Parliamentary Committees (Electoral Laws and Practices Committee) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 7 August 2014.)

The Hon. S.G. WADE (17:12): In rising to speak on this bill tonight I want to focus on what the Liberal Party regards as the key issue coming out of the 2014 election and that is the failure of the electoral system in South Australia to give the people of South Australia the government that they voted for. On 7 May my leader, Steven Marshall, the member for Dunstan in another place, made the following comments and I quote:

The party which clearly received the majority of votes in this election has not been in a position to form government, and this has happened far too often in recent years in this place. It is the people of South Australia who have been denied the government of their choice. Fifty-three per cent of people wanted a Liberal Party to govern this state. I accept that the system has delivered a Labor Party to form minority government, but this indicates, quite frankly, that this parliament needs to allocate resources and time to look at our system and to reform our system before the 2018 election. If we squib on this, we are not doing our job. This will be a primary objective of the Liberal Party in this parliament going forward.

Let me remind the house of some of the key data in terms of that undemocratic outcome. The Liberal Party received 44.8 per cent of the primary vote at the 2014 election, that is 91,377 more votes than the Labor Party. Let us remember that a House of Assembly seat in this parliament consists of about 22,000, so we are talking about more than four seats in terms of absolute value, let alone the 50 per cent plus one of those 22,000 that will determine a particular seat. To put it another way, a full 9 per cent more of the primary vote was won by the Liberal Party rather than the Labor Party.

The Labor Party scraped in with just more than one-third of the statewide primary vote. In other words, only one in three South Australians felt comfortable giving the Labor Party their first preference. On a two-party preferred basis the preference for the Liberal Party was 53 per cent, obviously versus 47 per cent. The Liberal Party was the preferred party of government in 24 of the 47 seats. The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party preferred vote. The majority of voters in a majority of seats wanted a Liberal government.

The Attorney-General, in moving this bill in the other place, stressed the commitment of the government to electoral reform, but he also took the opportunity to criticise the Liberal Party proposal for an independent statutory inquiry into electoral reform. The concern of the Liberal Party is that the dismissive response of the Attorney-General is indicative of a government which is very keen to avoid addressing this fundamental flaw in our electoral system.

Let me remind the house again that in three out of the last four elections the Liberal Party has won the majority of the two-party preferred vote, but it has not won government. The position of the South Australian constitution is extraordinarily clear. Section 83 of the Constitution Act provides that, ‘if candidates of a particular group attract more than 50 per cent of the popular vote’ after the allocation of preferences, ‘they will be elected in sufficient numbers to enable a government to be formed’.

The Attorney-General can mock the concept of the two-party preferred vote. The government can preach all it likes about the fact that governments are formed on the floor of the House of Assembly, and ‘we have got more seats than you’. However, the fact of the matter is that after the 1989 election, when there was a high level of community concern about the undemocratic outcome of that election, the people, at a referendum, voted for change. They want their electoral system to reflect the majority two-party preferred preference.

Labor likes to say that the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission (EDBC) that came out of those reforms was a Liberal creation, and so we are not allowed to complain about it. That is a severe misconstruction of history. I would remind members that it was actually a minority Labor government, at the insistence of the Hon. Martyn Evans, then I understand, the member for Elizabeth, who insisted on a select committee that progressed electoral reform. The Attorney-General might regard the two-party preferred vote as some sort of theoretical construct which is not relevant. The people of South Australia, in supporting the section 83 reforms, said otherwise.

After all, the principle here is not the impact on the Liberal Party or any other party. The offensive impact of the current electoral system is that the people of South Australia are repeatedly seeing their democratic will frustrated by the electoral system. So, the Liberal Party will be actively pursuing reform of our electoral system. The foundation of our democracy is that the majority of the support of the people should be reflected in their government.

In these brief comments tonight, I foreshadow that the Liberal Party will be moving amendments to this legislation, which I hope to table shortly, which will seek to make the first question of electoral reform to be addressed that of the democratic mandate. When I table the amendments, the process that we are envisaging is clear: we are not willing to allow the Attorney-General and the Labor Party to obfuscate and avoid addressing real reform with the distraction of smokescreens produced by committees.

The people of South Australia have shown their anger two elections in a row that their will has been frustrated. We believe that we as a parliament need to address that issue, and not accept the distractions and obfuscation of both the Attorney-General and the government. With those words I indicate that we look forward to participating in the committee stages, both to pursue a commission of inquiry and electoral reform, and also to consider the proposal for a parliamentary committee on electoral reform.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (17:20): The Greens have supported moves to create parliamentary committees to look into electoral matters. We supported the select committee of this chamber and we hope very much to support a standing committee as well. Most parliaments in Australia have similar committees, and I think that that it is an important function of the parliament to keep our laws in relation to democracy and elections generally relevant, up to date and fair.

I do not propose to comment on the previous 'we was robbed' contribution. We have all heard it many times, but I will say that we accept that we do need to look at making sure our elections are fair, but we have had an election, the result of which was determined according to current rules, and that is what we have to work with.

One amendment that the Greens are proposing to this bill is to remove the provisions that enable this to be a paid committee. This is the first bill in my 8½ years in parliament that has created a new standing committee where the membership of that committee attracts extra remuneration. The bill proposes an eight person committee. Seven of those people will be getting $15,000 a year extra salary and the chairperson will get $20,000. That adds up to $125,000 per year or half a million dollars over a four year parliamentary term.

The question is whether members of parliament should pay themselves an extra half a million dollars each parliamentary term in order to do the job that they are entrusted to do in any event, which is to keep our laws relevant and up to date and, in particular, our electoral laws. We can see no reason why members of this committee should be paid. In fact, I have said in this place on a number of occasions, I actually support the removal of all payments from all committees. I accept that that would involve a restructuring of general salaries and allowances, but it seems to me that we as a parliament have developed a system whereby every person is entitled to a committee because of the pay that it attracts as a way of basically supplementing income.

That is not the approach that should be taken. People should be on committees because of their particular interest and expertise in the area, and I accept also that some political balance is required as well. We already have an extensive number of paid committees. Some of them attract chauffeur-driven cars, and I have referred to that before as well. The Greens' approach would be to reform that entire system. What we have before us now is a brand new bill establishing a brand new committee that is going to cost taxpayers half a million dollars over a four-year cycle.

I should say that there will be administrative costs associated with this committee, and they will be incurred whether the members of parliament who sit on that committee are paid or not, and that is fine. There will be secretariat services and research services that are required, and that is fine, but I do not believe that members of parliament should get extra pay simply for doing their job.

So, in a nutshell, that is the Greens' position. I will take it one step further and say that if the clauses in relation to pay are not removed we will not be supporting the bill at all. We will simply rely on the select committee of the upper house. We do not think that that is ideal, but we feel strongly about this matter. We want to save the taxpayers of South Australia half a million dollars every parliamentary cycle so, if this remains as a paid committee, we will not be supporting its passage through the parliament.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.