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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-09-10 Daily Xml
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ELECTORAL REFORM

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (17:08): My question is to the Premier. Will he consider, as part of electoral reform, the introduction of optional preferential voting for the Legislative Council, at least up to the point of the number of vacancies to be filled? Members would be well aware of what happened on the weekend in the Senate. We have a very similar situation, potentially, in the Legislative Council and I am interested to know whether the government is prepared to look at that issue of electoral reform for the Legislative Council.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (17:08): I thank the honourable member for his important question. It is an intriguing question in light of what we saw at the federal election. There are, obviously, a range of so-called micro parties that have collaborated to harvest preferences so that one could have a relatively small number of preferences and then, through a process of tight preference exchange, find yourself a Senator. I think, without being unkind to the democratic process, some of the people elected are probably surprised themselves and it has probably also surprised some of the people who had cast votes for other people and who found their way, through an elaborate process of preferences, to get that person elected.

I think it raises a number of issues. It raises, I suppose, the question of the existence of an upper house, perhaps. It is our policy, of course, to retain upper houses, so it is no part of our policy, despite the fact that we did commemorate dear old Frank today. If you are to have an upper house and a proportional representation system, this remains a risk. I think what it does potentially open up is the possibility of a consideration of thresholds, that is, a minimum number of votes before a particular party can remain in the contest.

One only needs to cast one's mind back to Mr Xenophon to realise that he started with a relatively small proportion of the state vote and seems to have leveraged it up to a rather influential position in the national parliament. So there would be some resistance, I think, to a threshold that could defeat that idea but, nevertheless, I think he may have obtained about 3 per cent of the vote, so something less than that may need to be given some consideration.

I have only had the barest conversation with the Attorney about this. We have not really had an opportunity to discuss it in cabinet except to say that I think it does raise issues and we need to reflect on what the response might be to this phenomenon. Obviously, we are coming up to an election and I think we need to give some serious consideration to whether this needs to be addressed prior to our next state election.

Ms CHAPMAN: A point of clarification, sir, if I may. I did not want to raise a point of order but I understood the question to be relating to the circumstances of the weekend and the outflow, of course, to the Senate—and this is a very interesting topic and I am sure you would be interested in it, Mr Speaker, as well as members of the house. But I do not see how the federal electoral act is within the responsibility of the state government, so I just think—

The SPEAKER: No, the member for Bragg misunderstands. The member for Fisher asked about our upper house.

Ms CHAPMAN: Thank you.

The SPEAKER: The member for Waite.

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