Chauvel Charles: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1333] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Mr Finlayson nearly managed a statesmanlike contribution on that occasion and he is to be congratulated on that. 
Moana Mackey 
: He got a bit closer. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: A bit closer—that is right. I will take just a short call to look forward to what the system might include if we could get it right and in the words of the previous speaker Christopher Finlayson achieve an enduring and acceptable agreement on this important area of law. I think that it is important to reiterate what Mr Parker said in his earlier contribution: we really do need to capture the principle of transparency. That principle needs to embrace the activities of third parties because—as the United States’ experience with so-called soft money shows—it is all very well to try to regulate the political parties per se but if one fails to put rules in place as to transparency disclosure and what have you in relation to pressure groups then one achieves nothing. So any attempt going forward really must not only preserve the moves towards transparency relating to political parties—which was achieved to an extent by the Electoral Finance Act—but we have to make sure that it applies across the board to all actors in the political sphere; otherwise democracy is the loser. 
There was also some discussion about the donations regime. I must say that the previous speaker must have attended a different select committee from the oneI sat through because I do not recall the matters to which he adverted. I think we need to go further than simply a donations regime. We have to consider the matter of State funding of political parties. We are one of the few Western democracies that do not do this and if we think as a Parliament that we are serious about the notion of one person one vote rather than one dollar one vote then we have to make sure that it is not just the interests of the wealthy that are protected but that all interests in society can be represented in Parliament. Quite clearly the only way to do that is to do what the 1986 royal commission report originally recommended and go for some sort of system of funding where the parties perhaps get $1 or $2 in respect of the votes cast at the previous election so that there is a fair funding basis for all the parties contesting an election. 
In terms of a further look forward it would also be very useful to consider the question of participation in the voting system and I hope the Minister of Justice will be open to this. We have probably had less than desirable turnouts at our last few elections. I am not an advocate of compulsory voting as our Australian brethren are but I do think we can do some things to encourage a better turnout than we have at the moment. In this regard it is a shame that Sue Bradford’s initiative last year proposing to extend the franchise to 16-year-olds never really went very far as far as public debate was concerned. When that proposal was made I welcomed it and said it deserved a proper discussion. 
If we look at the historical voting turnout in this country we see that it has fallen on a trend-line basis since we lowered the voting age to 18. That seems counter-intuitive; one would think that it should have gone up. But if we think about what 18-year-olds are generally preoccupied with we realise that it is actually not much of a surprise. They are flatting and usually leaving one form of education and going to another or going on to some other form of work and they have other things on their minds whereas 16-year-olds might well be quite interested in the matters of civics that they have to consider when thinking about what is going on around them in the body politic. So I am not necessarily saying we should do this but I am saying we need to have a good debate about it when we look at the options going forward. I am very glad that this legislation is beginning the process that will allow us to do that. Thank you.