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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
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Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 23 July 2020.)

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (16:05): I indicate that I am the lead speaker for the opposition in relation to this electoral matters bill. I indicate that the opposition will be very strongly opposing this piece of legislation. Here we have an Attorney-General whose priorities during this worldwide pandemic have been helping Senior Counsel be renamed Queen's Counsel and devising legislation to better the Liberal Party and to fight Independents and to try to stop Independents and minor parties being elected to parliament. These are this government's and this Attorney-General's priorities in relation to legislation before this house.

The shadow attorney-general and I were briefed this week by the Attorney-General's staff in relation to COVID legislation, which we believed was something the Attorney-General was involved in drafting, but we were told very frankly that it was being managed by the Premier and the Premier's department but that the Attorney-General just had the job of carrying it through the house. We know that her priority has been about electoral advantage for the Liberal Party and about stopping Independents and minor parties getting elected to parliament.

That is what this legislation is about. That is the priority of this government. It is very clear that that is the effect of what is being proposed in this legislation. This proposal in relation to optional preferential voting has not come from expert reports, it has not come from the Electoral Commission and it has not come from any independent bodies that have been empanelled to consider the electoral process. It has come from the Attorney, it has come from the Liberal Party and it has come from their decision to try to change the law to better place the Liberal Party in future elections.

That is a disgraceful use not only of government resources, not only of parliament's time, but it is a disgraceful use of their power in getting into government to try to work out how they can better their position in future elections and how they can stop Independents and minor parties from getting elected to parliament. The effect of what this legislation seeks to do is that in the future we would not see non-incumbents, Independents or minor parties being elected to the House of Assembly. That is what the Attorney is seeking to do.

Very clearly, we will be opposing this legislation. As I said, it did not come from the Electoral Commission, it has not arisen from any independent body, it has come from the Attorney-General herself. At the first opportunity, the government is seeking to wipe out diversity and dissenting voices in our politics. This will be a heavy blow to Independents and minor parties. It is very clear why the Liberal Party and the Attorney-General have such a view. It is because the history of South Australian politics over the past few decades has been a history where Liberal Party supposedly safe seats have been repeatedly lost to Independents because the Liberal Party has not been appropriately representing those communities. They have taken them for granted and they have lost seats to Independents and minor parties.

We on this side have been prepared to work with those Independents and minor parties. In comparison, the Liberal Party have shunned those Independents and minor parties and have not worked with them. Just look at our record in terms of having Independents and minor parties form part of our cabinets over the past few parliaments. We have had Labor cabinets that have included Independents and even Nationals. That broad range of voices strengthened our democracy. Even when we had a Labor majority in our own right, we still welcomed these voices into our cabinet.

Now we have the Liberals rejecting working with the Independents and also trying to stop them getting elected to parliament in the first place. We also have many Independents who were former Liberal MPs ostracised, cast aside by their party. You just have to look at the late Bob Such and how he was treated in a disgraceful manner by many members of the Liberal Party for speaking his mind.

This bill would almost certainly spell the political end for independent voices in the Parliament of South Australia. Clause 24 of this bill seeks to amend section 76(2) of the Electoral Act 1985 to read, and I quote:

(2) In a House of Assembly election, a voter must mark their vote on the ballot paper by placing the number 1 in the square opposite the name of the candidate for whom they vote as their first preference, and, if the voter so desires, by placing the number 2 and consecutive numbers in the squares opposite the names of other candidates in the order of the voter's preference for them (but not so as to be required to indicate a preference for all candidates).

This small collection of words is a significant attempt—one of the greatest attempts we have seen—to manipulate the course of democracy in South Australia, and we cannot let this happen. We are a state that has long prided itself on extending the franchise. We were the first jurisdiction to allow women the right to vote and stand for parliament in 1894. That led the way for the Commonwealth of Australia to do so in 1902. We have pioneered and triumphed matters such as the secret ballot here in South Australia and also, of course, in preferential voting.

Preferential voting has been a key tenet of our electoral system for many, many decades in South Australia. Under the government's regressive proposal, you can just vote 1 and your vote will stop there. This is effectively going to lead to first past the post in South Australia. And where is the benefit to democracy for having votes disappear from the system if nobody gets 50 per cent of the first preferences? A majority of people may not vote for a candidate and may not express a preference for them, but under the Attorney's proposal they could still be elected. This is how the Attorney-General would like our democracy to work. A significant majority may not want a candidate, but they could still end up in this place. We can and we should stop this attack on our democracy before it even starts.

This state and country have a proud history of preferential voting and compulsory voting. The combination of the two means that everybody's vote counts all the way from the top of the ballot paper to the bottom. Minor parties and Independents get value from preferences, and so does the community. Sometimes, preferences mean that Independents and minor parties get elected. Sometimes, preferences mean that smaller voices can negotiate good local policy with the major parties.

It is worth looking at the electoral history of South Australia and you can see how pivotal preferential voting has been to the fact that we have elected Independents and minor parties to this parliament. You only have to look at the last election where we saw a very significant vote for SA-Best across a number of seats. SA-Best were unable to form a majority in any of those seats on the two candidate-preferred basis, but they did come close in a few. However, they would have had no chance on the basis of what the Attorney is proposing. They would have had no look-in in any seat if what the Attorney is proposing today were law back in 2018, at the time of the last election.

Look at the Speaker's seat of Heysen. The now Speaker, Josh Teague, received 40.7 per cent of the vote—some 9,227 votes. In comparison, SA-Best received 24.3 per cent, or 5,514 votes. That was a majority, on first preference votes, of some 3,713 votes for the Liberal Party, or a 16.4 per cent majority in terms of first preference votes.

If what the Liberals want now were in place at the time, that would have ensured there was no chance that the SA-Best candidate would have even come close to overtaking the Liberal Party candidate. However, our system allows those other voters—voters for the Labor Party, the voters for the Australian Conservatives, the voters for the Greens and the voters for the Dignity Party—to have the chance to determine which of those two candidates they would ultimately like to vote for.

That meant that by the end of the count, while Josh Teague was successful, the majority went from 3,713 votes to 824 votes. The percentage went from 16.4 per cent to just 3.6 per cent. That is the power we are giving those other voters the ability to have their say. That meant that that became a close election.

The same was true in the seat of Finniss. In the seat of Finniss, on the basis of first preferences alone, there was a majority of 17.8 per cent (3,804 votes). By the time all of those other voters had their say between the two candidates, that had reduced to 9.2 per cent (1,979 votes). That was a significant difference that had changed between the two of 1,825 votes (8.6 per cent). I should note that in relation to the seat of Heysen, there was a difference of 2,889 votes (12.8 per cent) between the first count and the two-candidate preferred count at the end of it.

Of course, the same is true of Labor seats. Labor seats can also be won by Independents. That almost happened in relation to the seat of Taylor. I should note the member for Hartley did much better, but if you look at the vote in relation to the seat of Taylor, the ALP candidate (now member for Taylor) Jon Gee received 9,786 votes (43.6 per cent) and the SA-Best candidate got 5,644 votes, which works out to be 25.1 per cent. It was a differential of 18.5 per cent or 4,142 votes.

In our system, we allowed the voters for the Greens, the Australian Conservatives and even the Liberals to have their say, which therefore reduced the margin for SA-Best. I think the eventual margin between the two candidates was 2,564 votes (11.4 per cent). That was a difference of 1,578 votes (7.1 per cent).

In relation to the Independents that were elected in the last parliament, they were elected very solidly, and I think it is important to distinguish between people who are incumbent-elect Independents and non-incumbent-elect Independents. Non-incumbent Independents face a very significant differential in terms of their ability to get elected. No-one knows that better than the member for Frome, who was elected very narrowly but has now established massive majorities of significant first preference votes that he has in his seat.

It is worth looking back at the 2009 by-election results for the seat of Frome to see how the current member for Frome, Geoff Brock, was elected. If you look at the difference in first preference votes between the Liberal Party candidate and the Independent candidate there was a difference of 3,019 votes—higher for the Liberal Party on that occasion, and there was a 15.6 per cent difference between those two.

If what the Liberal Party is proposing had been in place then, I do not think there is any doubt that a Liberal Party member of parliament would have been elected in that 2009 by-election. This is seeking to stop non-incumbent Independents getting elected to the parliament. If you look at what happened by the end, there was a very significant turnaround of 19 per cent between those two figures. Geoff Brock ended up with a 3.4 per cent higher two-candidate preferred vote than the Liberal Party and a 643 vote lead over the Liberal Party candidate in terms of two-candidate results, so there was a turnaround of 3,662 votes.

That happened because all those other voters—the voters for the Nationals, the voters for the Greens, the voters for One Nation and the voters for the Labor Party—were able to have their vote and their choice between those two candidates, the Liberal candidate and the Independent, the now member for Frome. They decided to pick the member for Frome. That is a seat where he has continued to increase his vote over elections since then. He would not have been elected if what the Attorney-General is proposing had been put in place.

