Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 moved by the member for Bruce and to oppose key aspects of the bill. The fact of the matter is that this bill is a joke, but the contents of it are deadly serious. It is called the electoral integrity bill but the fact is that it has no integrity. This bill is about making it harder for people to vote but easier to sling anonymous political donations. It will not strengthen our electoral system but debase it, and it has the capacity to corrupt it. In many ways the title of this bill is in the same tricky style that the government uses so often to hide the real intent and meaning of a bill—not saying what a bill means and not meaning what it says and giving bills names that give the opposite impression to the real intention of the bill.

There are a few earlier examples: the Fair Dismissal bill, which makes it easier for employers to sack people; the More Jobs, Better Pay bill, which is not about better pay or more jobs; and, of course, the infamous Work Choices bill, which is not to give people choices. The last thing that is about is choice and it in fact restricts the choice of employees choosing to bargain collectively. Now we have the electoral integrity bill that lacks integrity.

This bill will make it harder for people to vote. It will undermine the strength of the compulsory voting system that has served this democracy so well for so long. It will make it easier for donors to political parties—the Liberal Party in particular—to conceal their identities and to secretly influence government policy. That is why Labor opposes this bill. We do not oppose every aspect of the bill, but we most strongly oppose the key aspects—the real intent—of this bill. In essence, we are demanding that the bill be withdrawn and that the offensive provisions be struck out. Were that to happen, we would be happy to support valid changes to the legislation—legislation which we think in parts is in need of reform.

One of the main provisions of the bill is to increase the threshold for donations to a political party from $1,500 to $10,000 and then to index it to the CPI. Clearly, we oppose that. We oppose the decision in this bill to close the roll earlier after the announcement of an election and to reduce the present seven-day grace period, by which once an election is called people have time to get themselves on the roll, and to bring that back to 8 pm on the third working day after the issue of the writs. There is a proposition to extend the definition of ‘associated entities’ so that it applies to entities with membership of political parties and entities with voting rights in political parties. We do not oppose that proposition, nor do we oppose the proposition to require third parties to furnish annual returns under the Electoral Act. We do oppose the proposition to deny the vote to any person who is serving a sentence of imprisonment. We do oppose the proposal to introduce stricter requirements for identification on enrolment. We do not have a problem with the issues going to deregistering misleading political party names, nor do we have a problem with the removal of the requirements for publishers and broadcasters to furnish returns on electoral advertisements.

Let me go to the political donations part of the legislation first. The government argues that the threshold limit for political donations should be lifted from $1,500 to $10,000. It says that the $1,500 was too low. Of course, you would expect the Liberal Party to say that; it is, after all, supported by very wealthy businesses. It says that that figure of $1,500 has been eroded by inflation. You would have to think we were in the inflation mode of some Third World country for that sentiment to apply. The government says that not only has it been eroded by inflation but it adds nothing to Australia’s democracy other than unnecessary red tape. The fact is that the $1,500 limit adds transparency and, through it, accountability—something seriously lacking in this government. You have only to look at the scandal surrounding the Australian Wheat Board. We understand why the government wants to escape scrutiny and accountability—because it is not good at it. It believes it can do as it wants and not be held accountable for it. That is why those limits were imposed.

The government has been trying to get these changes through for years. Labor has been able to reject them because of the circumstances in the Senate. Now the government has seen its chance, so here it is back again doing something it has always wanted to do—lift the threshold. If you look at the figures released by the Electoral Commission, you will see they show that, if the threshold is increased to $10,000 and if donations were to be made at the same rate as they were at the last election, $8 million would go to the Liberal Party with no public scrutiny and no indication as to who put that money in. Think about it: $8 million was a huge slice out of the budget of the Liberal Party at the last election that was not met by public funds. I think that demonstrates the whole thrust of why we oppose this insidious aspect of the bill. It is designed to cover up the government’s wealthy mates so that it can squirrel more money into the Liberal Party, curry more favours behind the scenes and not be accountable to fund its election campaigns.

The government will make it a lot easier to donate in secret and to influence government policy for private gain, and the Liberal Party has form here. In the past, the Liberal Party has exploited loopholes in the Electoral Act to avoid scrutiny of donations. Members might recall the Greenfields Foundation, which lent over $4 million to the Liberal Party in 1996-97. If political parties choose to conduct their business by way of loans rather than grants, that is an issue for them; but, as Senator Faulkner asked back in 1998 when this issue came to light, what were the terms of the loan? Was it required to be repaid? Was it in fact a donation and simply designed to be called a loan to circumvent the principles? Should it have been declared? Most importantly, what was the source of the funds? If these are legitimate funds and if people are willingly making these donations and not expecting anything in return, why should they not be disclosed? Yet the government is introducing this proposal to ensure less transparency and less requirement to disclose.

What was the Greenfields Foundation in any case, with trustees who were all well-known Liberal Party associates with postal addresses shared with other bodies associated with the Liberal Party? The fact is that the Greenfields fund was a front for the Liberal Party—a slush fund, a money-laundering device, a means of breaching the spirit of the act and the principle of public disclosure of donations to political parties. That was the Liberal Party before these changes. Imagine what it is going to do when it gets these changes through.

We in the Labor Party believe strongly that the public has a right to know who the donors to political parties are. That is why when we were in government back in the eighties we introduced legislation to do just that so that the public could make a judgment on government decisions. This bill reverses that. It conceals the identity of significant donors. It makes it more difficult for the public to make a judgment.

