Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are a number of aspects that I wish to cover in my contribution to today’s debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005; however, I have no option but to start where the previous speaker, the member for Melbourne Ports, concluded. Not very often have we had such a breathtaking example of the opposition’s hypocrisy as we had in those last few sentences, when the member stood in this House and said that the Australian Labor Party opposes the increase in tax deductibility from $100 to $1,500 and that this is a terribly retrograde step, knowing—I assume he knows and give him credit for knowing—that, in 1997, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters produced a report with a unanimous recommendation that the government do precisely what we propose in this bill.

Let me take the member for Melbourne Ports to paragraph 13.107 on page 338, where the committee noted an earlier unanimous JSCEM recommendation in 1997. That recommendation states:

... that donations to a political party of up to $1500 annually, whether from an individual or a corporation, are tax deductible.

I give the member for Melbourne Ports, who was deputy chair of that committee, credit for knowing the content of this report. However, for the record, let us recall who the members of the committee were back in 1997. From the government, there was the then chair and now minister, Mr Nairn, Senator Abetz, Senator Nick Minchin, Mr Michael Cobb and Mr Graeme McDougall. From the opposition, there was Senator Stephen Conroy, the deputy leader in the Senate—who presumably in 1997 thought this was not a retrograde step but a progressive step and now, according to the member for Melbourne Ports, has changed his mind—Mr Laurie Ferguson and Mr Robert McClelland, both of whom are on the front bench of the opposition and presumably were part of the shadow cabinet decision to oppose precisely what they supported in 1997. You will never get such a clear-cut case of the hypocrisy of those opposite when it comes to electoral matters. That hypocrisy runs through all the arguments that have been put forward by those opposite in this debate and in our committee hearings.

It is the case that we reached agreement on many matters within the report and—although you would not know it from this debate—that the opposition said they supported many matters in this bill. However, to hypocritically claim that something is retrograde when the party membership of the opposition supported it nine or 10 years ago just says so much about the approach of those opposite. I say to the members of the public and to those following this debate that this is the best illustration of how the Labor Party and the opposition cannot be believed in their arguments on this bill. We are told that it is retrograde to try and improve the integrity of the electoral roll; to seek to have identification requirements, which the Australian public have become used to having in so many respects; to seek to have a system where people who enrol and re-enrol have to prove they are who they say they are; and to try to have an electoral roll that is up to date at all times.

The time available to me does not permit me to address all of the issues that have arisen in today’s debate, but it does allow me to address some of the main ones. The first issue, which I have already addressed, speaks volumes. As previous speakers have said, a good deal of this bill stems from the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. That committee spent a year working very hard to produce its report and its 56 recommendations; it did so with the aim of reporting within a year of the last federal election so that the government and the parliament would have time to consider detailed changes of the type we are debating today and, if minded, to implement those changes in good time before the next election.

It is the case that Australia—I have said this before; I said it last October in my tabling speech on the report—has a better than good electoral system, but that does not mean that we cannot do better. That does not mean that we should not seek continually to improve it. That does not mean that it is not open to abuse. That does not mean that abuse has not occurred—and, if the member for Melbourne Ports and those opposite have forgotten, I suggest they consult the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party. If they had done so just a few years back, they would have been consulting some of those members in jail. The member for Melbourne Ports also pointed out that Australia has led the world in electoral reform and he is right about that. However, that is precisely why we should never shy away from improving our electoral system, which is precisely what this bill seeks to do. It seeks to improve the integrity of our Electoral Act—and today I want to address in detail issues relating to that.

Before I do that can I point out that, while some of the recommendations that our committee made were made for the first time, many of them have been made over a number of years—back to 1996. I pay tribute to those committees and to the chairs of those committees for their work, which we picked up. I point out for the benefit of the House the longstanding debate that this parliament has had, both through its committee processes and through those reports. That in itself is another very good argument that the claims of rushing through changes—many of which have been mooted for 10 years—also fall flat.

I would like to firstly address the issue of the closing of the rolls. As previous speakers have pointed out, the bill proposes that the electoral rolls close at 8 pm on the third working day after the issue of the writs for an election, with some minor exceptions, which have been addressed by previous speakers. This is a much-needed measure. In fact, it needs to be pointed out that this measure does not go as far as the majority on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters sought to go. In reality, those three days would be four or five, because the issue of the writs very rarely happens on the day the election is announced. As we reported for the majority, the current seven-day period is an encouragement for those who should be on the electoral roll not to come onto the electoral roll and for those who are on the electoral roll not to keep their details up to date.

What those opposite do not mention is the contradictory nature of our electoral law. Many people support compulsory voting. I know those opposite vigorously support compulsory voting. We had some decent discussions about that issue. But, hand in hand with compulsory voting, no matter what your view, goes compulsory enrolment. We have a law that says that, if you are eligible to vote, you must be on the electoral roll and your details must be accurate. We have a contradictory law that effectively says that, if you would like to ignore the first law and not have your details up to date or be on the electoral roll, you can do so in the seven days after the election writs have been issued.

Our point is that that is too long a period of time. The best evidence for this is that the number of people seeking to do this is growing by 50,000 every election. Would it not be better to encourage people to keep their details up to date and to encourage those who turn 18 to go onto the electoral roll? Obviously, the system has not been working. It is not too much to ask. There is this debate as though filling out a form is so difficult, that it is a massive burden. You cannot turn 18 without filling out forms—to get a drivers licence, to get a bank account, to get all sorts of identification. You cannot move house or change electorate without changing the details of your rates and your utility bills. It is not too much to ask that, at that time, people change their electoral details.

The Australian electoral roll is also used for all sorts of other elections that occur throughout the three-year period. There has been this false and breathless litany of claims that this will disenfranchise voters.

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