There are also many other examples. Essentially, every other example you can find of a non-incumbent Independent being elected to this parliament would not have happened under what the Attorney-General is proposing. Look at the election in Mount Gambier in 2010. This was, of course, before the current member for Mount Gambier. This was a non-incumbent Independent who was elected to parliament, Mr Don Pegler. He received 36 per cent of the vote. The Liberal Party received 42.6 per cent of the vote, so they had a lead on first preferences of 6.6 per cent, but all those other candidates got to have their say.

The other Independent, the Greens, the Labor Party, and other minor parties like Family First all got to have their say and, by the end of it, Don Pegler won by 161 votes or a two-candidate preferred lead of 0.8 per cent. There was a turnaround of 7.4 per cent or 1,601 votes, which showed the power of those other candidates having their say. Once again, he is another member of parliament who would not have been elected under what the Attorney-General is proposing.

You can go back further and look at the seat of Chaffey, the seat of Gordon and the seat of MacKillop in 1997. In all those seats at that time non-incumbent Independents were elected on the basis of other voters being able to have their say between the two leading candidates. The seat of Chaffey had a difference of 1,887 votes or 9.8 per cent between the first candidate votes and the two-candidate preferred vote at the end of the day. Karlene Maywald was elected with a lead on a two-candidate preferred basis of 996 votes, despite trailing originally by 891 votes. That is because the Labor Party and the Democrats voters were able to have their say between those candidates.

Look at the seat of Gordon, which of course is now known as the seat of Mount Gambier, where Rory McEwen was elected as an independent at that election. He was down by 3,830 votes or 19 per cent on first preferences, but the Labor voters, the Democrat voters and the other Independent voters were able to have their say, and Rory McEwen was elected on a slim lead of 52 votes on the two-candidate preferred basis. You cannot tell me that an Independent would have won that seat if what the Attorney-General is proposing was law. There is no way that that turnaround would have happened if we saw the first-past-the-post voting that will occur if the Liberal Party's shameful bill is put into place.

Last but not least, let's have a look at the seat of MacKillop, where the later to be member of the Liberal Party, Mitch Williams, was elected as an Independent in 1997. On first preferences, he was down 1,340 votes, but by the end of the two-candidate preferred result, he was up by 3,182 votes. That was a massive turnaround of 4,522 votes or 22.2 per cent, which was on the basis of the Labor voters, the National voters, the Democrat voters, the United Australia voters and the Call to Australia voters—and I can not tell you much about that party—all being able to have their say and determine between those two candidates.

But, under what the Attorney is proposing, Mitch Williams would not have got elected. Mitch Williams would not have therefore gone on to be a longstanding member of the Liberal Party, because Dale Baker would have succeeded and won that seat and Mitch Williams would not have been elected. Mr Deputy Speaker, if I knew you were in the chair I might have gone back for the history of the seat of Flinders as well, which of course has had a very significant—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Mr Blacker.

Mr PICTON: That's right, Mr Blacker, in relation to the National Party being successful. Without having the statistics in front of me, I think it is a fair chance that Peter Blacker would not have been elected as the member for Flinders had what the Attorney-General is proposing to put in place been in place then.

This is about a protection to stop the Liberal Party losing seats to Independents and minor parties. In each of those circumstances, they would have kept their seats, and that is why this is a manipulation to try to make sure that losing those seats does not happen in the future. Preferences mean that those smaller voices can negotiate good local policy with the major parties, and that is what we have seen time and again from those Independents who have brought to our parliament different perspectives, different voices, which the Attorney-General is looking to eliminate.

Even though we in Labor have had our differences and disputes with minor parties over the decades, it is differences and disputes that make democracy what it is. Hearing tough truths is not easy but it does make for better decisions. The Liberals are trying to take that away from our system. This bill makes massive strides backwards in our democracy.

Jack Lang, the late Premier of New South Wales, said that you should always back the horse named Self-Interest, and that is exactly what is happening with this piece of legislation. This is all about the self-interest of the Liberal Party in staying in office and not losing seats to Independents and minor parties. In this bill the Attorney and the Premier have worked out that crushing Independents and minor parties is in their self-interest, and that is exactly what they are doing.

While the opposition may disagree with other thoughts of Antony Green from time to time and, indeed, some things he has said on optional preferential voting, he has a very clear understanding of the motivations behind why the Marshall Liberal government is bringing this bill to parliament. He said in July, and I quote:

In proposing that South Australia adopt optional preferential voting for House of Assembly elections, the Marshall government is highlighting democratic principles in favour of making preferences optional. But you don’t have to be cynical to see that in backing [that] principle, the SA Liberal Party is also backing its own self-interest…

What the Marshall government no doubt finds attractive about OPV is that it makes life harder for candidates who must come from behind to win on preferences...

And history explains why the Liberal Party might find OPV attractive.

Since 1982, there have been 26 South Australian electoral contests where a trailing candidate won from behind on preferences.

Of those 26 contests, 14 were won by Labor, 11 by independents or minor parties, and only one by the Liberal Party…

But for the SA Liberal Party, the greatest benefit of OPV will be cutting off Labor’s habit of helping to elect Independents in safe Liberal seats…

One other consequence of OPV will be the abolition of South Australia’s unique registered preference ticket savings provision…

This discussion points strongly towards the Liberal Party absorbing the lessons of past defeats in understanding that full preferential voting is no longer in its interest…

That is what this legislation is all about. This is all about their interests, their self-interests, their determination of what will make them win elections in the future and not lose seats to Independent and minor parties. They want to use the power of government, the power of their seats in this chamber, to push through a bill which will change the rules to make it easier for them to win more contests in the future.

It is a move that is opposite to what other jurisdictions around the country are doing. This is not something that everyone else is doing and we are just falling in line. Other people are actually going in the reverse direction. Have a look at Queensland, where they moved to full preferential voting in April 2016, with the then Labor opposition making amendments to a government bill to reinstate it. The long-term impacts of optional preferential voting on Queensland politics have been well documented. In 2012, Norm Kelly noted this in an Australian National University paper:

Proposals to introduce optional preferential voting have lacked support at the Federal level. Parliamentarians have raised concerns about the potential impacts of relaxing the rules to allow '1 only' votes, or votes using ticks and crosses.

The concern that a change to optional preferential voting would become a de facto first-past-the-post system has been confirmed by the experience of Queensland elections since optional preferential voting was introduced in that state. In Queensland, a significant unforeseen impact of the reformed optional preferential voting is the change in how political parties run their campaigns.

Prior to the 2001 election, the major parties advocated filling out more preferences. From 2001, however, parties have increasingly advised voters to just 'vote 1', with all major parties now advocating this option on their how-to-vote material. As a result, approximately two-thirds of voters—63.03 per cent—used the '1 only' option at the 2006. This confirms that the system is turning into a de facto first-past-the-post system, where seats are determined by a minority of votes and voters are not appropriately informed of their options. Consequently, while the reform is an improvement of fairness, voters' ability to make an informed choice is diminished.

We have the experience of Queensland, where it is very clear that up until 2012, when that paper was written, it became a de facto first-past-the-post system, where 63 per cent of voters were now voting first past the post. All major parties there were advocating that proposition. That means that all Independents—all the experiences we have had of elected Independents, who are non-incumbent Independents—would not have been elected and we would not have had the benefit of their contributions to this parliament and their ability to represent their constituents from the crossbenches. That is a very significant change.

You only have to look at the US, which is a very significant two-party system. It is almost impossible for an Independent to be elected in the United States; it is possible in South Australia. There is a track record of it happening, but that would not be the case under what is being proposed. Sixty-three per cent of voters in Queensland voting first past the post means that, if this were in place in South Australia, none of the people I mentioned would have been elected.

As we know, Queensland have now learnt their lesson and the law has changed. It has returned to full preferential voting, consistent with the commonwealth, consistent with states and territories around Australia. Also have a look at the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory also had optional preferential voting and has returned to full preferential voting. That was in legislation passed last year. The Chief Minister made some important points about the value of full preferential voting in his second reading speech on the reinstatement of full preferential voting. He said, and I quote:

Northern Territory elections are based on a voting system where preference votes are allocated to candidates in order to determine the final election result. A full preferential voting method encourages each and every voter to be more aware of their choice of candidates. It aligns the way in which ballot papers are required to be marked and completed with the way that these same ballot papers will be ultimately treated when distributing preferences. A full preferential voting method ensures that individual voters do not have less of a say in this democratic process due to how they choose to complete their ballot paper. Instead, each formal vote has an equal say on the distribution of preferences for candidates and this more fully represents the will of all Territory voters.

The Deputy Speaker endorsed the comments of the Chief Minister in the Northern Territory, yet another jurisdiction that has changed from having optional preferential voting (OPV) in place back to full preferential voting.

It also must be said that this would take us completely out of step with the commonwealth. People vote for state elections here and they also vote for federal elections, and what the Attorney-General is proposing is a significant shift in terms of pulling us out of alignment with the federal voting system. What that means for the confusion of voters and the potential for informal votes, particularly those that would be in place at a federal level should this pass, is very serious and I think has not been considered properly at all by the government in putting this forward.

