Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I am very disappointed to see Senator Seselja completely mislead the Australian public on television this morning, just like Senator Cormann attempted to do a few seconds ago by interjecting. Let me read to you the analysis circulated by Mr Gray from the Parliamentary Library in the last few days, because it bells the cat. It actually backs up the arguments of those of us opposing this legislation. So I am very disappointed to see completely misleading analysis about the impact of this bill being put forward by those opposite and some others.

Let me be very clear. It says: 'The obvious way to approximate the new system is to first look at how many quotas were achieved by each party as a primary vote. This will indicate how many seats the party is guaranteed to win, and may account for four or five of the six vacancies at a normal half Senate election.' There is nothing remarkable about that. But—and this is where it really matters that people do not just listen to the misleading commentary but read the document itself—'the remaining seats will be determined either via preference flows or by whichever party has the largest remainder after the full quotas are allocated to elected candidates.' So in other words: whatever preference flows happen or who has the highest remaining votes. It then goes on to make the following observation: 'The only parties that could reasonably be expected to transfer preferences at sufficient numbers to elect another candidate are the larger parties, the ALP, the coalition and the Greens. Directing preferences consistently under the new system is only possible through how-to-vote cards, and only the larger parties have the infrastructure to distribute these to their supporters across the state.'

This is a ganging-up by two major parties in this country to exclude 3.2 million voters, who did not vote for us. So get used to being disenfranchised. This idea that these votes become informal is complete and utter bunkum; it is a complete and utter mislead of the Australian public, because what this paper says is that those votes will exhaust because they cannot pass through the system, and the only parties that can get elected are those who have machinery all across the country. So let us be very clear: this paper backs up the analysis that 3.2 million voters are going to get no representation in this chamber. The only people who will are: the Greens, who want 12 bums on their seats in this chamber; the opposition, and we do get an increase but we do not believe— (Time expired)