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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
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Bills

Local Government (Elections) (Voting) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 5 June 2014.)

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (10:32): I would like to, firstly, begin today by commending the member for Goyder for this amendment that he has introduced to the Local Government (Elections) Act 1999. Of course, the member for Goyder has extensive experience in local government. I dare say he probably has more experience in local government than almost anyone here, having been a hardworking CEO of a local council for many years, and he has actually run elections as well, as a returning officer.

The Hon. S.W. Key: Geoff Brock and Tony Piccolo.

Mr TARZIA: Yes, I understand the member for Frome has also had extensive experience in local government.

Members interjecting:

Mr TARZIA: And the member for Light, but the member for Goyder has certainly been an esteemed fellow in that field. He understands the needs and wants of local government and he understands what needs to be done to improve local government, and I commend him on his initiative here in the house today. As we have heard, following changes in 2009, if you are a landlord, a business, a lessee, a non-resident property owner or a resident non-Australian citizen, you are no longer automatically included on the council's voting roll. I have to say, I was one of the councillors who was elected to local government on these rules. However, I do believe that there is time to improve this bill.

In my time as a local councillor I witnessed firsthand the apathy that does exist, unfortunately in this day and age, among certain people in regard to local government elections. Of course, I was elected to the Norwood, Payneham and St Peters council, where the turnout, like for many councils, is somewhere around 25 per cent. I am looking at the member for Bright, the former deputy mayor of the City of Marion, who I note was also elected under the old rules. We come from council areas where the turnout has historically been quite low: 25 per cent, 30 per cent, 35 per cent.

I think anything that encourages a better turnout for local government elections is a good thing, because we live in Australia where we should be proud of our democratic principles and our Westminster system where we do have the ability to elect members of local, state and federal governments. We should make the most of this, and we should make it as easy as possible for people to be able to be on that roll.

I note that the member for Goyder has also offered a good opportunity for consultation and he has consulted with Ms Wendy Campana, the CEO of the LGA, who seems supportive of the amendment. It certainly has the support on this side of the house and it also has support, I am pleased to say, in the conversations that I have had through other councillors as well. It is a good bill. Any bill which goes to the heart of our democratic principles and which allows more people to be able to vote and to get people more involved in the process of electing their local government representatives is a good thing and I am happy to support the bill.

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (10:35): I also rise today to support the amendment which is proposed. I think that, like the member for Hartley said, anything which increases involvement and engagement with local government is incredibly important and, like the member for Hartley said, the voter turnout in local government elections does leave a lot to be desired. I have often said that local government has the capacity to be the best tier of government in its ability to affect the day-to-day lives of residents who live in South Australia's communities, but equally, because of that closeness with communities, if local government is dysfunctional it also has the ability to be the worst tier of government, and dysfunction can be rapidly felt by the communities which it seeks to serve.

I represented Coastal Ward in the City of Marion for three years and was elected with voter turnout of around 30 per cent, which was one of the higher turnouts in the City of Marion. I look to the south of me in the City of Onkaparinga, where turnout in the local government elections there (perhaps due to the fact it is a lower socioeconomic area) sits at around 20 per cent and in the teens in some of the wards there.

I think that is something that is of great concern, to have people elected to make such significant local decisions, as are required by local councillors, and to manage large budgets. I know at the City of Marion we managed a budget of about $65 million a year, and to have people elected onto essentially board positions to govern that council on just a few hundred votes is not something that we should be particularly proud of in this state. While I am not advocating that we move towards a compulsory voting agenda in local government, I would like us to look at any ways which encourage people who are interested in being involved in local government to actually get onto the roll and be able to make a decision towards who they vote for.

I remember in the lead-up to the 2010 local government elections held in November there was some concern that landlords, business owners and non-residents within the council area who still owned properties and businesses in those areas were not made aware of the fact that they could get onto the electoral roll. Local councils were required to promote this, but apart from a couple of ads in theMessenger—and I actually noted that the City of Holdfast Bay had an ad in the Messenger this week encouraging non-residents, business owners and landlords to register now to get onto the electoral roll. I think the date of registration that was required was August, but, as you can imagine, people who are not in the area and people who are landlords in the area may not be looking at the Guardian Messenger, or whatever the local newspaper the council has decided to advertise in.

We need to, I think, look at as many ways as possible to get these people onto the roll. I remember when I stood for local government, I got a list of people who were nonresident voters and there were only about 35 for the whole of Coastal Ward. There were 12,000 people on the voter roll in Coastal Ward in the City of Marion and only about 30 who were nonresident landlords.

