Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Acting Deputy President. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that I am dialling in from here in Meanjin, or Brisbane, the Turrbal, the Yuggera and the Yugarabul people, and that sovereignty was never ceded, so we are on stolen land. I'm very proud to be first senator using our remote facilities, as the chamber finally enters the 21st century. I hope that we can continue that trend to modernity with, maybe, some more women in cabinet and a more representative chamber, and that is, of course, what the bill is about today.

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Ensuring Fair Representation of the Northern Territory) Bill 2020 is a bill that the Greens are very proud to support, and it goes to the ability of this chamber to represent its constituents and to the ability of the House to represent its constituents. The reason for this bill is that in early July the Electoral Commissioner determined that population changes in the Northern Territory meant that the electoral entitlement for the NT was for one lower house seat only. If the parliament doesn't act, then this small change in relative population will lead to the Northern Territory losing half of its representation in the House and going from four federal representatives down to just three. The resulting lower house electorate would cover the entire Northern Territory and the Christmas and Cocos Islands, so it would be by far the largest electorate in the country by population, at almost a quarter of a million people.

The Greens strongly believe that halving the number of seats in the Territory would be a massive injustice for First Nations people living in the Territory—who are, frankly, already unrepresented and underserved by our parliamentary system. It would also lead to major underrepresentation for rural and remote communities across the Territory and the islands. These diverse and disparate communities already share one rural electorate, despite the diversity of issues that the electorate has to cover. To combine an already stretched electorate with an urban centre would just further marginalise rural and remote issues. That is, of course, the reason why we are in strong support of the bill.

In the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the bill there was broad consensus expressed, both by those making submissions and those giving evidence, that returning to just one member and one electorate would seriously diminish the representation of people in the Northern Territory. I note that the Territory is 27 per cent First Nations people, which is the highest proportion of any state or territory. Lingiari, which is the seat that would be abolished, has the highest proportion of First Nations voters, at about 40 per cent, so its amalgamation would seriously and disproportionately impact the representation that First Nations people are able to get in the House of Representatives chamber in this federal parliament.

I've already mentioned how the NT is huge in its geography and covers a disparate range of constituencies. Currently, the urban and industrial issues are concentrated around Darwin, in the seat called Solomon, while most regional areas are represented in Lingiari. As I've said, amalgamation of those into one seat, we fear, would give priority to those urban areas over regional, remote and First Nations issues and voices. In relation to fracking, for example, which is, of course, quite topical, city voters who might have bought the spin that somehow there'll be some economic benefits flowing from gas—which, frankly, is dubious and disputed by the experts—might vote differently to people in the regional and remote areas, who will have to live with the impacts of a destroyed water table and other incursions onto their land. So it will be very difficult for a representative to balance those competing interests and concerns.

Of course, in order to represent an electorate properly you should get around and visit the place. Part of the reason I'm dialling in remotely is so that I can do that in the 14 days after this fortnight of sittings, rather than being in an appropriate level of quarantine to keep my fellow Queenslanders safe. But, because of the size of the NT, making it one seat makes it thoroughly impractical for the representative to get around and actually listen to the community and then represent those interests here in parliament. I want to note that in federal voting statistics the Northern Territory already has a lower turnout than other states and territories. If voters already feel unrepresented due to the size of the existing electorates and, further, the lack of an elected representative to get around and see them personally, there's potential for even less engagement and even more disenfranchisement. That would be a tragedy for our democracy.

The fact that the NT population fluctuates with a clear margin of error and that the census data is sometimes unreliable given the transient nature of the population means that it's preferable to have a guarantee of two seats, rather than changing between one and two seats every few terms. There is a whole range of ways this could be achieved, and some of the submitters to the inquiry on the bill went through them. Antony Green proposes a harmonic mean apportionment. It all gets very 'wonky' and interesting. We're very open to considering those methods in the future, but for now we think this bill is a necessary safeguard to protect our democracy and protect the interests of First Nations people through their being properly represented in the House of Representatives and the federal parliament.

Now is a crucial time in our relationship with First Nations people. The Greens, of course, believe that we need a treaty, we need truth, we need justice, we need healing, we need reparations and we need sovereignty acknowledged. All of those issues should be dealt with by this parliament and by our community, but, if we are to start off by reducing representation of First Nations people in federal parliament, that sends absolutely the wrong message and could set back progress on those other crucial issues of how we respect and acknowledge our First Nations people and their rights.

