Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the support of the opposition for the Electoral and Referendum Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. In the spirit of solidarity, and of course in the spirit of the season, I stand with my opposition colleagues and friends on this legislation. This legislation is very important to people in my electorate. It is very important to the members of the Australian Defence Force. The member for Gilmore will also know the importance of it. Our Defence Force has been extraordinarily busy for the last 10 years. We go at a moment’s notice, because things occur around the world. Our ADF responds in Australia’s name, but we do not get notice of it. As an example, our people deployed to Fiji at the moment had very little notice. We do not know how long they will be there. If there were an election called, how would they participate in the democratic process? And so it is with having to go to Timor and the Solomons. When Australian troops last went to the Solomons, from the point that they got notice in Townsville to when they were on the ground in Honiara, on Guadalcanal, was 18 hours. A company of soldiers from Townsville responded as part of the ready deployment force, and that happened because an AFP officer had been involved in a nasty incident and Australia responded.

As the member for Bruce has said, this is about allowing people to participate in the democratic process and to have their right to vote. I well remember some years ago, when soldiers from Townsville were in Somalia, the fact that they did not vote caused a court challenge in the election of a candidate for the state seat of Mundingburra. It caused the election to be overturned. It caused the candidate who was successful in the first election to lose in the second round and in fact it caused the Labor government of Queensland at the time to fall. They are the kinds of implications there can be. That has happened in recent times, when members of the Australian Defence Force have not been able to exercise their right to vote. This legislation now allows a trial of electronic voting.

I say, as the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters—and I note that the deputy chair, the member for Melbourne Ports, Mr Danby, is present—that we have certainly taken a very keen interest in electronic voting and how it is proceeding in the world. Some countries embrace it; others are very reticent to have anything to do with it. The ACT government has been trialling electronic voting, and quite successfully. The key problem seems to be that the electorate does not trust electronic voting. They think that it can be manipulated and that it can be subject to fraud. Particularly in the United States, this is a reason why it is not widely embraced. But the AEC, being the professional organisation that it is, thinks that it can conduct a trial whereby there will not be any question about the correctness of the vote, that it can be done on Defence secure systems so that it cannot be hacked into and that we will get the voters’ intended outcome. So I am very pleased, on behalf of the men and women of the Australian Defence Force, to support this legislation.

I note that the other major component of this measure—that is, allowing a new arrangement for blind and visually impaired people—has been very well received within that community. They will be able to cast a secret ballot under this trial for the first time in a federal election. It will cost some money, but the Australian government has provided additional funding to the AEC, and that will allow the purchase of computer hardware and software related to the trial of electronically assisted voting for sight impaired people and for the trial of remote electronic voting by ADF personnel serving overseas. Incidentally, it will also be used for the delivery of postal voting material to postal vote applicants by means other than post, which is covered in this legislation.

I again welcome the opposition’s support of the legislation and join in supporting it myself and recommending it to the House.

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