Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

‘Curacao Fischer Catt’—and other dodgy practices. The fact is that, until very recently, the integrity of the roll has been based largely on trust, and it still is to a certain degree. It was only under the Howard government in 1997 that the AEC commenced a process of continuous roll update, which includes mailing and doorknocking campaigns to help ensure that the roll is as accurate as possible.

Schedule 1 of this bill seeks to change the deadline for the closure of rolls for an election, once writs are issued. The Howard government, in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005, quite rightly reduced the period from seven days to 8 pm on the third working day after the writs are issued. The fact is that the seven-day period created an absolute influx of new enrolments and changes to enrolments, the sheer number of which made it near impossible for any verification to occur. The report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in 2002 stated:

Whilst acknowledging the efforts made by the AEC in attempting to ensure that the electoral roll is updated with integrity during the close of rolls period, the Committee considers that the volume of transactions which takes place during that period limits the AEC’s ability to conduct the thorough and appropriate checks required to ensure that integrity.

While there is no doubt that the calling of an election is often a catalyst for people to enrol or update their enrolment details, we have to weigh this against the possibility of a proportion of the enrolments that come in during this period being either fraudulent or invalid.

There is a significant problem with the Labor Party’s bleating about potential voters being disenfranchised. In 2004, under Labor’s seven-day grace period, there were 169,000 people who missed out on the enrolment deadline. In 2007, under the coalition’s three-day grace period, 100,000 people missed out—that is, 40 per cent fewer people missed out. And they are not the estimates from the coalition; these are estimates of the AEC. So the whole argument about voters being disenfranchised is false and factually incorrect.

Those of us who have been involved in politics for some time know that individual seats—and, indeed, even governments—can be decided by the narrowest of margins. The 1996 Mundingburra by-election in the state of Queensland is a case in point. The 1995 state election had seen the Goss government returned with a majority of just one seat. The result of the 1995 state election in the seat of Mundingburra, where the incumbent Labor member had been declared the victor with just 16 votes, was disputed by the Liberal Party. When the Court of Disputed Returns declared the result of the Mundingburra seat void and ordered a by-election, it was absolutely clear how critical the integrity of the rolls and the voting system were. Ultimately, the seat was won by the Liberal candidate and, as a consequence, the state Labor government lost power and the coalition took office.

So let us not be dismissive or glib about the absolute importance of ensuring the integrity of the rolls. A handful of votes do matter. They have mattered in the past and they will matter in the future. Not so long ago we saw that happen in McEwen, and I am sure my Victorian colleague, the member for McEwen, who has experienced some very close results, can attest to how crucial it is that any potential for fraud is negated and how critical it is that the potential for situations such as we have seen in the past, where we have seen fraudulent votes having a huge impact on election results, is eliminated.

The fact is that there have been documented incidents of electoral fraud in the past. To give some substance to the argument, we need to review some of these past examples, so that people out there listening to this debate and people who read the Hansard can understand what drives the passion in many of us to have integrity in the roll. Once again, Queensland is one of those states that provides us with myriad interesting political examples. This time we can turn to North Queensland where, in 2000, the state Labor candidate for Thurowinga, a former Townsville city councillor, pleaded guilty to 24 counts of forging Commonwealth electoral enrolment forms. She was sentenced to three years imprisonment.

Because ALP ballots for preselection are linked to entries on the joint state/Commonwealth electoral roll, there were all sorts implications about how the widely-known practice of ‘branch-stacking’ impinged on the integrity of the electoral roll. In fact, if I recall correctly, Labor’s golden boy, Mike Kaiser—who was recently handed the $450,000 a year plum job as head of the Rudd government’s National Broadband Network—was forced to resign as a state member of parliament over the findings of the Shepherdson inquiry, which found he had been involved in vote rigging in the 1980s. And how does the Labor Party respond to that? They say, ‘Good on ya, mate; here, have a $450,000 job.’

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