This is very clearly a blatant attempt to try to further the Liberal Party's election prospects at future elections. As I said, this has not come from an independent commission. This has not come from any independent work or reports. This has come from the Liberal party room, trying to make sure they win the next election and the one after that and that they do not lose seats to Independents and minor parties by having a de facto first-past-the-post system here in South Australia. We will oppose this. We will oppose it because it is, we believe, a move against furthering our democracy here in South Australia.

We encourage all members in both houses of parliament to oppose this legislation on that basis, and we will be fighting this legislation very strongly because it is not in the interests of the people of South Australia. I believe that the people of South Australia, even if they are stridently for the Liberal Party or for the Labor Party, support a system whereby you can have Independents who get elected to parliament and you can have a system whereby you get different voices and a crossbench elected to parliament. What the Attorney-General is seeking to do is abolish that. It is all about their self-interest, and because of that we will oppose this bill.

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (16:36): I rise to express concerns about a number of the proposals this bill sets out. As members will know, I believe strongly in the role both houses play in our democracy and the value of the vote, so it is alarming to me we are presented with a complex bill making some 44 amendments to the law that governs the conduct of elections in this state.

We are being asked in this house to pass this bill this week, in just two days. The reason for this is that it is in the Legislative Council where the real debate will take place. The House of Assembly is not considered the test for the legislation because the government has the numbers to force it through in this place, so this is an example of government ramming a bill through without ample scrutiny and without true consultation.

It is true a number of the amendments arise from suggested improvements made by the Electoral Commission in its report to parliament a year ago, but since then who has the government consulted with? Did the government issue a discussion paper, write to registered political parties, invite members of parliament to provide feedback or consult with relevant parliamentary committees? Unfortunately, the answer is no, and at least two of the proposals in this bill are not proposals derived from any recommendation of the Electoral Commission or any other public body. They are proposals of the government alone.

There is a very good reason why we do not tamper with electoral laws without wide input from independent public bodies. The reason is governments of the day can too easily be tempted to bend the rules to suit what they consider to be best practice. We have seen the consequences of that in the past in this state and elsewhere. It can lead to a perversion of democracy, and that is to be condemned.

In this case, the two specific matters I refer to are the proposals to introduce optional preferential voting for elections in the House of Assembly and to prohibit the use of electoral posters or, as they are more commonly known, our beloved corflutes. I foreshadow I will be moving amendments in the committee stage to remove both of these proposals from the bill. Extraordinarily, when briefed on Monday by the Attorney's adviser and departmental staff, it came to light advice from the Electoral Commission had not been sought in relation to these measures.

Not only that, it was indicated inquiries had not been made about how many votes would be exhausted—or, to put it another way, wasted—if optional preferential voting were to be adopted. That is extraordinary. Here we are, being asked to support a major change to the operation of our system of voting, a system that has formed the cornerstone of our democratic practice for a century. The founding fathers put this system in place for very good reason, and it appears there is no idea, no idea at all, of the number of votes it would affect.

It is hard to believe a decision like this could be taken without full information being sought. I feel confident someone somewhere in the machinery of government must have looked into this aspect of the question. Why there is no information, though, remains a mystery. Regardless, it was only after asking the question directly that I and my colleagues on the crossbench were given an answer yesterday at 11.30am. I quote from the email provided by the Attorney-General's office:

ECSA advises that 40,067 votes were saved through voting tickets in the HA in 2018 (p 242 of the Election Statistics Report). It is not possible to know how many of these tickets were only marked with a 1, rather than a 1 and a 2, or 1, 2, 3, however, the view of ECSA is that the majority these tickets would only have been marked with a 1, a cross or a tick.

To put this in context, we have to look at the primary votes cast in the 2018 election. I refer to the electoral statistics report of the Electoral Commission for the 2018 state election tabled in parliament in 2019. Data from that report shows there were 1,048,713 votes cast at the 2018 election in the House of Assembly. There are some obvious points of comparison to be made. Firstly, there were 44,497 informal votes cast at the last election, or 4.1 per cent of all votes cast. These are votes that would be informal, regardless of voting tickets. In other words, we already have a kind of optional preferential in South Australia that works to validate about half the number of votes that would be otherwise rendered informal.

It is also worth noting the primary vote difference between the two major parties at the last election was only 10,000 votes more than the number of votes saved by voting tickets. The vote for SA-Best was just over three times the number of votes saved by voting tickets. The Greens had a total of around 1.5 times the number of votes saved by voting tickets, and the total vote for Independents and other minor parties was less than the number of votes saved by voting tickets.

I refer to table 3.6 on page 242 of the report. This is the table referred to in the email from the Attorney-General's office, providing details of voting ticket votes by electoral district. It shows there were 40,067 votes which were rendered formal and for which preferences were then distributed in accordance with the lodged voting tickets. If optional preferential voting is adopted, these 40,067 votes would potentially be lost if the candidate they related to were excluded in the ballot. That amounts to 3.8 per cent of total votes cast.

Changing the status of the 40,067 votes saved by lodged voting tickets will likely have a significant impact on the outcome of the next election. Of course, what this does not take account of is how voters may change their voting habits in response to optional preferential voting. We know when optional preferential voting was introduced in Queensland, for example, the then Labor government campaigned on a Just Vote 1 approach in order to split the Liberal and National Party vote. This was before those parties merged into the LNP.

We could surely expect similar campaign tactics here and that would be unfortunate in my opinion. It would, in effect, work to advantage major party incumbency and squeeze out Independents and minor parties. That would diminish participation in our democracy, the breadth and quality of debate in this parliament and would probably work to advantage the Liberal Party particularly. While it would not prevent parties handing out how-to-vote cards with a recommended preference distribution, the likelihood is it would see this practice decline and remove a powerful tool of dissent for those unhappy with incumbent members, the government and indeed the major parties.

In relation to corflutes, it seems probable similar questions of electoral advantage are motivating the government's proposal in this bill. I know some people find corflutes annoying, but, really, we are only talking about four weeks once every four years and if they are put up correctly they need only be revisited once each election and that is to take them down. For challengers, Independents and minor parties we all know that corflutes are an effective and inexpensive way of promoting candidacy. Removal of corflutes without compensating measures, such as the candidate booklets used in local government elections, could be viewed as rigging, rather than reforming the electoral system. Why, for example, are we not acting to ban canvassing at polling booths on polling day? Many voters find that more irksome, but clearly the marshalling of numbers of helpers required for a full day is easier for incumbents to organise.

As to the other part of this bill, I and my crossbench colleagues have a number of other concerns and I will ask some questions during committee stage in relation to these. For example, I note the bill proposes to allow electronic applications for postal votes. This concerns me and I would like to know what guarantees the Attorney-General can give to ensure applications are not made by third parties acting in the name of often vulnerable people who may be in need of a postal vote.

I also hold concerns about the reduction in deadlines for enrolment and the extension of the time frame for pre-polling. I expect many of those matters will be agitated between the houses. This house is not a rubber stamp and when it comes to how our democracy operates, attempts to push through measures without consultation, scrutiny or justification is an even more egregious abuse of process.

Lastly, I indicate that I will be moving a further amendment to this bill. It was alarming to read in a recent briefing paper issued by the senior research officer of the Electoral Commission that South Australia now has the lowest representation of women of any Australian parliament and below the critical mass of the 30 per cent recommended by the United Nations. I will be moving an amendment that puts this issue on the radar for political parties. In simple terms, my amendment will require registered political parties that field more than five candidates in a general election to have at least 35 per cent female and male candidates, with the sanction if they fail to comply of not receiving public funding.

Public funding of elections is a recent reform to our electoral system, and I think it is fair if political parties are going to receive taxpayer dollars that they should meet some minimum standards of representation in the candidates they offer. Manifestly, this has not been happening, so this is a small nudge that I hope means we can accelerate representation of women in parliament ahead of the 2050 time line forecast by the Electoral Commission briefing paper as the current rate of change. With those remarks, I look forward to the committee stage of the bill.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (16:45): I am very pleased to rise to speak on the Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. I congratulate the Attorney-General on bringing it to this parliament because it does a number of things that are very important in ensuring that the will of the South Australian populace be reflected, if this bill is passed, in the composition of the parliament, the make-up of the government, who serve those people.

There are a number of principle matters at stake and I want to focus on the principles, because the purpose of our parliament is to govern for the best interests of all South Australians. One would hope that it would also be a widely understood and accepted idea that that government should be determined by the will of the South Australian people.

We know that for a number of elections the government—the make-up of the parliament, the composition of the parliament—did not necessarily reflect the majority view as expressed in a compulsory preferential system as advocated for by those opposite. The shadow minister, in particular, suggested that backroom deals done in preference negotiations in marginal seats that he identified and ran through were instead a better way to do it.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: For the party that brought us the 'Put your family first' disgraceful attack on the electoral system, designed by the member for Playford, who was State Secretary of the Labor Party at the time—

Members interjecting:

Mr BROWN: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Minister, take your seat. Point of order.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: You're out of your seat.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, Attorney, that is a very good point, although we are under COVID arrangements, so I am not sure how that reflects.