While we're on electoral reform, I have said that this bill is important, and the time for dealing with these issues is now, but there are also a lot of other reforms that our democracy is crying out for. We need more diversity of representation in our chamber and we need the voices of the community to be properly represented. Now, I have a private member's bill of my own, which will, hopefully, come on for debate at some point this century, which would remove the influence of private money on our democracy. It would say that, actually, you shouldn't be able to buy influence and that particular industries should not be able to make massive donations that then buy tacit favours or tacit policy outcomes that suit the bottom line while community interests, the public interest and the interests of the planet get put second, third or last. We think that's a crucial electoral reform as well. It has long been the Greens' view that we should get dirty donations and their influence on our democracy right out of the picture, so I'll be hoping to bring that bill on at some point. It would cap donations from everybody at $1,000 a year. That's for individuals; that's for community groups. That's for everybody, because we don't think that big money should be running our democracy; we think it should be about the public interest and the interests of the planet and the future.

That is, of course, the biggest electoral reform that the Greens will continue to champion and to push for, and we hope to have some support for that, but we note that, sadly, both of the big parties do accept very large corporate donations—to the tune of, I think, $100 million now since 2012. So, sadly, we're not yet confident that that bill will have the numbers it requires to pass, but we live in hope.

In terms of other reforms that are needed for our democracy to remain in this century, remote participation is, of course, at the top of the list. I'm really pleased that we are here and that things seem to be working. I haven't had my phone buzz, Mr President, to say that you can't hear me or see me or that things aren't working, so I assume that all is tickety-boo. I'm very grateful for that, but it's six months too late. We've been in this global pandemic for six months now and, really, we should've seen this process expedited at the beginning of that time. I'm glad we're here now, but it did take an awfully long time. Let's hope that the system holds up for the coming fortnight.

In terms of other reforms, the parliamentary code of conduct and, of course, a federal corruption watchdog, which go hand in hand, are desperately needed. I'll be speaking about the parliamentary code of conduct later today because the reporting to the inquiry into my bill to set one up is being tabled this afternoon, but suffice to say I think we need to make the parliament a more attractive workplace so that people actually want to enter politics and seek to make change, improve people's lives and work for the betterment of us all. The way that they see many senators and members conducting themselves really doesn't endear the profession to people who might be interested in a career in politics. If we're talking about democratic reforms and making our chamber more representative, then things like parliamentary standards so that conflicts of interests are properly managed and people act in the public interest are really very basic stuff that should have been legislated an awfully long time ago.

In terms of other democratic reforms, ensuring government decision-making and advisory bodies have broader representation is very crucial and very topical. We've seen the COVID commission stacked with industry representatives who have vested interests in pushing particular industries or particular resources, even particular projects, and there are very lax conflict-of-interest rules about how to manage those flagrant conflicts between what could be advocacy for the public interest through a public commission and what could be advocacy for the private interests of the personnel who are on that commission. Again, in this broader context of making our democracy work better, it's the community that needs to be represented, not people's private interests, so making sure that those government decision-making or advisory bodies are more representative and have better conflict-of-interest rules is well overdue.

There are a whole lot of other initiatives that we would love to see trialled as we take these tentative steps towards the 21st century in our teenage democracy. Things like citizen-initiated matters of public importance, citizens' assemblies and participatory budget-making—actually involving people in their democracy more systemically and more successfully—would lead to better outcomes. We would all be better informed and the system would do its job better. So we're really excited about the prospect of progress on those issues. We've learnt to become very patient, so I am not sure how long it will be until we see some real action on those things, but I am proud to be in a party that's pushing those issues and I know that there are many people in the chamber that agree on these issues, so there's hope for reform.

These are the reasons we support broader democratic reform, and in this particular instance we support this bill. I want to pay tribute and credit to Senator McCarthy, who has really championed this issue and has done, as always, an excellent job on it. I acknowledge that this legislation would entrench malapportionment, but we think it's fair enough in this case. You can't have a single Representatives seat representing an entire territory that is 27 per cent First Nations people and say that that's good and fair representation because there has been a slight change in population numbers. That could potentially lead to a really unfair and, I think, undemocratic outcome. So we need this fixed. We've got the bill before us today to fix it. I don't think it's coming on for a vote. I hope I'm wrong about that. We will certainly be supporting the bill if it does, and I do hope that the government take this on board and take the strong feedback of all of the submitters on board along with the rights, wishes and desires of First Nations communities to be properly represented in this chamber and in the other chamber.

With that, I conclude my remarks. It seems the tech has held up, so I'm grateful for that. I say thank you to everyone who has been involved in getting these remote facilities set up. There have been a lot of people working very long hours. We're very grateful for that and we thank you for it.