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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-02-26 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Electoral Reform

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (15:28): As I said, the Labor Party stands condemned and the member for Elder stands condemned in whatever language you want to use. 'Can you trust Habib?' was a filthy, disgusting flyer, and she has never once decried it. She has never resiled from it, never once tried to explain or justify it in anything approaching a convincing fashion.

The member for Mawson stands condemned for his activities in the 2010 election, as does the Labor Party, and I return to the justice's findings, firstly in relation to the evidence between the Sunday Mail staff and the Labor Party volunteers. The justice found that in many respects there was not a lot of dispute concerning objective facts.

The main areas of divergence between the parties concerned the interpretation of the facts. Where there was dispute however I preferred the evidence given by the witnesses for the defence [i.e. the Sunday Mail] for reasons I will explain in context.

We are talking now about an article about the scandal of Sandra De Poi handing out the controversial how-to vote-cards on polling day. As the Speaker alluded to before, clause 118 says that:

Whilst the scheme did not breach the Electoral Act, it was in my view outside the spirit of the law. It objectively offended the standards of ethics accepted by the community and the standards of morality underlying the law and is accordingly 'dishonest'.

Just because no law was broken does not mean that the Ministerial Code of Conduct was not maintained, does not mean that the Premier should not withdraw confidence from the Minister for Tourism, does not mean that the Minister for Tourism has no business continuing in such a role.

The judge went on to a range of other findings in her conclusions and I commend the findings to all members to have a read. I commend members to have a look particularly at 120, 122 and 123:

The plaintiff wore the T-shirt. She held and handed out the how-to-vote cards.

She did so knowingly, she did so knowing it was misleading and deceptive, and she did so knowing that it was part of a campaign that was misleading and deceptive. The member for Mawson was elected on that campaign. He stands condemned. He should hang his head in shame, as should the Labor apparatchiks who conduct all of these dodgy campaigns year after year. The Minister for Tourism is a disgrace.

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