Mr BROWN: I ask the minister to withdraw that disgraceful, incorrect statement.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: I seek the member's assistance as to which statement is allegedly incorrect and then I will assist the house if necessary.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Playford.

Mr BROWN: I ask the minister to withdraw the remark that I was the architect of a scheme designed to subvert democracy.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: For the sake of the late afternoon's debate, minister, it might be best if you withdraw that. You have obviously offended the—

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: I withdraw the language that I used.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Minister, I have not quite finished yet. Thank you for withdrawing it. You have obviously offended the member for Playford, but I do also ask the member for Playford and the member for Kaurna to listen carefully and intently and quietly to the minister's contribution, as those on the government benches did for you, member for Kaurna. Minister.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Thank you, sir. I withdraw the language that I used before and instead suggest that perhaps I could use an anecdote from history and real life to demonstrate some of the value of one of the propositions in this bill, that being the optional preferential system that is proposed.

The 2010 election, which many members would be familiar with and some might remember, was an election where the 'Put your family first' proposal was adopted by the Labor Party on election day. This was a how-to-vote card distributed by Labor Party members and other volunteers in four seats, including the seat of Morialta, where Labor Party volunteers purported to operate with an organisation connected to the then Family First political party, which was of course suggesting preferences to the Liberal Party in those seats. These Labor Party volunteers were wearing 'Put your family first' T-shirts and handing out flyers that said 'Put your family first', which clearly were designed to encourage voters who might be attached to the Family First Party to indeed express an order of preferences that was different to that which the Family First Party was suggesting.

Why does any party have these how-to-vote cards? Because it is a critically important and understood fact of our democracy that we want everyone's vote to be counted. We want people to vote for our parties, but to have their votes counted in South Australia they must number every box. Therefore, parties have this how-to-vote card so that their supporters, particularly those with any issues with their literacy or the English language, might be assisted to understand how to correctly fill in a valid vote, a vote that will be counted for the propositions that are put forward by the party they connect with.

The purpose of the Labor Party organising Labor Party members and Labor Party volunteers to assist handing out how-to-votes that said 'Vote 1 for the Family First candidate' and then prioritised the Labor candidate above the Liberal candidate in whichever seat, I would propose could only be to encourage those voters who wanted to support Family First to support candidates who were not endorsed by Family First, in this case being the Labor candidates in what were identified as marginal seats.

The member for Playford has an interesting role to play here, of course, because, if memory serves me right, I think his name was on that how-to-vote card in authorising the how-to-vote card. Indeed, a defence used by the Labor Party was that anybody who was allegedly misled by this how-to-vote card should have known better because, forgetting that the Family First name of a political party was up there big in at least 172 maybe 132-point font, and the member for Playford may correct me; he might have been the one doing the desktop publishing—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni interjecting:

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The fact is, that that—

Mr BROWN: Point of order: I would ask the minister to withdraw that remark.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Minister for Skills and Innovation, that was an interjection and I did hear it and I will ask you to withdraw it.

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: What was it that you heard, sir?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, don't do that, minister: just withdraw.

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: I withdraw.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Minister, before I give you the call again I am going to bring the house to order. I know emotions are running high. Minister, you have the call.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Thank you, sir. The Labor Party in producing this flyer, which was authorised by the Labor Party state secretary at the time, the now member for Playford, put in large font—132 or 172, we have not quite got clarification, but it was very large—'Family First'.

Mr Brown interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Playford is called to order. I do not know how many times that is today, member, but take heed.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Any reasonable observer, I would suggest, would think that it was a Family First how-to-vote card and I would put that that was the design. The second political party that was identified—

Mr BROWN: Point of order: I ask the minister to withdraw that remark, that the idea was to mislead voters.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Sir, I was not making allusions about any member of parliament.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, that is true, minister. I am not going to uphold that point of order. I know people are passionate about this and ultimately we are discussing behaviour and what is allowable in the lead-up to and on election day and that brings out passions, but I do remind members that the minister can be heard in silence. Minister.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Thank you, sir. So, at the very least, we have Labor Party members and Labor Party volunteers and supporters handing out a flyer authorised by the Labor Party where 'Australian Labor Party' was written at the bottom in, I believe, eight-point font; it could have been 10-point font.

Mr Brown: Whatever the law says.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Was it six? Whatever the law says is the response. I take that on. It was whatever the minimum is that the law says and my recollection is that is eight-point font. Family First, the name of another political party, was in big words underneath the words 'put your'—'Put your family first'—in 172-point font perhaps, 20 times larger. I leave it to any reasonable member of parliament, any reasonable member of the community to suggest to me that that was indeed a flyer designed to be open and transparent about its support for the Labor Party. I remain to be convinced.

You know who else was not convinced? Anyone in the Labor caucus between 2010 and 2014 because, indeed, the former government were so embarrassed by their behaviour that they brought a bill to the parliament to make it illegal to do something like that again. That was the behaviour that was authorised by the member for Playford when he was the State Secretary of the Labor Party: to authorise and to presumably, therefore, take responsibility for the publication and dissemination of a flyer on election day, which was subsequently effectively outlawed by this house based on a bill brought by the former Labor government because they were so embarrassed by their own conduct.

I would put that the reason the Labor Party did that was to take advantage of preferences in the way that they were required to be done under the compulsory preferential system, and they were enabled to do so. The benefit of an optional preferential system is that the purpose of saving a vote, the purpose of enabling every voter's wish to be reflected in the ballot box, counted for the candidate they support, will be maximised because it will be, indeed, much easier for any elector to express their preference because they will not need to follow a how-to-vote card, they will not need to choose between candidates that are lower down that they potentially do not prefer, and they can then cast their vote.

They can cast their vote in preferential order for all candidates. They can cast their vote in preferential order for some candidates and then not choose between the last couple of candidates. They can cast their vote for a smaller number of candidates in the order of their preference up to the point where they no longer have a preference between those that remain on the ballot paper. It is a perfect summary of how we can give choice back to voters about how they express their electoral will through the ballot box.

On a point of principle, I would advocate in a compulsory voting system, as we have, for the opportunity for a voter to say, 'You know what? I don't care whether you are in the Labor Party or the Greens, I don't want to choose between either of you,' or, 'I don't care whether you are in the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party, I don't want to choose between either of you. I am voting 1 Green, I am voting 2 Labor, I am voting 3 for the Nick Xenophon Team or SA-Best, or Advance SA'—any of the other parties that are in the system—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Whatever they are called.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: —and then choose not to vote for the Liberal Party or any other candidate under that. The fact is optional preferential voting gives that power to every voter, and for those voters who have identified only one or two people whom they want to support it gives them that power, too, and reduces the possibility of their vote being counted as invalid because they have not successfully identified filling in all of the boxes. The Labor Party does not have an in-principle objection to this, otherwise they would not have introduced legislation before the last election to have optional preferential voting in the upper house.

The Labor Party's objection to this is that they fear that it will damage them electorally. The member for Florey identified that, in fact, one of the greatest proponents of electoral benefit of the optional preferential voting system was indeed a Labor Premier in Queensland call Peter Beattie. It was the Labor Party that determined that they would use the system to say 'Just vote 1' in their campaign material.

The fact is that in that circumstance the Labor Party did well, the Liberal Party did very, very badly—I have a feeling they may have only got a handful or less of members in that election—the National Party did pretty badly, and the One Nation Party, who were I think one of the major opposition parties at the time, probably did less well than Labor. The fact is that sometimes it will help Liberal, sometimes it will help Labor.

Mr Picton interjecting:

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: We should be basing an electoral system on what is the best possible opportunity for people in our community to have the expression of their will reflected in the ballot box and in the composition of this parliament.

The member for Kaurna interjected that it will hurt Independents, or words to that effect; the member for Florey suggested as much in her comments. I challenge them on this claim. I think it is nonsense. Somebody who is capable of being elected to parliament as an Independent—because without the infrastructure of a political party the community's respect and regard for them is so significant that they are capable of winning an election in a compulsory preferential system—in many ways will benefit from the community not having to fill out every vote.

Somebody like the member for Florey, somebody like the member for Mount Gambier, somebody like the member for Frome would have been elected, I would posit, under an optional preferential voting system. Somebody like Janine Haines, who was leader of the Australian Democrats and significantly popular in the community, never stood a chance in that election because of the compulsory preferential system.

I think it was Gordon Bilney—the member for Kaurna might remind me; I am pretty sure he knows him—who was the member for Kingston at the time. Janine Haines was a candidate and the Liberal Party had a candidate, and the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, to my recollection, decided to swap preferences and shut out the Australian Democrats leader from having a hope of getting elected to that seat. I would posit that the people of Kingston, were they given the opportunity of optional preferential voting at that election, potentially may have given Janine Haines a better chance.

