-General has a firm belief that she is never wrong and cannot accept compromise or good ideas. For example, the opposition understood that the government wanted to pass this legislation very quickly yesterday, and we were happy to break up the three bills over a period of time. The government refused. They refused because of their stubbornness, behaving as if they are a majority government when they are not, acting as if they are not riddled with scandal, clogging up our courts, clogging up the ICAC, clogging up the processes of checking out whether or not parliamentarians or their staff are behaving immorally in Parliament House, which goes to the core of this government being rotten.

The CHAIR: The member for West Torrens, there is a point of order.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Generous as one can be during a debate, I think the member is clearly straying from the question of posters, which is the subject matter of the amendment before the committee.

The CHAIR: I uphold that point of order, member for West Torrens. Back to the subject at hand.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you, sir, because I would like very much to book a billboard in the member for Bragg's electorate to talk about how rotten this government is, to display in all its glory all the members who have had to resign from scandal, from embezzling money.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: A point of order: this was actually touched on by the member for Cheltenham, and I think covered, so it is only repetition now.

The CHAIR: We will have to be careful here, member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Are you going to be the first ever Chair to impose irrelevant repetition?

The CHAIR: I have already done that.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Have you really?

The CHAIR: Yes, yesterday evening, member for West Torrens. Just be mindful that we are drawing to the end of a long debate.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: We are only just beginning. We are just finding our straps, sir.

The CHAIR: Well, let me put it this way, member for West Torrens: we are getting to the end of a long committee stage.

Mr PICTON: Point of order, Chair: you have raised with the member an issue in terms of repetition under the standing orders. Can I seek clarification? My understanding is that repetition would be by the same member through a number of speeches, which is the issue you raised yesterday in relation to the member for Hurtle Vale. The point of order raised by the member for Bragg was that the member for West Torrens had repeated something that the member for Cheltenham had said. I am not sure that that is against the standing orders.

The CHAIR: I agree with you, member for Kaurna, because that often happens, actually, in this place and has happened often already in this debate. An example of that would be how the opposition has attempted to highlight the Americanisation of South Australian politics and the influence of Donald Trump. I seem to remember that being a bit of a theme. Anyway, back to the business at hand.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I have to say that when the Chair speaks he reminds me of what my father used to always say to me: beware the wrath of a patient man. The member for Flinders is a patient, patient man.

The CHAIR: And I have been exceedingly patient through this committee debate.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I think you have been. That is why you are held in such high regard by this parliament and with great affection. We will all be sorry to see you go. We would like you to express more independence every now and then, but never mind. That is life.

My point with the billboards is that I just propose that the government are concerned about what a target rich environment they are for large billboards because it would take a large billboard to fill the numbers of members of parliament who are facing either ICAC charges, ICAC investigations, anti-corruption branch investigations, sexual harassment cases.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Point of order, sir.

Members interjecting:

The CHAIR: I do not uphold the point of order.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

The CHAIR: He has, but he was interrupted in the first instance. I think you have made your point now, member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is true, sir. Imagine the imagery of trying to put 10 members of parliament on one corflute that is one square metre detailing all their crimes, misdemeanours and offences. It would be very difficult. I suspect probably that is why the government are opposing this piece of legislation. The other reason I think they are opposing it is that it is a way for minor parties and people who do not have many resources to get one message out very quickly.

Whenever you stifle debate or attempt to squeeze tighter control on the democratic expression, all that really happens is more of that power just slips through your fingers and you create unnecessary angst, and I think this is one of those examples. The government will get away with this. There will not be mass rallies outside Parliament House demanding a larger size for election posters—but it goes to a principle. Confident governments are not worried about scrutiny. Confident governments that are forward-looking are not afraid of amendments like this: they would embrace them because they would believe they had a message that could utilise these changes.

This government is inward looking, small and defensive. They are not forward-looking, they are not thinking about the future. All they are thinking about is, 'We cannot be just another Liberal government winning only just one term.' I have seen the panic in the Premier's eyes because all he has been doing for the last three years is putting up portraits of one-term premiers in parliament, trying to set a precedent for more one-term premiers being put up in parliament.

The CHAIR: There is a point of order.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Again, the member is getting off the message, and that is the advocacy for his support of an amendment to remove a one metre rule in relation to posters.

The CHAIR: I am prepared to give the member from West Torrens some latitude here. Honestly, he was using examples.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you, Mr Chair. Again, that is why you are held in such high regard. Thank you, sir, again for wise, wise ruling. I think this is a symbol of the government's smallness, that they are not able to accept that they are not the font of all wisdom. This is a good amendment, this is a sensible amendment and this is an amendment that will help not only minority groups and smaller parties but also the larger political parties, and it probably would help a government that was confident and forward-looking to sell their message. But this government is afraid of scrutiny and afraid of messages because the truth is that the only message about this government that is resonating is that they are mired in a dumpster truck fire of corruption, maladministration, misconduct and—

The CHAIR: Member for West Torrens, you are down to your last 40 seconds.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I know. I have my timer going as well.

The CHAIR: You have your clock going? Excellent.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am down to my last 40 seconds. Imagine, sir, a train wreck dumpster truck on fire coming off a cliff exploding at the ground and then exploding again at the bottom, on a billboard. That is what this government are but, thankfully, they have the Leader of Government Business to keep them on the straight and narrow because without him they would be lost.

The CHAIR: Does the leader wish to speak?

Mr MALINAUSKAS: Thank you, Mr Chairman, for the opportunity to make a contribution on a pretty logical amendment. I think all of us in this place embrace democracy. We embrace the democratic process. From the newest MPs, of which I am obviously one, to one of the most experienced MPs, like the member for West Torrens, we all thoroughly enjoy election time. We enjoy the opportunity to express ourselves through our democratic system and give the people of this state and indeed the nation more broadly the opportunity to make an informed view about who should lead them over the term that lies ahead.

Every opportunity that constituents get to consume information from their political leaders, from their local representatives, is an opportunity for them to better inform themselves. Throughout the west at the moment we have seen quite a substantial decline in people's confidence in democracy and the democratic process, and there is a range of reasons for that and those have been discussed previously by members during the course of the debate on this bill, including myself. What is absolutely paramount is that, when we contemplate the legislation that governs the democratic system, we do not do anything that would impede people's ability to be communicated with.

On this side of the house we form the view that election posters have a role to play in that regard. It might seem silly to some and frivolous to others, but we think that that role is a legitimate one and is worthy of being expanded upon. When we think about the one square metre rule, the great frustration anyone observing this debate would have is that thus far we have not heard any cogent argument as to why we would be restricted to one square metre. We have not heard any proposition whatsoever as to why we would have a different rule here in South Australia than we see throughout the rest of our federation, why we would have a different rule at a state level than we see at the commonwealth level. There is no answer. It seems to be a peculiarity that was cooked up some time in the mid-eighties.

