29
Lawrence Road,
Point
Lonsdale
Vic
3225
5258-3913
Thursday,
April 10, 2003
Professor Alan Fels
Chair
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
PO Box 1199 Dickson ACT 2602
Dear Doctor Fels
National
Competition Policy, Funding Election Campaigns and Just Ballot Papers
I am writing to you in your capacity as one who
can legally initiate inquiries into practices that violate national competition
policy. I am fully aware that my request can be dismissed as a politicized one
but I would not have sent this to you unless I believed it was in the interests
of public justice and also a vital matter for opening up our public commerce
and economic life in new and fair
ways. In brief I hereby request an inquiry that would investigate how
the current electoral laws violate basic principles of fair competition and
public justice and what needs to be done to bring about a just electoral
reform.
This is not a request from some political extremist
even though apologists for "both sides of politics" all too easily
construe any reform proposal they haven't thought of first as whacky and
marginal. Let me first give you some background.
On two occasions last year I raised the matters
I raise here with the Victorian Electoral Commission. On both occasions I was
told, in effect, that the injustices I had raised were indeed worthy of
investigation but the VEC could not take the matters any further because they
had no mandate under their terms of reference to do so. Presumably, the VEC is
not empowered by its own legislation to advise Government on matters of
electoral injustice that are implicit in the Federal and State Electoral Acts.
Both issues which I raised concerned political
advertising; the first with respect to the VEC's own advertising - "every
vote will shape Victoria" and the second with the electoral material
sent to voters by the Liberal Party that was clearly designed to mislead voters
by making the envelope look like a VEC communication.
In my first letter I informed the Commissioner
that I was writing as one who, on point of political principle, cannot vote for
either of the two major parties. My objection to the legislation governing the
ballot paper is that it makes it impossible for me, and significant numbers of
others like me, to cast a bona fide vote ie one which does not violate
my conscience. I trust I do not need to go into the issue here at length;
suffice to say that public funds are now distributed to parties for political
advertising in an election, and the amount is presumably calculated on the
basis of primary votes received. However "equitable" this may seem it
simply covers over an unjust state of affairs for many voters because both
major political parties know that the Electoral Act itself is biased in favour
of a ballot paper that protects their parties from voters who wish, on point of
principle, to cast a vote for neither. The parties I take it are there to serve
the country and not to serve themselves at the expense of the consciences of bona
fide voters. To conscript support to serve their parties in this way they
have allowed for an electoral act which then disposes the electorate to dismiss
candidates who are not endorsed by the two largest parties. This is simply
indicative of how an unjust ballot paper contributes to and maintains a deeply
embedded injustice in our system of representation. There are those wish to
cast a formal vote that does not endorse the two largest parties. And there are
good reasons for doing so. But the Electoral Act does not now allow for such a
vote to be cast. It only allows votes of voters who are prepared to cast a vote
that ends up endorsing one of the two major parties.
So this is the issue which clearly indicates a
violation of "fair competition" implicit to our political realm. And
since public funds are now being used to fund election campaigns "fair
competition" must require that public funding can only continue when the
principle is applied to the law governing the counting of votes and the
designation of any particular ballot as valid.
The second issue I raised was a related one and
I mention it here to indicate to you how much the VEC is incapacitated from
actions that would promote authentic electoral justice. The VEC Commissioner
indicated that yes there was a case of false advertising against the Liberal
Party but since no law had been broken there was nothing the VEC could do. That
kind of reply does not help us see the VEC as a servant of electoral justice;
it confirms a widespread cynical view that it is merely a servant of the major
political machines. The VEC needs to be made to serve the electors of Victoria
who actually, via their taxes, pay their salaries and other entitlements.
So that is my request with its implicit
justification. I have continued to write to politicians of different sides
commending such electoral reform. The deep cynicism that has resulted from the
two parties foregoing principles and embracing unbridled pragmatism, while
embracing the unbridled market-place, needs to be resisted in the interests of
public justice and fair competition.
I realise this suggestion is fraught but since
politics via public funding for elections has brought voting into the market-place
so also the principles of "fair competition" need to be re-applied to
ensure public justice at the ballot box. Of course, to change the political
philosophy of those two slumbering giants is something your Commission can not
do and I am not suggesting you try. But the law governing elections violates
fair competition in this important respect, and the elected representatives
need to be told that and strongly encouraged to promote electoral justice and
forego twisting the electoral law to own political party's self-interest.
Yours very sincerely,
Bruce C Wearne
(dr)