That showed very, very few, because there were obviously many more than 30 people who were landlords in the area, and only a tiny proportion had taken the opportunity to register to vote in the local government elections. That automatically meant that there were many hundreds of people who had been disenfranchised—people who still own assets in the area and who still have a great stake and interest in the area being looked after and well-governed by the local council. Obviously people who have an investment (often mum and dad investors) may actually be even keener, because it is a financial investment in ensuring that the local community is kept in good working order.

I strongly support the member for Goyder's amendment to the Local Government Elections Act 1999 and urge all other members to also get on board and support this strategy to get more people involved in local democracy in South Australia.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (10:41): I rise to speak in support of the bill. Basically, what this will do is take the roll back to the provisions that were there before the government's amendments in 2009, that enabled all businesses, once they were on the roll, to remain on that roll. It is vitally important that businesses and business people that participate in their local communities through employing South Australians and sponsoring local clubs (for example, the football club, cricket club or netball club), and that may very well be seeking input from council for projects and so forth, are encouraged to participate, and that it is easy for them to do so. It should be no different for them to participate in the democratic process at a local government level than what it is for residents, and apply to be on the roll once only.

This is streamlining the process for businesses and property owners so that they can participate in the democratic process. The fact that, in 2009, this government put another bureaucratic barrier in place and made it more difficult for businesses to participate in the democratic process only confirms the public view that this government does not like business. In my view, this was certainly deliberate discrimination of businesses in favour of other people who are able to participate in the democratic process of local government elections.

It is not as though we are giving new rights to people who never had rights before. It is not as though it is ground-breaking legislation that we are talking about today; we simply want to restore the balance that was there prior to 2009, before it was removed by this government. Those who have run businesses know that there is so much to do every day, particularly if you are a small business. It is an unnecessary task to ask businesses to go back to their local council and ask for another set of enrolment papers just so they can participate in the election after they had already done it for the previous election.

This will streamline the process and enable the participation of more people who actually do contribute to their local community. They may not live there, but they certainly spend a good part of their week and their day in that area. Their customers, clients and professional community live there. They pay council rates and, in many instances, they pay council rates at a much higher level than residential council residents may very well pay. Many councils still have a differential rate in the dollar for businesses, which is generally higher than it is for non-businesses. I remember when I was on the Prospect council, from 1991 to 1993, it was very heavily debated whether that was a fair and just thing to do, considering that, at that time, Prospect Road, for example, was full of empty shops. I can remember that I was on the council with the Hon. Russell Wortley at the time. He was described as the—

Mr Speirs interjecting:

Mr PISONI: —extreme left. He was a member of the Duncan left, I think, at the time, and I was described as a lunatic right on the Prospect council. It was quite a time, but we did, in fact, accomplish something significant together when it was a combination of the left and the right. A couple of the older, more conservative members of the council were on leave; they were obstructing the more progressive members of the council in their view that they should eliminate backyard burning. So, there was an affiliation of the left and the right on the Prospect council, and we managed to get a ban on backyard burning to come into play during that 1991 to 1993 period. It was a great success.

Also, for those who enjoy the street trees on Main North Road, that was another accomplishment of the work of the Prospect council from 1991 to 1993. I think that that is an example of where it was very important to have business input in that it had an impact on a council project that lifted the amenity of the entire community. Main North Road is not what you would call a model strip shopping centre, but its impact has been softened tremendously by these now 20-year-old trees, which certainly have a decent canopy and do soften the impact of some of the architecture on Main North Road.

To get back to the reason I strongly support the member for Goyder's bill this morning, and that is that it is about community participation. We know that businesses do have a strong philanthropic vein, and they are very keen to participate in their local communities. Why would we want to make it any harder, why would we want to have an extra burden for them that residents do not need to go through in order to participate in a democratic process at a local government level? I commend the bill to the house, and I congratulate the member for Goyder for his foresight and for his support for small business and property owners who are not residents within their council districts.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (10:48): First, I congratulate the member for Goyder for bringing this matter to the attention of the house. It is a matter that the opposition has argued previously; in fact, I understand that, back in 2009, the government changed this particular part of the Local Government Act to basically, I would suggest, disenfranchise a significant number of electors from being able to vote in their local council elections by making it more difficult for them to remain on the roll. The opposition argued at the time that that was a retrograde step, and nothing has changed.

I was at a meeting only last week, when the Leader of the Opposition and I met with a number of councils in the South-East. We were at the Robe council, and this matter was raised with us as a problem. The Robe council has more absentee property owners than any other council in the state, they told us.

Mr Griffiths: 60 per cent, or something like that.