Now that the bill is open, albeit at the eleventh hour before an election, there is an opportunity to address what was clearly an error and develop a degree of consistency. Other members, including the member for West Torrens before me, have talked about the range of messages that may well be on those corflutes. On this side of the house we have nothing to fear. We are more than happy to provide our political opponents a far greater breadth of area on their corflutes or election posters to prosecute their messages.

I know the member for Stuart is very passionate and unequivocally supportive of the basketball stadium in the CBD. We asked the member for Stuart a few weeks ago whether or not he unequivocally supported the basketball stadium and his answer was yes. He said the words himself, if my memory serves me correctly, that he unequivocally supports the city basketball stadium. The member for Stuart from time to time is out and about in his electorate in and around Port Augusta, and clearly the member for Stuart has everyone in Port Augusta telling him, 'I want a basketball stadium in the city. That's got to be the priority, that should be the issue, that should be the infrastructure we see prioritised from this Liberal government. We are less concerned about investments in Port Augusta Hospital and we are more concerned about investments in the city basketball stadium.'

That is obviously an informed view the member for Stuart has taken, so presumably the member for Stuart will want the ability to put massive election posters up in Port Augusta saying, 'I want the city basketball stadium.' I am sure that desire rings through every ounce of his being. Presumably he wants that ability. Why would he deny himself that? Why would he? It is a big basketball stadium: it is $662 million worth. That is not easy to fit on a one by one metre corflute that people can drive past and see.

There is example after example of the sorts of initiatives and messages that the member for Stuart will want to prosecute in Port Augusta. He will want to come out and attack the idea of a nation-leading, world-leading hydrogen policy. He will want space on his election posters to attack a world-leading, fully costed hydrogen policy that may or may not benefit those in the Upper Spencer Gulf. He will need all that space. Why would he vote against any means or mechanism that will only facilitate him prosecuting his political arguments?

I think of the member for Newland. He will be very determined to prosecute what he has stood up and fought for in this chamber. He stands up and fights for paid parking at TTP. He wants paid parking at TTP. If the member for Newland was liberated and given more than one square metre to work with on his billboards, he could promote the cost of parking—

Mr Boyer interjecting:

Mr MALINAUSKAS: He could fit 'Tea Tree Plaza' on there. He could have a full schedule of the hour-by-hour cost that he wants to impose upon his constituents, charging for parking in the north-eastern suburbs.

A lot of the member for King's constituents shop at Tea Tree Plaza, and presumably she will also want the opportunity to go to her constituents and say, 'I voted against an opportunity to debate a bill on TTP parking.' She will want to let people know about that. Why the member for King would want to deprive herself of that ability is completely beyond me.

Similarly, we know that the member for King is very passionate about making sure the Adelaide 500 never returns; she has a very hard and fast, a very ardent, position on this issue. She will want to promote that to her constituents, and she should not be deprived of the opportunity to have a billboard that makes it clear, 'No Adelaide 500 under my watch.'

I think of the member for Chaffey. The member for Chaffey is another person who is very passionate about the city basketball stadium. It is a stone's throw away from Walkerville, and at any moment those residents will be able to get to the basketball stadium. Not so much people in the Riverland, but I know that his constituents in the Riverland, in the member for Chaffey's view, want the city basketball stadium.

They are sick and tired of hearing about potential expenditure in country health. According to the member for Chaffey, what they want is the city basketball stadium. So he will want the opportunity to aggressively promote that in his electorate. Why should the member for Chaffey not have massive billboards up in Barmera, up in Waikerie, up in Renmark, promoting the city basketball stadium?

The principal tenet of the argument in favour of this amendment is that if members opposite, particularly those in regional seats—sir, your successor may—want to promote the city basketball stadium in Port Lincoln, none of these people should be deprived of huge billboards in their own electorates promoting the city basketball stadium.

There is the prospect of a federal and state election at the same time. We do not know when the Prime Minister will call the election. It is entirely possible—and in fact we have seen various reports suggesting it from some media outlets—that the Prime Minister and the Premier of South Australia are in cahoots, trying to concoct an unprecedented circumstance where the federal election is in March next year, which would then result in a delay to the state election.

On this side of the house we are rather nonplussed about such a proposition. We know how close the Premier is to Prime Minister Morrison, and the Premier himself will want to let constituents know how determined he is to make sure that Western Australia has more GST money than we do. Nonetheless, I am sure the Electoral Commissioner here in South Australia as well as the federal Electoral Commissioner—not that I can speak for them, of course—would not want to see an unruly situation where there is inconsistency about election posters between various elections.

Say, for instance, Prime Minister Morrison wanted big billboards in March next year to promote the fact that he had taken GST money out of South Australians' pockets and taken it over to Western Australia. If he wants to promote that up and down West Terrace, along those massive billboards, he can—but the Premier would be denied that opportunity. The Premier cannot even put a basketball stadium up on a billboard authorised by the director of the Liberal Party.

That takes me to another inconsistency with the legislation as it stands, and an argument for this amendment. What we have around the state at the moment is millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars being expended on government advertising which well and truly exceeds one square metre. We regularly see a privately run tram going up and down North Terrace talking about the government's supposed $16 billion infrastructure program. If that is acceptable and allowed to be well over one square metre, why should that not be the case for political parties? Why can the state government promote their misinformation but the Labor Party cannot put out genuine information over the same scale?

To deprive your political opponents of that opportunity speaks to a government that is on the run, speaks to a government that does not welcome scrutiny or transparency. We can all recall, prior to the last state election, the Attorney-General and the Premier talking about how the—

Mr Whetstone: Is that the one you lost?

Mr MALINAUSKAS: Yes, member for Chaffey, that's right. That is when you formed government at the last election; you are right, the former minister refers to the fact that they won the last election, after they lost the four prior. They formed government with a swing against them after 16 years.

They had a lot of talk about transparency and open democracy, and what we have seen ever since then is an extraordinary attempt from this government to suppress political debate and suppress information. One only has to reflect on the Attorney's attempted FOI reforms, which were clearly an effort to suppress information going out into the community. This electoral bill, and the way the government have formulated their position on thoughtful, appropriate, very legitimate amendments, is rather concerning because it is inconsistent with all the messages they purported to have before the state election, but of course that has become a theme we have witnessed over the last three years.

That takes us to probably one of the most essential tenets of the argument in favour of this amendment, which is the fact that the Electoral Commissioner wanted it himself. Back in 2014 they wanted to take away the restriction of one square metre, and we now have an opportunity to accept that recommendation and address it. Why any member in this place would be opposed to such a reasonable proposition is beyond the opposition and the South Australian parliamentary Labor Party, which is why we think it is a worthy amendment.

It is an amendment that most South Australians would believe makes sense. It is utterly consistent with the democratic ideals I think we all share in this place and certainly would go a long way to making the lives a lot easier of our hardworking electoral officials, who already have enough on their plate around election time without worrying about measuring corflutes throughout the electorate.

We would encourage those opposite to support the bill. We would encourage every South Australian to pay attention to this debate and the outcome of this amendment because only one party in this parliament apparently is truly committed to transparency, a democratic process and giving those opposite the opportunity to promote the basketball stadium.

