Senator MINCHIN (South Australia - Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister)

(7.34 p.m.) - I move: That the committee does not insist upon the amendments disagreed to by the House of Representatives.

I would like to deal with this matter on the basis of addressing the electoral system which the Senate insists that the government adopt for the election of delegates to the convention, because that is what we now have - not the govemment's preferred system but the opposition parties' preferred system for electing delegates to the convention.

The Senate is telling the government that we cannot have this convention unless the election of delegates is conducted on a compulsory attendance ballot using the normal Senate style ballot paper. That is the position we now find ourselves in. Without taking too much time, I want to address my remarks to the system which the Senate insists that we use.

Firstly, I want to address the Senate ballot paper issue and urge you again to think about the practicality of that. We have no ideological hang-up on this. We are trying to deal with this in a practical way. We, as a government, came to this issue on the basis of discussions with the Electoral Commission on the sort of election we could find ourselves in. With 20 positions available in New South Wales, 16 in Victoria and 13 in Queensland, this is a much bigger show than even a full Senate election. It involves a situation where candidates would be elected to positions for just 10 days, not for six years as is the case in this chamber.

Therefore, we must plan on the basis of the possibility of enormous interest in it. And particularly in New South Wales, there is a lot of interest in this issue. My office has been inundated with queries about the process, the election and becoming a candidate. I said to the government, 'We are going to have to plan for an election that could have anything up to 500 candidates. How are we going to deal with that?'

I think that is realistic. There are 20 positions in New South Wales. You only need 20 teams of 20 running for election and you have 400 candidates. There has been nothing like that in any Senate election Frankly, the Senate system cannot cope with that sort of election. The proposition that the Senate is insisting on, that it be the normal Senate system, could make this an absolute shambles.

I note that the Proportional Representation Society of Australia, which I trust you all treat as reasonably neutral in this debate apart from its obvious advocacy of proportional representation, but we are proposing a proportional representation election - has written to a number of senators. In its letter, the society said:

We believe that the govemment's efforts to cater for the possibility that very large numbers of candidates will nominate in some states are quite reasonable . . .

It went on to say:

. . . experience in the most recent New South Wales legislative council election and the first ACT election using the discredited and discarded d'Hondt scheme shows that the Senate type ballot paper becomes extremely unwieldy when around 100 candidates nominate. There would be utter pandemonium if 200 or more candidates came forward.

So the Proportional Representation Society of Australia is endorsing our system. It is waming the Senate, as I do, that the adoption of the full Senate system could be an utter shambles.

We as a responsible government have had to plan for a situation where not 200 but 500 candidates might nominate. I remind you that the Electoral Reform Society and Malcolm Mackerras - whatever you might think of him - have both endorsed the system we have proposed and do so from, I think, a more neutral corner than any of us in relation to this debate.

If the Senate insists on this amendment and we were to have an election on the basis of the full Senate election system, we could have a ballot paper one metre long by half a metre wide. It could be twice the size of the ballot paper used in 1989 ACT election, where, as you all know, it became a joke. It has the incidental fact of costing considerably more for the scrutiny as well as taking eight to 10 weeks merely to count. We are electing delegates to be there for 10 days, but it is going to take up to 10 weeks to count it.

Below-the-line voting in such situations, according to the Senate system and on the amendments you have proposed, would be extremely difficult. If there are, say, 400 candidates, to have a formal vote you have to number from one through to 400 below the line without making a mistake. I suspect that those voting below the line will suffer a very high risk of casting an informal vote. For all those reasons, that element of the Senate's proposed electoral system is unacceptable to the government.

The question of an attendance ballot - which is the second of the three major issues that we must address in the electoral system proposed by the Senate - was not proposed by the government and is not supported by the government. We have allocated some $35 million for the election that we proposed to conduct a postal vote. One of the reasons we did so was that it is $13 million cheaper than an attendance ballot. It will cost some $49 million for a full attendance ballot for the election of delegates to this convention.

We are not trying to be unduly fiscally conservative on this matter, but we do think that that is not cost-effective or reasonable in the circumstances. For an election which does not involve a government or a parliament but delegates to a convention, that sort of expenditure is unwarranted when it can be done effectively for considerably less money. So we do think that the cost involved in a full attendance ballot is not necessary and is wasteful.

I do point out that the postal ballot has the great advantage of enabling us to get into every household in Australia a great deal of information about this election. It is an unusual election and people will be looking for information. Your amendments have had to go to the extent of providing for material to be in libraries and other things. We will be able to deliver into every household the statements of all the candidates saying exactly what they stand for and full how-to-vote information about an unusual election. We think that is a considerable advantage of the method we have proposed.

We have, as you know, proposed security systems to minimise the extent to which there can be fraud, but I put to you that the incentive to defraud in an election like this is very limited. You are talking about statewide electorates of one million people-that is for my state, the second smallest state. To actually have any influence on the outcome would require fraud on a scale that is unheard of. Labor spent 13 years telling us that there was no fraud in the electoral system so I think it is a bit much to say that we cannot have a postal vote.

Senator Kernot - You spent 13 years telling us that there was.