ELECTORAL (LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL VOTING) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 26 November 2013.)

The Hon. S.G. WADE (10:35): I rise on behalf of the Liberal opposition to support the Electoral (Legislative Council Voting) Amendment Bill 2013. The bill is a miscellaneous set of amendments to strengthen our electoral legislation. They are part of an effort by the government to deal with the threat of microparty gaming as evident in the recent Senate election. I note the comments of some honourable members yesterday in this second reading debate on this bill. There were suggestions that the bill is rushed and was an attack on minor parties. Both of those claims may be true, but the members can hardly complain.

All the honourable members who spoke yesterday, supported progressing Hon. Mark Parnell's optional preferential voting bill a fortnight ago. It was rushed, it was being progressed in less than a month after it had been tabled, it involved much greater reform than proposed by this bill, and it risked major system failure in the electoral process at the next election.

The fact that the government backed down on statements to the opposition to progress the bill, and the fact that crossbenchers supported that bill, was one of the poorest displays of legislative practice I have experienced. In my view, the crossbench has no right to complain, in terms of the time frame on this bill, given their behaviour on the optional preferential voting bill.

The government and opposition have accepted the advice of the Electoral Commissioner and are of the view that an optional preferential voting system could not be implemented before the 2014 election, yet crossbenchers persist in demanding that outcome. They did it again in the debate on this bill yesterday. The crossbench can hardly complain that their ideas are not taken seriously when they persist in advocating what is unachievable.

Before I turn to the content of the bill, I want to acknowledge the constructive way the Attorney-General has engaged the opposition in relation to this bill, and I understand from a number of honourable members that the government has engaged members broadly. It is not an agreed bill, but I think the government has made significant efforts to take into account the range of interests of electoral players, and that is how it should be. Our electoral system is the rules of the game; it is not appropriate that one of the players should write the rules to suit them. Electoral legislation, perhaps more than any other set of laws, should be supported by a broad consensus.

As I said, the opposition does not agree with every element of the bill. We have moved an amendment, we will be supporting a crossbench amendment, and we intend to pursue some issues in the committee stage which may well lead to proposed amendments. However, let me stress that we support the bill.

Let me address each of the key issues in turn. The bill will require that a potential candidate receives the support and signatures of 100 electors to get on the Legislative Council ballot paper, as opposed to the current requirement for two. The opposition supports an increase in the number of nominators required for a Legislative Council candidacy. We regard that as a modest litmus test of the credibility of the candidate.

Every person has the right to participate in our democracy, including the right to stand for parliament themselves. The Hon. Mark Parnell reflected widely-held views yesterday when he said:

...when it comes to barriers to entry, we want barriers to entry to parliament, we do not necessarily want barriers to entry to the ballot paper, because in a democracy, people should have the right to be able to run for parliament, but a barrier to entry to being elected, I think, is quite a legitimate and reasonable thing to call for, and that barrier should be the level of public support that you have. If you do not have a level of direct public support, then you should not be elected to state parliament. So, that is where we believe the barrier should apply.

I am quoting that favourably, but I would like to suggest that the nomination requirements should not actually be seen as a barrier. I think a barrier is like a nomination fee; an exorbitant nomination fee which is beyond the means of the ordinary person I think is a barrier to entry. However, I would submit to the Hon. Mark Parnell and the other members that we should not see the nominator requirements in that regard. I would prefer to see them, if you like, as prequalification requirements: if you cannot get that number of nominators to support you to put your name forward, you are unlikely to get their support in pursuit of your candidacy.

In relation to ballot grouping and the order, the bill provides that only registered political parties and groups, with the support of 200 different electors, may lodge voting tickets and have an above-the-line voting square. We also support changes to place registered political parties before other groups and candidates on the ballot paper, and in that respect my understanding is that that represents Senate practice.

I think the jury will be out as to whether that is to the benefit of the major parties. It certainly will make it easier: if people are inclined to vote against the major parties, it will be easier to find the people who are not the major parties—they will just go to the right of the paper. Still, we will see what impact it has, if any.

Another issue in this bill was the descriptors for Independents. The proposal of the government is to reduce the number of words in the descriptor from five to two. The Liberal Party certainly shares concerns about the misuse of ballot papers. The Electoral Commission is not in the business of producing political messages for candidates; in other words, major parties are required to not allow their how-to-vote cards to be distributed within six metres of the polling booth, but some of the descriptors of some of the candidates are almost a political message inside the polling booth.

The opposition does support trimming. I am certainly not naive enough to think that it will actually stop the messages. A two-word slogan can be a very powerful message. Having grown up in Tasmania, I know that 'No dams', and the yellow triangle, is one of the most enduring political slogans in Australia. 'Independent: No dams' is just as much a slogan as a five-word descriptor—'No dams, let the Gordon River flow free'—or whatever it might be. Certainly a larger descriptor allows you to have a more nuanced message, but short ones can still be powerful—that is my only point.

Considering that the proposal to increase the nomination fee is a matter for regulation, we commend the government for being up-front about the fact that they intend to increase the nomination fee. It is proposed to be increased from $450 to $2,000. This, I suppose, goes back to the issue we were discussing with the Hon. Mark Parnell and whether it is a reasonable barrier to entry. In my view $2,000 is reasonable, and I suppose in supporting my case I draw people's attention to the commonwealth. The commonwealth requires a nomination fee of $2,000, and I did not notice any dearth of candidates at the last federal election.

