We have succeeded beyond the frontiers of what was thought possible, even though there haven't ever been large numbers of people directly involved in the campaign. In fact, at our last Annual General Meeting in June, the Attorney-General, Gary Humphries (Liberal), and the ACT Electoral Commissioner, Phil Green, were both present. Mr Humphries, whom we invited to be our guest speaker, said that for a relatively small society, we are fairly well known in political circles and we have been instrumental in changing the face of ACT politics. He generously added that without us perhaps neither of the referenda would have succeeded.
I certainly pay great tribute to Gary Humphries, because without him, we wouldn't have got entrenchment. He predicted correctly that when it came to the crunch, he would be able to back the ALP (which had campaigned for single-member electorates, and then attempted to thwart the people's verdict with party boxes incompatible with Hare Clark) into a corner and give them an option they wouldn't be able to refuse. The choices for the minority Follett ALP Government were to support an entrenchment referendum and to allow the legislation to go through with a 2/3 majority in the Assembly; or to oppose the referendum, and invite more questions about its intentions for the electoral system. Going along with the referendum was judged to be the better alternative in the circumstances.
Mr Humphries also mentioned that there was new legislation before the ACT Assembly to go another part of the way towards the Tasmanian system on election day. The one significant vote we lost in `94 was on "how to vote" material. Two-term Abolish Self-Government MLA, Dennis Stevenson, lined up with the ALP to defeat an amendment aimed at preventing lobbying of voters on the very threshold of polling places. He did not stand again, complaining bitterly about the move from one electorate to three, and labelling the referendum process of '92 a fraud.
Under the legislation [passed without amendment in October], there is to be no canvassing within 100 metres of the defined polling area in relation to a polling place - this can be more than the just the entrance, allowing voters to decide whether they will go in to vote without interruption or hindrance. There is however no parallel with Tasmania's long-standing provisions prohibiting election-day newspaper advertising or distribution of election matter. The High Court is far less likely to uphold any challenge on "free speech" grounds when material can still be widely distributed on election day to those who want it.
So it's been a very heady year. I'll give you some historical background in the hope you will find it inspirational. If the ACT Branch of the Society hadn't nagged and pestered, entrenchment wouldn't have happened; if Gary Humphries hadn't picked the best way of getting legislation through the Assembly, it wouldn't have happened. When I came to the referendum campaign, it was largely up to the Society to organise events because parties and candidates were flat out with their own quests for voter support; if we hadn't done anything, we may still have won, but it would have been very close. As it was, several politicians were alarmed when they were going door to door because people were asking questions about the material (the "no" case) that Stevenson put into the official referendum booklet. They were genuinely uncertain of success, bearing in mind we needed to get something like 58% of the formal vote (a majority of "electors", that is people entitled to be on the roll).
Let's go back a year: the idea of entrenchment didn't get off the ground until 14 Feb 94, the eve of the second anniversary of the `92 referendum triumph (where two-thirds chose Hare-Clark ahead of single-member electorates). At a public meeting we got 40 people, rather a big turnout for such events. We didn't have the presence of the Canberra Times and yet as a result of the ramblings of the late Arthur Burns (an eminent political scientist in his younger days, and an opponent of Hare-Clark), we were able to tighten the protection of voter empowerment.
Burns raised his proposal - one which none of us had dreamed of - that instead of direct party boxes which are quite easy to legislate against, you could achieve the same end by allowing people to write a 3T2for 3Ticket2 in squares alongside individual candidates' names. As soon as he outlined this device, we recognised it as something we had to guard against. The referendum legislation therefore included the provision that the only numbers deemed to exist are the numbers that are written on any ballot paper, starting with one as the first preference. Without this meeting, there could have been a loophole where the use of the number 0 or a letter of the alphabet could have circumvented the absence of party boxes. Any party doing this would have been running a political risk but would not have had to persuade the people at referendum of the merits of such changes.
