Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I assume that Senator Muir is referring to the ordering of candidates by political parties as presented on the ballot paper. The ordering of candidates on the Senate ballot paper is transparently put before the voter, and the voter can make a choice. The voter can either accept the ordering by the political party of their choice, which they do not have to go and find in the AEC on some internet register—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Okay, let's call it the AEC website where political parties can register three different group-voting tickets directing preferences below the line in three different directions for more than 100 candidates. What we are talking about here is—very transparently on the ballot paper—when people vote above the line for a party of their choice, or the parties of their choice, then obviously the ordering of candidates is very transparently in front of voters. If voters do not agree with the ordering of candidates by the political party of their choice, they can of course vote below the line.

Senator Muir, I understand your perspective; I understand the proposition you are putting. You are entitled to your view—of course you are—but we might have to agree to disagree, because we decided to follow the suggestion of the Labor Party. We decided to follow the suggestion of Labor's National Secretary, George Wright—I quote him again:

Labor's preferred position would also see a requirement that ballot paper instructions … advocate that voters fill in a minimum number of boxes above the line, while still counting as formal any ballot paper with at least a 1 above the line.

That is what George Wright, the National Secretary of the Labor Party, put to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters—according to Senator Conroy, without the knowledge of the National President of the Labor Party at the time, Senator McAllister. Senator Conroy now says, 'All without the knowledge of the national executive.' The revelations about the inner workings of the Labor Party become more and more interesting. I do not understand how the National Secretary of the Labor Party still has his job. Why hasn't he had to resign? He has put forward the exact reform proposal to Senate voting arrangements which the government is giving effect to. Here is Senator Conroy saying that Mr George Wright, the National Secretary of the Labor Party, put this proposal on the table to a committee of the parliament without telling his president, without telling his national executive, on a frolic of his own. How come he has not been sacked, given what a strong position you have taken against this reform? Please explain that to me. How can he continue to have the confidence of the National Executive of the Labor Party if, on such an important issue—an issue that you think is so important that you are running a 27-hour filibuster—you are not applying a sanction to the National Secretary of the Labor Party, who actually was actually at the beginning of this precise way that we would recommend that people should be able to vote when voting for the Senate above the line?