00:00:00
Speaker 1: We finally got an answer yesterday to a long standing question about the fate of Mick Sherry, the South Australian Electoral Commissioner, who we now know will step away from his position. We know too that the state government had directed the Commission to hold the local government elections next year, delaying them from November this year on account of the parlor state of the South Australian state election that was conducted in March of this year. We wanted to bring Clem MacIntyre on to talk about this. Clem McIntyre, Emeritus Professor of Politics from Adelaide University. Clem, good morning to you. From your vantage point as a simple observer of these things myself, it just strikes me as odd that we did this so well for so long and then apparently the wheels fell off. How can that be?
00:00:49
Speaker 2: Yes, good morning, and it's a very good question. Probably it's one that will become apparent when the results of the review that have been conducted into the the last election are returned later this year. But you're right, we've had an independent electoral Commission for years and years and years all over Australia, different ones at state levels and the federal level, and with a couple of rare exceptions, the conductor of elections has been exemplary. There's sort of a benchmark against which the rest of the world often looks pretty awful. And then out of the blues you say, nearly things went wrong in South Australia. Now, as I say, I can't tell you why that happened, but the review being conducted by the former Federal Election Commissioner should give us some of those answers.
00:01:43
Speaker 3: So claim. One of the key changes that the proposed legislation that the government has come up with is that instead of being held in November this year, the elections will be held in April of next year. But after that they'll change the election cycle. So anyone running for local government next April will be running for a four and a half year term because the next elections will be in November twenty thirty one. So when you look at that a little bit more closely, I guess what it does is it means that from now on, avoiding using the term going forward, there from now on local government elections will not be held in the same year as the state election, which should from a workload perspective be a good thing for the Electoral Commission.
00:02:31
Speaker 2: Yes, I think you're quite right, and Martastami's Electoral Commission have been pushing for some time to have a greater space between the state elections. We've got fixed four year terms for state elections. We know it's the third Saturday in March every four years, so we can put that date down clearly, the days of a premier being ablic call an electional and it suits them along gone. So we've got that fixed term at the state level, and we've had fixed terms at local government level, and having both in the same Calumber year I think did put serious strain upon the Electoral Commission. They're different elections and they've got their own complexities and so on. Putting a bit more time between the state one and the local government one, I think is a good idea. It's probably going to cause some inconveniences as that rescheduling takes place, will have to delay the local government elections from later this year till next year, and that's going to upset the plans of perhaps some sitting councilors and candidates. And then, as you say, a slightly extended term for those elected at the elections of the rescheduled elections for next year. But once we've got through that little hiccup, I think it's a very sensible move, Thank Glen.
00:03:49
Speaker 1: If there was a spectrum of, say a technological sophistication with how we approach elections in Australia and South Australia compared with the rest of the world, how would we sit. Are we sort of in the middle of the range. Are we at the cutting edge? Are we behind the time so to speak?
00:04:06
Speaker 2: I think in terms of integrity and rigor and independence from government, we are as good as anyone. I don't know any other system that you'd say that's clearly better than us, and there are lessons we would learn. So in most without going for every country, in most parts of the world, there is not the same level of independence between the electoral Commission and the government. For example, we can see in the US at the moment that we've got state governments effectively drawing federal boundary lines for congressional elections in a way to set up parts and an advantage and suit them, and some of those are being built in court and so on. Here we have an independent commission who are told we need to distribute the population into a given number of seats with equal numbers. More or less, they go about and do that, their findings to the Parliament and there that's what happens.
00:05:04
Speaker 1: About the sorry Glen. What about though, specifically with regard to our use of technology in terms of counting votes, in terms of collating votes in people voting away.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: So we do generally again across Australia, with a few exceptions, we're still with the pencil and paper. Other jurisdictions outside Australia are looking much more at electronic voting and so on. We have postal voting, not everybody has that, and we have absentee voting, which doesn't apply in a lot of jurisdictions as well. Look, I'm not a fan of a move to electronic voting for all sorts of reasons. The danger of hacking remains there, I think, regardless of what the technical experts tell us, and having confidence in the process is really important. And look, I'll sound old fash and probably romantic, but I rather like the idea that the community turns up on Saturday, picks up a pencil and advise the sausage and chats to the neighbors. Stands in a queue, cast the vote and headsone. It's not a lot to ask once every four years for us to physically attend like that, whether it's a pre poll or on the day. And I think there is some it's some abstract sense of collective good as we exercise the franchise and cast a vote. So I would be sorry to see it go to electronic voting where we sit in a kitchen table and press above. Yeah.
00:06:42
Speaker 3: The people who often get the most emotional in out voting in Australia and migrants who've come here from countries where you can't vote, and they go, wow, how lucky are we with one the lottery of life being given a chance to settle here. Good on your claim, claim McIntire, Adelaide, UNI, Emeritus Professor of Politics.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: The best argument I've heard of against electronic bulting, beyond the nice elements that Clember's pointed out there, was that there is something fundamental to working democracy that people understand every step of the process. You get I put the mark on this paper, it goes into that box, it goes into a room. They tip them on the floor. People from all the parties come and watch them get counted. It's all very tactile, transparent, and you understand it once it goes into a computer system and there's software, and there's how's it get transmitted and who can get access to Once there's questions you can't answer. That invokes all sorts of speculation around what might actually be really going on. You know that goes berserk online, that kind of vacuum, that knowledge vacuum gets filled well sorts of stuff. So I think that's a pretty compelling argument to keep it as it is.
