Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have served on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters since I was elected to this parliament in 1998. I went to all the hearings around Australia as part of the 2004 investigations. I patiently went to remote parts of Australia with a large group, mostly members of the government. This parliament should know that at none of those hearings was evidence presented that there was substantial fraud of the Australian electoral roll. In fact, electoral officer after electoral officer, and academic expert after academic expert, testified that there is no substantial fraud of the Australian electoral system. The changes being contemplated by the government in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 are not based on any evidence.

Let me remind the House that between 1990 and 2001 there were six election events—five elections and one referendum. At each of those election events, 12 million Australians voted. So, over those six election events, 72 million people voted. During that period of time—the same time that 72 million people voted—the Australian Electoral Commission discovered 71 cases of proven electoral fraud. So why on earth are we changing a system that works? Hundreds of thousands of Australians will be affected as a result of evidence that one in a million Australians who voted in those six election events was proven to be involved in electoral fraud.

It is this legislation that is an absolute fraud. In a compulsory voting system we have an obligation to the Australian people to make sure that as many of them as possible have the right to vote—and that is exactly what this legislation is sabotaging. I cannot speak more strongly on this. This legislation is an abrogation of the rights of the Australian people. Younger people in particular will be affected by this, as the member for Banks has said.

No evidence of fraud was adduced to the committee at all of the hearings I was at in 2004. The current minister was not there, nor was the current Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. There was no evidence produced at months of inquiry that proved there was any substantial electoral fraud that affected any division in Australia, let alone a national election result. This legislation is based solely on what the Soviets used to call ‘salami tactics’. Slice by slice, the Liberal Party are trying to slice off voters who may support the opposition—hopefully, the next government—at the next election. The government want to slice off young people. They want to slice off Aboriginal people. They want to slice off all people who may not have enrolled perfectly or do not have a drivers licence, and they want to slice off elderly people—all the categories we raised in the inquiry. This legislation is an absolute disgrace to Australian democracy.

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