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

Many times you rise and participate in discussions in this House that are usually politically partisan and a bit ho-hum for the average member of the public. But, when I approached this legislation and the measures introduced by this government, I do so with a great deal of passion and enthusiasm. The crusading, democratic ethos of then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam is one of the factors that brought me into politics. If people were truly aware of the extent of the winding back by the previous government of democratic rights in Australia through many of the rorts that were introduced at the last election, they would understand the importance of this bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010. When the measures that I am going to speak about were introduced by the previous government, the then Labor opposition said that we would overturn the Howard government’s undemocratic changes to our electoral laws, and I think that Senators Ludwig and Faulkner, having brought forward this bill, are doing exactly what we committed to at the last election.

I have had a long history on this issue, being a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters for most of the time since I was elected 11 years ago. In October 2005, when the majority report of JSCEM foreshadowed then government changes to the act, I presented the opposition’s minority report, which made it clear that we would oppose the changes and we would overturn them when we were returned to government. In December 2005, the Howard government brought in its bill, which was based on the majority report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The key elements of the Liberal bill were: a reduction in the period of time Australians had to enrol to vote and to update their details on the electoral roll, ensuring that many people would lose their right to vote; and the introduction of a new proof of identity requirement, making it more difficult for people to enrol, to change their enrolment details or to case a provisional vote.

The situation before us is not entirely due to those changes but, given Australia’s growing population, it is very alarming from a democratic point of view that the electoral commissioner reported recently at a public hearing that 1.39 million Australians are not enrolled. That really should have been the focus of government made over the last few years, rather than allowing the process of taking more Australians off the roll. In May 2006 I spoke several times against the Howard government’s then bill, and I said:

These changes represent the reversal of more than 150 years of democratic progress in Australia, progress towards a more democratic, inclusive and transparent electoral system. Australia has always been an innovator, indeed a world leader, in electoral reform and democratic processes. As a result Australia has one of the most open electoral systems in the world, which has the highest reputation for integrity and transparency. Now, for the first time in memory, an Australian government is going to wind back some of these features of our electoral system for no good reason other than for short-term partisan advantage.

09:59:26

That is what I said about the previous Liberal government’s measures which were put in place for the last election. I felt very strongly about this attack on Australia’s democratic system and I still do. My strong feelings came from an understanding of how precious and fragile democracy and freedom are. All through the terrible events of the 20th century, when much of the world suffered under fascist and communist dictatorships, Australia stood as a beacon of democracy and freedom. Millions of people have come here to Australia to find peace, freedom and democracy. They found a democratic system that, while not perfect, was one of the best in the world.

Australia has always been a pioneer in the development of advanced systems of electoral democracy. The secret ballot was pioneered in Victoria in the 1850s and became known worldwide as the ‘Victorian’ ballot. All adult males had the right to vote in the Australian colonies by the 1860s, long before any European country. They were among the first places where women won the right to vote. In the 1920s we introduced compulsory enrolment and then compulsory voting, making it clear that voting was a civic duty in which all citizens were expected to take part. In 1974 we lowered the voting age to 18. The Hawke government introduced public funding for political parties and the compulsory disclosure of campaign donations when they were elected in 1983.

That is why, in my view, it was shocking to see the previous government introducing its regressive legislation in 2005. This legislation made it harder for people to vote and easier for people to donate money without disclosure. There is no doubt at all that the effect of this legislation was to take large numbers of people off the electoral roll and to prevent large numbers of people who were on the roll actually casting their vote at the 2007 federal election.

This was confirmed by the very thorough report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the conduct of the 2007 federal election, which was presented to parliament in August 2009 by my good friend the honourable member for Banks. The report showed that the Howard changes had the effect of disenfranchising tens of thousands of Australian citizens at the 2007 election, which is exactly what we predicted would happen. At least 50,000 people we know of—on the basis of past experience—would have enrolled in the traditional seven-day period of grace after the calling of the last election, but they were prevented from doing so. Many more were disenfranchised by being taken off the roll by the AEC when they changed their address and were then deterred from re-enrolling by the more onerous enrolment procedures.

In 2004, 77,000 people were added to the rolls after the calling of the election because they had been incorrectly removed. In 2007, only 1,400 of these people were able to get back on the rolls on election day. These changes were entirely due to the legislation of the previous government. My estimate is that about 100,000 Australians were prevented from enrolling or voting by the changes made by the previous government. I also believe that a majority, perhaps a large majority, of those disenfranchised people came from social groups more likely to vote Labor: first time voters, new citizens, Indigenous Australians, people with poor English or low literacy skills, itinerant workers and even homeless people. There was the belief that the Australian government did this in order to disenfranchise their fellow Australians because they thought that these social groups were more likely to vote for the then opposition.

The then Liberal government justified these measures by what they called the ‘protection of the integrity of the electoral roll’. This was the thrust of their report in 2005 and the thrust of their speeches in support of the bill in 2006. In fact, there was no evidence of any significant degree of electoral fraud in Australian federal elections and there was no merit to the coalition’s claims that these regressive changes were required to protect the integrity of the roll. These claims were nothing but a fig leaf for the coalition’s naked self-interest.