Speaker 1: We finally got an answer yesterday to a long standing question about the fate of Mick Sherry, the South Australian Electoral Commissioner, who we now know will step away from his position. We know too that the state government had directed the Commission to hold the local government elections next year, delaying them from November this year on account of the parlor state of the South Australian state election that was conducted in March of this year. We wanted to bring Clem MacIntyre on to talk about this. Clem McIntyre, Emeritus Professor of Politics from Adelaide University. Clem, good morning to you. From your vantage point as a simple observer of these things myself, it just strikes me as odd that we did this so well for so long and then apparently the wheels fell off. How can that be?
00:00:49
Speaker 2: Yes, good morning, and it's a very good question. Probably it's one that will become apparent when the results of the review that have been conducted into the the last election are returned later this year. But you're right, we've had an independent electoral Commission for years and years and years all over Australia, different ones at state levels and the federal level, and with a couple of rare exceptions, the conductor of elections has been exemplary. There's sort of a benchmark against which the rest of the world often looks pretty awful. And then out of the blues you say, nearly things went wrong in South Australia. Now, as I say, I can't tell you why that happened, but the review being conducted by the former Federal Election Commissioner should give us some of those answers.
00:01:43
Speaker 3: So claim. One of the key changes that the proposed legislation that the government has come up with is that instead of being held in November this year, the elections will be held in April of next year. But after that they'll change the election cycle. So anyone running for local government next April will be running for a four and a half year term because the next elections will be in November twenty thirty one. So when you look at that a little bit more closely, I guess what it does is it means that from now on, avoiding using the term going forward, there from now on local government elections will not be held in the same year as the state election, which should from a workload perspective be a good thing for the Electoral Commission.
00:02:31
Speaker 2: Yes, I think you're quite right, and Martastami's Electoral Commission have been pushing for some time to have a greater space between the state elections. We've got fixed four year terms for state elections. We know it's the third Saturday in March every four years, so we can put that date down clearly, the days of a premier being ablic call an electional and it suits them along gone. So we've got that fixed term at the state level, and we've had fixed terms at local government level, and having both in the same Calumber year I think did put serious strain upon the Electoral Commission. They're different elections and they've got their own complexities and so on. Putting a bit more time between the state one and the local government one, I think is a good idea. It's probably going to cause some inconveniences as that rescheduling takes place, will have to delay the local government elections from later this year till next year, and that's going to upset the plans of perhaps some sitting councilors and candidates. And then, as you say, a slightly extended term for those elected at the elections of the rescheduled elections for next year. But once we've got through that little hiccup, I think it's a very sensible move, Thank Glen.
00:03:49
Speaker 1: If there was a spectrum of, say a technological sophistication with how we approach elections in Australia and South Australia compared with the rest of the world, how would we sit. Are we sort of in the middle of the range. Are we at the cutting edge? Are we behind the time so to speak?
00:04:06
Speaker 2: I think in terms of integrity and rigor and independence from government, we are as good as anyone. I don't know any other system that you'd say that's clearly better than us, and there are lessons we would learn. So in most without going for every country, in most parts of the world, there is not the same level of independence between the electoral Commission and the government. For example, we can see in the US at the moment that we've got state governments effectively drawing federal boundary lines for congressional elections in a way to set up parts and an advantage and suit them, and some of those are being built in court and so on. Here we have an independent commission who are told we need to distribute the population into a given number of seats with equal numbers. More or less, they go about and do that, their findings to the Parliament and there that's what happens.
00:05:04
Speaker 1: About the sorry Glen. What about though, specifically with regard to our use of technology in terms of counting votes, in terms of collating votes in people voting away.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: So we do generally again across Australia, with a few exceptions, we're still with the pencil and paper. Other jurisdictions outside Australia are looking much more at electronic voting and so on. We have postal voting, not everybody has that, and we have absentee voting, which doesn't apply in a lot of jurisdictions as well. Look, I'm not a fan of a move to electronic voting for all sorts of reasons. The danger of hacking remains there, I think, regardless of what the technical experts tell us, and having confidence in the process is really important. And look, I'll sound old fash and probably romantic, but I rather like the idea that the community turns up on Saturday, picks up a pencil and advise the sausage and chats to the neighbors. Stands in a queue, cast the vote and headsone. It's not a lot to ask once every four years for us to physically attend like that, whether it's a pre poll or on the day. And I think there is some it's some abstract sense of collective good as we exercise the franchise and cast a vote. So I would be sorry to see it go to electronic voting where we sit in a kitchen table and press above. Yeah.
00:06:42
Speaker 3: The people who often get the most emotional in out voting in Australia and migrants who've come here from countries where you can't vote, and they go, wow, how lucky are we with one the lottery of life being given a chance to settle here. Good on your claim, claim McIntire, Adelaide, UNI, Emeritus Professor of Politics.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: The best argument I've heard of against electronic bulting, beyond the nice elements that Clember's pointed out there, was that there is something fundamental to working democracy that people understand every step of the process. You get I put the mark on this paper, it goes into that box, it goes into a room. They tip them on the floor. People from all the parties come and watch them get counted. It's all very tactile, transparent, and you understand it once it goes into a computer system and there's software, and there's how's it get transmitted and who can get access to Once there's questions you can't answer. That invokes all sorts of speculation around what might actually be really going on. You know that goes berserk online, that kind of vacuum, that knowledge vacuum gets filled well sorts of stuff. So I think that's a pretty compelling argument to keep it as it is.
