ELECTORAL (VOTING) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (20:48): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Electoral Act 1985. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (20:48): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This is a simple and fairly short bill which seeks to achieve four outcomes. Firstly, it seeks to ban the handing out of how-to-vote cards on election day and, secondly, it introduces the system known as Robson rotation for House of Assembly electoral ballot papers. Thirdly, the bill introduces a system of optional preferential voting for the Legislative Council and, fourth, the bill bans political parties from being involved in the collection of postal voting information.

I will run through each of these briefly. First of all, in relation to how-to-vote cards, we have had a great deal of debate about the dodgy how-to-vote cards that were handed out by Labor Party supporters in this last election. The debate has revolved around the best method of stopping these dodgy practices. The Greens believe that we have the simplest and best method of all, and that is to ban the practice of handing out how-to-vote cards on election day altogether.

Members need to bear in mind that how-to-vote cards date back to a period when it was the primary way for people going to a polling booth to vote to find out about the candidates, the party that they represented and how they should vote. If members recall, in the past the names of parties did not even appear next to the names of candidates and, if you had Smith, Jones, Brown and White on a ballot paper and you did not have a how-to-vote card, you would not have known which party each of those people represented.

That has changed over the years. We now have the names of political parties next to the names of candidates on the ballot papers. In each voting compartment we also have registered how-to-vote cards on display for anyone to see. So really the how-to-vote card has passed its use-by date. It had a useful purpose many years ago; it no longer serves any purpose at all. However, no party or candidates will choose not to hand out how-to-vote cards whilst other parties and candidates do. That means that unilateralism is not going to achieve any outcome: it is either all out or all in. So this bill very simply says that on polling day how-to-vote cards will not be handed out.

It is worth pointing out that what the bill does not cover is the how-to-vote cards that are displayed in each booth, put up by the electoral office. It will not cover the posters that appear on Stobie poles and elsewhere, exhorting voters to vote 1 for a particular candidate or party. My amendment will not cover the distribution of material—letterboxing, for example—and it will not cover electronic communications, including emails and SMS.

Very simply, this bill bans the handing out of how-to-vote cards on election day. If you ban them all, you ban the dodgy ones as well as the legitimate ones but, given that the legitimate ones are past their use-by date, there is no great harm. In fact, voters I think will appreciate not having to run the gauntlet. The cards add very little to the democratic process; they perform no useful function.

The next amendment is to introduce the system known as Robson rotation in House of Assembly ballot papers. What that means is that the candidates' names are varied on the ballot paper so that each candidate appears at the top, at the bottom and in the middle in an equal number of ballot papers. Of course, that completely negates any effect of donkey vote or reverse donkey vote. In other words, one of the sad outcomes of our compulsory system of voting is that people not wanting to be fined will simply turn up, have their name ticked off and then will pay no further attention to what is on their ballot paper. They will vote 1 through to 4, for example, or 4 backwards to 1, and political science (I think it is science rather than mythology) says that the donkey vote is worth something. Whether it is 1 per cent or 2 per cent or half a per cent is unknown, but it is worth something.

Robson rotation means that everyone has a go at the top of the ballot paper and everyone has a go at the bottom. Of course, it also ties in beautifully with not having how-to-vote cards, because it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to have a worthwhile how-to-vote card with a Robson rotation system on the actual ballot papers.

The third amendment is to institute optional preferential voting in the Legislative Council. As all members here know, the level of informal voting in the Legislative Council is very high. In fact, in this last election it was over 6 per cent. Some of those people may have intended to vote informally. The vast majority, I would say (and this is the evidence of scrutineers), have made a mistake on their ballot paper that has resulted in informality.

One of the best ways to reduce the level of informal votes and to also increase the democratic rights of individuals is to allow people to vote for as many or as few candidates as they want on the ballot paper. The way my bill is constructed is that, if a voter chooses to vote below the line, rather than having to vote 1 through to 74 in sequential order, they can vote for just one, they can vote for five, they can vote for 20, but they do not have to vote for all—as many or as few as they want.

This system, also in my bill, is extended to above the line voting. At present, you only have the choice of putting one number above the line. As we all know, when you do that you lose the right to allocate your own preferences. The party or the candidate you vote for determines where your preferences go.

My amendment proposes that voters should be able to number as many or as few squares above the line as they see fit. So, in the most recent election, when there were 35 parties and groupings above the line, you would not have had to number all, but you would be allowed to number more than one. What this means, of course, when we put these two amendments together, is that we do need to slightly change the system of counting of votes, because there will be some votes that exhaust.

For example, if a person votes for one party or just a small number of parties or candidates, if those people are either elected or exhausted, the ballot itself will exhaust. That means that the last person, or even the last few people elected, may be elected on less than a full quota, in which case it is those with the highest votes left at the end who will be elected.

People might think that that is not a good system, where people can get elected on less than a quota, but I say that the democratic principle, which states that you should not have to vote for people you do not want to, overrides any disadvantage that might arise from an election of someone without full quota. I think it is an important amendment.

The Greens have adopted a system of optional preferential voting in all our internal elections, and that means that you vote only for those you want to; you are not forced to vote for anyone you do not want to. However, as I said, the most important thing this does is take the deal-making power away from parties and put preferences back into the hands of the voters, where it should be.

Once you do that, you get preferences being allocated by voters according to what they really think about parties and candidates and what they stand for. At present, unless you want to number all 74 squares, as it was last time, you are only allowed to put No. 1 above the line and someone else decides where all your votes go. That is not democratic.

The fourth thing that this bill does is ban all political parties from being involved in the collection of postal votes and postal voting information. Members would know that this has been used by both Liberal and Labor parties over many years. Official looking documents are prepared, sent out to voters inviting them to apply for a postal vote.

Most people who get these, I imagine, do not know that they do not come from the Electoral Commission; they probably imagine that they do. The parties are harvesting details of people who are postal voting, and one consequence of that, of course, is that a larger proportion of the population than is necessary is now voting with postal votes.

For some people, of course, postal voting is absolutely the way they need to vote. It is the most convenient and the best way to go, but a lot of people are unnecessarily using postal votes, and that has consequences, such as election results taking longer to determine. If it is a close result, then a final outcome is unlikely to be known on the night if there is a large number of postal votes. Basically, my bill prevents political parties interspersing themselves between the voter and the state electoral office. I think that getting rid of that system of party involvement in postal votes will in fact lead to better democratic outcomes.

Those four matters are not by any means the only things that need fixing in our electoral system, but the Greens believe that they are important and that they represent, if you like, a first tranche of reforms that we will be introducing in this term of parliament to reform the electoral system and to make it more democratic.

Because we have now established a select committee on dodgy how-to-vote cards, amongst other things, I imagine that that committee will want to look at some aspects of this bill. However, it is my intention that it remain on the Notice Paper,rather than being formally referred and removed from the Notice Paper. However, I urge members who have now formed that select committee to consider seriously at least that aspect of this bill: the idea that banning how-to-vote cards is the best way to get rid of dodgy how-to-vote cards. I commend the bill to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.