Electoral (Regulation of Corflutes) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 24 August 2021.)

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (17:20): I rise to speak in relation to the Electoral (Regulation of Corflutes) Amendment Bill 2021. I indicate that I am the lead speaker for the opposition and I indicate that the opposition is opposed to this legislation.

This is legislation that has been designed and brought to this parliament because the Attorney-General and the Premier believe that it will help them to win the next election. That is the whole reason why this legislation has been brought to the parliament. This is legislation that has previously been considered in relation to another bill the Attorney brought to the parliament that was defeated at the second reading stage in the other place. This is being done for one reason only: because the Liberal Party believes that it will help the Liberal Party's chances of retaining government at the next election.

It is only 179 days until the next election next year. We are not in the last half, we are not in the last quarter, we are now in the last eighth of the time that this parliament has been elected for over those four years. This is effectively the second half of the last quarter of a sporting match, and here we are with the government time after time introducing pieces of legislation to try to change the rules right at the last minute in relation to how the electoral system should work.

We have seen that in relation to other bills that we are still debating, we have seen that in relation to the previous legislation that has now been defeated and now we are seeing it here in relation to this bill that is seeking to ban not only corflutes but also other electoral posters from being displayed. It is very clear that the government believe that if they stop the display of these corflutes, then it will reduce the chances of their MPs being defeated at the next election. This is the reason why they have introduced this.

This is a redrafting of one of the sections of their previous electoral bills they had in the parliament last year. It would prohibit the exhibition of any electoral poster on a public road that is made of corflute, plastic or other material prescribed by regulations, which is worth considering for a moment. We are specifying the type of material that could be used as corflute or plastic or whatever the government introduces by way of regulation.

Presumably, unless the government introduces a whole range of different types of materials, there could be some materials that could be displayed on public roads or could be displayed outside polling booths. If you could determine a cardboard poster, then that would be able to be explained. I have seen in other states the use of wooden backing and then paper posters stuck to that. There is nothing in this legislation that would ban that from operation. You have to ask why.

It is a very bizarre situation in which particular types of material are being banned but others would be allowed and presumably would still be able to operate on public roads. Are we going to be in the situation where some parties end up using wooden signs or cardboard signs and they would be allowed? Based on the legislation we have here before the parliament, then that may well be the case. The legislation would also seek to limit the number of election posters within 50 metres of a polling booth to four per House of Assembly candidate and four per Legislative Council ticket or candidate.

South Australians have been very used to and understand that there is a variety of posters outside polling booths. In the eight years I have been a member or a candidate, I have never had anybody complaining to me about posters outside polling booths, but we are now going to specify a limit of four per lower house candidate and four per group of or individual candidates for the upper house outside polling booths. There is seemingly very little justification for why that should be the case, which we will get to later.

The opposition opposes this bill for the same reason it opposed the previous bill that was defeated in this parliament. The central reason we are putting this forward is that we should not be changing the rules of the election this close to the election. We already know that we are—as far as the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Act are concerned—already in the campaign period in relation to funding and disclosure requirements. That started from 1 July and we are now towards the end of September.

We are already in the election season as far as our laws are concerned, yet here we have the Attorney trying to push through legislation that would change the electoral processes right before the election would happen. Parties would be already in the planning stages of their various election processes, and corflutes and posters no doubt would be one of those elements they would be planning for, and here the government is trying to change that at the last minute.

If this were being put forward by the government straight after the election with years and years until the election, that would be a very different matter. That is not to say I would necessarily support it, but I think that would be a matter we would consider, that we would have time to consider and that everyone would have notice of before the next election takes place, whereas we are in a very different situation when it comes to putting this legislation before the parliament with very little notice.

Very clearly, this is about Liberal self-interest. Very clearly, they believe that this is going to help them in relation to their marginal seats. They believe that, when it comes to their key marginal seats they are concerned about—whether it be the electorate of King, the electorate of Newland, the electorate of Adelaide and the electorate of Elder, as well as a number of other country seats where they may well be subject to strong challenges from Independent candidates—it would be helpful for the government to not have the ability for challenges to their MPs who have had posters up advertising themselves.