Let me just recount that between 1990 and 2001 there were six electoral events. The previous speaker, the member for North Sydney, was talking so knowledgeably about the Shepherdson inquiry but he could not mention how many people were involved because his argument would have been shamed by the fact that there were so few. Between 1990 and 2001 there were six electoral events at which 12 million Australians voted at each opportunity. Six times 12 million is 72 million. In that entire period the Electoral Commission showed that there were 72 proven cases of electoral fraud—one per million. Why would you change the legislation affecting all Australians’ right to vote on the basis of one fraud per million, especially in the context of democratic countries like the United States who had such problems with their voting systems at presidential elections and which actually led to a dispute over a presidential election count.

The AEC, the independent statutory authority charged with safeguarding the integrity of our electoral system and whose commissioner was appointed by the Howard government, said in October 2001:

It has been concluded by every parliamentary and judicial inquiry into the conduct of federal elections, since the AEC was established as an independent statutory authority in 1984, that there has been no widespread and organised attempt to defraud the federal electoral system … and that the level of fraudulent enrolment and voting is not sufficient to have overturned the result in any Division in Australia.

This view was shared by Emeritus Professor Colin Hughes, a highly respected former electoral commissioner, who wrote in 2005:

… the thorough review of the electoral roll conducted in 2002 by the Australian National Audit Office … concluded ‘that, overall, the Australian electoral roll is one of high integrity, and can be relied on for electoral purposes’. There are adequate safeguards in the current electoral laws and procedures to deal with any … attempts at fraud without stripping the vote from hundreds of thousands of citizens.

The inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2007 election received a submission from the AEC which said:

… it can be clearly stated, in relation to false identities, that there has never been any evidence of widespread or organised enrolment fraud in Australia.

These comments go to prove the correctness of the point made by the veteran election analyst Malcolm Mackerras, a former researcher for the Liberal Party, when he said that the changes in the Howard legislation were motivated solely by ‘a relentless pursuit of the electoral interests of the Liberal Party’. As it turned out, these changes were not sufficient to save the Howard government from defeat at the last election, but had the election been closer their manipulation of the electoral system might have changed the results. As I noted earlier, a significant number of people lost their right to vote because they were unable to enrol either because they missed the cut-off date or because they did not have photo ID when they went to enrol. Others lost their votes when they tried to cast provisional votes but were unable to do so because they did not have photo ID.

The report into the 2007 election found that more than 27,000 provisional votes were rejected because they did not comply with the new requirements. The number of formal provisional votes fell from 112,000 in 2004 to 42,000 in 2007. A disproportionate number of these would have been two-party preferred Labor voters. My view is that enough Labor voters were disenfranchised to allow the coalition to win at least four seats—Bowman, Dickson, McEwen and Swan—these seats would otherwise not have been lost by Labor at the 2007 election. This is not just my view. The joint standing committee heard evidence from Professor Brian Costar, of Swinburne University, one of Australia’s most respected political scientists. Professor Costar testified that these changes to the electoral roll had a partisan effect, namely that it took votes away from the Labor Party. His estimate was that this change cost Labor three seats in the House of Representatives. Professor Costar told the committee:

I think a case can be made that it changed the result … We know that provisional voters, because of their choice, are not a minor 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.

The bill we are discussing today will reverse these retrograde changes and will go a long way towards restoring the integrity of our electoral system. The bill implements the main amendments of the joint standing committee’s report. As one of the government members on the committee, I am pleased to be able to play a part today in laying the foundations for this bill. The main provisions of this bill are: to restore the close of rolls period to seven days after the issue of the writ for an election, to repeal the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity before their votes are admitted to scrutiny, to modernise enrolment processes to enable electors to update their enrolment details electronically, to allow the AEC to manage its workload more efficiently by enabling enrolment transactions to be processed outside the division for which the person is enrolling, and to enable prepoll votes cast in an elector’s ‘home’ division to be cast and counted as ordinary votes wherever practicable.

The bill also contains one additional measure relating to the number of candidates that can be endorsed by a political party in a single seat. This provision was made necessary by the antics of Fred Nile’s party at the 2009 Bradfield by-election. I am sure that members opposite share in our interest in including this. By running nine different candidates in the by-election, Mr Nile pushed the informal vote up and deprived hundreds of people of their formal vote. There is no legitimate reason why a party should be allowed to flood the ballot paper with unelectable candidates. It amounts to sabotage of the political process.

This bill is the culmination of a long process, and it is very welcome. I hope it will be passed by both houses in time to have effect at the election later this year. There is no doubt that the government has a mandate for this bill, and I hope that the opposition will not try to make their bad record worse by blocking it in the Senate. If they do, a re-elected Labor government will bring it back next year, when I believe we will have a Senate that is much more reflective of the wishes of the Australian people. Either way, sooner or later, we will reverse the regressive changes inflicted on our democracy by the previous government.

The main task of any Australian democrat looking at the Australian electoral system is to get those 1.39 million Australians who are not enrolled back on the electoral roll. We have a compulsory voting system. We are honour bound to try to get those people back on the electoral roll. This legislation handles the people who were, very unjustly and for partisan political purposes, taken off the electoral roll by the previous government. This is a first step in ensuring that Australia remains at the forefront of democratic processes and transparency in the international community.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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