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes, over 50 per cent of their property owners do not live within the council area. Of course, Robe is a very popular seaside resort—amongst other things—with a normal permanent residential population of about 1,500 people, but during the summer months that population swells to about 15,000 people. A significant number of those people who come to Robe own property in Robe and obviously, as contributing ratepayers, want to have some say—some representative input—into the way that community and that council operates. We were told that a significant number of those people reside outside of South Australia. There is a large number of people who own property in the township of Robe who live as near as the Victorian border to as far across as Ballarat. It is a very popular place.

As the member for Unley just said, the reality is that this is not about conferring any more rights. These people have—and everybody agrees that they should have—a right to participate in the democratic elections within their council area. That right has always been held by people who own property in a council area even though they do not reside in the council area. It is a right that is not in dispute here. What is in dispute here is the ease with which they can exercise that right. One has to question why a government would make it more difficult for a citizen to exercise their democratic right.

I draw the parallel between the government's actions with regard to the Local Government Act and the electoral system that is operating at the council level, and the Constitution Act of South Australia which controls the state's electoral matters. The reality is that we have an electoral system in South Australia which does not reflect the basic principle of democracy, and that is that every citizen has an equal right to elect a government of their choice or, just as importantly—and maybe even more importantly—to throw out a government that they do not want. That is something that we do not have in South Australia and that is a question I have been posing to some of the political scientists in this town: what level of response should you require from the community to get rid of a government that you do not want? Because in South Australia at the state level that is obviously over 53 per cent. I think this Labor government has a very, very poor record when it comes to democracy.

Mr Pengilly: And within their own party.

Mr WILLIAMS: We know that they have no semblance of democracy within their own party. Their fundamental philosophical position is not one that is founded on the principles of democracy, unlike that which we enjoy in the Liberal Party. They have a very poor record when it comes to democracy, democratic elections, at both the state and the local government level.

One can only speculate that this was a deliberate ploy by this government back in 2009 in an attempt to disenfranchise those people whom they believed would not naturally support their candidates. That is the only logical explanation for making it more difficult for people who have every entitlement to vote at a council election, to make it more difficult for them to exercise that vote, because that is what this is about.

We all know, from a whole myriad of functions that occur in our society, that people forget. Since we no longer issue registration stickers for motor vehicles, how often have we heard that people forget to register their motor vehicle, particularly if they do not get the renewal notice? That is an issue that comes up. It certainly comes up in my electorate—

Mr Pengilly: Particularly the older ones.

Mr WILLIAMS: —on a regular basis. And as my colleague, the member for Finniss says, particularly older citizens.

Mr van Holst Pellekaan: Even businesses.

Mr WILLIAMS: Even businesses, the member for Stuart reminds me. The reality is that when you put up a barrier such as this where people have to go back on an annual basis and reregister their right to vote at a council election, a significant number of them fail to do so. It was pointed out to me at Robe recently that the Robe council is very concerned about this. As a council they are concerned about this because a significant portion of their electorate falls into this category and it makes it very difficult for them to exercise, as a council, in a democratic fashion, when they are fully aware that a significant portion of the people who are eligible to vote in their council elections are just not on the roll.

There is a council election coming up later this year and we will have the debate both before and after the election about the poor turnout of electors at council elections. That is just the turnout of those who are actually on the roll. It ignores the fact that there are a significant number of people who are not on the roll, not by their choice. They are not on the roll because in 2009 their government—the Labor government in South Australia—made it more difficult for them to be on the roll and that is the problem.

I come back to the point I made. It is my earnest belief that the Labor government made it more difficult because they believe that those people who own property in a council area where they do not reside would be more likely not to vote for a Labor candidate. I honestly believe that that is the circumstance. That is no reason to manipulate an electoral system, just like as I said we have an electoral system at the state level that mitigates against conservative voters. It mitigates against the majority of South Australians who want a different government and have almost constantly wanted a different government for almost the last 20 years.

This is a very good bill brought by the member for Goyder. I commend it to the house and I sincerely hope that the Labor government comes to its senses and understands that democracy is a principle that should not be toyed with for its own benefit.

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (10:57): This is an excellent bill and I commend the member for Goyder, as others have, for bringing it forward to the house. To the casual reader of Hansard, I commend all the speeches that have come so far. I agree with pretty much everything that has been said by the members for Hartley, Bright, Unley and MacKillop and, indeed, the member for Goyder in introducing the bill in the first place. I just wish to add probably three things in my contribution that have not been focused on to this point.