Those MPs have had four years as a member of parliament to promote themselves, to use the resources of incumbency, including their electorate office, including their staff, including their global allowance, to get their name and face out there amongst the masses, and any challengers to that would not have an equal ability to do the bare minimum in terms of having their poster up before an election. The crux of this matter is that they believe this will help them to win those seats.

This will be very clearly a disaster for minor parties and for Independents who are seeking to get elected to this parliament. Those parties are not going to be able to have advertisements on television or, if they are, the budgets are going to be quite minimal. They are not going to be able to spend millions and millions of dollars to blitz the airwaves. Nowadays, a lot of the spending goes on digital to blitz the YouTube, to blitz the Facebook and to blitz the Google advertising, which both major parties will be spending literally millions of dollars doing.

Minor parties and Independents rely upon low-cost ways of campaigning. This is one of those ways that minor parties and Independents can get their name out there, can get their message out there and can be considered by the public. When you are considering the government's push to have this legislation introduced, always back self-interest. Self-interest here is that there is a key concern from the government that they may well lose seats to minor parties and Independents, as they have done historically as the Liberal Party over the past 50 years.

The history is that many of their safe seats have been lost to minor parties and Independents and it has been very difficult to win them back. Clearly, part of the government's decision-making in bringing this in is to make it harder for those people to get their name out there. I am already aware of a number of what you would consider blue ribbon, traditional Liberal safe seats that have strong Independent challenges to the Liberal incumbents at the next election, and there may well be others that I am not yet aware of.

Those people will be campaigning hard. They will not have the resources of the government at their disposal, but bringing in this legislation would be a key way for the government to try to deprive them of the ability in a low-cost way to get their name out there, get their message out there and campaign, particularly in those regional areas.

I think the government have not even properly addressed the fact that the drafting of this legislation is so radical that it may well capture all sorts of other unintended consequences in terms of people trying to protest appropriate local issues, political campaigns and things that people want to protest about. That sort of advertising on signs made out of plastic or corflute or other materials subject to regulation would now be an offence under the Attorney's proposed legislation. I think that there is a real doubt over whether the breadth of this is so far that we are outlawing all sorts of other unintended activities that would not be envisaged.

I can think of one very strong example of that in my own electorate of Kaurna. We have a piece of land on Commercial Road, between Seaford Meadows and Port Noarlunga South, which has been approved for development. It is currently an empty paddock that is the home of a mob of kangaroos that have been beloved by the community, particularly kids in the community, and over the past few years there has been a strong protest from local residents about that development going ahead. A significant petition was delivered to the house about it and this has been a strong concern for many people.

Part of that campaigning from the local community has been to put up posters on the public road area, displaying their concern and their desire for that development to stop. From what I can see, the government is now outlawing that sort of protest activity. The government is now saying that people who put up such posters could be subject to offences and fines. I do not think anybody in the community in my own electorate wants to see concerned people who put up posters about this issue fined. Rather, I think the vast majority of people support those people who have been raising those concerns.

I think we need to seek detail and assurances from the Attorney-General in terms of what the unintended consequences are in relation to non-party and non-political candidates who use posters who could be subject to fines and offences by the legislation that the Attorney is trying to introduce to safeguard and sandbag Liberal vulnerable seats. So for all those reasons, this legislation is quite outrageous.

The government previously put this bill and various changes from the Electoral Commissioner, as well as the government's desire to have optional preferential voting, in a bill before the parliament. I am not going to debate the subject of the electronic documents legislation, which parliament is concurrently debating. We have talked about it in some detail, as you might recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will not traverse that legislation.

Clearly, the Attorney was given recommendations from the Electoral Commissioner, and she decided to introduce legislation to implement some of them—not all of those recommendations, mind you, and there were some that were pointed out in particular that she did not do—as well as chuck in corflutes and optional preferential voting that the Electoral Commissioner did not call for, that nobody called for. The only reason why she sought to do those things is that they thought the Liberal Party would do better if those amendments had been passed.

