ELECTORAL (PUBLICATION OF ELECTORAL MATERIAL) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 30 June 2010.)

The Hon. M. PARNELL (15:49): This bill seeks to achieve two things: first, it seeks to clarify the law and remove the ability for parties and candidates to issue what have become known as dodgy how-to-vote cards during an election period and, secondly, the bill seeks to clarify the situation in relation to attribution of political comment made on the internet during election periods.

I want to deal first with the first issue, that is, how-to-vote cards. The commentary around this clearly stems from the last state election when we saw some fairly unsavoury but not unusual behaviour from the Labor Party in relation to how-to-vote cards that purported to be from Family First. I will say that the other major party is not immune to this sort of behaviour, either, and neither is the Family First Party the only victim of this type of behaviour. The Greens certainly have been on the receiving end of fairly suspect practices in state and federal elections past.

The question for this chamber is going to be whether the government's proposed amendment will, in fact, fix the problem, and I am not convinced that it will. We debated this provision before the state election, towards the end of 2009, and the point was made then that these words are similar, if not identical, to words that exist in commonwealth legislation which, as I understand it, may have been originally based on Queensland legislation; but that, regardless of their origin, they do not work, have never been applied, and have not, in fact, stopped any of the dishonest and misleading behaviour that has characterised past elections.

So the question for us is: if this is the form of words that has been chosen to be incorporated into our electoral laws and they do not work, why are we wasting our time? I am not prepared to make a final judgment on that question until we have had a fair bit more debate and, also, until we have heard from the select committee that this chamber has established to inquire into this very question.

The second matter raised in the bill deals with what the former attorney-general described as the sewer of criminal defamation that he saw flowing through the online commentary in websites such as Adelaidenow. Whether the former attorney's colourful description is accurate or whether you take an alternative view that it is real, direct democracy in action where people express their views without fear or favour in an open, clear and forthright manner, depends on your starting point.

The bill, to my mind, in some ways should be unnecessary because the nature of parliamentary debate is that, whilst the former attorney-general might have started off with a very clear position about what he wanted to ban, outlaw or regulate in his bill, by the time it got to this chamber and a number of questions had been asked, during both the second reading stage and the committee stage, it was very clear to most of us here that in fact it was not how that legislation would operate. I think, had the matter ever gone to court, there was enough evidence of the intention of the government, through ministers' answers, and also the intent of this chamber that it was never intended to restrict freedom of speech on the internet. Nevertheless, there were some who took the view that the bill as passed (the current act) did in fact have that end, so we now have this bill before us to clarify the situation—and that is not necessarily a bad thing, notwithstanding it might not actually be strictly necessary.

I also have a bill before parliament that deals with the first of these issues in relation to how-to-vote cards. The Greens' position is quite simple; that is, if you want to get rid of dodgy how-to-vote cards you can, very simply and without any harm to the democratic process, get rid of all how-to-vote cards. They are, in fact, something whose day has passed. How-to-vote cards have passed their use-by date. They are not needed in a modern democratic society and they are not needed for two very simple reasons. The first one is that we no longer have the situation where the candidate's party affiliation is not on the ballot paper. It is and it has been on the ballot paper for some time. It used to be the situation that, if you did not know which of the four candidates—Jones, Smith, Henry and Brown—represented which party, you basically needed a how-to-vote card from one of the volunteers of the parties that you wanted to support to tell you who was their candidate. We do not need that any more because the parties are on the ballot paper.

We also have a provision—I am not sure whether it is unique to South Australia, but certainly it is not universal—that how-to-vote cards can be provided to the State Electoral Office, they can be incorporated into a poster and placed in each voting compartment, which means that voters have two ways of getting the information they need. First, it is on the ballot paper itself; and, secondly, if they raise their eyes, they will see that it is on a poster directly in front of them in the voting compartment. So, we do not need people handing out how-to-vote cards. If we can get rid of how-to-vote cards, we get rid of the dodgy practices that go with how-to-vote cards.

However, my hope is that, either at the conclusion of the second reading or at some stage fairly soon, this council will adjourn debate on this bill and we will await the outcome of the select committee that this chamber has established. I have made it clear to members that I am more than happy for my bill banning how-to-vote cards to suffer the same fate, if you like. In other words, let's leave it on the Notice Paper, let's wait until the select committee has reported and then we can consider all the various models of electoral reform that have been put forward by the various parties in a more comprehensive way.

With those words, I look forward to the adjournment of this debate and to coming back to it some time—maybe it will be September or October, but I certainly hope it will be before the end of the year—when we can have a more thorough debate. Finally, in case members might be nervous about adjourning an important piece of legislation, I add that we need to remember that this bill and the act that it amends have no work to do for more than three years. It will not be needed until the next election comes around. So, we do not have to make a hasty decision; we can in fact make a considered decision.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. Carmel Zollo.