However, in the system defended by the member for Kaurna, allegedly to support Independents, and by the member for Florey, underestimating her own popularity in her community, those Independents would not benefit from the compulsory preferential system. They would indeed have benefited from an optional preferential system. But do you know what? That is not even my argument either. My argument comes back to principle. How can we best give the voters the opportunity to express their will at the ballot box and thereby have this parliament reflect the people who the South Australian community want to be here?

The bill does other things that I believe are also worthy of support. One of the principles in the bill is to simplify the pre-polling arrangements. If the bill is supported, these arrangements will assist in ensuring that the will of the community is best reflected in the ballot box outcomes. They remove the current state of affairs whereby the Electoral Commissioner is encouraged to encourage votes at polling booths on polling day.

There is a range of other things that put up a barrier to pre-poll voting, such as the requirement that you have to declare that you are unable to vote on polling day and so forth. I do not think that should be necessary. As long as every citizen in our country can vote, and vote only once, then I think that is the key goal that we are seeking to achieve.

In relation to voting during the period of voting, we are seeing in the United States right now an opportunity for the use of pre-poll voting and postal voting in order to benefit the capacity of that country to have an election during a pandemic. It need not be a pandemic for people to be inconvenienced by having to vote on polling day, inconvenienced to the point where some of them miss out on voting or have to rush in and out, and make very difficult decisions in relation to whether it is child care, employment arrangements or anything else.

If our purpose is to have a system that best identifies the will of the community, the will of our voters and how they express themselves at the ballot box, then surely a system that makes it easy for people to vote and makes it easy to have their vote registered and counted is the one that we should be supporting. I think these improvements to the pre-poll voting system do just that and should therefore be commended.

This bill does another significant thing, which is extraordinarily welcomed in my community and, I think, communities around Australia: it proposes to ban the use of corflute posters on Stobie poles. For people who have observed elections in other states, the extraordinary number of these posters that appear throughout our community is strangely South Australian.

There are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands. I know the former member for Croydon Michael Atkinson revelled in the idea that he would only put up corflute posters on private property. He did not think it was necessary for his vote in the seat of Croydon to put up corflute posters. He made some entertaining speeches in this parliament about this.

The seat of Croydon is not traditionally one that has been on the knife edge of the margin in choosing elections. Usually, in marginal seats, where people are having a crack, three posters on a Stobie pole are not an uncommon sight. It is an unsightly common occurrence, but not an uncommon one. I think it is a tremendous distraction from what we should be focused on. It encourages the superficial side of elections.

While political parties are encouraged to do so by the fact that they are allowed to and by the fact that everyone else is doing so, you end up with this situation where a candidate who does not put up posters is seen not to be trying. In order to demonstrate to their community that they are trying as they go around introducing themselves, they are therefore encouraged to put up ridiculous numbers of posters.

I would posit that a better way to be known in your community is to be engaged in your community. A better way for elections to be focused is on talking about issues by using the opportunity to visit community groups and by using the opportunity to potentially distribute materials focused on the policy directions you wish to take as a candidate or a party, rather than having these posters, which traditionally have a name, a face and a political party, to drum in that soft support the idea that you are around the place and to familiarise yourself with the electorate.

The wastage in environmental terms is monumental. The annoyance for our community is significant. I certainly welcome and commend the Attorney-General for bringing to this parliament a bill that will remove the use of corflute posters from Stobie poles in future state elections. There is still the capacity for people to express support in their residences, businesses and so forth in other ways. For anybody who wants to spend some time talking to their community about whether this measure is something that should be endorsed or not, I would encourage them to do so if they are in any doubt about supporting this bill.

I note the claim by an earlier speaker that this was a suggestion that we are looking to rig elections. I fail to see any logic in that claim and I think that the community will certainly welcome this move. I endorse this bill to the house and I commend the bill to the house. I encourage all members to vote for it in its current form and I will certainly be doing so. I look forward to the continuance of the debate.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (17:06): I rise to speak on the Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. If you were not convinced by the contribution of the member for Morialta, that is no surprise. That was easily the least convincing attempt at justifying a move to optional preferential voting you would hear.

The simple fact, as the member for Kaurna has said, is this is an attempt to enshrine the incumbency of the current Liberal government—nothing more, nothing less. This has been put forward by an Attorney who has already been called out for prioritising the return to Queen's Counsels over sentencing reform. Now we learn that there has been a substantial body of work that has been undertaken during the last six months, as this state grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, to put together a bill that can help the Liberal Party secure power here in South Australia for as long as possible.

The thing that offends the Liberals the most, and the thing they seek to change here, is the fundamental tenet of our voting system at the moment: that every single vote counts. What the Deputy Premier, the member for Bragg, and all her colleagues do not want to happen anymore is for all those votes to count because, when all the votes count, it does not matter whether you vote Labor or Liberal or Green or Independent or Australian Conservative or some other party, your vote counts all the way to the end.

What the member for Bragg wants is the immediate exhaustion of votes as soon as their utility has been dispensed with, presumably, in her view. If you vote for a minor party but you do not fill out the entirety of that ballot paper so that all candidates receive a preference, that is a substantial advantage to the Liberals. The Liberals say, 'Well, that's just because the Labor Party and its electoral support base is inherently flawed because, by and large, it relies on the preferences of minor parties to get its candidates elected.'

Putting aside the fact that the Liberal Party as it is is an unholy political marriage of the Montagues and the Capulets and continues to be, particularly while the member for Bragg remains in this parliament and particularly while she and her moderate faction ensure they bring all effort to bear to exclude more conservative-thinking Liberals from the cabinet, it is also flawed, of course, because what is wrong with a Liberal member of parliament not achieving 50 per cent of the primary vote, not getting elected in their own right and relying on preferences?

It is the same for the majority of members of parliament. It is certainly the case for me. Yes, I secured a higher primary vote than my Liberal opponent, and I did so in 2014, but I do not decry his right as it was in 2018 or her right as it was in 2014 to receive the preferences of minor parties. I think that is absolutely appropriate. There is nothing wrong with that.

Once again it ensures that every vote counts. Even if you vote for a temporary political party, if I can put it like that, one which is only formed for the purpose of contesting, perhaps, one election and then disappears into the ether from then on, if somebody votes to support that minor party, why shouldn't their vote carry all the way through to the final count? Why shouldn't their vote contribute to the election of a Labor, a Liberal or an Independent member of parliament? There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

So then we hear the spurious argument of, 'Oh, well it's okay in the Legislative Council so we should bring it down into the House of Assembly.' Well, we all know why we have optional preferential voting in upper house elections in Australia, whether it is the Senate nationally or whether it is in the Legislative Council here in South Australia. It is because Australians and South Australians have no tolerance for a tablecloth ballot paper, because of course we have seen in the last 25 years that we will have dozens, if not up to and sometimes over 100 candidates in those upper house elections, and it is unreasonable to expect a voter to have to vote and put a number in a box next to each of those candidates. So it is entirely different what we are seeking to achieve in elections both upstairs and downstairs.

I did have to chuckle as I was listening to the contribution of the member for Morialta about the feigned outrage that comes from the Liberals about the electoral campaign conducted in some parts of the 2010 election regarding Family First, because the Liberals would have you believe that this was an outrageous concept propagated on the people of South Australia by the Labor Party.

Well, let me correct the record because the people who brought this practice to the people of South Australia were the Liberals themselves: Malcolm Buckby contesting the seat of Light in 2002; and also the former member for Mawson, Robert Brokenshire, contesting that election for the seat of Mawson in 2006. That was its genesis. Let's not have any other revisionist history put to the parliament.

This is what happened, and so for the Liberals to say, 'It is outrageous for a major political party to claim that they have family values and encourage voters to vote accordingly,' well, it was the Liberal Party of South Australia that brought that practice into our electoral system. The Deputy Premier should know that and should know better because not only was she party president, I believe, up until 2002 but she was also a candidate for the 2002 election for the first time, as she was a senior member of the Liberal parliamentary party from 2002 onwards.

No-one is persuaded by the bogus crocodile tears from those opposite about that. I am looking forward, of course, to the contribution from the member for Unley. No doubt there will be some horrific worker-driven unionist conspiracy which he is seeking to crush through this, and no doubt we will be furnished with tales of apprenticeships—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Lee, we are all enjoying—from everyone really—a potted history of South Australian political history, but I do not think we should anticipate too much what might lie ahead.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Okay, well, let me segue, using, perhaps, the member for Unley in my next contribution, to the matter of corflutes. How would the member for Unley have first been elected to this place if he were not able to place his visage all over the main roads of the electorate of Unley? Remember, the member for Unley only just escaped unscathed with his candidacy through one of the well-known, well-publicised, internecine factional battles for preselection within the South Australian Liberal Party to gather enough support. Was it Chris Kenny or was it Christopher Moriarty? I cannot remember who was defeated.