The first is that I appreciate that a number of the country members, in particular, deal with councils with very high levels of non-residential voters in council elections or in fact potential voters in council elections, whether they be business owners or property owners or holiday house owners or whatever else. Although I have some regional bits in my electorate, I am looking at it more from the perspective of the city parts of my electorate where we have significant numbers of people who may own a business or may own property, potentially (but I am particularly worried about business owners in this case) in a different council electorate from that in which they live.

As a metropolitan MP—and I imagine there are people on the government benches who, if they think about it, have encountered the same issue—it is very frustrating for people, especially if they are not receiving favourable treatment (or even fair treatment, as many of them would think it) from the local council where their business is, to then have to go to that council and try to get representation. Some ward councillors are better than others and that is the nature of the beast, but I think it was Paul Keating who said, 'If it is a two-horse race, always back the horse with self-interest involved,' and it is not in a council's best interests in terms of getting re-elected to focus on the group that is less likely to come out and vote because they are not actually enrolled in the same way.

I will speak a bit more about the difference between automatic enrolment and the non-automatic enrolment and what that does to democracy. The point is that a business owner's rights in being represented are naturally going to be less powerful in seeking advocacy if they are part of the group that is not automatically enrolled. That said, as a local MP you often get the business owner coming to you, whether they are looking to try to get help from the Norwood, Payneham & St Peters council or the city council, or wherever their business may be located.

They might live in Rostrevor or Newton, and they will therefore come to me as their local member, where they live, so we try to help them. This happens on a regular basis. It is really an area where, if someone is automatically enrolled because their property or business is in the council area, then they are going to get better representation from local council, and that is the way it should be.

We understand that the act allows people to enrol themselves, as long as they do it with, I think it is three months' notice required at the moment, prior to the election. That is their right. The government, even in changing the act in 2009, did not try to take that right away; the government seems to acknowledge that these people have the right to vote.

It is not the same as state elections. We have the electoral roll where everyone gets one vote in forming government in South Australia, but councils are different. They are about seeking to represent the rights of those with an interest in the area, whether that be by living there or by owning property or business there or whatever else. So the things are not equivalent.

The point is that in council elections, if we are going to have a democratic process, then that democratic process should be fair and equal for all those involved in participating in that process. It is clear that once you have this discrepancy, where some people, by nature of being on the state electoral roll, are automatically enrolled and others are not, there is going to be a discrepancy in the way the representation occurs. That is not fair.

I think the member for MacKillop put his finger right on the issue. I imagine that the government will probably vote against this bill; it will probably vote against it because it is in its best interest to do so as a political party, not in the best interests of the people of South Australia or those they seek to represent.

We are in this position where the minister for local government is an Independent member of the cabinet, and I think that as a rural member, and one who represents people in Port Pirie and the larger townships of his electorate as well, he would appreciate exactly the points that have been raised by members on this side. Perhaps he has spoken to the Local Government Association and has had similar commentary.

It is critical that this bill be dealt with, it is critical that we vote on this matter. I think the member for Goyder has done a great job in bringing it forward, and I look forward to voting on it. I think we should vote on it today and get it to the upper house, so that we can move on and pass this bill through the parliament.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland) (11:02): I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (11:02): I would like the right of reply, actually, to bring the matter to a vote, if I may.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Newland has the call; we usually go from side to side.

The house divided on the motion:

Ayes 22

Noes 19

Majority 3

AYES
Bedford, F.E. Bettison, Z.L. Bignell, L.W.K.
Brock, G.G. Caica, P. Close, S.E.
Digance, A.F.C. Gee, J.P. Hamilton-Smith, M.L.J.
Hildyard, K. Hughes, E.J. Kenyon, T.R. (teller)
Key, S.W. Mullighan, S.C. Odenwalder, L.K.
Piccolo, A. Picton, C.J. Rankine, J.M.
Rau, J.R. Snelling, J.J. Vlahos, L.A.
Wortley, D.
NOES
Bell, T.S. Evans, I.F. Gardner, J.A.W. (teller)
Griffiths, S.P. Knoll, S.K. Marshall, S.S.
McFetridge, D. Pederick, A.S. Pengilly, M.R.
Pisoni, D.G. Redmond, I.M. Sanderson, R.
Speirs, D. Tarzia, V.A. Treloar, P.A.
van Holst Pellekaan, D.C. Whetstone, T.J. Williams, M.R.
Wingard, C.
PAIRS
Koutsantonis, A. Goldsworthy, R.M. Weatherill, J.W.
Chapman, V.A.


Majority of 3 for the ayes.

Motion thus carried; debate adjourned.

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