Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

What they really believe in. They really believe in Medicare co-payments. They really believe in young people being pushed off the dole and not having any income to sustain them for six months. They really believe in $100,000 degrees. They really believe in cuts to pensions, and they really believe in undermining Medicare. We can go on and on. It is a very clear insight into the soul of the Liberal Party.

And this Senate stopped that—not all of it; there were certainly a few deals done, but this Senate stopped a great many of the measures in that budget which not only were broken election promises and a breach of faith with the electorate but were policies and programs and cuts which really went to what sort of Australia we are. It was this Senate that stopped them. So I say to the Greens—I suspect there is probably no-one else listening—and to anybody who might listen that putting in place a system which advantages you but which, over time, has a higher risk than the existing system of enabling the coalition to obtain a working majority of the Senate is not a progressive thing to do. It is in fact a remarkably selfish thing to do.

I also want to return to a point that I think Senator Conroy made, where he was suggesting that in operation, in practice, this system is a first-past-the-post system in effect. Senator Cormann, I think, responded—if not to Senator Conroy then to me—saying, 'That's ridiculous; it's not the case.' I want to go back to the evidence put before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters by Mr Green, who is an advocate and a proponent for this reform, which he is entitled to be, but he ought not to be put into this debate as someone who is a disinterested academic on this. He is a proponent of change. As I said, that is reasonable. I disagree with him, but that is his position. Senator Conroy was asking him about exhausted votes, and he was also asking him about the number of ballot papers with only a single 1 above the line.

As you recall, we have already heard in this debate that some 96 or 97 per cent of voters, as a result of the system which has been in place for the last 30 years, put 1 above the line. In New South Wales the number of ballot papers with only a single 1 above the line—remember, there is a not dissimilar system in New South Wales; is that a reasonable proposition?—is 83 per cent. If 83 per cent only have 1 above the line, I suppose you could say it is not technically a first-past-the-post system, but it is a hell of a lot of votes which are being treated in essentially the same way. Some might say, 'That's okay,' but that is not the system that Labor supports. We have outlined time and again here why we think a compulsory preferential system is preferable. It is very clear from the numbers that Mr Green asserts occur in New South Wales—