Mr BOYER: I rise to speak in support of the amendment and offer my own observations about why I think this would be a very sensible decision. We heard earlier today in this place some talk about the much-touted Building What Matters bunting in advertising that has cropped up all across the metropolitan area and regional South Australia as well.

I had my own experience of seeing that and asking a few questions about it, in fact. I think the minister spoke today about this building project specifically, which was a $10 million grant under the former Building Better Schools program under the previous Labor government to the Aberfoyle Park High School. I had occasion to go there and meet the principal and visit the school recently to see those works. They are extremely impressive, there is no doubt about that.

But encircling the school on the day I was there was the Building What Matters bunting, and it was extensive. It basically completely surrounded the whole school and, as I was walking around with the principal of Aberfoyle Park, Ms Marion Coady, I asked, 'How long has that been there? Is that happening in other schools, do you know?'

This was quite early in the piece before it was going up on education sites. Ms Coady said to me, 'It just appeared one night. I arrived at school the next day. I had no idea it was going to be put up. There was bunting there from the builders who had been carrying out the work around the chain-link fencing and then I arrived one morning and that had all been replaced by this Building What Matters bunting instead,' which is remarkable—

Ms Stinson: It's the bunting fairies.

Mr BOYER: That is right, the bunting fairies appeared and it just magically popped up. I can tell you, having put in the freedom of information application to the Department for Education and the Minister for Education on this specific matter, this bunting does not come cheap. I can tell you that it is expensive stuff. That brings me to my point. By having this peculiar, nonsensical one metre square rule, what it really does is provide an unfair advantage to the government of the day, which has the ability to do this kind of paid government advertising like Building What Matters, and can pay for it out of taxpayers' money and can afford to put it up at schools and transport projects all across the state even at this high cost, but the poor old opposition of the day, of course, is hampered and restricted by a one metre rule.

I question how effective some of this government advertising like Building What Matters might be; nonetheless, it is plastered across the state and the metropolitan area. I would hazard a guess that there would be very few people living in the metropolitan area who get out and commute to work who would not have seen it somewhere. That, therefore, is the advantage for the government, an advantage that is not shared by the opposition. That is just one of a number of reasons why we should be scrapping the rule if we are looking to make sure that our elections are held on a level playing field.

We know, too, and I am sure this is not news to anyone in this place, that there is an incredible amount of confusion between the different levels of government and what the different levels of government are responsible for. I think there is no need to add to that confusion by having this kind of arcane rule about what kind of advertising can occur in federal elections and what kind of advertising can occur in state elections.

Just after the 2018 election, just after being elected for the first time to this place, when I was out doorknocking trying to reach a few people who I had not been able to reach before the election to say hello, this particular lady in Surrey Downs was pleasingly friendly. The member for Badcoe is right: it is nice to get someone who is happy to see you at the door; it does not always happen. I introduced myself and she exclaimed, 'You have just replaced Nick Xenophon as our local member of parliament.' I took a step back and had no idea how to really approach that one but it reinforced—

Mr Malinauskas: Don't tell your predecessor that, though.

Mr BOYER: No, I wouldn't. She would not be pleased. This was a lady who was completely genuine in her response to me. The gulf between who she thought was her representative in that area and who it actually was was so extreme that I could not really bridge it, but it was important to me in terms of showing me just how disconnected and tuned out so many people are in terms of what happens in our political debate and our system of government. I think it is ridiculous that we expect so many of those people who are already tuned out and not paying really careful attention to then differentiate between these different rules that we have for political advertising.

Given that we are approaching a scenario where we may well have overlap between a state election and a federal election, it occurred to me that I am not quite sure how we expect people to differentiate between federal political advertising, which no doubt will at some point have something disparaging to say about the other party—for instance, something negative using the word 'Liberal' and something negative using the word 'Labor'.

I am not sure—do we expect members of the South Australian public to get out with their measuring tape and measure the poster in question to work out whether or not they should be considering that advertising in terms of their state vote or their federal vote? But of course the truth is we know it is going to bleed across and influence both state and federal voting. To have this silly rule which means state political parties are limited to a poster of one metre squared, but federal political parties will not be, I think is just ridiculous.

In this day and age, when people are more disinclined to engage in the political debate and listen to their political leaders, trust is at an all-time low, we do not need another reason to disenfranchise those people from the debate even more. Having another silly rule here, if people hear of it or we speak to them of it, they will quite simply shake their head and say, 'The world is crazy.' They will probably put it in the same basket as different rail gauges and that kind of stuff that we have had and just think, 'All our elected leaders are nongs; why are they doing things like this?'

Putting aside those few reasons as to why this amendment is an excellent idea and we should scrap the one metre rule, for me I think the most compelling reason is that if you enforce silly, nonsensical ideas like this one which, as the leader pointed out in his comments, nobody can account for or explain why they exist and a rule for which nobody can provide any kind of justification, what you get is a race to the bottom.

If you want to force political parties to squeeze their political messages into one metre square posters, sure, we will do that, no worries, but if you think you are going to get some kind of informed, articulate, nuanced political debate that deals with the big issues and treats the voting population like the intelligent, grown-up people they are, well, forget it, you are not going to get that. You are going to get silly slogans. You are going to get complex, important issues of state and public policy boiled down to a tiny little kernel and then everyone is going to complain about why our election campaigns turn into mudslinging and things like that.

We need to provide political parties with the scope to communicate with the voting public in an intelligent way and with a bit of detail, instead of forcing them to boil down these complex issues of state and public policy onto a postage stamp and then in turn expect the South Australian public to make sense of that and make an informed choice. It is time for this change. This is a great opportunity and I certainly hope other members of this place will support the amendment.

Ms STINSON: I rise in support of the member for Kaurna's brilliant amendment to scrap the one metre rule. There are, of course, many, many reasons why I support this, a number of them already outlined by my colleagues in such eloquent fashion. I am quite partial to a sign. They are clear and they are clean—in my case, I always make sure they are nice and bright—and, of course they are very accessible. They are really quite an original form, a base form of promoting a message.

Any business that you go past, especially when you are driving around my area, if you are on Marion Road or Anzac Highway or South Road, you will see most businesses, certainly those that are trying to attract a customer through the door, will have a sign out the front, quite noticeable signage at the front of their businesses. This is how they let us know about their messages about what they are selling, what their message is and why you should visit their shop. It is really a very basic and straightforward way of getting a message across.

I have to say that I am pretty recognised for my corflutes around the place. I think quite a lot of people recognise me from the telly. They definitely make that comment to me that they find the signs really helpful and that is how they came to be aware that I was a candidate at the last election. Despite the fact that I think Mr Boyer and I were nominated on the same day, 14 months before the last election, it is not until those signs go up that people suddenly go, 'Ah, there's an election,' because the sign is in your face and it is static and people can understand it and get the message pretty quickly.

