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

The honourable member for Mackellar says they could be fraudulent. There are ways of determining whether they are fraudulent. That was an absolute cut-off. If people turn up to exercise a provisional vote, they are entitled to cast it and then we have a process in place where they can have that checked. This bill implements a 2007 election commitment by the Australian Labor Party to repeal the provisional voting identity requirements. It also implements recommendation 2 of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report on the conduct of the 2007 federal election. The committee, as I said before, is multipartisan. It picks up the committee’s recommendation. Yes, it was a commitment of the Australian Labor Party. That was absolutely clear and it was the right commitment and the right issue. A multipartisan committee of this parliament also recommended it. It picks it up as a safeguard, and we are talking here about issues of fraud. If the Divisional Returning Officer responsible for accepting the vote has reason to doubt that the signature that purports to be the elector’s signature is the signature of the elector, the DRO must check the signature against the most recent record of the elector’s signature that is available. There are safeguards, and we have to be mindful that our job is to allow people to vote and not preclude them, not put barriers up. It is always easy to put the barriers up, put the shutters up, make it difficult and make it hard, but we actually have to let people through and not push them out.

There are a few other amendments that are quite specific and relevant in this bill. I have dealt with the first two: restoring the close-of-the-rolls period to seven days after the issue of the writ for an election and repealing the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity before their votes are admitted for scrutiny. There are a few others. The bill is modernising the enrolment processes to enable electors to update their enrolment details electronically. I would like to make a few comments about that. If somebody moves to a different address, they have a responsibility to notify the AEC that they have done that and to keep all their details up to date. My experience is that a lot of people, including me, then get a notice from the AEC that says, ‘Please return this within 14 days.’ What happens after 14 days? If you do not return it within 14 days, does it become invalid? That is how it reads. A lot of people might get their mail after 14 days have already passed. Frequently I do. Somebody from my household got one a little while ago and, by the time they read it, 25 days had passed. What do they do? It says that they have to return it within 14 days.

I have always said how simple it would be if you could do that online. We live in a world that is electronic. Why can’t we update our details online? Why do we have to do this process—get a form, fill it in and send it off within 14 days? It frequently trips people up and further acts to disenfranchise them. That is what we are talking about. It is about franchisement, not disenfranchisement. So I was pleased to see that addressed in the bill. I am not 100 per cent clear how it will work in practice. I think it will be a work in progress, as something new that is being introduced, but it is a welcome provision and it is good to see that it is in there.

Another provision in the bill allows the AEC to manage its workload more efficiently by enabling the enrolment transactions to be processed outside the division for which the person is enrolling. That one speaks for itself. It just makes sense. It is probably one of those ones that are long overdue. I think that provision will be welcomed by the AEC.

Another provision in the bill is to do with prepolling. I am aware that most of us here in this place have had quite a deal of practical experience with scrutineering and prepolling. I forget what the figures are, but the number of people who cast their votes with prepoll is getting up around—

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