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Page 1 of 11 Inquiry Into and Report on All Aspects The Hon Mr Tony Smith MP Chair, Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters PO Box 6021 PARLIAMENT HOUSE ACT 2600 7 April 2014 Dear Mr Smith Inquiry into and report on all aspects of the conduct of the 2013 Federal Election and matters related thereto A healthy political philosophy reflects a balanced view across many social issues. There once was a time whereby parliaments using the Westminster system consisted of progressive local representatives with a broad gamut of individual special interests. Today this type of representative is labelled as ‘single issue’ or ‘independent’ and big parties have become dominate for convenience of getting laws passed. I was a senate candidate for a micro party in the federal election on 7 September 2013. The party I represented was not a front party, not aligned with any existing political party or Member of Parliament. We were a member of the Minor Party Alliance and lodged a Group Voting Ticket. Political parties are responsible for social and national development. Misinformed and misguided choices at the ballot box can produce hazardous consequences for our society and we all then have to live with those consequences, at least for a period of time. Many millions of Australians have never been a member of any political party. The membership numbers for the major parties is said to be around 80,000 Liberal and 35,000 Labor. Yet in elections around 10 million people vote for these two parties. This situation needs to be challenged. Voters over generations have been trained to vote for one of two camps. Misguided intergenerational loyalties and psychological propaganda are not good enough reasons to have existing players re-elected time and time again. It has been reported by the ABC that the “7.30 report has been told this inquiry will recommend changes to electoral law in order to prevent the micro parties using preference trading to guarantee Senate seats.” This accusation may be truth or rumour. This inquiry has a responsibility to the Australian people to ensure that the Major Party Alliance does not change our electoral laws in order to secure power. Australia’s electoral and parliamentary system needs to be swept clean and ordinary people need to understand that they can intervene in a system that is being hijacked by big party elitism politics. With 68.72% of the votes counted in the rerun of the WA senate election we can see that 25.55% of voters chose not to vote 1 for the Major Party Alliance, and 2.88% (29,332 people) voted informal. Liberal / National received a quota of 2.5769 and Labor / Greens received a quota of 2.6349. Five out of six senate seats are earmarked for the Major Party Alliance. After the distribution of preferences from the minor parties to the major parties, the experts are predicting the Liberals are the likely winner, dominating with three of the six seats, in spite of a 7.46% swing against the coalition. Without Clive Palmer’s efforts the duopoly would most likely have won all six seats. Page 1 of 11 There is no possible way that every voter will get their candidate choice elected into the parliament. Yet the chatter I have been listening to has contention that getting as close to this as possible is what the committee should be working towards, the assumption is everyone should be a Major Party Alliance voter. The Palmer United Party (PUP) almost obtained a full quota in their own right as did the aggregate of minor parties and independents. PUP received preferences from four minor parties to secure a senate seat. The last seat anticipated to be won by the Liberal Party is reliant on preferences from the National Party and PUP and 18 minor parties. This indicates that minor party voters will miss out on authentic representation in the senate with the Liberal Party claiming a mandate from voters to do as they please. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has said in it’s submission to this committee, “The glue that holds the system together is trust”. There is no place in our electoral system for a glue which merely beats a drum of hope and faith to innocent believers. Trust and election results are mutually exclusive. Electors want certainty that the system does what it is supposed to do, that is to accurately give effect to voters’ intention to reveal the will of the people and give them decent governance. Australia is no longer a nation of colonies, yet our electoral and political system treats us as if we were. Addendum “A” titled ‘Political Madness’, is a breakdown of some of the differences Australian voters are subjected to through elected governments protecting their own patch, with a will to end up with fewer parties contesting in elections and keeping themselves in power longer. Australians deserve a simply structured, efficient electoral and parliamentary system in which no degrees of honesty are tolerated and one where fairness and accountability are highly valued. Most political parties set up as ‘voluntary’ groups and do not obtain legal status as a political party until registered by the one of nine electoral commissions around the country. Political movements exist without evolving into political parties. Some movements, such as Get Up, are set up and funded to support existing political parties. Membership is regarded as a healthy sign of engagement with citizens. Movements that evolve into political parties do not need to be registered. Registration brings entitlement to a host of benefits, such as, the name of the party appearing on ballot papers, possible receipt of electoral funding, and the right to accept tax concession contributions from the public and income tax exemptions on their income. Political parties form freely, without authorisation or interference to peruse their democratic purposes publicly, so it is not a surprise that due to so many Australians being disillusioned, disenchanted and disengaged with the elitist politics, many thousands took grassroots action and formed new political parties before the last federal election. Some new parties made the AEC registration cut-off date for the 2013 election and others missed out. It is easy to see that the ‘will of the people’ is being manipulated one way by one parliament and at the same time another way by other parliaments and executive dominance around the country. We are one country and we would be better served with one electoral system whether the election is federal, state, territory or local government. If a party is registered federally that should provide an automatic state and local government election registration and the state election acts should mirror each other under a federal model. Page 2 of 11 Smoke and mirrors. The Major Party Alliance parliamentary politicians sell to the average punter a single or coalition identity, but they are in fact complicated structures with states and territories having a party of their own with different set of rules of engagement for themselves, their candidates, and their members. Members are bound by two sets of rules; the federal rules and the state rules. It appears from recent press that one of the Labor party’s federal rule is members and candidates must be a union member, yet the same is not required for membership according to the Victorian branch. If the federal party overrides the rules of the state party then it would be fair to assume that the Victorian branch would have a heap of non-members being counted as members on their data base. We have a candidate based electoral system, yet in practice, our democracy is built upon a party system. Elections are contested on an extensively publicised two-party mantra with little emphasis on the individual candidates. Many two party preferred voters would not have a clue who their party candidates were as they are trained to vote for the “leader” and the “brand”. The agenda of the media is to squarely promote the leaders of the two major parties and to ridicule all other parties who dare to attempt to challenge the status quo. Voters cannot make an informed decision at the ballot box if the media is allowed to continue to make candidates from ‘successful’, as in the two major camps, the only serious contenders. Government sponsored media outlets should be required to provide equal air time to all parties so that the voter has an opportunity to know and understand what options are available to them. Whether a Registered Political Party has elected candidates or not they are a non-government public body dealing with public issues. We need to clear the mismatch of where and how political parties are classified, recognised, registered, and operate. For example the Liberal party runs seven “autonomous” Divisions with individual constitutions. On top they have parliamentary parties. Is the Liberal Party a political party, an association or a big business or all three? A search on ASIC’s organisation and business names register reveals the following: A Non-Registered Entity (Liberal Party) Two Australian Proprietary Companies (Liberal Party of Tasmania Pty Ltd, Liberal Party of Western Australia Pty Ltd) A registered business name (Liberal Party of Australia [SA Division]) Two associations (Liberal Party of Australia [Australian Capital Territory], The Liberal Party of Australia [Western Australia]) No mention of Northern Territory Country Liberal Party No mention of Liberal National Party of Queensland, (Liberal Party of Australia (QLD) Pty Ltd deregistered) Northern Territory Liberal party, describes itself as a NT party independent of any other political party, though it is associated with the Liberal Party and National Party of Australia. The AEC maintains a register of federal political parties.
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