Perhaps in either example the member for Unley has done us all a favour, in any event, which is not saying much. But if it was not for the benefit of corflutes, how does somebody seeking election, particularly for the first time, take on the enormous advantage of incumbency? Being able to publicise yourself or publicise a candidate's name and the fact that they are indeed a real person is an important part of that.

The member for Morialta says it is unsightly to put these posters up on Stobie poles. First of all, each to their own. Some might be more unsightly than others, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Are we really saying that we are covering up some sort of Hanging Gardens of Babylon in the quality of our Stobie poles by putting candidates' pictures on them? Really, if we cannot publicise the fact that (a) there is an election on and (b) these are the candidates, how else are we meant to encourage people to come out to vote?

We know that electoral participation continues to ebb in this state, as it does across most western democracies in the world. We know that people's engagement with politics continues to dwindle. If we can not, firstly, publicise the fact that we have an election on and, secondly, let people know who those candidates are, then we can only expect that people's engagement with elections and politics will continue to decline.

It is no coincidence that there are several amendments contained within this bill to change the act so as to reduce, to minimise and, in some cases, remove the requirements to advertise elections and also those key steps within elections. That is no coincidence because, once again, this is a bill designed to provide as great an advantage as possible to the incumbents.

If you can perhaps draw as little attention as possible to the fact that there is an election on, if you can draw as little attention as possible to the fact that there is an opportunity to be enrolled to vote for the purposes of the election, and if you can ensure that you have arranged the electoral process so that the incumbents have a serious advantage over all other challenges, then of course, from the Deputy Premier's and the Liberal government's point of view, you can see why this bill is so attractive to them. Of course, it does not improve the conduct of our elections; in fact, it does the opposite.

The basis for all this is the substantial chip that remains on the collective Liberal Party shoulder over their performance from 2002 through to their eventual electoral victory in 2018. Some people would say that it was the result between 2002 and 2006 of the ongoing churning of leaders of Liberal Party that meant that the public had no confidence in the Liberals when it came to the 2006 election.

Personally, I think then Liberal leader Rob Kerin is one of the most respected, admirable and just plain nicest people I have come across in politics, so not to detract from him, but what arrived after that was what caused the Liberal Party so much damage in 2006, at the same time that a government, a state and economy were performing exceptionally strongly under the then leadership of the Labor government.

Fast-forward to 2010, and you could ascribe all sorts of reasons as to why the Liberals lost 2010, but one thing still comes up in the minds of journalists, and that was, unfortunately, the member for Bragg's refusal to rule out a challenge to the venerable leader, the former member for Heysen. That certainly did derail any momentum that the Liberals had in the last week.

Not many people can say that they single-handedly lost their party an election but, in 2014, along came the member for Norwood, the current Premier. Summing up the case for people to put their faith in him on the day before the election was held, he stood up and proudly told the people of South Australia to vote Labor. On top of that, we had ill-fated submission after ill-fated campaigning technique, which led to what the Liberals thought was an unfair drawing of the electoral boundaries in South Australia.

I can understand why some Liberals would be distressed when the then Liberal leader—the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Norwood, as he was back then—would spend an enormous amount of time during the election campaign out campaigning for those important swing votes on Eyre Peninsula, doing his best to try to drive up that margin as hard as he could from 24 or 25 per cent to try to get it up to 26, 27 or 28 per cent. That effort was repeated across several safe Liberal electorates in regional South Australia.

Then the Liberals suddenly think, 'I can't understand why we won the two-party preferred vote statewide, yet we failed to win a majority of seats. I can't understand why at one point we nearly had 15 seats, an over 10 per cent margin, compared with the Labor Party's only 5 per cent. I can't understand it.' Well, 16 years in a row might start spelling it out to those opposite. You do not need to try to fundamentally rewrite our electoral laws to enshrine your incumbency. You just need to understand what the remainder of political parties in the remainder of jurisdictions around Australia understand about political campaigning in the modern age.

The member for Morialta says you need to go out and talk to people. I realise that might be an anathema to some, but that is actually quite important. It is actually quite important that you go out and speak with people. It does not matter if they identify as a Labor voter, a Liberal voter, a small business owner or, God forbid, a trade unionist, someone who puts at heart the interests of the nearly 840,000 South Australians who are workers. It does not matter what their interests are. Be willing to engage with them and be willing to have a fair comparison and a fair battle of ideas in the lead-up to an election, and enter the contest on election day with both parties as well as Independents and minor parties having put their best case forward for the people to decide.

What is wrong with it? That is the system we have at the moment, but that is something so egregious to the member for Bragg, so egregious to the Deputy Premier, that she seeks to fundamentally change our voting system here in South Australia. Even though I may not agree with them, even though I may not like their politics and even though most likely they do not like mine, I think those people who are motivated to go to vote on election day who only have an interest in voting for a minor party—perhaps because they are a member of that party, or they are familiar with that political party and they follow what they are interested in and what they advocate for, or they know the individual standing for that minor party or even just as a purely Independent candidate—deserve to have their votes respected.

I think those people have a right to have their say and have their say carried through for the entirety of the electoral count. I do not think, like the Deputy Premier thinks, that as soon as they have voted their vote can be counted once or maybe twice, but certainly less than the number of candidates on the ballot paper, and then dispensed with. Every vote does count in this state. Every vote does count and should count to make sure that everybody gets their say, not just those people who might be prepared to vote in a way that puts sufficient support behind the Liberal Party of South Australia to maintain them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

It is an outrageous abuse of power that the Deputy Premier and the government would spend so much time and so much effort, when our state is crying out for economic leadership, to put all those working hours into a bill to try to enshrine their incumbency. This is not just a threat to parties other than the Liberal Party, it is a threat to any individual who might seek to stand for election on their own merits. It is a threat to all of those people who are not a member of a major party, who at some point at the next election or in the future might want to put their hand up and seek election either to the House of Assembly or to the other place.

Remember what happened in 1997: we had a single individual running on a single issue, who just ran their candidacy up the flagpole because they were so passionate about a particular issue. That person was Nick Xenophon. It is clear, under what is being proposed here by the Deputy Premier, that had Mr Xenophon stood in a lower house election for one of the 47 seats he would have had no chance—absolutely no chance whatsoever—and that is exactly the way the Deputy Premier and the Liberals want it. It is their way or the highway when it comes to electoral law. They will continue to push this and they will do anything they possibly can to get this bill passed.

We should all remember the closing words of the member for Morialta who said, 'I support this bill in its current form.' Well, I wonder what gymnastics, I wonder what other allowances and I wonder what other negotiations this government will be tempted to force their way through in order to get this bill through. It is a disgrace and it should be opposed.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley—Minister for Innovation and Skills) (17:26): I am very pleased to contribute to the bill and support the bill. I note the member for Lee's description of the inclusive nature of Liberal Party campaigning where we believe every vote is important and so we do visit our base and we do support our base. Yes, it is harder work when you are inclusive as a political party because it is much easier just to focus on the marginal seats and forget about your base. But that is Labor's model and that is why compulsory preferential voting is important for their model: they have forgotten about their base.

Their only way of keeping the base with them is to force them to vote second, third and fourth preferences if they decide, 'This year, I am sick of being ignored by my local member. I am sick of my local member, the member for Wright, running around in King,' for example. 'I want my member for Wright working for me in Wright. I am going to not give the member for Wright my first preference this election.'

But Labor knows that they will get the preference back because of compulsory preferential voting, because their base is always going to put Labor ahead of the Liberal Party in compulsory preferential voting. Consequently, they know that they can give the bird to their base to campaign in marginal seats, ignore their base because they know that even if those voters drift they are forced to come back by law if they want to have a formal vote. That is the basis of the Labor Party's entire campaign strategy.

The member for Lee let the cat out of the bag. For Labor, their base does not matter. They are just a vehicle for them in their pyramid of power that they set up through the union movement to get themselves into parliament. They are disdainful of their base; they just use them. That is the evidence that we heard from the member for Lee.

I also found it very amusing to hear how Labor candidates—I suspect the member was speaking for the Labor Party—actually need posters around for people to know who they are. I wonder why that is. It is because they are always blow-ins. They are not locals. That is why they need the posters: no-one knows who they are. No-one knows who they are, so that is why Labor say they need posters. That is why they say they need posters. That is why they need posters. It is just so obvious. The political motivation of those opposite is coming out in droves during this debate. Politics for them is all about them; it is not for the people of South Australia.

We encourage people to participate in the electoral system; that is why we want to make it easier to vote. We want people who want to vote for their own candidate but do not give a damn about anybody else to be able to do that and still have that as a counted formal vote. That is democratic. It is not democratic to say, 'If you want that person, you must vote for others in order for us to count that vote for your first preference.' That is the system that Labor is supporting. What is democratic about that?

Compulsory preferential voting makes political parties and members of parliament lazy because it is so easy to do what Labor does and take advantage of the fact that, if people want to have a formal vote, they must have every square filled out. How outrageous is it that they would prefer, even though someone's intention is clear on a voting ballot, that their vote is not counted because they left two squares blank? That is their choice. That is what they are proposing is a fair system.

