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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-05-21 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations) (14:06): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and thank you for your kind compliment about earlier in the day. I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: The Governor spoke to this parliament of the need for South Australians to have confidence in our public institutions and in the way these institutions arrive at decisions that affect everyone's lives. We understand the potential for a growing sense of estrangement between politicians and the people they are elected to represent, and we want to build new and stronger bonds to reverse this perception.

Today, I can inform the house that the government intends to establish a joint standing committee on electoral matters. It is intended that the committee will not be controlled solely by any one political party, with appointments reserved for members of the government and the opposition, as well as Independent and minor party members. It is the government's intention that the committee will have a role similar to that of the commonwealth's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The commonwealth committee is established to:

…inquire into and report on such matters relating to electoral laws and practices and their administration as may be referred to it by either House of the Parliament or a Minister. The matters that may be referred by the House include reports by the Commonwealth Auditor-General. The Committee could also inquire into matters raised in annual reports of Commonwealth Government departments and authorities.

The committee will have a natural role to consider the conduct of each election, but it will have a broader role of inquiring into reform of the state's electoral system to continually seek to improve our democracy. This will replace the haphazard select committees into electoral matters that we have seen in the past.

I will be having discussions with members of this place and the Legislative Council in the coming days about this committee. It is a responsibility of all of us to live up to the trust that has been placed in us by the people of South Australia, and this joint committee will help to raise the public's confidence in our electoral processes.

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Health.

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