Kelly in the Media

Kelly Vincent – ABC Adelaide interview on the costs associated with standing candidates for the South Australian Parliament

Peter Goers: Why does it cost so much more than anywhere else in the nation for someone to become a political candidate for Parliament in South Australia? Three thousand dollars to be a candidate for the Lower House and $3,000 for the Upper House compared with $250 in some states and territories, $500 in New South Wales and $3,000 here. Federal Parliament’s at $1,000 for the Lower House, $2,000 for the Upper House and the Senate. This was changed prior to the last election. Kelly Vincent who is an MLC Member for the Legislative Council and Mark Parnell is a Greens Leader, when did this come in, Mark?

 

Mark Parnell: Well it was snuck in in the dead of night just before the last election, the 2014 State Election. It was done by regulation and there wasn’t anything that anyone could do to stop it because the regs came in after Parliament had finished.

 
Peter Goers: How does it serve democracy? How does it work, Kelly? Say I wanted to run for Parliament, I have every right to do so as a citizen don’t I, Kelly?

 

Kelly Vincent: Absolutely and look if we want to represent the community we need a diversity of voices. Of course we want there to be some checks and balances so we want to make sure that there is a range of ordinary people in the Parliament because that is one way to get your voice heard in our community. If the Parliament isn’t represented then how can we possibly be making the right decision for anyone?

 

Peter Goers: And any adult can and you were the youngest person to be elected to any Parliament in Australia, weren’t you Kelly?

 

Kelly Vincent: I was until Wyatt Roy and I very much look forward to losing this title because I’m all for more young people coming into Parliament.

 

Peter Goers: Is this a deposit? Do you get this money back?

 

Kelly Vincent: You do get the money back if you achieve 4% of the vote or over but some smaller parties, and particularly the candidates running for the first time that may not be obtainable if they’re still getting their campaign underway.
Back to Mark Parnell
Peter Goers: Why do you have to pay this, Mark?

 

Mark Parnell: Well it’s called a deposit but as Kelly says it’s effectively a fee. We need diversity of voices, I think there should be a barrier to entry to Parliament and that is that you get enough votes. There should not be a significant barrier to running for Parliament and they’re two very different things, they’ve set the amount at $3,000 with no justification, it’s not as if  you facetiously talk about the Raving Loony Monster Party or whatever, we don’t have a history of people abusing the right. It’s not as if our balance paper is full of joke candidates, it’s not the Government I think overreached and it is self-serving because the old parties always get their money back.

 

Peter Goers: I think it was a reaction to preference whispering that was going on and was very advantageous and we saw Family First get that Senator and he had an incredible low vote but the preferences got him up and it was scaring the major parties I think.

 

Mark Parnell: Well that’s right. There’s a solution to that and that is to get rid of backroom deals and things called ‘group voting tickets.’ But to making it even harder for people to just put their hand up to enter the contest I think is outrageously undemocratic. Kelly and I – and we joined with another small Party the Animal Justice Party – to call on the Government to put it back to a more sensible level. We’re suggesting $500 for the Lower House and $1,000 for the Upper House. It’s still a substantial amount and it’s still a disincentive to people who aren’t serious but at least it allows everyone to have a go and I reckon that’s what’s democracy’s about.

 

Peter Goers: Why should it cost anything at all?

 

Mark Parnell: I think you do need something so that people who are serious are the ones who nominate.

 

Peter Goers: oh, so only people with money are serious?

 

Mark Parnell: No, no, no. It doesn’t have to be set at such a barrier that only the rich can afford to run but you don’t want kids straight out of school just for a laugh running for Parliament.

 

Peter Goers: No true but in Western Australia – what you mean like, Kelly?

 

Mark Parnell: [laughs] No. Kelly is good for a laugh but she’s an ornament to the place.

 

Peter Goers: she is but in Western Australia it’s $250.

 

Mark Parnell: Well that’s right, we are orders of magnitude where we’re three times as much as running for Federal Parliament and six times as much as the next highest which is the New South Wales State Parliament

 

Peter Goers: And this is every candidate in every party?