The upper house quite wisely saw this for what it was, an attempt by the government to try to benefit their own situation, and they opposed and rejected that legislation. Then we have the Attorney at the last minute—really at the last minute, one minute to midnight—coming into the parliament to try to reintroduce part of that legislation in relation to corflutes and get us to consider and pass that legislation.

Why would the government be so concerned about potential support for Independents and minor parties? Well, one reason is that they believe that they stand to lose the most seats to those parties. What we have seen is a very real and angry concern from people in regional South Australia that this government has let them down, that this government is the most city-centric government that we have ever seen and that their concerns have been fundamentally ignored time after time.

I am very concerned about the fact that this is such a city-centric government, but I believe that this is leading to the concern of many people in regional South Australia about what they are going to do in response to that. They have been listening to Liberal candidates and Liberal MPs for the past 20 years telling them, 'The Labor Party is awful. They are city-centric. You've just got to get rid of them. Elect us, and we will look after the regions at last.'

Now that they have finally had a Liberal government for 3½ years, they have found that they have been ignored even more than they thought they were before. We have even had the spectacle in the past week of what has happened in relation to the member for MacKillop, who has been very bravely standing up on behalf of his own constituents and very bravely taking stances in this parliament, against the party view, in relation to what is going on at the border and in his community in the South-East, standing up for his local residents.

We have heard the very real and serious concerns about how people in the South-East have been ignored in relation to the management of exemptions and the delay in exemptions. He reportedly went to the party room to try to raise those issues and was reportedly howled down by the Premier. The Premier stormed out of the meeting, rather than listening to and addressing those concerns. The member for MacKillop has just been through a week's consultation process where he has considered leaving the party, but has now agreed to stay in it for now.

It is very clear from the off-the-record sources that are speaking to various media outlets that tensions are still running very high in the Liberal Party, and one of those key reasons is his concern about regional South Australians. I thank the member for MacKillop for his bravery in speaking up on behalf of his constituents because that would not be an easy thing to do when you have the Premier being so angry and concerned in relation to his own behaviour.

These sorts of things add up to the concern that people have, which would lead them to want to support Independents and minor parties instead of the Liberal Party. They are not traditional Labor areas; I am sure we acknowledge that. I am sure we would like everybody in these areas to support Labor, but we recognise that will not be the case. They have been traditionally Liberal areas. You can look at electorate across electorate in South Australia and recognise that in the past many have supported minor parties and Independents that take to this parliament a different viewpoint.

Deputy Speaker, as you know well, your electorate has been one of those that in the past has been represented by a minor party, and there are many others in regional South Australia. If those candidates do not have the ability to use low-cost ways of letting people know they are running, letting people know who they are, letting people know there is another option at this election and you do not just have to vote the same way you always have, it creates a real risk to their ability to get the word out. Hence, the government are trying to protect their base, and their regional safe seats that are really concerned about the city-centric government.

One of the key reasons for the concern arises when they see $662 million being spent on a CBD basketball stadium. They say to themselves, 'We didn't vote for that. We wanted our local health services fixed. We wanted our local roads fixed. We wanted our local schools and other important services fixed and addressed.' And here we have the government chucking a whole bunch of money into something that nobody called for, nobody wanted, particularly not the people in regional South Australia. I think that will be another reason the government want this legislation, so that it is another reason why they do not want people to know about Independents.

Another issue is that there is a long history of where these Independents are elected. It has actually been the Labor Party, not the Liberal Party, that has been able to work with Independents. We have consistently had an approach of being able to work with people on the crossbenches in the parliament decade after decade, whereas the Liberal Party do not have that ability. They do not have the ability to work with or negotiate with people in the crossbench. They are concerned that they would not have that ability in the future if more people were elected.

