The Nationals Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, has launched a campaign to end group voting tickets in the Victorian Parliament’s Upper House.
Mr Walsh says when a politician can get elected on just 1.53 per cent of the vote “then clearly the system is a farce”.
And as farce he says is being continually manipulated by fringe candidates with radical agendas which just as clearly do not have anywhere near the support to justify someone being elected to a role “as serious and as responsible as a Member for the Parliament”.
“Northern Victoria’s agricultural industry has been blatantly victimised by a Member for the Legislative Council, elected with just 1.53 per cent of the vote,” Mr Walsh says.
“When you add that person, a member of the Animal Justice Party, was also working with a known terrorist group – the Farm Transparency Project – before going into Parliament you can see just how dangerously outdated our Upper House election process has become,” he says.
“And I don’t use the word terrorist lightly, if you look at the definition of ‘terrorist’, it is a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians in the pursuit of a political gain.
“Which is exactly what has been happening to the Sinclair abattoirs where these terrorists trespassed and chained themselves inside the facility and have caused incredible stress and cost to the whole Sinclair family who are now also defending a civil court case around this issue.”
Mr Walsh says once elected – on just 1.53 per cent of the vote – the member was wooed by the Labor Party with the chairmanship of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, a committee which does a number of inquiries.
And then, he says, with the ongoing support of the Labor Party, the chair of that committee, who was elected with 1.53 per cent of the vote, was able to conduct own-motion investigations by that committee into industries which are critically important to northern Victoria and on this party’s radical agenda.
“So this committee held an inquiry into the operation of the pig industry, with the defined aim of actually closing down that industry down in Victoria,” Mr Walsh explains.
“Just to make this clear – someone who was elected with just 1.53 per cent of the vote, and then enabled further by the Labor Party to chair a committee, wanted to close down one of the major agricultural industries in northern Victoria,” he says,
“Sixty per cent of the pigs produced in this state come out of my electorate and as you can imagine, these battering ram tactics where someone with just 1.53 per cent approval can have the full majesty of the Parliament behind them, is creating huge uncertainty and angst for the many, many people in that particular industry there.
“No-one in their right mind can believe this voting system reflects the Westminster principles on which our Parliament is based, where elections are meant to represent the views of the majority of voters, not a ridiculously inconsequential minority so small as to be a joke.
“I do not believe group voting tickets delivering outcomes such as these are in any way reflective of the community views in my electorate.
“Why should people who want to have that lawful industry, who want to have bacon for breakfast, and who might want to actually have roast pork that does not come from interstate or overseas, have their choices trampled because we have a person elected with 1.53 per cent of the popular vote who is not in Parliament to represent the people but is there to hammer a single, unsupported agenda?”
