Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

And who were some of the notables as reported at that time in an official inquiry into these matters, the Shepherdson report? We find there are other identities. One was Mr Mike Kaiser. He had to resign from his office and I think as a member of parliament, as a backbencher. There was also Mr Gary Fenlon. Mr Powell has accused Mr Fenlon of providing addresses of safe houses where voters could be illegally enrolled.

What about this one: vote early and vote often. Another answer was given by the then Special Minister of State—Chris Ellison, in this case—on 6 November 2000 in the Courier-Mail. The Special Minister of State at that time pointed out that a Labor official, a member of the 1987 federal election campaign team, revealed that he and other ALP supporters cast numerous votes for Mr Lavarch, a well-known person at that time—I think Attorney-General in the Hawke government—and other ALP candidates in state and federal elections by illegally impersonating other people. This is evidence in the Courier-Mail expose. He gives an example of how Labor went about rorting the electoral process. The article states:

On polling day in Fisher—

this Labor member recalls—

there were many female names on the rort list, but a lack of women in on the scam. “But we got one young girl of 16 from Young Labor who thought it was quite exciting. She voted 14 times.”

I want to draw this to the attention of the member for Maribyrnong because of his great enthusiasm for legislating for these rorts. In the 1996 election, polling was telling Labor that one of their senior people, no other than Kim Beazley, was at risk of being defeated in the electorate of Brand. So what happened? There was a trebling in provisional votes on election day. The primary votes were running at 51 per cent in favour of the Liberal candidate, but they opened up the provisional votes under the rules of that time, in which they were virtually accepted on the grounds of someone signing a piece of paper to the effect that, ‘I do live in the electorate, at this address,’ and nobody ever went around before they opened those votes and knocked on the door to see who did live at that address. The votes were running across the board, in Labor boxes and in Liberal boxes, at 51 per cent for the Liberal candidate. But it was tight, and when they opened the provisional votes, which were treble the average, they ran 80 per cent to 20 per cent in favour of the Labor candidate. Now how would that happen? The member for Maribyrnong is a great student, I would imagine, of voting principles. He would have had to campaign for his position in a previous life. Once the trend is established in box after box after box, it stays that way. Provisional votes were cast in all those boxes and yet they ran absolutely contrary to what happened.

The member for Maribyrnong mentioned the act as it exists and complained about it. A person who is not on the roll is asked to perform the simple act of showing some identification. If you front up at an airport and you have a previous booking, what do they say before they give you your boarding pass? They ask, ‘Have you got any identification?’ You invariably have, because in this day and age you carry your drivers licence. And why do you carry it? Because some policeman is likely to stop you and say, ‘Where’s your licence?’ It has a photo on it and it is acceptable identification. Yet all of a sudden in one of the electorates, and it was Fran Bailey’s electorate—tell me quickly, Bronnie: what is it called?

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