We also had Crispin Hull of the Canberra Times who is now back as deputy editor leading discussion of what was involved in entrenchment, the first time the question was raised so publicly. Those present got the message that it was an important issue, especially after the attempt to undermine Hare-Clark with party boxes. Terry Aulich, former Tasmanian Labor MHA and Senator, was there and he emphasised the importance of various aspects of the Tasmanian legislation.
It turned out that the great lot of work which went into putting on that public meeting sowed abundant seeds. For instance, the Liberal Party made a public commitment to Hare-Clark's entrenchment not long afterwards. An ad hoc committee studied how to draw up the necessary legislation. While the drafting output was quite different from the legislation approved by the people in February, many important issues were clarified during this process.
The reason the meeting of 14 February 94 was called was because at the very end of sittings for `93, the Follett Government had put up this bodgie proposal for party lists - so bad was it that we accused them of Pol Potting the system. Although they backed off just before Christmas, under immense public uproar and pressure, there was still great uncertainty as to what the Assembly would end up with. We held the meeting to ensure the essential provisions of Hare-Clark would be preserved and emerged with important spinoffs.
During the ensuing negotiations on the electoral legislation, the Liberals were pressing the government to introduce referendum machinery provisions partly because without them you can't entrench anything. The ACT Self-Government Act 1988 requires such legislation to itself clear the same hurdles proposed for future amendments. Now comprehensive referendum machinery could have been tacked onto some appropriate Government legislation as an amendment, but then you would either have to draw it up yourself or get into the queue for drafting services. If the government at any time decided to go down the referendum legislation track, its requirements would have priority over work still in progress. Obviously the Follett Government wasn't going to speed up the introduction of referendum provisions when faced with the prospect of their use for citizen-initiated referenda or an electoral entrenchment proposal.
In fact this legislation was introduced towards the end of September, and was basically modelled on the Commonwealth procedures - official arguments for and against any referendum proposal were the prerogative of a majority voting either way. It occurred to me that people might be pushing for something to happen for opposite reasons, perhaps even two equal groups, and yet this legislation was forcing them to combine to put in a single case.
Nothing was happening while the government was working on its referendum legislation, and I can remember that in October even the natural optimists among us were becoming despondent about the chances of entrenchment legislation getting through the Assembly by early December. Yet we persisted and managed to galvanise some memorable action. Plan A was to attach amendment to the Government's referendum machinery provisions, but it failed because the debate was not adjourned at a critical juncture.
Plan B was therefore fast-tracked and on 30 November 94, Gary Humphries introduced the Proportional Representation (Hare-Clark) Entrenchment Bill 1994. He introduced a version requiring further work because that was the last day on which he could do so without moving a suspension of Standing Orders to bring on debate. There were ten safeguarded principles covering both the positive aspects (electorates to return an odd number of members at least 5, Robson Rotation, and countback) and necessary prohibitions (direct or indirect party boxes). These could be individually overturned only by a 2/3 vote of the Assembly or through referendum, so that Labor support in the Assembly was a necessary prerequisite to ultimate success.
On the basis of Labor's past implacably hostile stance towards Hare-Clark, I didn't think the legislation would get through. However the Government quickly put out a media release foreshadowing amendments to have "compulsory voting" entrenched and to fix the Assembly size in the event of control over that being handed over by the federal Parliament. Perhaps there was an expectation that such amendments would be defeated and then there would be a reason to vote against the original measures. However, the ACT Liberals have not been particularly fussed about compulsory attendance and were also quite happy to accept the second change. The Labor Party was thus put into an election-eve position where it supported the referendum legislation in the Assembly and remained as quiet as possible on the issue thereafter.
So we ended up not with 10 points but with 12 points in the referendum legislation. On 8 December, the last day of the second Assembly's sittings Labor voted "Yes" to the amended entrenchment referendum legislation - what a pleasure it was to hear that word from members of the dominant Left faction! Dennis Stevenson voted "No", and as the only member to do so (Yes 16, No 1) could present an official "No" case as he alone saw fit.
