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

Mr Deputy Speaker, we do not need to hear his excuses now. He will have plenty of opportunity to explain why some of his frontbench have a different view from his. We will look forward to that on another day; there will be plenty of time for that.

We have this situation where it is claimed that people will be disenfranchised. That is utter bunkum. Disenfranchisement occurs when someone is prevented from having a voting entitlement. Everyone in Australia has the same voting entitlement. To claim that if somebody does not keep their enrolment up to date they are somehow disenfranchised, by their own voluntary action, is utterly ridiculous.

Another measure I would like to briefly mention is the requirement for identification for those enrolling and re-enrolling. The Australian Labor Party would have you believe that it is a retrograde step to require simple forms of identification in a timely manner. There are a range of forms of identification. I will not go through all of those now, but the drivers licence number is the simplest one. Failing that, there is a list a page long of alternative forms of identification, from the Medicare card right through a whole range of other forms of identification. But, somehow, this is a retrograde step as well. As I think the now minister famously said when he was chair of the committee, to get a video in Australia you must provide more identification than you need to provide to get onto the electoral roll. The Australian public will view this as a sensible measure, and they will wonder why it has not been a requirement all along.

Other aspects of this bill that have received mention by those opposite include, obviously, the change in disclosure and also good measures on party registration, which, unless the situation has changed, I understand have bipartisan support. Let me just deal quickly with disclosure. From memory, the disclosure threshold was originally set at $1,000 in 1984 and raised to $1,500 in 1991. The government are proposing an increase to amounts above $10,000. We believe that is more in line with 2006 standards, and it is in line with thresholds in the UK and New Zealand.

I will quickly address the attitude of the Leader of the Opposition and those opposite on the issue of disclosure. Because the $1,500 threshold for disclosure has not increased since 1991, it has been effectively reduced in real terms. But at the National Press Club, the Leader of the Opposition said that, if he were to win government, he would change the threshold back to $1,500. The obvious hypocrisy of this statement is that he is happy to have an amount fixed in stone and not even to have incremental increases.

If the Leader of the Opposition is true to his word, and I know that the Leader of the Opposition values his word, by saying that he opposes the change from $1,500 to amounts above $10,000 and that, if he has his way, he will change that amount back to $1,500—that is my understanding; and it is his right—the Australian Labor Party will continue to declare amounts above $1,500. You can declare any amount. You can voluntarily declare $500. So I welcome the fact that, if this bill is passed, the opposition will declare all amounts between $1,500 and $10,000. That is their policy. They would not be so hypocritical as to run to the next election not declaring amounts between $1,500 and $10,000. That would be utterly hypocritical. In a voluntary way, the Australian Labor Party—and we welcome this fact—will declare all amounts between $1,500 and $10,000. I am sure that their state secretaries and federal secretary have noted that, but I am not so sure that they will be as enthusiastic about it as those opposite—and we note that.

In the few minutes left to me in this debate I want to address one issue that is not in the bill. It is an issue that had the unanimous support of the committee, and I urge the government to act on it in the future—that is, electronic voting for the blind. In a bipartisan way, the committee spent a considerable amount of time on it. At present, the sight-impaired cannot cast a ballot without the assistance of either a family member or a member of the AEC—that is, they cannot cast a secret ballot. Technology enables this to be overcome.

The committee reported back in October that electronic voting for the blind and the sight impaired was now possible and safe and that there ought to be a trial of it in every federal electorate at the next election. I would like to see that pursued. We do not, as some people have reported, see this as a precursor to a general move to electronic voting, but we do think that it is long overdue and that it ought to be considered and introduced on a trial basis before the next election.

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