They do not know the personal circumstances of that person who voted. Maybe they made a mistake, but under Labor's preferred option they deserve to be punished if they have made a mistake: 'If they are too stupid to fill out all the squares and the vote is not one of ours, then they should be punished.' That is all you can read about in the speeches coming from the other side of the chamber. Every single vote counts only if it represents the wishes of the voter.

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (17:32): I rise to offer my emphatic support for the electoral reform that is proposed and recognise the significant work undertaken by the Electoral Commission of South Australia informing the many recommendations before us.

I would like to start by focusing perhaps on something that has not received as much attention throughout the commencement of this debate, although I acknowledge that the Minister for Education did touch on it, and that is that this state has failed to keep pace with the electoral modernisation that has occurred in other jurisdictions. They are the words of the commissioner. It is now well overdue for South Australia to modernise its electoral act and allow voting services to evolve in order to meet changing community expectations.

As the commissioner stated in his report, our electoral system must adapt and integrate technology to better reflect the digitally connected environment we live in in the 21st century. Thus, in the government's bill before us, there is welcome reform to allow for alternative ways to lodge information with the Electoral Commission.

Sensible changes, such as enabling candidates to lodge nomination forms online instead of paper and manual data entry, will significantly reduce time and resources for processing nominations, how-to-vote cards, voting tickets and other candidate-related information. As well as that, it will enhance accuracy and streamline quality assurance.

There are sensible changes contained in this bill before us that include enabling voters to apply for postal ballots by phone or online with extended application deadlines. The majority of inquiries to the electoral office in the lead-up to the 2018 election were reportedly from alarmed visitors, travellers and those who were going to be away from their homes on election day, out of their state or overseas. All were worried they were not going to get their postal vote in time.

After the election, there were electors fearing fines due to uncertainties as to whether their vote had been received in time, etc. What happens to a grey nomad with no fixed address—and I can tell you that the Narungga electorate attracts a fair proportion of those—with regard to postal votes or the like? Thus, I welcome the reform offered in this legislation to better cater for such people as itinerant electors.

Amendments proposed are that if an itinerant elector fails to vote, or is outside South Australia for more than one month, they will not lose their status. There is proposed exemption from compulsory voting for such itinerant electors so such voters as the homeless or the travelling retiree can avoid unfair hardship due to stringent electoral legislation. A lack of a permanent residential address should not disenfranchise people from voting.

After much consultation, concerns have been recognised around existing rules for itinerant electors. While under the act enrolment is not compulsory for itinerant electors, voting is compulsory, which has proved problematic when a homeless person, who is enrolled but does not vote on the day for whatever reason, is issued with a failure to vote notice, which they will unlikely receive, given their lack of a fixed address. Failure to respond then becomes a fine and, if left unpaid, a bigger fine and potentially a court action.

Reform is clearly needed to improve such pointless endeavours that do nothing to connect homeless people with the democratic process but instead just add stress and fear. Thus, I welcome the amendments to provide that itinerant electors who fail to vote at a state election, or who remain outside South Australia for a continuous period of more than one month, continue to be entitled to be enrolled as itinerant electors. Modernising our voting services to better accommodate the realities of modern society was a clear direction of the commissioner to ensure that all electors, including those unable to access a polling booth, those living in remote areas of the state or travelling, have more flexibility.

In the reform before us is the capacity for the Electoral Commissioner to establish pre-poll booths as he deems appropriate anywhere in the state, up to 12 days before the election, not just in remote locations but in rural areas or at declared institutions, such as nursing homes or hospitals, which is currently the case. This, too, offers vital reform.

It is recognised that more and more people want to vote early, and this has tried to be accommodated with the expansion of pre-poll voting services, removing the eligibility requirements for voting early. Pre-polling went up for the 2018 election. There were over 120,000 pre-poll votes in 2018, which was almost 11 per cent of the overall vote. This was significantly up from the 2014 election, when there were just over 80,000 pre-poll votes, being just 7.5 per cent of the votes.

Clearly, it is time for improvements to better cater for these voters. I especially welcome the reform to recognise pre-poll votes as ordinary votes so that they can be counted sooner and not wait until all other ordinary votes are counted before they start working on them. This will speed up declarations significantly, making the counting process far less drawn out.

Postal voting is also another important area requiring reform. It is a popular method of voting, and in the 2018 election there were over 95,000 postal votes, which is roughly 8.5 per cent of the vote. This was up from just over 84,000 in the 2014 election, which was only 7.8 per cent of the vote, so it is increasing in popularity as well. At the last election, almost 103,000 applications for postal voting were processed—a 14.8 per cent rise from 2014—and, interestingly, of those 7,756 postal vote applications were rejected for simple things such as missing signatures or applying twice.

There is an obvious need for clarity. Of the 95,191 voting packs posted to electors, 73,982 were completed correctly and returned on time to be admitted to the count. There has been work done already to improve this process. A new innovation for the 2018 election was having the form required to apply for the postal voting available for downloading from the Electoral Commission SA website and then electors could print off the form, sign it, scan it and email it back.

That was seen as an improvement and one that alleviated widespread concern from electors around the reliability of Australia Post delivery times, especially for electors in rural, interstate and overseas places. We are the only electoral commission in Australia not to offer electors the option of applying for postal votes online, so this proposed reform is welcome and will bring our state in line with other jurisdictions.

Some other changes noted in Commissioner Sherry's report that do not require legislative change, but I welcome them nonetheless because they offer improvements to a dated system, include the rollout of full electronic roll-marking at every booth to reduce queue waiting times, the potential for multiple voting and the incidence of polling official error. Several electoral commissions around Australia have made the move to full electronic roll mark off with success, including the ACT, NT, Queensland and Tasmania. Every other commission is currently working on it.

Using technology for mark-off not only speeds up voter identification processes but reduces errors and reduces costs and waste that comes from the longstanding practice of printing excess quantities of all 47 House of Assembly ballot papers—just in case they are needed to cater for those who vote out of district. It will also ensure capacity for the desired early counting of pre-poll votes to count those votes as ordinary votes. It will be a costly exercise to roll out, but one that I see as vital.

The proposal for pre-poll centres is also welcomed—potentially one in every House of Assembly district—and expanding opening hours to accommodate electors who work or whose commitments prevent them from voting during normal business hours is another good idea. All such innovations are already adopted in other jurisdictions, and I welcome them. Commissioner Sherry also spoke at length in his report about the need for more education for young people and new electors to keep them engaged and informed to ensure their vote counts.

It was disturbing to read the declining rate of enrolment of younger electors and the increasing number of non-voters. That is not just a matter of concern for South Australia; it is a trend forming across Australia, New Zealand and beyond. A solution offered elsewhere is more flexibility and enrolling rules, such as allowing people to enrol after the roll has closed, even on the same day as voting enrolment, if that is what it takes to engage young new voters with democracy in our society. We do not want thousands of people turning up to polling booths on election day and being told they are not on the roll and cannot vote.

Reportedly, there were over 7,000 people who went to vote, who were not on the roll but who voted anyway believing there was a mistake in the records. In the commissioner's report, of those 7,318 people unfortunately just 153 of them had their House of Assembly vote counted, and 852 had their Legislative Council vote counted, so any improvements that can be made to prevent this are very important. New South Wales has permitted enrolment up to and including on polling day since 2011, and since 2010 in Victoria. Whilst not recommended in the current reforms, I would welcome this change as well, which is potentially one that will naturally follow once electronic marking is instigated.

Finally—and it has been well ventilated already this afternoon—perhaps the two reform points in the bill before us that have sparked the most public interest are the reform of optional preferential voting for lower house candidates and the banning of corflutes on public roads. Of the former, a major change introduced before the 2018 state election was optional preferential voting for the Legislative Council and in his report the commissioner deemed it to have been successful. Thus, now the government seeks to expand this option into the House of Assembly voting.

Put simply, this system allows electors the option of marking their preference above the line instead of having to number all boxes in order of preference. It does not preclude candidates—Independent, minor, major or otherwise—from standing successfully and contesting the election. It just means that all candidates have to convince the majority of electors that they should vote for them. It puts the onus on the candidate to convince the elector of their merit. Voters who still wish to number every box will be able to do so. The change is that they will now have another option. So it is the case that if optional preferential voting works for the Legislative Council there is no reason why it cannot work in the House of Assembly.

I welcome this reform and see it as a change that frees up the voter to make up their own mind about who and how many candidates they vote for instead of having to vote for candidates they do not want. This reform rightly provides transparency of where votes and preferences go and is an initiative I firmly believe the community will welcome.

The proposal to ban the use of corflutes on public roads is perhaps my favourite of the reforms proposed. I note that the Minister for Education made the comment that they were unsightly and should be banned for that particular reason, with which the member for Lee disagreed, but I hope, in the effort to find some bipartisan support in what has been a contentious debate, that we can all agree that the electors of Narungga were subjected to an unsightly proposition at the last election and that we can give consideration to alleviating their concerns for the 2022 election. It certainly was a pretty brutal thing for them to see on a Stobie pole when they were driving around. I am, of course, referring to myself and not the opposition.