In debate, the then Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, complained about the late introduction of the entrenchment legislation and said the original wording had flaws in it. She appeared quite agitated as she moved about the chamber before heading outside briefly. More intensive work had gone into improving the original wording, a Monday morning meeting with Electoral Commissioner proving extremely helpful, and a drafter finding extremely elegant wording to deal concisely with countback, so Gary Humphries was ready with his own amendments. The media did not give the legislation's passage much prominence even though the Electoral Commissioner now had to make arrangements to hold a referendum simultaneously with the first Hare-Clark election.
Had Crispin Hull still been editor of the Canberra Times, this development would have prompted front-page banner headlines. As it was the newspaper covered our campaign activities fairly but gave no editorial lead on the entrenchment question. In fact on election day it ran a very inconclusive set of paragraphs which included some extraordinary reasons why people might vote against entrenching. Letters questioning the legality of the referendum process received quite undeserved prominence.
The referendum machinery provisions left only 30 days [actually 32 in practice, because the 30th fell on a Saturday] in which to finalise the official "Yes" case and present it to the Electoral Commissioner for despatch to all electors. As a majority of the 16 relevant Assembly members was needed, at least one of the Government MLAs would have to make a written endorsement of this material. It was therefore obvious that the strongest argument for entrenchment at this early stage, the outrageous attempt to undermine Hare-Clark before it had been tried, would not appear in this document. Gary Humphries handed a draft "Yes" case to the ALP on Christmas eve. When nothing had come back by 5 January, the possibility loomed of no arguments in favour appearing in the official booklet, and the next day Independent Michael Moore threatened to go to the media unless there was an exchange of revised drafts. While the proposed ALP version was received late in the day, it hadn't radically altered the structure, so it was possible to prepare negotiating positions over the week-end. Hours of haggling over exact wording only concluded in the early afternoon of Monday 9 January.
The energy devoted to settling these details meant that no-one paid attention to handing in a final layout that spread the contents over as many pages as possible. On the other hand, Dennis Stevenson put together a rather slick polemic containing numerous errors of fact and unsustainable assertions, many based on a charge that Hare-Clark was aimed at eliminating the role of independents and minor parties [four MLAs were elected from this group, compared with three in the previous Assembly]. We had to counter this attack as well as pointing to the attempted Pol Potting as proof of the immediate need to entrench the key principles.
Through earlier savings and the national appeal, the Society's ACT Branch had enough to print 100,000 leaflets about the referendum's importance. Nearly all of these were delivered to letterboxes by volunteers, Michael Moore's supporters playing a major role in the final fortnight. Malcolm Mackerras launched our leaflet on 13 January - the week-day media were more interested in his predictions than its contents - and also unveiled our eye-catching "Don't trust politicians with your electoral system" poster the day before the election.
We also had to create newsworthy situations in the face of advice of one editorial approach that without conflict, there couldn't really be campaign news. Helpful positive coverage came during visits at regular intervals by Lord Kitchener (providing a United Kingdom perspective on electoral reform), Ken Fry (former Labor MHR, an important influence during the first campaign), Ted Mack (whose impeccable credentials as an Independent meant he could tackle Stevenson's claims head-on) and Bob Brown (both to stress Hare-Clark's proven success in Tasmania and urge entrenchment support from voters for smaller parties). Not everyone approached was prepared to help directly.
One of our rallies in the rain worked beautifully generating key television and radio time while we and, I'm pleased to say, some of you here, went about letterboxing several Belconnen suburbs. We even had one of the ALP candidates endorsing the referendum at a public meeting sponsored by several organisations, but no-one from the media was present that evening. Silence on the referendum extended even to ALP "how-to-vote" material, while Michael Moore blew the whistle on a Labor staffer urging a "No" pre-poll vote.
The result of the referendum to entrench the key principles of the Hare-Clark voting system for the ACT Assembly was 65% in favour, the same proportion that had chosen Hare-Clark over single-member electorates. This time we won every booth, ranging from a low of around 53% in some new suburbs where we did not deliver our leaflet, to the middle and higher 70s. If we had managed to turn Labor's Assembly support into several prominent public endorsements, perhaps we'd have climbed beyond 75% overall.
