Fed: Whitlam calls for fast changes to electoral equality

AAP General News (Australia)
02-13-2004
Fed: Whitlam calls for fast changes to electoral equality

By Belinda Tasker

CANBERRA, Feb 13 AAP - Australia is decades behind the United States in ensuring electoral
equality, former prime minister Gough Whitlam said today.

"In America when it comes to redistribution they don't beat about the bush, they say
it's to be done immediately," Mr Whitlam told the senate legal and constitutional references
committee.

"No primaries, no elections unless the borders are as nearly as possible the same number
of electors as laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States of America under chief
justice Earl Warren 40 years ago."

The Senate committee is conducting public hearings into the State Elections (One Vote,
One Value) Bill 2001, 2002, introduced to the parliament by Australian Democrats Senator
Andrew Murray in 2001.

At the time of introducing the bill, Senator Murray described WA's electoral system
as a study in inequality with mining and pastoralist votes worth four times the votes
of others.

If passed by the parliament, Senator Murray's bill would force state and territory
electorates to contain as equal a number of voters as possible.

Mr Whitlam, who is believed to be the first former prime minister to give evidence
to a Senate committee, said last week's state election in Queensland highlighted the need
for electoral reform and the importance of one vote, one value.

He said of the 89 electoral seats in Queensland, nine had more than 30,000 voters and
three had less than 20,000.

"In America that would not be tolerated and it would be overthrown," Mr Whitlam said.

"This bill relates obviously to the unacceptable situation in Queensland as well as
the still less acceptable situation in both houses in Western Australia."

Mr Whitlam said that if Senator Murray's bill was accepted by both houses of parliament
it could be introduced before the end of June this year, in time to ensure changes to
electoral boundaries were introduced in WA before the state election due late this year
or early in 2005.

"If our committee system and our parliament works as promptly as the United States
does then the next WA election for both houses of parliament will for the first time in
their history be on the basis of one vote, one value," he said.

Mr Whitlam said he did not believe constitutional problems would arise if the federal
parliament moved to introduce new laws on state elections and boundaries.

AAP bt/sb/cjh/jlw

KEYWORD: ELECTIONS

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