It does puzzle me about this one metre rule that we have always had. There really seems no particular reason why a sign that is one metre or 1.5 metres or five metres should be dictated. I am not sure that in all of this debate I have actually really heard much of a reason as to how that came about, or at least not a convincing reason.

Another reason why I think signs should be held onto, even in this age of social media—and a lot of us are getting our messages out there a lot more on social media—is that unfortunately we do have a dwindling mainstream media. We have seen, since the last election, the Messenger newspapers disappear. We have also seen a number of our suburban and country newspapers disappear.

The very disappointing consequence of that, on top of the fact that so many journalists—indeed, my former colleagues—have lost their jobs in those cutbacks, is that messages just are not getting out there to our community. There are very few forums now for a suburban MP, or even a country MP for that matter, to get a message across without having local media and local journalists to cover that message, that story, about what is going on in that local community and, to be honest, to scrutinise it. Of course, you do not get that level of scrutiny from a sign but you can get your message out.

I think with the absence of those community-level forms of media, there is very limited opportunity to be able to inform the community of what we actually stand for. Surely, that is the whole point of an election: to let people know what we stand for, what our personal values are, what our policies are, what we are going to do for people, what we have already done for people. I think our community deserves to be informed in that way.

Unfortunately, as we head into the next election, a very crucial platform that we previously had to be able to inform our communities and have a live debate in community and suburban media just simply does not exist anymore. I do know that The Advertiser has its Messenger pages on its platform, and that is a good thing, but it is a far cry from the many suburban Messenger newspapers that were available previously.

So the only way now for me to get my message out to my local community, when the story is not quite as big as something that might appear on Channel 7 news at night or might not be worthy enough to grace the competitive pages of The Advertiser, is to tell people directly. Obviously, we do that with flyers and street corner meetings and phone calls and all the things we do in our day, but we also do it through signage. Of course, it is pretty hard to get a comprehensive message across in just one square metre. It is pretty difficult.

So broadening that space that we have broadens the message that we can get across and broadens the opportunity for our community to be informed, for us to be accountable for what it is that we are doing and for the community to understand what it is they will be getting if they vote for any one of us here and all the other candidates who will putting their hands up at the next election.

I might want, for example, to tell people about how I am fighting for them and what they need and the information they need as the South Road development happens in our community. It is a pretty big project—something supported by both sides, certainly supported by Labor—but it is something that will affect hundreds, if not thousands, of people's lives. At the moment, there are so many people worried about their homes, their businesses and their futures in my area. My electorate, of course, has the entire aboveground section. There is a tunnel to the south, there is a tunnel to the north, and the entire aboveground section falls in Badcoe.

What that means is that there are a lot of nervous and stressed out people right now, and they do deserve to know that their local member is working hard for them. They deserve to know when there is a local meeting on. They deserve to know closer to the election just exactly what I have done about that to represent them to help them and to try to encourage this government to give them more information as speedily as possible about what this major road development means for them.

I might also want to tell them about what is happening to our public transport network. I might want to tell them about how we have seen that privatised and what that actually means for train and tram operations in Badcoe. In fact, Badcoe probably has one of, if not the highest, concentration of train and tram stations. We are lucky enough to be very well serviced, so people in my area are very interested in public transport. Certainly, the feedback I have had and the work that I have been doing around the privatisation of those services has been pretty detailed and I have been getting a lot of feedback from people about just how disappointed they are about it.

Likewise, on the flipside, I might want to let people know about some of the commitments that I have already made in my community—for example, upgrading the train station at Clarence Park. That was something that people raised with me several years ago. I wrote to this government about it. They said it was not a priority. I mean, since we have announced it, now it is a priority—not that much of a priority, though. It will not be funded in the next term of government. It will be the one after that.

Mr Boyer: They hate trains over there.

Ms STINSON: Yes. It is not quite a priority as such. It is just a priority when someone else announces it. That is an important debate and something that my community deserves to be informed about, but you cannot really get all that detail across fairly and properly to people in one square metre, which is yet another reason why we should be having just a bit more room on a sign to be able to explain some of these complex issues to people that will be pivotal to them.

I know they will be pivotal for my community because they are raising them with me and they want information about what is being done about public transport and what the different promises are that are being put forward. Just as I might want to put forward my policies and what my party's policies are in relation to public transport, I am sure those opposite would like to do the same. Height limits on Anzac Highway is another one. That is a big one at the moment.

Mr Boyer: They want to know about that.

Ms STINSON: They absolutely want to know what is going on there. They want to know why we previously had a three-storey limit for blocks of land along Anzac Highway that overlooked the character zone in Glandore but now it is eight storeys. They want to know about that. Obviously they are getting me knocking on their doors, they are signing the petition—we had it tabled here today—they are coming to street corner and community forums about that issue and they are engaging with me about that.

But of course another way of getting across exactly what I am doing, exactly what the issue is, how they can be active and how they can be engaged is with signage, and it is a lot to fit. It was three storeys and now it has been changed overnight with the stroke of a pen. Now, instead of any public consultation, we have seen it suddenly changed by the minister to eight storeys on particular blocks along Anzac Highway. That is a lot to fit into one square metre. So you do need a little bit more room to be able to explain to people what is going on because, as I said, unfortunately, no Messenger.

There are a few other reasons why it would be good to have a bit more than a metre square. It is more efficient—it really is. At the moment, if I want to get across some of those messages about Anzac Highway height limits, what is happening with South Road and the community forums that I am running about that to better inform my community with what is happening because the government is not, the privatisation of our train station, the promises I have made and the commitments that Labor has put on the table for our community, I have to put them on one square metre repeatedly down the road.

We can do that. We can put a bit of a message here and here, right down the length of Anzac Highway. We have no shortage of big, long, straight roads in my electorate. But it is a bit cumbersome. It would be easier if people could just see it all in one place, understand the message, engage, make their decisions, take action or even just say, 'Okay, I got that. Moving on now,' without having four or five or six or seven signs down the road telling them what is going on.

Another reason is that would it not just be more environmentally friendly in some cases? I know it is a federal election when I drive down south on South Road and I see that huge billboard of Amanda Rishworth that she always gets. It is a lot more efficient than completely plastering the whole place. It is one big billboard. You know she is there. You know what she has been up to. She has been working hard for the south. She is always working hard for the south. Her face is there, her contact details are there and it is one big sign and you cannot miss it. It is a lot more efficient really than printing out a whole heap of little posters. It is one big electronic poster. Surely, it has to be more environmentally friendly.

There are a few electronic billboards in my area and in fact they are growing. We have seen a proliferation of electronic billboards in the seat of Badcoe lately. The latest one was installed on the side of the Black Forest tram bridge over South Road—a very topical site right now. We will see if it survives the upgrade. There are also some really good ones on the Gallipoli corner. If you are travelling from Glenelg and going into the city, you will see a really big one on the Ashford side and then there is another really big, curved one you can see from all angles. It is pretty fancy. Not too far away from that is the Black Forest bridge one.