As I said earlier, this bill should be seen as part of the efforts to deal with the threat of microparty gaming, as evident in the recent Senate election. One of the issues we discussed at the CEDA Forum, which the Hon. Mark Parnell, the Hon. Dennis Hood and, I think, the Hon. John Darley attended in October was: what is a legitimate microparty and what is a non-legitimate microparty? I made the point at that forum that a party with a low starting vote might, nevertheless, reflect mainstream values and be quite legitimately receiving preferences from a wide range of voters, and I used D4D as an example there. To suggest that microparty groups reflect fringe issues and that somehow their receipt of preferences is illegitimate is, I think, a simplistic approach.

The Legislative Council has shown its eagerness to act. The council was favourably disposed to the Hon. Mark Parnell's OPV bill when we last discussed it, much to my distress, because I believe it is important for us to maintain the integrity of the electoral system, and I do not believe we can be confident that we will have a robust electoral process in March 2014 if we were to impose the optional preferential voting process. The opposition will not support OPV or Sainte-Laguë before the 2014 election.

We appreciate the Hon. Dennis Hood has an amendment in relation to a threshold. It would be fair to say that earlier on in this process we were very sceptical about a threshold but, on reflection, the Liberal Party's view is that, as a short-term measure, considering that the parliament seems to be clamouring to do something, we regard that as, if you like, the best of the worst options and we will be looking forward to the discussion on the Hon. Dennis Hood's amendment.

I may conclude my remarks there and say that I look forward to the committee stage. I would say that we have a large amount of material in the in-tray for what I would hope would be a future parliamentary committee. There was a select committee on electoral matters in this parliament which highlighted particular issues in relation to postal voting and voting for people with disabilities. The most recent debate we had, on what I would call electoral miscellaneous No. 1, highlighted even more issues in relation to postal voting, and I think these discussions post the federal election have raised even more issues such as Sainte-Laguë and OPV and a whole range of reforms that are worthy of consideration.

I will certainly have more to say on this in terms of the consideration of the bill in the committee stage but suffice to say at this point that the opposition welcomes being an active player in that discussion. Our reticence to implement a reform before the 2014 election should not be seen as a lack of interest in reform: it is a matter of reform being orderly and properly considered. With those remarks, I reiterate the opposition's support for the Electoral (Legislative Council Voting) Amendment Bill 2013 and look forward to the committee stage of the bill.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (10:46): I want to place on the record the view of Family First on this bill. Family First is largely supportive of the bill. I think, like the opposition, we have very significant concerns about substantial change to the electoral system in the closing week of parliament for the four-year term. It has been quite a debate that we have had in this chamber in recent weeks on this issue. We have had a number of models presented. There is the Sainte-Laguë system, which I must confess I had never heard of until a few weeks ago, and neither had many—

The Hon. S.G. Wade: Neither had the Attorney.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: And neither had the Attorney-General, I am informed. In fact, he did tell me that. I consider myself a student of electoral systems and it was a new one to me. We have known about optional preferential voting for some time—it has been around for a while—but it does require a very substantial change to our current system of electing members to this place and Family First is on the record as making it absolutely clear we will not support optional preferential voting in the short term, that is, prior to the 2014 state election.

I want to make it clear to members in this place that we are open to those discussions after the 2014 election. It may well be that that is the best system to elect members to the Legislative Council. However, it is a matter that I think we should do carefully and properly. Whoever the government is after March, perhaps in the first 12 or 18 months of that government, they could present it and then give this place time to properly consider it so that it is enacted at least 12 or 18 months before the next election and then all the relevant political parties, Independents and groups have time to consider what that new legislation means for them.

I would like to place on record, also, my thanks to the government (particularly the Attorney-General) and the opposition (particularly the Hon. Stephen Wade) for their constructive discussions throughout this debate. It is inevitable that, for political parties, self-interest plays a role in these issues, but I think I can honestly say that both those individuals seem to be seeking the right outcome for the people of South Australia, as I believe Family First has also, and that will always be our objective. I think it is in the interests of our parliament that people are elected to this place with a decent representation.

Of course, the way this bill came about, as the Hon. Mark Parnell mentioned in his contribution a couple of weeks ago when we were debating his bill on optional preferential voting, was that we saw a couple of individuals (I do not need to name them because we all know who they are) elected to the Senate on very low votes in the recent federal election.

I think that is something that the public at large simply does not support. The public expects that people elected to an upper house of parliament, whether it be state or federal, would have a decent level of support. The word is 'decent'. What is a decent level of support? That is, of course, a matter for debate. To some people, that may be something in the order of 5 per cent, it may be 8 per cent to others, it may be 1 per cent to others—it really depends on your own perspective.

That brings me to my amendment. Members will note that I filed an amendment which introduces a 2.5 per cent threshold for the primary vote. A candidate would not be able to be elected to the Legislative Council if they achieve less than 2.5 per cent of the primary vote in the upcoming state election.

I confess at the outset that this is not a perfect amendment, but what is attractive about it is it is a minor change to the electoral system in the sense that it is very clear, very simple and is able to be absolutely determined: either someone got 2.5 per cent or they did not. It will fix the issue of people getting elected on very small amounts through the so-called 'gaming' of the system for this election, and then, I think, it will be incumbent on members in this chamber and, again, whoever the new government may be—if there is a new government or the current government continues—to determine what is in the best long-term interests of the people of South Australia.

I really did not want to say much more than that. I just reiterate that Family First supports the general thrust of this bill. We are concerned that it has been done very quickly. We have looked at it as best we can with the resources we have available. I know the government has been working overtime, as has the opposition. Again, I thank them for their cooperation, and I look forward to the committee stage of the bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. Carmel Zollo.