Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Hansard source

Absolute nonsense, he says. As I say, these are measures that the government now attempts to introduce so as to ensure that people have the maximum possibility of exercising their role. In the 1920s, in a very swift debate in this parliament, both sides of politics essentially agreed to introduce compulsory voting. This is a society which has very liberal rules with regard to citizenship and permanent residency and which essentially has emphasised participation by saying to people, ‘We want you to be part of our political system; we want you to participate; we want you to be a citizen. We don’t want you to be marginalised in a corner, hostile and ambivalent.’ That is the spirit in which this legislation has been introduced—to make sure that the time people have to change their enrolment is reasonable and that it is not a situation in which people who, for a variety of reasons, do not have the opportunity to get their enrolment changed are basically denied participation in the political process.

What they do over there under the guise of some false concern about corruption and manipulation is an attempt to basically make it difficult for people. It is not only with regard to the enrolment period, and it is not only with regard to transferring during the election process; it is basically with regard to a broader philosophy of making it difficult for people to turn out on election day and for them to cast their votes. They are putting on restrictions and putting on requirements and making it more difficult. That is the agenda because, essentially, based on socioeconomic circumstances, they believe that the majority of people who would be less inclined to vote and more affected by these kinds of restrictions are those who will not vote for their side of politics. The figures in the report indicate just how massive the problem can be. If the last election had been called a day or two differently, or if they had closed on 15 October, only 17,208 of the electoral transactions numbering 279,469 would have occurred. It was a sorry enough figure anyway, but for the day on which it was called it would have been far worse.

I quote from the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The report said:

The committee can see no valid reason why it should be necessary to continue with close of rolls arrangements that serve to disenfranchise electors and that require unsustainable levels of funding to be expended in order to partly mitigate their effect.

In conclusion, this measure is not about protecting corruption, and it is not about basically ensuring which side of politics can win the seats; it is about people participating in our democratic processes, in a system which has, historically, had that fundamental emphasis.

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