There are some good ones on Richmond Road. I think the Mushroom Week sign has possibly been up for too long on Richmond Road. If we had this, maybe someone would buy that site. Maybe someone would buy that billboard and we would be able to replace the Mushroom Week one near Vili's pies.

Mr Boyer: It would stimulate the economy—jobs.

Ms STINSON: It would stimulate the economy. Someone has to get up there and replace that Mushroom Week sign at Vili's pies.

An honourable member interjecting:

Ms STINSON: There is nothing wrong with Mushroom Week, but it seems to have been Mushroom Week for about 18 months now.

So there is that one, and then there is also one closer to home. There is a really good billboard on the corner of Marion Road and Anzac Highway, a location that may be familiar because that is where my electorate office is. There is one right outside there that would just be prime territory for a really great billboard—and any side might want to use that billboard. It is more than one square metre, of course, so that is tough.

If this amendment were to be approved—and an excellent amendment and an excellent suggestion it is from the member for Kaurna—certainly those billboards in my electorate would suddenly become a lot more competitive. There would be a bit more competition for those, and not only would we be able to see quite clearly who is running but they would probably have some room to pop a policy or two up there. The beautiful thing about an electronic billboard is that you can change it. As the election rolls on, you can update it. You can add another policy and another policy.

Last time, I had 22 different things I had delivered to my electorate, but I am not sure if all 22 would fit clearly on the billboard—I might have to get a few billboards—but there is the capacity there to tell people not just who you are but what you stand for, what your policies are, what you have delivered on, what they will get with you and maybe a bit about what they will get or not get with the other side.

I warmly welcome this amendment and encourage all those in this place to think not just of the arguments that have been put forward on this side but of the reasons why we might want to have a bit more space to tell our story. Those arguments equally apply to those on the other side: I am sure they want to tell their electorates about what they have been up to. They might want their candidates to be able to do so as well. They might want to justify some of the positions they have taken and explain them to people in their community, and that is pretty hard to do in one metre square.

The ACTING CHAIR (Mr Cowdrey): Member for Badcoe, regrettably your 15-minute allocation has expired for this contribution.

Ms STINSON: I had no one-minute warning, sir.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I move:

That progress be reported.

The committee divided on the motion:

Ayes 22

Noes 24

Majority 2

Motion thus negatived.

The ACTING CHAIR (Mr Cowdrey): The member for Enfield.

Ms MICHAELS: It would give me no greater pleasure than to make comments on this particular amendment at this time of night, because it is such an important amendment that the member for Kaurna has moved. It is, of course, if we are paying attention to the debate, the abolishment of the one by one square metre size limit for advertising. When I investigate why it is in there, I am told there is no real reason for it being in there. No-one really knows.

Members interjecting:

The ACTING CHAIR (Mr Cowdrey): Members, enough please!

Ms MICHAELS: When someone tells me there is no real public policy reason for having something in there, I say let's change it. For that reason alone—

An honourable member: Most of the time.

Ms MICHAELS: Most of the time.

An honourable member: Red tape reduction.

Ms MICHAELS: Red tape reduction, exactly. The fact that there seems to be no real public policy reason for having this, and there are so many reasons for abolishing this that many of my colleagues have canvassed this evening, is good enough for me to be voting in support of this amendment—if we get to vote.

In terms of the 2014 recommendations, they of course recommend this be abolished, and I think we should move consistent with that recommendation. I also think that there is a number of situations in Enfield where I would like to make use of larger signage, billboard signage. I now, in my new boundaries, move over Grand Junction Road. Of course, that is a very wide road and I think a larger sign would be much more useful going across that road than a one by one square metre sign that people will not be able to read across eight lanes of traffic.

For me personally, I think there is an interest in having this abolished. The messaging that you can put on those larger signs, as people have canvassed on this side of the chamber, obviously is much more extensive and can be messaged in a way that is understandable by a range of people. I obviously have a significant number of people with English as a second language in my electorate and sometimes messaging that is targeted to that can be very helpful for promoting democracy. I think sometimes we might be able to benefit from having larger signs to give those messages out to that community.

Having billboards or larger signs can actually be much more environmental. Rather than cardboard printing or corflute printing of smaller signs, we can get our messages across much more effectively with things like billboards and larger signs that can be produced on more environmentally friendly material.

Something that the member for Badcoe just mentioned was local newspapers being gone. Having some size and being able to produce more detailed messaging is actually very useful in that situation and something that I think, given my passion for policy, would be very useful for my own campaign and would be useful for our campaign at the next election.

I also think there is a measure of inequality, coming up to the next election, if we are not able to abolish this and move past this amendment, and that is an inequality of government spending on large platforms—buses, bus shelters, all sorts of large messaging—that is paid for by the taxpayer, that will get the government's message out, that we will not have access to. That will flip at some point in time. At some point in time, we will be in government and if we leave this rule in it will be members in the other side who will suffer not being able to get their messages across on large formats. I think from an equality point of view we should be able to get rid of this and have larger formats to be able to, basically, fight on an even playing field, to be honest.

There is also, of course, the federal election coming up at the same time, and that inconsistency of rules without a sound public policy for this sizing difference can cause confusion: 'Vote Labor,’ 'Vote Liberal,’ 'Vote Greens' on different sizes. I can tell you that going into the by-election there was very little understanding of the difference between local, state and federal. In fact, my by-election was only a few months after the local government elections and people were annoyed at me that they had to vote again and thought it was in the same election.

Being able to get across to people that there are different rules for different elections that might be going on within a matter of weeks, if not months, is a reason why we should have consistent rules on that basis to avoid confusion and to avoid having to deal with 'Are we voting state Labor or federal Labor, or state Liberal or federal Liberal?' People just do not understand. Unfortunately, they do not have the passion for democracy that we have in this place.

Also, I think we are forever sitting on these little phones, and at some point in time we are going to get sick of these little phones. At some point in time, we are going to realise—the marketing gurus will tell us—that actually we need to change the way we message. It may be that for younger people who are stuck on their phones all day, seeing a big billboard is actually the one thing that is going to make them (1) enrol to vote and (2) participate in democracy in the way that we hope our younger people in our electorates do. For all those reasons, I fully support the member for Kaurna on this amendment. I thank you for your time.

Ms HILDYARD: I also rise to speak to this amendment No. 16 rightly brought to this place by the member for Kaurna, an amendment which seeks to address the issue of the limits on the size of electoral signage, an issue that I think the member for Enfield has articulated very well. It seems to have served no purpose or function whatsoever to date. As the member for Enfield also said, I understand that the Electoral Commissioner in 2014 certainly supported increasing the size of electoral signage and messaging, and I thank the member for Kaurna for looking at those recommendations and for bringing this amendment to this debate on this bill.

There are a few issues I would like to raise in relation to it. First of all, I understand a few others have raised the issue around the fact that we are looking at having a state and federal election in very, very close succession. I think that does create some level of confusion sometimes for people around the two elections happening at the same time.

