Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is pathetic. The article further says:

Income and housing tenure derive primarily from paid employment. Income provides individuals and families with necessary material resources and determines their purchasing power.

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In effect, demobilisation of young voters seems to have developed over time into a general pattern, which is to a large extent independent from the social backgrounds of these youth.

So not only do we have the fact that there are clear connections with socioeconomic circumstances—employment, housing tenure et cetera—but we have a parallel development of youth disinterest. This legislation is going to worsen that reality, because a very high proportion of those people who are not enrolled are those in the younger group.

On the issue of false enrolment, it is preposterous to say that either major political party in this country has the time or the resources to run around trying to double vote in large numbers on election day. For all of the citation of instances of this, it usually involves people who are cheating social security, people who are trying to get drivers licences and that type of thing. Members opposite have quite rightly also cited instances in the Queensland branch of the Labor Party, where it occurs for internal Labor Party reasons. No-one is denying it can occur, but to defeat this marginal problem—and the government has said there is very little evidence to show it has any impact on any electorates whatsoever—should we marginalise and try to deny 300,000-plus people a vote every election day? There are a few exceptions that will allow enrolment for 17-year-olds who become eligible to vote during the election period and for people who become citizens in that week, but they are a minor part of it. Essentially, 300,000-plus people are going to have difficulties voting.

Should we go down that road because of innuendo, anecdotal evidence or allegations by a defeated candidate in his own seat, and I can think of one case where, quite frankly, the Labor Party would suspect the complainant. It is very interesting that one of the things that emerged in the Macquarie electorate was that a particular religious group, which was very attached to the coalition member at that time and which had religious reasons as to how and when it voted, voted via other people. It is very interesting that one of the main things that came out of this investigation was that the members of a group that one would largely see as being attached to the coalition, because of their religious motivation and their religious reasons as to when they vote, were the ones who seemed to have voted. One must suspect who it was that actually might have done any voting on their behalf.

Should we use such a draconian rule to deprive people and make it difficult for them to vote, marginalise them from the system, have them become less involved, make them more cynical et cetera? One of the realities is that the average person down at the hotel or at the soccer game on the weekend whinges and whines about having to go and vote. But, at the end of the day, having done that, people feel they have some involvement, that they have some responsibility for the outcome. They might not have been that interested, they might not have voted for the government, but at least they were part of the process. The alternative is to have a political system that has a large number of people further disenfranchised, further disillusioned. Even if, for a moment, we give one-tenth of a degree of credibility to the claims of those opposite, to go down this road is to go one step too far.

I do not deny for one moment that there are instances of this. In fact, I am one of the few members to have written to the AEC about specific cases, including one involving the Regents Park branch of the Labor Party in my electorate some years ago. If the Liberal Party wanted to really do something worthwhile to destroy genuine fraud in this system, they would look at the difficulties in relation to sections 101.5 and 131.6 of the Criminal Code. We have a situation where, if a person enrols at an address and it appears that they failed to change their address—but that it was not really malevolent or deliberate—then they have to be prosecuted within a year of that action. Large numbers of people, because of the interaction of the Commonwealth Electoral Act and the Criminal Code, cannot be prosecuted because of time limits. So if those opposite want to do something practical about the very real fraud that occurs to a very minor degree in this system, they should do something about that.

Another issue in this legislation is the question of political donations. Once again, this is just driven by crude politics. For all the concern they have expressed for little old ladies sending them $10, and the material of that kind that has been dished up in previous debate, the truth is that this is essentially to facilitate a cover-up of where donations come from.

The average Australian will think it is quite reasonable that, if people are giving large amounts of money, they should know whether that affects political decisions. Whilst there might be many people in this country who are civic-minded and just like supporting political parties, anyone who has half a brain, quite frankly, knows that a large number of political donations, the vast preponderance of them, are given by corporate interests and others—trade unions et cetera—who have a vested interest in political outcomes.

When you consider issues like privatisation and the controversy over the Smartcard in the last few days, people would like to know whether a particular political decision of a party was motivated by the $20,000 or $5,000 donation that it got or whether particular companies in particular industries seem at a particular election to be more interested in funding one political party than another.

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