Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005. The bill seeks to reform numerous elements of the electoral system. Some elements of the bill are positive and are supported by Labor. These include increasing the Australian Electoral Commission’s powers by giving it power to access information held by Australian government and limited state and territory agencies, which may help to improve the integrity of the electoral roll; requiring that AEC divisional offices be located within divisional boundaries; and bringing internet sites into line with regulations on paid electoral advertising. However, Labor is strongly opposed to other elements of the bill.

Labor is concerned that the Howard government’s proposed electoral reforms are all about making it harder to vote and easier to donate to political parties. I will outline some of the reforms to which Labor is opposed. As a result of this legislation, there would be greater identity requirements for enrolment of provisional voters. People who want to enrol to vote or to update their details will have to provide one or more of the following: a drivers licence, a prescribed identity document to be shown to a person who is in a prescribed class of electors and can attest to the identity of the person or an application for enrolment signed by two referees who are not related to the applicant, whom they have known for at least one month and who can provide a drivers licence number.

This requirement is unnecessary. The government claims that it is introducing these requirements to protect the integrity of the electoral roll, but that claim is purely fictional. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted a thorough investigation into the integrity of the electoral roll in 2001 and found only 71 cases of fraud between 1990 and 2001. During this time there were five federal elections and a referendum. The AEC noted that these false enrolments were not deliberate attempts to corrupt or unduly influence the electoral results. So I think it is an exaggeration to say that we have a serious problem with fraud of the electoral roll.

The government’s true motivation in introducing several of the measures in this bill is to secure for the coalition government an electoral advantage. The minority report from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 election shows that, in all the states and territories, between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of adults do not have a drivers licence. So a large proportion of people will find it more difficult to enrol to vote or to update their details. And what about the homeless? The 2001 census shows that there were about 100,000 homeless Australians. That is what the census shows, but the reality could be significantly different from that. How on earth can they enrol or change their details with these new changes?

This bill will make it harder for Australians to get enrolled and to cast a valid vote on election day. It will also increase the administrative burden on the AEC and potentially disenfranchise thousands of potential voters. Another major concern is that, if this legislation is passed, the electoral roll will close on the day the writs are issued. Current legislation allows for a seven-day period of grace after an election writ is issued for people to enrol to vote and to update their details on the electoral roll.

The government justifies these changes by contending that the AEC does not have time to adequately process the details of people enrolling to vote or updating their details in that period between the issuing of the writ and polling day; hence, this leads to more errors on the electoral roll. That is the government’s claim. The AEC has said that the current seven-day arrangement does not prevent it from taking adequate steps to prevent fraudulent enrolment—in fact, quite the contrary. In relation to proposals to close the roll early, the AEC, in a year 2000 submission to an inquiry into the integrity of the electoral roll, stated:

... the AEC expects the rolls to be less accurate because there will be less time for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received.

According to figures provided by the AEC, at the 2004 election over 280,000 people enrolled to vote or changed their enrolment in a substantive way in the seven days between the issuing of the writs and the close of the roll. This figure includes approximately 78,000 new enrollees, 78,000 people changing or updating their existing details, 96,000 people transferring intrastate and 30,000 people transferring interstate. So, under this government’s proposed changes, on the figures from the 2004 election, the ability of over 280,000 Australians to vote stands to be jeopardised.

History also tells us that closing the roll on the day that an election writ is issued will see tens of thousands of Australians excluded from voting. In 1983, the electoral roll was closed on the day that the election writ was issued. As I alluded to earlier, on polling day approximately 90,000 people found themselves unable to vote because they had not enrolled in time. An AEC official who recalled the 1993 election said:

It created a lot of confusion and a lot of provisional votes, and a lot of people go in to vote, find they are not on the roll and just walk out.

The people most affected by these regressive provisions will be those in our community who already face the greatest disadvantage and the most difficulty accessing our country’s decision makers. There is a wide consensus amongst experts in this area that closing the roll early will have the greatest impact upon those who do not have a complete understanding of our political system.

In the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 federal election, leading electoral commentator Antony Green asserted:

If suddenly the election is called two or three months early, people will not have regularised their enrolment. You will cut young people off, as the numbers show ...