Certainly, the electorates of the member for Kaurna, the member for Hurtle Vale and other members of this house are in their entirety in the federal electorate of Kingston. I wanted to touch on the fact that the member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth, is an extraordinary campaigner. She is absolutely relentless about making sure that she is listening to, communicating, hearing, advocating for the issues that people in our southern community feel really strongly about. I have no doubt that she will have an abundance of signage in the federal election campaign.

I think it is very, very odd that potentially, when there will be two election campaigns running at the same time, there will be complete disparity in terms of the availability of sizing of signage in each of those election campaigns. I think it is very odd that there is a disparity and potentially will also lead to some confusion.

I also want to touch on something that the member for Enfield and, I think, others have touched on and that is the inequality around the ability for the government of the day to have access to additional signage, if you like, through government advertising. Like other members who reside in the southern suburbs, the way that I come to this place is via the now two-way Southern Expressway and then down Goodwood Road into the city and onto West Terrace.

One of the sets of lights that I often find myself parked at for some time both on my commute to the city and out of the city is at the Daws Road/Goodwood Road/Springbank Road intersection. Alarmingly, what I have seen over the past few months is the sudden appearance of literally kilometres and kilometres of government signage saying Building What Matters, which I find very odd. I can never reconcile that that seems to be both the Liberal Party slogan and messaging and the paid government advertising. When I am sitting at those lights, morning after morning and evening after evening, I ponder how on earth that has come to be, how that is possible.

In listening to the debate about this amendment tonight, I certainly turned my mind to what that will be like during an election campaign, when it is festooned literally four kilometres along the road, and there are particular limits around the signage that particular candidates can have. As the member for Enfield pointed out, it certainly gives rise to inequality in terms of the ability to share messaging and certainly to share any detailed messaging.

Another point I want to make is that I know everybody in this house would agree that it has been a really difficult couple of years for people in our community. It has been so difficult, with some people being incredibly isolated during periods of lockdown, during periods of restrictions—restrictions and lockdowns that we all absolutely must and should always adhere to. It has also been difficult for people who are isolated.

A lot of people say to me, 'How are people in the community coping with the restrictions?' I often say in answer to that question that of course we need to adhere to them. It is those people who were already isolated to some degree in our community, who were already struggling, who were already perhaps not connected to people, who have found it the hardest, and they have often become even more isolated, even more disconnected.

As members of parliament, we often reach out to people who are isolated, through doorknocking and all sorts of community meetings, morning teas and all sorts of visits and gatherings. Obviously, we have curtailed some of those activities over the last couple of years, rightly and appropriately in line with restrictions. What it means is that some people, particularly those who are more isolated, have not had those opportunities. More than ever, those people and indeed many other people in our community will be looking for information, looking for ways to find out more about particular candidates, looking for messages they can read to get some quick, detailed information on particular policies, programs, ideas and developments at particular spots in our community.

I think this is an incredibly important time for us to be thinking about how we can provide more messages, more information, rather than thinking about how we can keep the status quo. For that reason, I am incredibly supportive of and very grateful for the member for Kaurna's amendment because I think it is so crucial that more than ever people have access to information in different ways. Everybody in this house would know that, for many people who are more isolated in our community, it is often extraordinarily difficult, depending on their circumstances, for them to access information online and in other forums.

I am sure that everybody in this place has community members who come to them asking for advice on where they can access particular forms in paper form or advice on how to get information when they are not connected to the internet, when they do not have the capacity or the resources to ensure they can connect in an online way. Again, we absolutely need to make sure that we are giving groups in our community the most information possible rather than less. That is something really important for us to think about, particularly in the context of the last couple of years.

The last two things I would say are that, firstly, people in our community are looking absolutely desperate for leadership, for vision and for all of us in this place to think about how together we can contemplate the many challenges that have come from the last couple of years. Again, part of that leadership is thinking about the systems we have and thinking about better, stronger, more plentiful ways that we can be communicating with people and sharing information. We should really consider those people who are looking for that information and show leadership in providing it to them.

Finally, I just want to share a story about the value of signage during election campaigns. It was about 3am on the night when corflutes went up in the 2014 election, and a friend and I were erecting corflutes on Main South Road, not too far from the Emu Hotel. It was about 3am and a few patrons were leaving the Emu Hotel. One young man was walking home from the Emu Hotel and he stopped to talk to me and my friend. We had a great conversation about various policies at 3am, after he had just left quite a long evening at the Emu Hotel. We had a lovely conversation and canvassed all sorts of issues.

Then he said to me, 'I'm wondering whether I could please have one of your signs, because I've been at the pub since I finished work at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon and I'm really worried I'm not going to remember who I had this conversation with, so can I please take one of your signs with me?'

An honourable member interjecting:

Ms HILDYARD: Exactly. He also asked whether we would please drop him home and we organised some transportation to help him get home. I just wanted to share that story because, whilst I am not suggesting that people need to use corflutes to remember conversations in many instances at all, I think people being able to reflect on clear messages, communicated in a way that conveys the detail that gets to the heart of particular messages, is incredibly important, and it is incredibly important now more than ever as people are craving information and connection to one another.

Mr BROWN: Mr Acting Chair, I draw your attention to the state of the committee.

The ACTING CHAIR (Mr Cowdrey): There not being a quorum, ring the bells.

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I rise to speak on the same amendment that the member for Kaurna raised, really to pick up on a couple of comments that have been made—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: I thought you had already spoken.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Three—first, by the member for Reynell, which I found slightly troubling, if I am honest. As a member of the southern suburbs who manages to use the duplicated Southern Expressway, she expressed that she would come into the city having left the Southern Expressway via Goodwood Road.

Chair, you might be aware that across Adelaide's metropolitan road network, in the last five years a new series of signs have been erected to show estimated travel times across alternate routes from particular precincts of the metropolitan area to a central location. For example, from the Southern Expressway there would be different times that it would take to travel into the city if you went via South Road or if you went via Marion Road. As you got closer towards those junction points there would be another alternative, which would be if you took perhaps Goodwood Road or South Road.

These signs are based on a relatively recent form of traffic monitoring technology based on Bluetooth. Bluetooth, of course, was an invention that came from a Dutch researcher—

An honourable member: Who was that?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I did have it moments ago—it was Jaarp Haartsen, who initially worked for the Ericsson company, which later merged with Sony, which produced the phones the Hon. Ian Hunter in the other place still uses to this day. That Bluetooth technology has enabled a far more accurate reading of average travel times across Adelaide's road network.

These signs were erected to give motorists a better understanding of how long it would take to travel into the city via alternate routes. It would give motorists a choice; you could take this route or that route to get to your destination. So from the Southern Expressway you could take Marion Road or South Road, or you could take Ayliffes Road or South Road, for example.

Admittedly I do not live in the southern suburbs, but I have used, and continue to use, the duplicated Southern Expressway on a semi-frequent basis. In my experience, member Reynell, it seems to me that Goodwood Road is not really the best option to get into the city in the swiftest time, so it vexes me greatly that the member for Reynell will continue to make this choice.

