Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on this suite of four bills, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010, amending the electoral and referendum processes in this country. I say at the outset that I have some experience in elections. I believe I have now participated in 27 in total, seven as a campaign director and five as a candidate, with my sixth as a candidate coming up. I strongly support the electoral system that we have in Australia and I have been pleased to be able to do that as a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

We probably have the best electoral system in the world, and no lesser authority than a former US Secretary of State said so recently. We have a representative democracy. We have adult suffrage. We have equal suffrage. We also have compulsory voting, which is often a point of contention with some but I would contend that compulsory voting compels the government to give every citizen an opportunity to vote. Some of the amendments in this suite of bills actually go toward giving people the opportunity to vote, whereas obstacles have been put in the way of people doing that in the past. We also have—I am not sure that it is unique anymore—a wonderful system for the distribution of preferences. Elsewhere in the world this system is called the ‘Australian ballot’, because we invented it here. We can, if we will, also call it preferential voting, but the rest of the world calls it the Australian ballot—except in the United Kingdom, which is about to have a referendum on adopting the Australian system. They are calling it the ‘single transferable vote’  because, heaven forbid, that Westminster, which gave the world democracy, should import something from one of the colonies. I wish them well with that, and maybe they can pick up a few more of our advancements such as voting on the weekend so that workers do not have to get their boss’s permission to go out to vote. Ours is, without question, one of the best participatory democracies of a representative nature in the world.

There are a number of things that I would like to see happen in the future, some of which are non-controversial and others controversial, as the member for Goldstein would say. I am more than anxious to see a great deal more of our transactions, as voters, with the Australian Electoral Commission conducted online. It is quite clear now that most of us in this place, I am sure, would be using online banking. It is very difficult sometimes to get to a bank with our schedules, but we can do that with great safety and great security these days by banking online. I am sure a bank-like system could be adopted by the Australian Electoral Commission to enable voters to interact with the commission online.

I also dream of a day in the future when Indigenous Australians are able to participate in our electoral system in a manner similar to that enjoyed by Maori people in New Zealand. They are provided a separate Maori roll and people identifying as Maori are able to be on that roll or the general roll. There is a quota for Maori members elected to the New Zealand parliament. I think there are five Maori seats covering the whole country. This, of course, gives the indigenous people of New Zealand the enormous benefit of having seats at the table where the main decisions are made.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010 attracted the most opposition from the member for Goldstein in his presentation when he spoke before me on the suite of bills. In Australia today, we have an enormously mobile population. In my area, the population is mobile within the electorate as well as across electorates. In the Australian context, we do not have a 19-day campaign with a fixed election date, such as they have in New South Wales where the rolls are closed on the day that the writs are issued. We have an expectation, certainly amongst the community, that an election will be held this year but there is no certainty of that occurring because the election does not have to be held until 16 April 2011.

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