On the issue of the enrolment changes, the former Minister for State, Senator Abetz, justified the proposed enrolment changes as reducing the opportunities for election fraud. Not only has he not produced any evidence to back that claim of fraud but the provisions that they are producing here actually disenfranchise many present and potential future voters. For example, the need for more rigorous identification procedures will discourage many voters from enrolling. The reduction of that seven-day grace period after the calling of the election will mean that many people will not get on the roll. The argument that the rush of enrolments means that insufficient scrutiny is given to those enrolments can be answered, of course, by providing better resources for adequate scrutiny.

On the seven-day grace period, the Electoral Commission’s own publication, Behind the scenes: the 2004 election reportand this is borne out in table 5 in that document—says this, and it is pretty revealing:

During the 2004 federal election, a large number of Australians used the close of rolls week—

this is the seven-day period that is going to be abolished—

either to enrol for the first time or to check their enrolment details and if necessary to update these details. The AEC replied to almost 10,000 email enquiries during this period.

There were 10,000 email inquiries during that seven-day period. It continues:

The AEC received a total of 423,975 enrolment cards in the week between the announcement of the 2004 election and the close of rolls date. Of the enrolment cards received in the last week, 78,816 were new enrolments.

The former minister says that the seven-day grace period does nothing for our electoral system other than increase opportunities for fraud. The changes would disenfranchise those 78,000 people. This provision certainly does nothing for them. His assertion that the seven-day grace period does nothing for the electoral system is patently nonsense. The independent Electoral Commission has said that in the last year were it not for this period there would have been 78,000 people not entitled to vote. Make your own judgment. Why doesn’t the Liberal Party want more people voting in elections? Because basically its hidden agenda is to get rid of compulsory voting and go to voluntary voting. This is the thin edge of the wedge.

The government claims that these measures are necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral roll and to prevent fraud. It has not substantiated that. The ANAO report Integrity of the electoral roll in 2002 found that independent data-matching of the electoral roll demonstrated that, of the enrolments matched to the Medicare data, over 99 per cent appeared to be valid. There is not much evidence of fraud there. That was an independent assessment. Where is the government’s evidence for the necessity to make these changes? All we are hearing is self-serving assertion. The real reason for these changes is that the government believes it will gain electoral advantage.

Australian citizens should be encouraged to vote and to participate in their democracy. These proposals will have the opposite effect. They will discourage participation. The government’s proposed changes will make it harder to vote but easier to donate to political parties. The changes will have a disproportionate effect on already disadvantaged people—young people, people with lower levels of education, Indigenous Australians, Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds, people who move frequently or have no fixed address, and prisoners who are serving sentences of less than three years. The change to the seven-day grace period for enrolments will also seriously disadvantage rural and regional voters who may need to make a special trip or allow extra time for postage to lodge their enrolment.

The ALP endorses the maintenance of compulsory voting. We make no apology for that. Every citizen should have a stake in the political process. We have seen in last night’s budget how budgets can be about choices and governments determining those choices—were they the right choices? Having the ability to determine that is a terribly important entitlement. We believe it is to be encouraged as strongly as possible, and that is why we support compulsory voting.

But the Liberals do not believe in compulsory voting. This is not the first time they have tried to erode it. This is an attempt to whittle it away, to bring in voluntary voting by stealth. There is ample evidence that some ministers in the government would prefer to have voluntary voting. Senator Minchin has said so. So has Minister Nairn, when he said that he will ‘take a closer look at voluntary voting’ once this bill is passed. The Prime Minister, as usual, has distanced himself from the debate—let it run, see what the reaction is. Let us not delude ourselves: this is another example of the thin edge of the wedge of undermining the compulsory voting system in this country.

The minister says that it is illegal not to be correctly enrolled. That is true, but we also need a commitment to effectively enforce that requirement. The National Audit Office’s report of 2002, which I referred to earlier, noted that the Electoral Commission had set a performance target of 95 per cent of people who are eligible to vote being included on the roll. Since 1999 the AEC has moved from habitation surveys—in other words, physically doorknocking—to a computer based method of updating the roll. The ANAO reported in 2002 that it was an effective method of managing the roll—that it was capable of producing a roll that is accurate and complete. Up to that time, it had not been implemented in a nationally coordinated and strategic manner; in other words, it could have been done but it had not been implemented properly. Again, it is the question of the will, the intent and the preparedness of government to get behind it and see that it is done. In the meantime, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that significant numbers of younger people do not enrol, do not vote and have never become engaged in the political process. And there is no process of identifying them or enrolling them.

I could go on at length in response to the member for Page who said, when he spoke before, that as a member of the National Party he was not able to get big donations. We only have to pose the suggestion that, apart from the public funding the National Party gets, it has always been able to get its pork barrel from the government as part of buying the National Party’s silence and its becoming the branch office of the Liberal Party before every election. We have seen the rorting of perfectly valid and important schemes such as the Regional Partnerships program and the readjustment packages down in the electorate of Eden-Monaro by the Special Minister of State, Mr Nairn. We have seen all of those examples, and we will come to those on another occasion to highlight the hypocrisy. Suffice it for me to say that we have serious concerns about this bill.

I support the remarks of my colleague the member for Bruce in his second reading contribution. I support the second reading amendment. I make the point again: this is an undemocratic bill and it is a bill that should be withdrawn. It is a bill that is unacceptable as long as it contains the undemocratic principles and provisions that I have outlined: reducing the period of time that citizens have to enrol to vote, the provision to introduce new and unnecessary identity requirements and this lifting of this outrageous cap on political donations. Labor oppose the bill. We will fight it. We hope that we will win the argument in the Senate. If not, when we come to office we will correct the undemocratic provisions of the bill.

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