Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank the members who have contributed to this debate on the Electoral and Referendum Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, particularly the member for Banks, who was an eminent member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters for some period of time. He served on that committee well before I was elected to this place in 1996 and he has provided great input over the years on electoral matters. I thank him for his kind words and also his vote of confidence that after the next election I might be the minister who will look at the matters. I will make a couple of comments on some of the issues that he raised.

As members have pointed out, some of these provisions have been extremely well received, particularly those providing the ability for visually impaired people, for the very first time, to be able to lodge a secret ballot at a federal election. That has not happened before. Such people have been voting for many decades but have never been able to cast a secret ballot. With the introduction of this trial, they will be able to do so.

I mentioned in introducing the bill in the House that I went to Melbourne a couple of weeks ago to observe the trial for visually impaired people being undertaken by the Victorian Electoral Commission. The one I visited was conducted at Vision Australia in Melbourne, and the feedback from blind and visually impaired people was very positive. This was their first experience of it. In fact, there was also anecdotal evidence that some people have never been on the roll because of the fact that they would not be able to cast a secret ballot. The fact that there was a trial encouraged them to enrol for the first time. That is all good because that is enfranchising people further, which is very positive.

The member for Banks raised the issue of the number of locations. It is technically quite difficult to put this in place, as is the resources aspect of it, so we believe that 30 was probably quite an extensive network of locations. It is not known exactly how many people would avail themselves of it. We have some idea of the numbers of people who are either blind or visually impaired who could use it, but it is not known how many will. We may get some idea of that when we have the final figures—which I have not received yet—for how many used it in the Victorian state election recently. But it was felt that because of the challenges involved in putting this together we should start with this sort of number, and 30 will ensure that we get reasonable coverage. We are working very closely with organisations like Vision Australia to ensure that the locations that we choose are known to people with that sort of disability so that we can maximise their use. If the trial proves to be very successful, we would be looking at expanding the number.

The other aspect of the electronic voting is with respect to Defence Force personnel overseas. As I indicated in my introduction speech to the bill, we estimated that something in the order of a third of Defence personnel who were deployed overseas missed out on voting in 2004. That is about 1,500 people; there are in the order of 4½ thousand Defence personnel deployed. There are two aspects within this bill that address that. There is not only the trial of electronic voting, which will be done on the Defence secure network. That in itself is not an easy task either, but I am very encouraged by the cooperation that we are getting from Defence—from the secretary of the department and the Chief of the Defence Force right through—to put that in place. But it does pose a few technical difficulties, which we are quite confident that we can solve. That is a significant number of personnel. That was the first thing we have done to address that problem.

The other aspect in this bill is automatic postal votes for people deployed overseas. That cuts out just one aspect of the mail going backwards and forwards; they will not have to make an application if they are listed as automatic postal voters while they are deployed overseas. They will have a choice under this bill to either vote as a postal voter, if they can get it all happening in time, or use electronic voting. I will be very keen to see this particular trial and, once again, if that is successful, we would be looking in subsequent elections to expand that to other personnel stationed outside of Australia. The obvious ones are places like the Antarctic, which was raised in the joint standing committee’s report.

I will be keeping an eye on the other matters that the member for Banks raised, and I am very happy to have a look at the aspects that he mentioned about increasing red tape and perhaps some of the Langer amendments. I am more than happy to have a look at that. I was the chair of the joint standing committee when the problem of Mr Langer first arose, so I am more than happy to have a look at that as well. If the changes that have taken place have caused greater concern than the original concern, I would be very pleased to look at that and also the aspect of privacy of envelopes. That is an issue that has been debated quite a bit—about how we can get all of that sort of thing right.

The 6 pm cut-off on the Thursday was something that was really pushed to me by the AEC because of some of the difficulties that they have in doing all those things in the last few days. The reason we have put this in is that we are concerned that quite a number of people miss out on voting because they think that they have made an application in time but the ballot paper does not come back in time, because they have left it too late, and they then do not make other arrangements. The provision within the bill is that, for any that are received after that 6 pm on the Thursday before polling day, the AEC—and the member for Banks acknowledged what a brilliant organisation they are and how well they work—will be doing all they possibly can to contact the people whose applications arrive after that date to try and work out a way in which they can have an alternative vote.

Those people can perhaps go to a pre poll on the Friday, if they have put in a postal vote application because they are not going to be there on the Saturday. Perhaps they can get to a pre poll on the Friday or at least make other arrangements for the Saturday. In discussions with the AEC there was concern that people just assumed that they were going to have it all done in time but ultimately missed out on voting as a result of the enrolment arriving too late for the AEC to process. The AEC needs time to get the ballot paper back to those people so that they can then post it and have it postmarked in time to be an eligible vote.

I think that covers the main provisions of this bill. There were aspects to do with defamation which are just legal things, but I do not need to go back through those because I detailed them in the introduction to my bill. I thank the members who have participated in the debate. I thank the opposition for their support of this bill as a non-controversial bill, therefore allowing it to go swiftly through the parliament. I should also comment that one of the other aspects of this bill was proof of identity and the change that we are making there to make a passport for people overseas to be the first tier. The member for Banks might also be interested to know that the AEC and my office have been working closely with the states to have the proof of identity regulations introduced.

The New South Wales Premier requested that we hold off the formulation of these regulations until after the New South Wales election, as he was concerned about new regulations starting at the time that people are thinking about making sure they are on the roll correctly, leading up to the New South Wales election. He was concerned about inconsistency between documents and things like that. Our original intention was to have the regulations in in January, but I have agreed to Morris Iemma’s request that we leave it till after the New South Wales elections. We are putting everything in place such that the regulations will come into force in April, which I think makes a lot of sense. We do not want to cause confusion for the New South Wales government. However, I hope that we have that full cooperation subsequent to the election so that the arrangements can be quickly put in place and all the necessary documentation and new forms be finalised well ahead of a federal election, which will be due, presumably, later next year.

I appreciate the cooperation that, hopefully, we will be getting from all the state governments in finalising that matter. We want to have a continuation of the one roll and the one type of form between the states. There is enough confusion for people as it is, unfortunately, between state and federal elections because of some states having optional preferential voting. It is a cause of a lot of informality of the vote because people think that at a federal election they can just vote 1, as they can in some of the state elections. There are other states that are still fully preferential. Let us try to keep everything else as consistent as we possibly can without causing further confusion. I am pleased to finalise the debate on this bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Order that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.

See this speech in context