In another example of rules debates attracting the most political passion, the Queensland Legislative Assembly exploded this afternoon over a bill making changes to the state's electoral laws.
The LNP Opposition, with the support of the cross bench, moved a bill that would increase the size of the Legislative Assembly from 89 to 93 seats. With a redistribution about to get under way, this increase in numbers would protect conservative seats in the north of the state from abolition, while new seats are likely to be created on the conservative voting Gold and Sunshine Coasts.
The bill had passed the in principle stage of debate (the second reading to old timers) when the government ambushed the opposition during the in detail (committee) stage of the bill.
The government moved an amendment to abandon optional preferential and re-introdocue full preferential voting. The cross bench also supported this proposal, meaning the opposition bill was amended to include the government's amendment.
After more than an hour of furious condemnation by the opposition, the LNP had to vote for the bill as amended for full preferential voting. It had to vote with the government and cross bench as the only alternative would have been to burn off the support of cross bench members the opposition had worked so hard to court.
In my view making such a major change to the state's electoral system unannounced and at short notice is exactly the sort of slip shod legislative behaviour that the single chamber Queensland Parliament has been criticised for so often in the past.
Even the Northern Territory parliament allowed a decent period of consultation and debate before moving to optional preferential voting earlier this year. Jarrod Bleijie as Attorney General asked for submissions before changing the Electoral Act when the Newman government had a massive majority.
It also makes Labor's recent confected outrage about Senate reform look pretty shallow. This bill has been amended and passed in less time than the committee hearing into the Senate reform bill that the Labor Party so heavily criticised, and without the production of a major committee inquiry two years before the legislation.
Now in a matter of two hours the Queensland Parliament has abandoned a method of voting that was recommended by a post-Fitzgerald inquiry body, the Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC), way back in November 1990.
No call for submissions. No inquiry. No committee. No warning. Just the moving of an amendment in committee to an opposition bill. It backs every argument that no campaigners made last month against granting fixed four year terms to a parliament with no upper house.
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