Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear ‘Hear, hear!’ from the other side. I think there is a lot of agreement on this particular issue, which is good to see, and I understand a lot of the recommendations from the joint standing committee do have bipartisan or multipartisan support. The provision is around the issue of ID and it is good to see that it will be picked up. I turn to that specifically. The Howard government’s Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2006 ensured that provisional voters were required to produce evidence of identity—a drivers licence et cetera—before their vote was counted. There were two issues arising from that. Some people do not have such ID, and if they did not have that evidence of identity on polling day then the elector had until usually the Friday after or five business days after the election to produce evidence of identity to the AEC. In the 2007 election, approximately 25 per cent of provisional voters were unable to produce evidence of identity on polling day, with approximately 20 per cent of electors then producing evidence after the election, meaning 27,000 votes were rejected at the preliminary scrutiny. That is 27,000 votes too many because if we are talking about—

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