While the success margin was over 10,000 votes above what was necessary from just under 200,000 electors, winning so clearly yet again wasn't at all easy given the mobility of ACT residents. Several public figures commended the ACT Branch for its strenuous efforts when it mattered.
There were no complaints about the speed or fairness of the election result itself, a Liberal minority government being formed after the first sitting of the new Assembly. A lingering single-member mentality was reflected in one Labor numbers man's comments on the night [before the magnitude of the swing had sunk in] of hopes to "form a majority government" based on "green preferences". In fact the Greens had two candidates elected and a third was the last candidate defeated in Brindabella. A rather high informal vote of 6%, predominantly deliberate, suggests that Abolish Self-Government supporters could not bring themselves to vote for anyone else once Dennis Stevenson decided to call it quits.
As five working days are allowed for postal votes [on election day voters may go to any ACT polling place, the three ballot-papers being of different colour], the quotas were struck on the Saturday after the poll. By the next Tuesday night it was clear who was going to be elected, the scrutinies had all ended on Wednesday afternoon, and the results were then declared on Thursday.
Two candidates, both party leaders, had quotas of first preferences in the central Molonglo electorate. Several exclusions followed the transfer of their surpluses, two more candidates were elected in close proximity, then came another stream of exclusions before the last three vacancies were filled. In the southern Brindabella electorate, the first quota was not reached until the Tuesday, upon the exclusion of a candidate with 3000 votes. The patterns of relatively few early quotas and long strings of exclusions closely mirrored Tasmanian experience, and contrasted with what happens in Senate elections. While the Greens and Democrats agreed to "swap preferences", only 30% of Democrat supporters followed that advice. Fewer than half of Labor's supporters in any electorate followed the how-to-vote numbering determined through factional jostling.
The ACT's entrenchment outcome (joining Eire and Malta in protecting voter influence) shows that a small core group can mobilise the support of the community for a just electoral cause. Let me now turn to the challenge before you in NSW [and now Queensland]. After the polling in March, the Carr Labor government owed its majority to the donkey vote in Gladesville, its overall victory achieved with well under half the two-party-preferred vote. Prominent past mover and shaker, Graham Richardson, has pointed out publicly that the ALP needs only 48 1/2 - 49% of the vote to get elected these days, because of the stronger concentrations of Liberal and National voters in their "safe" areas.
An Opposition committee headed by new backbencher Barry O'Farrell has already cried foul suggesting adoption of the South Australian requirement that boundaries be drawn so a party or parties with majority support should get a majority of the seats. This is of course impossible to guarantee under any single-member-electorate system, because massive margins in extremely safe seats count for exactly the same as the slimmest win in a marginal electorate. The challenge is for us to make the Coalition see the problem, given the differential concentrations of voter support around the State's various regions. Similarly, with Robson Rotation, the extent of electoral injustice would have been diminished by a reversal of the Gladesville outcome.
This patently unfair result in NSW is an opportunity for us to promote proportional representation. Unless detailed analysis is carried out by your Branch and approaches are made to MPs and opinion leaders, a climate in which effective change might occur will not be present. Without your dedication and energy, it won't get done.
Let me offer a few words of encouragement in adversity. Our low point in the ACT came when the abominable d'Hondt system was originally introduced in 1988. Yet it took so long to count the following year and the result was so obviously unfair that momentum for Hare Clark started to grow. At our last AGM, Gary Humphries mentioned that the Liberal Party studied electoral systems with a view to finding one that could withstand ferocious attack by powerful ALP forces determined to introduce single-member electorates. Hare-Clark was found to be the only system that could do this, and the Liberals thereafter supported it strongly for ACT elections.
I am proud to say that the ACT now has the best electoral system in the world - better even than Tasmania's in some technical respects. You have shared in this wonderful achievement. Less than 10 years ago there appeared to be no chance of this happening.
The first step is in defining the problem, and getting influential or powerful people to understand that it is the problem. Then comes the long haul of building public support. Good luck!