Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendments to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 that have been moved by the member for Calare. The retention of prisoners’ right to vote is essential. I think I am one of the few members of this House who has appeared on behalf of members of the prison population. I was a criminal lawyer before I went into parliament. The statistics show that a large proportion of the prison population is Indigenous and a large proportion of the prison population is also serving short-term sentences. I believe that the current law is balanced: anyone who is serving imprisonment for three years or more is precluded.

What the parliament should be about is enfranchising people, not disenfranchising them. This is where we come to the second amendment in relation to early closure of the roll. In my speech in the second reading debate, I labelled that together with the idea of more identification for people who are claiming provisional votes. I regard those provisions as the ‘hanging chad’ provisions—provisions that are there to knock people out. We are not talking about one or two voters here. We know that, if this provision had been in place at the last election, 70,000 electors would have been disenfranchised. Quite frankly, I do not care whether electors are Labor, Liberal or Callithumpian. We as a parliament should not be moving to disenfranchise a massive number of electors; we should be encouraging people to enrol.

It is a fact that young people are a bit slack. The minister would know there are research papers by the Australian Electoral Commission that show that 18-year-olds are the least enrolled. Not until voters are 25 years of age, according to the Australian Electoral Commission statistics, do we get the balance right on enrolment. Only among voters aged 25 or older is the same percentage enrolling. But the figures show that among those aged 18 to 25 the enrolment is not as large. We are not talking about phantom enrollees; we are talking about real people—many thousands of people.

The minister claims that at the last election more young people voted for the Liberal Party than voted for the Labor Party. Well, so what! Whether or not they voted for the Labor Party in bigger numbers should not be the criterion. The criterion should be: has the government demonstrated massive fraud requiring this provision which is going to disenfranchise tens of thousands of people? Has the government shown massive fraud as a basis for this coming in? No. There have been assertions, there has been prejudice, there has been suspicion and there have been unsubstantiated allegations made.

I served on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters from 1990 to 1996 and for subsequent short terms. For the whole of my time on that committee, I was guided by a philosophy of empowering people—making sure that legitimate people can get on the roll, have a vote and elect the government of their choice. It is all about retaining integrity in the system. This legislation will not bring a higher level of integrity to the system. In close elections we will end up with a Florida-like situation in which there will be a question mark over the vote because people have been disenfranchised. Florida was a blight on the American voting system. The provision being brought in here is going to be a blight on the Australian electoral system, and I believe the government is quite wrong in wanting to bring it in. I believe that, down the track, it is going to create disenchantment with our electoral system.

Whether we like it or not, younger people do have a problem getting on the roll. We should be giving them every encouragement to get on the roll. We should be giving them the slack that is currently in the Electoral Act. The provision in the Electoral Act is not corrupt; it is a savings provision. It gives them a safety net of seven days from when an election is called to get on the roll. I think it is a disgrace. (Time expired)

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