Mr Picton: People are very set in their ways.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: People are set in their ways, and Adelaide motorists are certainly that on occasion. What that makes clear to me is that these travel times signs are not big enough, clearly they do not stand out enough over our road network. If a travel times sign, which must be in the order of perhaps two or three square metres, is not getting information across to a motorist like the member for Reynell—who I must say, in my experience, does have an eye for detail—

Mr Picton: A very attentive driver.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: An attentive driver, no less—then clearly one square metre for the electoral sign is insufficient. That is the first point I wanted to make. The second point, timely as it is, is that there has been a suggestion from the Deputy Premier that if we were to move away from one square metre perhaps we might move to a life-size corflute. Well, I have to say that in my experience, in my 43 years on this earth, that is something I just cannot countenance. Can you imagine if, for example, I was not contesting the electorate of Lee but was contesting the electorate of Stuart? Imagine the outrageous advantage the incumbent member would have over an opposing candidate like me. To have a life-size corflute that would tower over mine, Stobie pole to Stobie pole, is just unfair.

This is the sort of discrimination I have had to put up with for the entirety of my life. Some of you may know that I am the youngest of five children. In my unfortunate reality I am also the shortest of them. It is this sort discrimination I thought I could get elected to parliament and escape; clearly, it now seeks to be perpetuated by the Deputy Premier. Clearly we need a more equitable and reasonable basis on which members of parliament and people seeking election can compete with one another. I think the contributions to date have, without exception—other than that of the Deputy Premier—demonstrated that one square metre is insufficient. A lot of reasons have been given as to why, but now our minds are turning to an appropriate alternative.

The member for Kaurna initially proposed a change to the infinite, that there would be no limitation whatsoever, that we could have a billboard of limitless dimensions where a candidate or a sitting member could advertise their candidacy. Perhaps that is a bridge too far. Perhaps we do need to enshrine some more reasonable limit—perhaps two square metres or three square metres—but I think the house is quickly forming the view that change is needed and a prescription of change would be best considered at this hour.

If such an amendment should be filed to the member for Kaurna's amendment, of perhaps two square metres or something similar, I indicate pre-emptively that that would be something I would support. I think that is a reasonable way forward in what has become somewhat unexpectedly a most vexed issue in the consideration of the bill. As Richard Burton said at the commencement of that famous radio broadcast, no-one would have believed that at the outset of the consideration of this bill several hours would have been spent on the consideration of one mere amendment on the change to the size of electoral signage—but it is an important issue.

It is such an important issue that the issue of corflutes has not only been raised by the Deputy Premier in another bill to be considered at some point but it has also been raised by the member for Waite and, of course, it remains an issue of some contention when it comes to the regulations around the laws and the regulations around how elections are to be conducted in South Australia, so if change is sought we now have the menu of options in front of us.

We can ignore the problem that we are currently faced with and we can take the option of the Deputy Premier and that is just to get rid of corflutes. But that ignores the fact that there needs to be some advertising of the fact that there is an election afoot and that there are candidates standing for election, and the community deserves to know who those candidates are, and perhaps what they look like—if that is what they want to advertise—and also what their names are.

There is that option and then there is the choice the member for Kaurna put forward, which is that we should allow a limitless size of advertising sign which can provide not just an advertisement that there is an election afoot by the presence of such a sign but also who the candidate is, or even what the member for Cheltenham said, and that is to start in some more detailed messaging particular political messages for the benefit of the constituency. He went into some detail, for example, with a suggested message about having the Premier and a series of disgraced former ministers and members and so on with descriptions above them, but I had not turned my mind to that extent. It was more the consideration of how we could allow a candidate or a sitting MP to let their specific communities know about the fact that they were standing again.

Perhaps the member for Kaurna can enlighten the chamber about whether there is to be a further prospective amendment and, if there was, how many square metres we might perhaps move to, but one square metre surely does not fit the need of the community anymore. I know the member for Bragg is accommodating as a legislator. She is welcoming of opposing views and new ideas.

Mr Picton: Her generosity knows no bounds.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Her generosity does know no bounds. In fact, who would have thought that so many hours of the house's time would be spent on consideration of this particular bill. I know someone is listening in closely—Australia's most renowned electoral analyst who pays close attention to this bill. While the parliament was afforded the benefit of his briefing on changes to electoral regulations in many respects, I do not recall he offered an opinion on this.

But we have offered ours. We have offered some helpful suggestions about how we may change things, and I really do hope that in the breadth of experience, anecdote and consideration that members have put to the house through the course of this debate that we can arrive at the best possible result to encourage as many South Australians not only to enrol to vote but to actually vote, and then, of course, to vote according to their wishes.

Mr PICTON: I would like to thank the member for Lee for his contribution and the other members who have spoken over the past short time we have been debating this amendment. I note that the member for Lee foreshadowed that we are considering whether there could be some other provision, some fallback. I have now circulated something and we will get to that at the appropriate stage, but I still believe that this would be the best course of action for the committee to take and the parliament to take—to remove this section entirely.

That is what is consistent with the 2014 Electoral Commissioner's recommendations. It is consistent with the federal government's approach. I think one of the contributions in the past few minutes talked about how this is also a good red tape reduction measure. Many people talk about how they are elected to parliament and they give these great speeches about how they want to remove red tape. Well, here is an opportunity. There is red tape and seemingly no reason for it.

I note that the Attorney has been waving around some extracts from Hansard, presumably from the 1980s, so I look forward to seeing whether she is going to read into the debate whether there was actually any policy rationale for why this was put forth in the first place because we are still yet to hear any rationale whatsoever—any justification, any policy reasoning—for why this should be in place and why we should be limiting free speech, that we would prescribe this, in that we do not say how long a TV ad should be, we do not say how big a letter should be, we do not say how long a radio ad should be, but we say how big a sign should be.

I do not think that that is consistent with the open democratic approach, particularly when it is government money, taxpayers' money, and they can make signs as big as they want to and they continue to do so, but for any other citizen that would be defined as electoral advertising and is banned under this provision.

I hope that we can get support from the committee to move forward with removing this provision, which I think would make a great deal of difference to improving the bill and improving the fairness of our electoral process. Mine may well be the last contribution, but we may hear from the Attorney if she wants to read her Hansard and make one last attempt to justify her stance against this amendment.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I speak in respect of the member for Kaurna's amendment, which seeks to delete section 115 of the Electoral Act for the reasons that have been outlined by a number of speakers. One of the speakers tonight, in particular the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, raised a concern as to the enforcement of the poster size. Her concern included that she had once observed what she saw as a breach of the poster size and reported it to the council, only to have a response to the effect that it was not a matter for them. She was concerned, therefore, about the capacity to enforce the matter.

