Bills

Electoral (Legislative Council) (Optional Preferential Voting) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (20:30): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Electoral Act 1985. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (20:31): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This is a simple bill that members have seen before. In fact, it was debated in the last sitting week of the last parliament. The bill amends the Electoral Act to introduce optional preferential voting into the South Australian Legislative Council. The rationale for this bill is known to all members. It is to put control of voting back into the hands of voters and away from parties and groups. It abolishes group voting tickets that allow parties and groups to determine a complete allocation of preferences.

Under this bill, voters can choose to number as many or as few squares as they want, either above or below the line, on the Legislative Council ballot paper. The purpose is to ensure that the composition of the Legislative Council most accurately reflects the will of voters. If there are parties, groups or candidates that they do not want to preference, then they should not have to.

In the period since November, when we last debated this measure, there has been an important development and that is the interim report earlier this month by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on Senate voting practices (as part of the broader inquiry into the conduct of the 2013 federal election). The interim report was tabled in the federal parliament on Friday 9 May 2014. It had the general support of all the major parties.

The relevance of this report to the South Australian Legislative Council is that the voting system for the Senate is to all intents and purposes identical to that in our Electoral Act. I would like to just quote briefly from the foreword by the chairperson of that committee:

The 2013 federal election will long be remembered as a time when our system of Senate voting let voters down.

Combined with pliable and porous party registration rules, the system of voting for a single party above the line and delegating the distribution of preferences to that party, delivered, in some cases, outcomes that distorted the will of the voter.

The system of voting above the line has encouraged the creation of micro parties in order to funnel preferences to each other, from voters who have no practical way of knowing where their vote will ultimately land once they had forfeited it to the parties' group voting tickets…

The 'gaming' of the voting system by many micro parties created a lottery, where, provided the parties stuck together in preferencing each other (some of whom have polar opposite policies and philosophies) the likelihood of one succeeding was maximised.

Instead of a lottery ball popping out of a machine, in Victoria, a micro-party candidate popped out as the winner of a Senate seat.

The Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party received just 0.51 percent of the primary vote, but their candidate was elected to the Senate through 'gaming' the system. Clearly, given the circumstances, this election did not represent the genuine will of the voters…

The current system of Senate voting above the line, and its reliance on group voting tickets, should be abolished and replaced with a new system that puts the power of preferencing back in the hands of the voter.

Our considered view is that the new system should be an optional preferential voting system where the voter decides whether to preference and how many parties or candidates to preference. We also suggest consequential reforms to below the line voting to remove the need for voters to complete every box.

I could not have said it better myself. I have one minor disagreement with the committee's report, but it is minor in the scheme of things; that is, the federal committee is only proposing partial optional preferential voting below the line, not full optional preferential voting, as is in my bill. The committee recommends that below the line voters should be required to put a minimum sequential number of preferences equal to the number of vacancies so, in other words, at least six numbers for a half Senate election or 12 for a double dissolution.

The reason I do not support partial optional preferential voting is that it fails the logic test. Forcing voters in South Australia to number at least 11 squares below the line in a Legislative Council election does not guarantee that a voter's preferences will actually elect anyone. If the voter's choices are all for small party or Independent candidates, their vote will still exhaust without electing anyone, so I say let's not make this any more complex than it needs to be.

Finally, I will say that I fully expect this bill to be considered by a parliamentary committee looking into electoral matters, whether that be a select committee of the Legislative Council or a standing committee, as foreshadowed in another place today by the Attorney-General. I would be happy for that to occur provided the committee goes about its business efficiently and we do not find ourselves on the last sitting day before the 2018 state election arguing how to change the system. There is no excuse not to get reform underway in this first part of the parliamentary term, not wait until the end. I commend the bill to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. G.A. Kandelaars.