ELECTORAL REFORM — LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
41. Ms M.J. DAVIES to the Minister for Electoral Affairs:
I have a supplementary question. Why
did the government not prioritise the Greens' legislation introduced in
the Legislative Council last term, which would have abolished ticket voting in
a commonsense manner by giving it priority for debate in both houses of
Parliament?
Mr J.R.
QUIGLEY replied:
I
do not control what happens up there—I wished I did! There was so much
in that last Parliament that we got through here and they just sort of—well,
they talk the ears off on ass up there and they just kept on going and going on
all these bills that just got stuck in the mud. I am not responsible for that,
Leader of the Opposition.
I can remember being at the fishing
club when the Premier rang me on my phone and said, ''I'd like
you to do this job and that job'' and
when I got to work on Monday, I thought, ''Right. What needs to be done
here?'' With electoral affairs, electoral reform goes without
saying, so I rolled up my sleeves and got on with it. What I came up with is the idea that if I did it, if I sat down at my
desk and went about the task, the Leader of the Opposition, her party, the
Liberal Party and people in the community would say that I am being partisan
and doing what people do in America when they try to redraw the boundaries to
suit a party. That is why I thought: why not go to a former Governor to chair a
committee—he has travelled the length and breadth of this state and is
an eminent jurist—of some people who are experts on electoral reform to
look at the matter and come up with some ideas for me?
The SPEAKER: The member for
Scarborough with his first question!