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Legislative Assembly 1936 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Wednesday 20 September 2006 ______ Mr Speaker (The Hon. John Joseph Aquilina) took the chair at 10.00 a.m. Mr Speaker offered the Prayer. Mr SPEAKER: I acknowledge the Gadigal clan of the Eora nation and its elders, and thank them for their custodianship of this land. PARLIAMENTARY ELECTORATES AND ELECTIONS AMENDMENT BILL Second Reading Debate resumed from 30 August 2006. Mr BARRY O'FARRELL (Ku-ring-gai—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) [10.00 a.m.]: The Opposition will not oppose the legislation. However, for the benefit of advisers from the Cabinet Office and the Premier's Department, I indicate, as I have privately, that amendments will be moved in the other House. I will not bother this House with those amendments, as I am not into time wasting. This is important legislation in the year in which we celebrate the 150th year of our democracy, as in a sense this legislation enables our democracy to function. We cannot have responsible government without elections. We cannot have clear results without an administrative framework for elections. The Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act provides that framework for conducting elections for this place, the other place and for the Parliament collectively. In that sense every member of Parliament has an interest in this legislation and an interest in the operations of the State Electoral Office. As a member of this place and as a former party official I have always had great respect for those who work in the State Electoral Office. I have had good relationships with successive commissioners and the commissioners' staff. I state for the record my appreciation of the efforts of the current Commissioner, Colin Barry. The proposals before the House originate from a number of sources, such as the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the report of the electoral distribution commissioners, and the Council on the Cost and Quality of Government. However, they also very much rely on Mr Barry's efforts to modernise the operation of the State Electoral Office and to regularise the way it functions. Those efforts are basically intended to ensure that the body whose purpose is to ensure fair elections in New South Wales is operating in a way that will not only suit the next election but elections thereafter. In that sense this bill, which cleans up the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act, is welcomed by the Opposition and no doubt is welcomed by all honourable members. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters made a large number of recommendations. I again state for the record my view that that is a worthwhile committee. One of the first things I did as a new member of this Parliament was to have my leader move for the establishment of such a committee. Thanks to the then Leader of the House, the Hon. Paul Whelan, the motion was defeated. But I am delighted that, after the 2003 election, the current Leader of the Government in the upper House, the Hon. John Della Bosca, saw fit to ensure that the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters was established. That is important because there is no difference between an election and any other public interest process. At the conclusion of an election there should be an inquiry into the way in which the election was conducted. If problems are identified and improvements are deemed necessary there should be a report. It is partly against that background that this amending bill has been introduced. The electoral redistribution that took place last year resulted in a number of recommendations by the redistribution commissioners that have been largely incorporated into this legislation. I will briefly discuss the six matters that will be the subject of Opposition amendments in the upper House. First, I highlight that the Liberal Party and The Nationals will seek 20 September 2006 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 1937 to amend this legislation to ensure that people serving periods of incarceration in the State's gaols are denied the right to vote. That is consistent with Federal legislation and the practice in this State prior to the election of the current government. When an offender commits a crime of sufficient seriousness to warrant a custodial sentence, the punishment is meant to deprive the offender of entitlements as well as liberty. The Opposition simply does not believe that justification exists for prisoners to retain the right to vote and will move an amendment in the upper House accordingly. Unusually, this legislation came to prominence through this city's tabloid newspaper in relation to provisions that will effect changes to permit voting to take place in licensed premises, notwithstanding the proviso that alcohol cannot be served in the part of the premises that will be used as a polling place. Some confusion arose in the defence of that provision by the Deputy Premier. Given the person who undertook the defence, that is not surprising. Initially the argument seemed to be that the provision was designed to address remote centres where polling places may not exist. The point made by the Opposition at the time, and the point I make again today, is that consultation with honourable members who represent the most remote and largest electorates in this House reveals that that has not been an issue of concern in relation to the conduct of elections in their memory. I am not quite sure why that idea was put forward, but I am now told that it relates to halls that may be used for polling in country towns. Indeed, the Sydney Town Hall is licensed to hold functions at which alcohol may legitimately be served. In recent memory, no instance of any challenge to voting has occurred in such halls. If the amendment is directed to resolve that issue, the first argument is that there does not appear to be an issue. There has been no body of complaint suggesting any contention about the serving of alcohol in such premises. It may well be a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If the Electoral Commissioner wants to pursue this area of improvement as he would see it, we will seek to move an amendment that ensures that licensed premises include halls such as CWA halls in country towns and Sydney Town Hall but explicitly exclude clubs and pubs. I think it is fairly obvious that if a local returning officer or, indeed, the Electoral Commissioner, were to determine to have voting in a club or pub in a country town, a suburban town or a down-town location, it would be a recipe for disaster. There is enough emotion around some of our schools, where most of the voting in the State occurs, without throwing alcohol into the mix. The legislation seeks to ensure that the part of a licensed premise, which could be a pub or club, in which voting is occurring cannot serve alcohol. However, that simply means that if the voting occurs in the lounge bar people can go round to the public bar to get a drink. People will still congregate outside the club or pub, and the potential is still there for the usual heated emotions that occur on polling day to get out of hand and create other problems. I recognise that the honourable member for Coffs Harbour understands that it may also make more difficult to deal with the electoral offence of treating, which is readdressed in the legislation. How could one tell whether the beer or wine in a person's hand was bought for them by a candidate or a candidate supporter? The third area that will be the subject of amendments relates to issues concerning the production of how-to-vote material. The current election legislation prevents an endorsed member of one party who is running for a lower House seat handing out how-to-vote material recommending a vote for another party in the Legislative Council, and vice versa. It is not intended that that will be changed by this legislation. However, it gave rise to an anomaly at the last election. We have represented in this Parliament the Coalition, the Liberal Party and The Nationals, who run a joint Legislative Council ticket that is accepted as a joint ticket by the State Electoral Office. At the last election, on the advice of the then Electoral Commissioner, we were refused permission for the Liberal Party and The Nationals—who, of course, do not run in the same seats—to issue statewide how-to-vote material covering all 93 seats in which both parties were running. I note that we now have another two entities in relation to Legislative Council elections, the Labor Party and Country Labor. We are not quite sure how the Labor Party has managed to circumvent the rule. The purpose of our amendment will be that any parties, irrespective of who they are, who run joint tickets in the State Electoral Office, and which are accepted by the State Electoral Office as joint tickets, shall have the right for their lower House candidates to issue statewide how-to-vote material encompassing all seats in which either of the two parties are running and which will enable them to provide how-to-vote information across those seats. That would address the issue for the Liberal Party and The Nationals, it would address the 1938 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 20 September 2006 issue of a Country Labor-Labor Party ticket, it would address the issue if one day Family First and Call to Australia formed a coalition together, it might even address the issue if the Greens were to one day join with the Labor Party and form a coalition.
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