Greetings, all. This is the moment we've been waiting for for a very long time. I'm very happy to be here to talk to all of you.
First, on proportional representation, I think this is obvious, and I think everybody knows it's obvious, but the question is, how do we do it and how fast can we get there?
Second, I'm definitely in favour of minority or coalition governments. It doesn't matter who the majority is, a majority government has too much power. It's as simple as that.
The reason more people aren't participating in the electoral process is cynicism. The reason more people aren't here is equally cynicism. Nobody believes this is going to happen, but maybe it will. It would be fantastic if it did.
I've heard that there's a lot of talk about a referendum. I'm aware of Elizabeth May's opinion on this. She does not think it's a good idea. I'll let her defend her points on that. I don't consider myself qualified to judge on the issue. The point is, if people feel it's very important to have a referendum on the issue, then, fine, do a referendum, but keep the process moving, keep people talking about it. Get it done.
The system I propose, I think it's called mixed proportional. I would propose to have two separate ballots. Each person would vote twice, and perhaps we'd have a system of stars so you could rate, say, six stars or something, distributed among the maze of parties that are running so you could say which ones you like the most or the least. There would be another separate vote for a local candidate who could be for a party or could be running as an independent. Say the Liberals get 40% or so of the vote on the ballot for the party and they also get 40% of the members in the assembly from the local votes, then they don't get any other people. It makes sense. Then the rest are filled in from the party.