We have the likes of the many Independent members of this house who have served as cabinet ministers under Liberal governments. It was even the case after we won very convincingly the 2006 state election, when the member for Light and others were elected in that very significant election victory. We kept on the likes of Karlene Maywald and Rory McEwen in our cabinet to provide an additional voice for people in the regions, and they played a very valuable role in our cabinet. We recognised their value to good government and the wider community. We also even notably had a former leader of the Liberal Party in our cabinet before the last election, which was certainly a surprise to many, particularly in the Liberal Party.

It is very doubtful that the Liberal Party would reach across the aisle to bring onboard Independents and minor parties into their government. They are so hopelessly divided that they will not even let some people from the right faction into their cabinet, inside their party. The conservative wing of their party has been so totally crushed and defeated that they are not even speaking or allowing them to be represented in the cabinet.

We have heard many contributions in this debate already about the reasons this legislation is not necessary. However, there is one contribution I think is worth reflecting on, and that is not a contribution from now, nor from last year's debate, but from back in 2009. This was a contribution from the former shadow attorney-general and former Attorney-General Robert Lawson MLC, who spoke very passionately against having restrictions on corflutes put in place.

He denounced the proposition that was then being put forward by the then member for Croydon, the Hon. Michael Atkinson, as a reason to help the incumbent government, help the Labor Party, retain office in government. Very clearly, the Liberal Party have completely swapped their position in relation to their opposition to the bill back in 2009. Robert Lawson said:

We on the Liberal side oppose these amendments in the strongest possible terms…They are a very important way in which candidates can put themselves before the electorate to gain some name recognition for themselves and/or their particular party…It is a clear example of this government's desire to close down the debate, to restrict opportunities for political engagement, and to limit the capacity of small parties and newcomers to participate. The reason is obvious. This government sees itself as riding high in the polls; the Attorney-General has said publicly, and somewhat arrogantly, that he regards the Australian Labor Party as a natural party in government in South Australia. Clearly, he wants to keep it that way.

Of course, I would agree in relation to that comment from the member for Croydon, but Robert Lawson went on to say:

We do not pretend that corflutes are popular with the public or with local council; many regard corflutes as visual pollution. However, that is not really surprising, as many people are disdainful of the whole political process, and regard letters and brochures from aspirants to political office with annoyance and irritation. All the polling shows that they can get heartily sick of electioneering. The way to overcome that cynicism is for us, as political parties and candidates, to engage the public and enthuse them. The government has chosen the easy way—namely, banning the most visible form of political activity—but the opposition does not believe that is the way to go.

He concluded by saying:

…the opposition is strongly opposed to the restriction on electoral advertisements. They are already an important part of our political process. There are already in place adequate controls and regulations over them. Indeed, one might say there is actually over-regulation of electoral signs, but this is a politically motivated proposal to improve the prospects of the current government and should be opposed.

It is very interesting to see the change that has occurred between 2009 and now in the Liberal Party's view in relation to corflutes. Back then, they opposed changes because they said that it was important for political debate and that this was a cheap and easy way of stopping that debate and stopping challenges to the then incumbent government, the Australian Labor Party, who was in office at the time. Now they are in government they want to do exactly that and try to stop people challenging them at the next election.

I would like to talk about an issue that has been raised in relation to the environmental aspects of this legislation. It is important to note that if this legislation passes it does not mean there will be no corflutes produced. Let's be very clear about that. If this legislation passes there will not be an environmental benefit because there are not going to be corflutes produced because you will still be able to put them on public property, you will still be able to—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for King is on her feet. Do you have a point of order?

Ms LUETHEN: I would like to move that the debate be adjourned.

The SPEAKER: What we will do, member for King, given the time, is that we will get to a point where—

Mr PICTON: I seek leave to continue my remarks.

The SPEAKER: Yes, thank you. We will get to a point where the member for Kaurna seeks leave, which he has done now; is that correct?

Mr PICTON: Yes.

The SPEAKER: Member for Kaurna has sought leave to continue his remarks. Is leave granted?

Leave granted; debate adjourned.