It has been clearly established in a report by the AEC, titled Youth electoral study, that young people are disengaged from the electoral process. A key point of the report is that, generally, ‘young people do not understand the voting system’. In addition, the report asserts that young people ‘do not perceive themselves, generally, as well prepared to participate in voting’. Given the lack of understanding and preparedness of those young people, closing the electoral roll early will serve only to ensure that even fewer of them are enrolled to vote and, hence, able to vote in federal elections.

In his submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 election, Professor Costar emphasised:

Good reasons would need to be adduced to justify the denial of the vote to such a large cohort of citizens; especially the new enrolees, most of whom would be young people, who need encouragement to become civically engaged.

No good reason to disenfranchise thousands of young Australians has been produced at all by the government.

At the last federal election, almost 1.7 million people between the ages of 18 and 25 enrolled to vote for the first time. This bill will exclude a significant proportion of these young Australians from lodging a vote, stripping them of their democratic right to participate in a federal election. This has serious implications not only for the next election but also for future elections. How can we expect young people to develop respect for parliamentary processes when the government apparently works so hard to exclude them at the first available opportunity?

I am very conscious that the government has made some comments in the lead-up to this debate about the personal responsibility of people to their enrolment obligation. In my view, Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds will also lose out as a result of this bill. In a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 election, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre pointed out that this group is disproportionately represented in the group of citizens who register to vote in the period of seven days after the issue of the writ. This is hardly surprising, given that many Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds may not be familiar with the Australian electoral system or have the language skills to properly understand information with regard to their electoral obligations. While the government has provided increased funds to the AEC for various purposes, including advertising, an advertising campaign cannot offset the number of people who would have enrolled to vote in the additional seven days after the issue of the writ.

I just want to consider for a couple of moments the government’s view on this call of personal responsibility. I have heard this in the debate and in the media leading up to this bill. It is all very well for the government to say that it is entirely up to the individual to exercise their personal responsibility for their civic duty and their obligation to enrol for voting. That is all very well as long as we equip them adequately and completely to do so. That is not being done. While we see record levels of massive multimillion dollar government advertising in the promotion of all sorts of government campaigns, let me assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, we will not be seeing multimillion dollar advertising campaigns to remind people to enrol to vote. I can guarantee that that will not be happening to the level that would even be remotely required to address this action of the government.

The previous speaker, the member for Hotham, made reference to the issue of compulsory voting. We all know that a number of members of the government at high levels who have an absolute belief, a commitment, that one day they will drive policy to the point in this country where they remove compulsory voting. Let me put it straight and clearly on the table that, as far as I am concerned, that would be the most detrimental thing we could ever see happen to the Australian form of democracy—one of the strongest and best forms of democracy in the world historically. In my view, this legislation is the beginning of that sort of thing. If you are going to expect the population to show regard for the wonderful democratic process in which we operate, you have to give back to them the regard that is required.

As part of this legislation, another nasty Howard government plan is to increase the declarable limit for the disclosure of political donations from $1,500 to $10,000. This is an enormous jump in the limit required before donation details must be made public. Massive sums of money will go into party coffers without the public knowing. In the Canberra Times on 27 March 2006, Mr Norm Kelly, who teaches politics at the Australian National University, wrote:

In a healthy democracy, voters make their decisions based on representations from a diversity of parties and candidates. To make an informed decision, it is important that voters are aware of who is funding those parties and candidates.

However, the Government’s proposed measures will result in a higher proportion of political donations being hidden from public scrutiny, and therefore voters will be kept increasingly in the dark as to who is bankrolling our political parties.

It sounds so much like the American system, doesn’t it? It raises the question. The government claims that these reforms will increase the transparency of the electoral process and avoid instances of electoral fraud—again, that claim. In my view, the only transparent thing in this legislation is the Howard government’s agenda. This government will make it easier for people to donate to influence the democratic process while at the same time making it a lot harder for them to actually exercise their democratic rights. This is another example of an arrogant and out-of-touch government that is ready to use its control of the Senate to ram through policies which are designed only to give it a political and financial advantage at future elections.

The government’s justification for this legislation is, frankly, dishonest. The claim that the legislation is designed to combat electoral fraud in this country is contradicted by the simple fact that Australia does not have a history of electoral fraud, as testified by the inquiries to which I have referred. The real basis for this legislation appears to be that the government believes it will gain a partisan advantage at future elections as a result of the reforms—or that it just has a philosophical bent and this is the way it sees democracy in Australia. It is not the way a lot of us see democracy in Australia, I can assure you. This bill ought to be condemned, and Labor’s amendments ought to be passed.

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