 

Mark Parnell: And what that means is if you’ve got a small party and you want to give everyone in South Australia the chance to vote for you, in other words you want to contest every seat, and you have a team of people for the Upper House as well, that’s $150,000 upfront just to contest the election and that’s just not fair

 

Peter Goers: So this would favour major parties with major fundraising. We have a Prime Minister who sat down and wrote out a cheque for $1.75 million from his own account to fund the last election

 

Mark Parnell: That’s right. It favours the old parties for two reasons; one is they’ve got the money. The other one is they always get at least 4% in every seat so they always get their deposit back. And to be honest, even the Greens we pretty well get our deposit back everywhere as well but this isn’t about self-serving, this is about democracy. And I think that our democracy is well served by having a variety of people running for Parliament, giving a range of choices.
Michael Atkinson, Lower House Speaker (ABC Adelaide 20.48-20.53) Costs associated with standing for the South Australian Parliament
Peter Goers: The Speaker of the Lower House here in Adelaide, Mick Atkinson has called in to put another view

 

Michael Atkinson: I thought I’d ring in because there would be two Members of Parliament who are furiously agreeing with one another and I thought I might try to make it interesting by putting a contrary point of view. The point I wish to make is it does cost millions to run elections. For instance more than $100,000 now to have a by-election and we already know that the Upper House ballot paper is the size of a tea towel or larger and that many of the candidates on it are effectively joke candidates because they’re not trying to win, they have no expectation of winning but they’re running as part of a preference feed. So they’re trying to feed preferences into some of the bigger parties like Labor, Liberal, Nick Xenophon Team and the Greens. So the Animal Justice Party is essentially a joke party that’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the Greens and the idea is to feed preferences into the Greens.
Back to Mark Parnell
Peter Goers: Is that true Mark?

 

Mark Parnell: No. They’re a rival party and they’re trying to attract votes from other parties including from the Greens. So it’s just not true. But Mick’s point, where I will agree with him is that we do need to fix up the system of preference harvesting and these fronts that are set up to send votes in different directions. The way you do that is you have something like optional preferential voting and you don’t allow backroom deals. We can fix it. They fixed it at the Senate level for the last election, no more parties deciding where preferences go. We can fix that problem here as well but I don’t think the solution is to prevent people who have got a legitimate world view, want to put themselves before voters as a choice, stopping them from even contesting with these outrageously high fees. I just don’t think that’s democratic.
Back to Michael Atkinson
Peter Goers: Surely Mick you wouldn’t like to see somebody stopped from attempting to represent others in our democracy by a financial involvement of $3,000 if they didn’t have that money, would you?

 

Michael Atkinson: If you put it like that who could fail to agree? But my point is the ballot paper is enormous and it’s so enormous it’s confusing some in the electorate and impeding their right.

 

Peter Goers: Over 90% vote above the line and those who vote below the line, such as me, you put a lot of work into it. And you would do too, Mick?

 

Michael Atkinson: My recollection, I used to be in charge of the Electoral Act for eight years, is that the requirement to get 4% of the vote is more the requirement to get 4% of the vote of the winning candidate. So I think you might find you get your deposit returned on considerably less than 4%. But I do think it’s an abuse of the democratic process for someone to run for Parliament with no intention of winning only to funnel preferences through to some other candidate and therefore to make the ballot paper longer and more confusing. And that’s the reason the deposit is there and it’s been there nearly throughout the history of parliament democracy.

 

Peter Goers: South Australia is certainly isolated here in that it’s more than 10 times as much to stand for Parliament in South Australia than it is Western Australia; that’s ludicrous

 

Michael Atkinson: I’d be interested to see how many joke parties or preference rorting parties are running in Western Australia and to make some assessment of whether the deposit there is so low it’s led to an abuse of the system.

 

Peter Goers: People are saying anything that promotes diversity in our Parliament is a good thing. Thank you for calling in, Mick Atkinson.
Back to Mark Parnell
Peter Goers: And a final word from Mark Parnell

 

Mark Parnell: There was a little bit of agreement there with Mick at the end. But you’ve nailed it – why 10 times more? And I think you’ll find those other states, they do have people running who know they’re not going to win. But honestly if the test for whether you should be able to run for Parliament is whether you can win or not we would only ever have two candidates in every seat. You’ve got to have the ability for people to run and you’ve got to make the barriers a reasonable level to sort out the people who are completely not serious but still allow that diversity of voices to be put before the people.
Back to Kelly Vincent
Peter Goers: Kelly Vincent?

 

Kelly Vincent: I think Mark is absolutely correct in terms of there are ways to fix the issues that Michael has raised and thereby reforming the electoral system by looking at things like proportional representation and optional preferential voting, but not by locking people out from even having the chance to have their voice heard

 

Peter Goers: Thank you, Kelly.