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

The Tax Laws Amendment (Political Contributions and Gifts) Bill 2008 shows that Chris Bowen, the Assistant Treasurer, and the Labor government are taking electoral reform seriously. By bringing forward this measure so early in the government’s term, as we pledged to do before the election, the government is putting into legislation the views that so many speakers prior to me outlined. As well as being a timely change to improve our democracy, this measure is an election commitment that will save around $30 million over three years. During the last parliament, electoral reform was an issue that I spoke on constantly and that I said we should tackle during our first term. I remember an exchange I had with the honourable member for Indi after a debate on electoral matters in the Main Committee. During that debate she rather cynically expressed her scepticism that we meant what we said on this matter. Now she can see that we meant what we said.

The government is reintroducing this legislation to remove tax deductibility for contributions and gifts to political parties, independent candidates and members. It was originally introduced into parliament on 13 February 2008 in the Tax Laws Amendment (2008 Measures No.1) Bill before being referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. Although the committee recommended that the measure be passed by the Senate unamended, in what has become the norm—because of our obstructionist opposition—this measure was blocked in the Senate on 26 June 2008. I have been a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters since I was elected to this House, and for a time I was deputy chair. During that time I watched at very close quarters the former Howard government manipulating Australia’s electoral laws to their own partisan advantage. I have been involved in formulating the current government’s response to those efforts.

As I said earlier, this bill is one of several instalments of the government’s commitment to electoral reform. An extensive review of electoral laws has been announced by the government. This process will lead to the publication of a green paper on electoral reform that will appear later this year. Senator Faulkner, the minister responsible for electoral matters, will deal with a wide range of issues relating to the enhancement and modernisation of our electoral system. Senator Faulkner’s discussion paper will be followed by a white paper—a statement of the government’s further legislative intentions in this area. Obviously at present I do not know what the content of the white paper will be; that is the point of having a process of consultation. But I certainly hope and expect that it will contain proposals to roll back the other regressive changes that the Howard government made to our electoral law in 2006—namely, the shorter period for new and changed enrolments after the announcement of an election, the requirements for photo ID when enrolling and the requirements for photo ID when casting a provisional vote, and also some earlier changes to the savings provisions that the previous government made which virtually increased the informal vote by a third.

Last week the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters held hearings as part of its inquiry into the conduct of the 2007 federal election. Amongst the witnesses were Professor Brian Costar of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and his colleagues from the Democratic Audit of Australia, a group that advocates reform of our electoral system. I was able to ask Professor Costar a series of questions about the effect of the Howard government’s changes to the procedures for enrolling and voting. Professor Costar stated his views based on his research on the tighter requirements for provisional voting—that is, that voters wanting to cast a provisional vote had to either bring photo ID to the polling both or have a person from a prescribed category witness their photo ID if they wanted to fill in a postal vote. He said that in his view this requirement had significantly reduced the ability of people to cast provisional votes. He said that this had had a partisan effect—namely, that it took votes away from the Labor Party. His estimate was that this change cost Labor three House of Representatives seats. He did not name the seats, but I can name them: McEwen, Bowman and Swan—and I would probably also suggest Dickson, which should interest the member sitting on the front bench over there. Professor Costar, one of Australia’s most respected political scientists, told the committee about the partisan effect of making it harder for people to cast provisional votes. He said:

I think a case can be made that it changed the result. If the admission rate had been what it had been in the past, three electorates might have changed hands … We know that provisional voters, because of their choice, are not a mirror image of the electorate as a whole. They tend to be more Labor and Green than they are Liberal, National, or anything else.

My view about it is that it is a demographic explanation. There is nothing partisan about it; that is just how it is.

He was explaining the fact that provisional voters are slightly more pro-Labor than the ordinary run of voters.

This bill on electoral funding should be seen in the light of all of the regressive changes that the previous government made to our electoral laws and to the process of democracy in Australia. The Australian Electoral Commission has provided me with some figures on the impact that this change has had on the ability of Australians to cast provisional votes. At each of the last three elections, between 165,000 and 180,000 people cast a provisional vote. In 2001 and 2004, about 50 per cent of those applications were rejected. This was usually on the grounds that the identity of those people could not satisfactorily be established, perhaps because they were not on the roll at the address they gave or because their application was not properly witnessed. This shows that the AEC was doing its job, ensuring that only people who were entitled to vote actually did so.

What all Australians should know about the previous government and their rorts that influenced the last election, however, is that in the 2007 election the proportion of applications rejected jumped to 86 per cent—that is, about 60,000 Australians who applied to cast a provisional vote were rejected. What was the explanation for that sudden rise? Was it that 60,000 people had suddenly become enrolled at false addresses or had forgotten to sign their names? No. It was because they were unable to provide photo ID, as required by the Howard government’s regressive changes to the act or, more likely, because they did not realise that they were required to do so.

We have a compulsory voting system in Australia; we ought to be doing everything we can to widen the franchise, not to minimise it. Taking 60,000 Australians off the electoral roll is just like the coalition’s opposition to this legislation—typical of their regressive behaviour as far as Australian democracy is concerned. The great majority of the voters, in other words, were honest citizens who were entitled to vote and who wanted to vote but were prevented from doing so by these quite unnecessary changes to the Electoral Act. We do not have to look very far to find out who these people were; people who wanted to cast a provisional vote but were unable to do so either because they were unable to provide photo ID or because they did not realise they were required to do so are likely to be first-time voters, people whose language is not English, new citizens, Indigenous people, people with disabilities sufficient to prevent them holding a drivers licence and people on low incomes, who are less likely to have passports. All of these categories are, on balance, more likely to be Labor or Green voters than Liberal or National Party voters.

When you look at the fundraising and transparency issues together with the early closure of the roll and these changes to provisional voting, you understand why people like the Democratic Audit of Australia and Professor Costar are concerned about Australian democracy and think that the changes made by the opposition are very regressive.

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