Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Madam President, I support the bill as it is. I want to make one or two observations. Regarding the number of people who do not vote, if I look at my own election in May of this year there were 23 311 voters of which 18 756 saw fit to vote or at least turn up. That is, 80.46 per cent voted, almost one-fifth failed to vote. Informal votes amounted to 672 of that 80.46 per cent of people who voted.

The point that I want to make here is that a penalty unit is $120. The penalty for failing to vote is, I think, is the huge amount of $24 now. The Leader will correct me if I am wrong.

Mr Wilkinson - About five-and-a-half cups of coffee.

Mr DEAN - Five-and-a-half cups of coffee. I wonder are we really serious about wanting people to vote. Voting is compulsory but there is nothing serious about this at all. The only thing that is serious about this whole act is when a person innocently goes out and offers to provide his salary to the people. That is treated as serious. We are not treating this as being a serious matter at all. I think to suggest in the second reading speech that when a person fails to vote, $24 will be provided to the Monetary Penalties Enforcement Service. That is expecting a bit too much. Can you imagine people failing to vote and $24 going to the service for them to collect this sum of money?

Ms Forrest - If they do not pay it they get put in the name and shame list on the Internet. So maybe that is the deterrent. The amount of $24 is not very much but seeing your name on the list is.

Mr DEAN - Maybe. I would be very surprised if many are put into the hands of that service for the collection of that amount of money. There are many serial offenders in this situation. I spoke to a number of people about voting. It was interesting the number of people who said to me it is against my religious beliefs to vote; and that is acceptable. All you have to do when you are challenged is to say that it is against your religious position to vote. I have had other people say that they have never voted and have never been fined. A number of people said that. They may not be on the electoral roll, for whatever reasons. You wonder how closely we get out to ensure that people are enrolled and doing the right thing. I had a few people say to me that it was against their personal beliefs to vote - they just do not vote and they just do not pay fines.

Ms Forrest - Are they the ones that come to your office for assistance on matters?

Mr DEAN - You are probably right, they are probably the same ones that come in and want support. I would have thought in this day and age that if we really wanted to ensure that these laws were complied with we would at least have imposed a realistic penalty. I accept that some people do not want to vote. Religious beliefs I accept as a perfectly legitimate reason. There are some other very good reasons too that people cannot vote, and I accept those as well.

I made fun, in a way, of how seriously some offences are treated. Take the poster situation that is referred to in the second reading speech. There is no real policing of it, though.

There is policing of some comments that you make if somebody complains about you, and that is what happened in my situation, but a person can go out and flout the laws, flout the Electoral Act in relation to where they put posters. It was never so evident than in my election where a number of posters were put up illegally on government property and no action was ever taken. I was very meticulous to ensure that everything that I did was 100 per cent spot-on because I knew that people would be watching me. Others were openly flouting the laws and no action was taken. Does the Electoral Office say that unless somebody complains they are not going to take any action? Is that what they say? Or should there be some requirement to at least control this with some form of policing? There ought to be some control over it because if there is not, the law becomes a laughing-stock.

Mr Wilkinson - Were many of your posters stolen?

Mr DEAN - An interesting point. I was saying last night at the dining table that last election I only had two posters removed. I thought that I would have had heaps taken this time. We were prepared for it, we had a lot of back-up posters, but it did not happen.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - Can I borrow the other side of your posters then?

Mr DEAN - You can. I have a lot out there that you can have.

Mr Wilkinson - They are ageless too because they have a hole where the head is and the member just puts his head through the poster every now and then.

Mr DEAN - We currently have a member for local government who is standing for the position of Deputy Mayor who has had heaps of them stolen and destroyed. I do not know what he has done wrong because this person is a fairly quiet sort of a person, certainly not of my ilk at all or in the area that I get myself into from time to time. He has had heaps taken and I kept telling him to him to use my sites. I thought they were pretty safe, but it has not worked out to be true for him at all.

Madam President, the system in relation to spending and posters really is a bit of a nonsense. If we look at the lower House, there are no restrictions, as I understand it - it is open spending, it is open slather, on posters and whatever else you want to do.

Ms Forrest - Councils do have some by-laws about their signage.

Mr DEAN - Yes, it is council and within the Electoral Act and so on. I think both areas cover some of these things. In this House this year we were restricted to, I think, $12 500 in expenditure and it was open slather on posters. In local government you are restricted to 50 posters and open slather on spending, as I understand it; open slather on spending in local government. We are restricted to $12 500 and I think it increases by about $500 each year. From speaking to the candidates, I understand it is open-slather spending in local government. Correct me if I am wrong.

Mr Parkinson - If all you did was spend money on posters and absolutely nothing else, which would be impossible because you have to nail them up or screw them up, you can still only spend $12 500.

Mr DEAN - You are right.

Mr Parkinson - It is not open slather on posters at all.

Mr DEAN - Yes, that is right. When I say it is open slather on posters, you have $12 5000 and that is your limit, but what I mean is, if you spent the whole of the money on posters - you can buy a lot of posters for $12 500 so it is not going to happen, is it, so that is the point I want to simply make there.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - Through you, Madam President - then are you advocating for an increase in the amount of money that Legislative Councillors can spend?

Mr DEAN - I am saying there should be some consistency, I would have thought, across the board. I just wonder why those restrictions relate to, say, this House whereas there is open slather in the lower House. Even if you were an independent member standing in the lower House you could spend whatever you wanted. I am wondering why today there is an inconsistency in the spending for people standing for Parliament.

Mr Wilkinson - You wouldn't want it the same as the lower House though, would you? People are spending $60 000 to $70 000.

Mr DEAN - They are, and I am not saying that is right at all. There really does need to be some inconsistency, though, and I wonder why there is this discrimination. Maybe the Leader is able to explain it to me. I will be supporting the amendments as they currently are.