I just want to confirm for members that in the Electoral Act it confirms it is the Electoral Commission that is the enforcer in relation to these matters. So, for the benefit of the deputy leader, if she has any concerns in the future, she can direct her attention to the commissioner. He has also reported in his election report that there are 11 occasions of reports, eight notices were issued against those who were apparently breaching the rules and three were found not to have been in breach. It was the same for the previous election. I just bring that the attention of the house.

The second matter is in respect of the history of this matter. While I have been listening to the riveting contributions of members in relation to this amendment, I have had occasion to look at a number of the historical acts. It appears that there has been a prohibition of certain electoral posters based on size for decades. I am now looking at the consolidated Electoral Act of 1929 to 1975. In fact, that provided, it appears for some time, a prohibition not to post up or exhibit or permit to be posted up or exhibited on any building, vehicle, vessel, hoarding or structure of any kind, an electoral poster, an area of which is more than 8,000 square centimetres—the current being 10,000 square centimetres.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: No, 8,000 square centimetres. In 1975 we were metric, right? Of course, at some stage in between it converted to 10,000 square centimetres, in other words a square metre. In fact, for members' benefit, if you breached that, there was a $400 fine at that stage. Then it set out the prescriptions in relation to whether that be on a roadway, a footpath, etc. So it has been with us for a very long time, but certainly the crystallising of the last transfer motion in 1985 into the current act, which currently covers our regulation of elections, was indeed in the debates.

I refer particularly to 15 May 1985. The history of the introduction of the new electoral bill was by the Hon. Chris Sumner in the Legislative Council and you can make an inquiry of him. When he introduced the bill, it appears on a cursory glance of the Legislative Council, it did not have provision for the restriction at all; it seemed to be just dropped. It was raised actually in the lower house, in the House of Assembly, on 15 May 1985 by the then member for Elizabeth, Martyn Evans, later to become the Hon. Martyn Evans.

As a backbencher then for the Bannon government, he introduced the amendment to ensure that there was a continuation of restriction, but at the new metric level of 10,000 square centimetres or one square metre. In the course of those debates, the government of the day, via the Hon. Greg Crafter, who would be well known to many, the member for Norwood at that time, said on this day:

Clearly, there is strong feeling in the community about electoral advertising, and there is strong opposition to this intrusion, particularly on personal or political grounds but, in the minds of many people, on environmental grounds. This has resulted in many councils passing by-laws prohibiting electoral advertising or regulating it in some way. It would seem desirable that the Government falls into line with what is being expressed clearly at the local government level and brings down some restrictions on electoral advertising to give effect to those clearly expressed wishes of a great many people in the community.

I think he encapsulated the general feeling in the speech. Of course, members can go back and reminisce about what was said back in 1985, but there was a cementing of this restriction on the size of election posters and it seems to have followed a very long tradition, way before the lifetime of all of us. There seemed to be very good men—and women, eventually—to set out the reasons why this was important, and I think it is still important today.

Nevertheless, it is with us. Although the member is proposing in the amendment before us to abolish this provision, I am aware from a document tabled that there is a fallback position now being presented that it not be an abolition but that it be two square metres. It seems there has been a quick caucus on the other side and they have decided, 'If we miss out on this, we might have a chance with two square metres.' I am not quite sure how two square metres has been developed.

But I am prepared to listen to matters. As I said right at the beginning of the debate in relation to this amendment, if we are going to change the rules in relation to poster size, it ought to be done within the envelope of advertising material generally, and that includes in relation to a bill that is also before the house in relation to corflutes. At some stage, if we ever finish this bill, during the course of further sittings on this matter we will have a look at those options.

So I do not understand specifically the merits as to why two square metres is now being proposed as a potential option or a potential amendment. But again, we can have those conversations. In the meantime—

Mr Picton: Just building on the Martyn Evans reforms.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Those mighty Labor backbenchers who were so active and so dogmatic about the government of the day. Mr Bannon's government, of course, was mindful of that, and the sentiment expressed by the Hon. Greg Crafter I think has some merit. But, in any event, I hope that adds to the information that members have. Again, if there are any proposals that the opposition want to put as an alternative, I am always happy to hear them but it will be within the envelope of the further matter in relation to corflutes and any other advertising restrictions that are being considered.

Mr BROWN: Finally, on the amendment, sir—and may I say, without reflecting on the fine abilities of the member for Colton, it is good to see you back in the chair.

The CHAIR: I am going to thank the member for Colton for allowing me to sneak off and have a coffee.

Mr BROWN: I felt it would be remiss of me as a former employee of Mr Martyn Evans, as he is now, not to point out that he was in fact an Independent member of the house at the time that bill was passed.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

Mr BROWN: No—although I might point out that during my time working for Mr Evans he was in fact a member of the Labor Party. I would like to point out that whilst I did enjoy working for him, and he was a fine member who taught me many things about looking after local people, we do not share the same views on electoral reform in any way.

The CHAIR: Thank you, member for Playford—interesting contribution and well thought out.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I have a question for the Deputy Premier. I am grateful for the advice from the 1985 extract, I think it was. If I was listening closely enough, I think she said there was an expansion from 8,000 square centimetres to 10,000. However, she did say that this provision dated back to 1929 and, of course, it would be incongruous—

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan: No centimetres back then.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —would it not that we would be talking about centimetres. I cannot help but feel like we experienced in the transition to decimal currency that something was lost where people used to talk about the cost of certain goods in the concept of guineas, that that was lost, and we only spoke about pounds and then of course into dollars. The Attorney may be underselling what was provided some time between 1929 and the conversion to metric. In fact, perhaps there was something that proceeded the 8,000 square centimetres. Perhaps there was a more commodious number of hands or furlongs or chains which were allowed.

The CHAIR: It would have been square inches.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Square inches?

The CHAIR: It would have been square inches.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: As always, sir, I am grateful for your counsel. So then my question becomes: how many square inches were allowed from those 1929 provisions? If the Deputy Premier can shed any light on that, was that based on the size of a vessel or other vehicle, perhaps a carriage or a horse, which might have been used by a candidate for the purposes of an election?

If we are seeking some historical consistency and the member for Kaurna is seeking to ensure that we try to find the right balance between the competing demands of those who are interested in this matter, we do not want to sell ourselves short. I seem to be continually coming back to the member for Stuart, who suffers a similar affliction, though to a greater extent than me, of finding the current prescriptions around corflutes too constrictive to convey all of the necessary information to electors. We really need to find the right solution, so I would hope that there is some accommodation, perhaps more than two square metres. If it was previously more than 8,000 square centimetres or 10,000 square centimetres, that would be a good solution.

The CHAIR: Member for Lee, I would remind you that it is the member for Kaurna's amendment, so the Attorney-General may or may not choose to respond to that. I do not think she would have to answer it as a question but will take it as a comment. Of course, your Chair is someone who still talks in acres rather than hectares.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Your amendment is gratefully accepted, sir.

The committee divided on the new clause:

Ayes 19

Noes 24

Majority 5

New clause thus negatived.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: In light of the foreshadowed tabled further amendment, I will move that progress be reported.

Progress reported; committee to sit again.