David Jull (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Chief Government Whip reminds me of the Treaties Committee, which is a new one. We were always hearing great tales about how dreadful it was that Australia was going into all these strange treaties with overseas countries on all sorts of things. Now this parliament has oversight of those treaties and determines which particular areas we are going to go into—and it just goes on and on.

I was absolutely staggered to hear the Leader of the Opposition make reference to the change to the Commonwealth Electoral Act, saying what a dreadful thing it was that this government was going to tighten up the registration process for new enrolees and for changing people’s names on the roll. The reality is that at the last election 400,000 people had defied the act and had not registered or changed their address, and this is what is going to be done to make sure that people who have the legitimate right to vote are on the roll in time. It is interesting that, when he was talking about the early closure of the roll, the Leader of the Opposition really did not tell us all that is involved in this new legislation. It is true that the roll will close at 8 pm on the day the writ is issued for people not already on the roll. But he did not say that it will close at 8 pm on the third working day after the issue of the writs for people updating their address details and he did not say that people that turn 18 or are due to be granted citizenship during the campaign will also have three working days to update their enrolment. I thought that would have been regarded as sensible and responsible and as being far from anyone trying to corrupt the electoral system.

There are checks and balances in this place. The Senate is performing its role. Yes, it is the first time in many years that the government has a majority in the Senate but that is not being abused. Goodness gracious me, all you have to do is listen to the ABC every night of the week—it is almost as though it is a national disaster—to find out that the Senate is in revolt and that there are government senators challenging government legislation. But at least we on this side of the parliament have the right to challenge legislation and those decisions, and it is something that every member of my particular party is proud of. This MPI has really been a bit of a joke and I am sorry that it came up in this form, because what I was hoping to be debated—the predominance of this parliament—could have been aired today. Unfortunately, it has not. I proudly believe that this is one of the greatest political democracies in the world and that this parliament itself is one of the great institutions of the world.

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