I do not believe that corflutes offer any value for voters. I believe they are outdated and are an eyesore and a distraction for motorists. They cost a lot of money and only end up in landfill. As a parliament that just voted to ban single-use plastics, these pose a serious environmental risk and as a parliament we should resolve in the same with regard to this plastic. Other states have gone down this path and it is time South Australia did as well. They are an outdated method of promoting candidates to the public and do little to educate voters about a candidate or their platform.

Specifically, the bill before us will prevent electoral advertising posts on public roads, including any structure, fixture or vegetation on a public road but will, rightly, not prevent display of corflutes at polling booths or on private property. No longer will we see ridiculous jostling for Stobie pole positions, removing, shifting or defacing corflutes, or notices issued for putting them up too early or taking them down too late. This change cannot come soon enough in my view, and I am looking forward to its speedy passage through both houses.

In closing, as publicly stated back in July when I welcomed the release of the Electoral Commissioner of South Australia's report on the 2018 state election and the subsequent reform bill introduced by Attorney-General, this electoral reform bill importantly incorporates recommendations from the Electoral Commissioner and from government that improve administration, streamline voting processes and modernise the Electoral Act. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms LUETHEN (King) (17:46): I rise to support the Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2020, which is designed to modernise South Australia's electoral laws for the benefit of South Australians. I commend the Attorney-General again for her hard work to bring this bill to parliament.

Expanded pre-poll voting options, a ban on election corflutes on public roads and optional preferential voting for House of Assembly candidates are reforms being introduced to state parliament by our Marshall Liberal government. Every election cycle, the Electoral Commissioner of South Australia reviews the previous election. The government of the day then considers these findings to determine whether any changes are needed to the Electoral Act for the benefit of South Australians.

The 2018 report was tabled in parliament on 28 February 2019. After considering the commissioner's report, the government is proposing a number of reforms, many of which directly meet recommendations of the commissioner and others which have been initiated by government. Under this bill, the Electoral Commissioner will be able to establish pre-poll booths anywhere in South Australia up to 12 days before the election.

The bill provides that voters who attend a pre-polling booth established for their district will have the convenience of being able to cast an ordinary vote. The counting of ordinary votes made at pre-poll booths will be able to occur before the close of polls in prescribed circumstances. This will help to ensure that the results of the election are known as soon as possible after the close of polls. These changes are possible because each voter will be marked off on an electronic electoral roll on a computer at each issuing point in every polling place. Electronic roll mark-off will ensure that there is no risk of any person voting multiple times.

Previously in this parliament, we have seen amendments to curb the availability of pre-polling. Many more people are making themselves available for pre­poll voting and they do so because it is convenient for them. We need to adapt to changes that South Australians are asking us for. We have seen a clear shift in both recent federal and state elections in 2019 and 2018 respectively. Why should South Australians not be able to vote when they want to and when it is convenient to them, especially in the weeks prior to an election?

This flexibility is consistent with the right to have a choice about when you vote and your entitlement to be able to vote, which this bill is strengthening. Voting is a democratic right and if you want to vote early, you should be able to do so. I am pleased that this bill enables greater access to voting early and ensures that those votes, given their high numbers, can be counted on polling day.

To further reduce red tape, the bill contains amendments so that both voters and candidates will have flexible options for lodging information with the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commissioner will be able to allow candidates to lodge nomination information and how-to-vote tickets online. Regulations can be made, allowing voters to apply for postal ballots by phone or online.

Amendments have also been made to the date of the close of rolls and to the deadline to apply for postal votes. This allows for earlier issue of voting papers and will maximise the opportunities for postal voters to return postal votes in time for their vote to be counted in the election; however, as in the current act, voters will still be required to vote in person if not lodging a postal vote.

I distinctly remember King constituents who told me they did not get to cast their vote in the 2018 election due to difficulties they faced with the postal voting process. In particular, persons who could not physically get to the polling booths on the day due to their disabilities, who rang the Electoral Commission as they did not receive their postal vote packs, were told, 'That's okay, we'll mark you off for trying to submit a postal vote.' This was not fair, as these people told me they wanted to execute their right to vote but were prevented from doing so by the inefficiencies of the current postal vote system. This is what we are looking to fix.

The time frame for postal votes is always a consideration, to ensure voters have every opportunity to vote despite their inability to attend a pre-poll or election day polling booth. In addition, the bill provides that both election information and public notices will be published on the internet, rather than a newspaper, in the first instance. This is really just getting up to date with technology.

The bill will keep it open to the Electoral Commissioner to consider which additional advertising should be used beyond the internet. The act already provides voting options for a class of voters who do not have a fixed address and this bill includes new protections for these itinerant electors. A number of the amendments are drafted to allow regulations or the Electoral Commissioner to set out the detail of proposed processes and this will enable further changes to be made in the future as technology evolves.

One major aspect of the bill is it includes a ban on the use of corflutes on public roads. Corflute is the name given to the corrugated polypropylene, a fluted plastic that is lightweight yet rigid. Through election periods across the state, we see corflutes posted on Stobie poles, advertising election candidates, and being used as A-frames at shopping centres and the like.

Corflutes are without doubt detrimental to the environment, as there are limited recycling options for them, as acknowledged by the Australian Greens on their website. Polypropylene is not widely recycled, with only two main recycling methods: mechanical recycling, which is complicated due to concerns around food contact and separating types of plastic, and recycling through chemical methods to break down the corflute. While all political parties encourage their candidates to reuse and recycle corflutes or to repurpose or donate them, this is often difficult and sees a continual cycle of new corflutes being printed for each election.

When I asked my King constituents for their thoughts through social media and through phone canvassing them recently, the vast majority of constituents supported the ban for many reasons. Last week, I also visited one of our local high schools and, again, they were completely in support of banning them. One resident, Sandy O'Keeffe, said she totally agrees they have no benefit at all. Katelyn Normington said, 'Having had one fly onto my windshield on a windy day driving along Main North Road, mid lane change, ban them. It could have ended very badly.' Mia Mac said, 'My thoughts are they need to go. They have never swayed my vote. They are so bad for the environment.'

As well as over 200 King constituents saying corflutes are not necessary, and the fact that corflutes themselves are difficult to dispose of, beyond the environmental impact, local councils have further raised concerns about diminished roadside safety, distracting drivers and making our areas look unsightly. As the member for Unley just said, it was outrageous to hear the Labor Party telling us that they need to put up posters; otherwise, people will not know who they are and who to vote for.

Corflutes are, finally, without a doubt costly to parties and do little to educate voters about a candidate or their platform beyond their name ID. The government appreciates that not all voters will have access to the internet or, particularly, social media, where great sums of political communication occur about candidates and the policies of political parties on the day.

In regard to the cost and magnitude of these posters, I estimated corflute numbers in King in 2018. We had six candidates, each with approximately 800 corflutes, which would add up to approximately 4,800 corflutes. Times this by 47 House of Assembly candidates, and it means 225,600 corflutes just for one state election of House of Assembly candidates. If these corflutes are worth approximately $10 each, then this is over $2.2 million spent on corflutes. I am sure there are many more worthwhile activities which could be supported in our community rather than plastering our faces on light poles.

Importantly, this government appreciates that people may need to be reminded of election day and polling booth locations and, as such, the bill provides that exceptions to this ban are permitted by regulation. It may potentially be used to allow limited numbers of corflutes to be displayed adjacent to polling booths on election day and near polling places within the current advertising and electoral display guidelines in the act. Finally, the bill provides optional preferential voting in the House of Assembly. This is a purely optional system, and voters wishing to cast a more comprehensive ballot will still be able to do so.

The reasons for this amendment are clear: South Australian voters deserve to understand where their votes are going and, should they wish, simply vote for one party or one candidate without the backdoor deals diminishing their vote. In The Advertiser, South Australians were polled on their views around optional preferential voting in response to the question: should ballot papers allow you to vote for just one box? At the time I read the article, 76 per cent had said, yes, they should be able to do so. On that poll at least there is overwhelming support. What is more overwhelming is the support on the same poll for the banning of corflutes. Ninety per cent of people voted, yes, that political posters or corflutes should be banned.

This bill makes a number of sweeping changes. It acts on the recommendations not only from the 2018 election report but also some from the 2014 election report, which the former government failed to implement. For voters, the changes are simple. There is less environmental impact through the production of corflutes, greater voter choice through being able to vote for the political party or the candidate they desire, the abolition of backdoor deals and more freedom to vote early.

These changes modernise current electoral laws in South Australia and give South Australians the greatest flexibility and voter power they have ever had. I commend the bill to members.

Debate adjourned on motion of Dr Harvey.


At 17:58 the house adjourned until Wednesday 23 September 2020 at 10:30.

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