Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service and Integrity) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting the amendments proposed by the shadow minister. The reduction of the proposition in the bill from three years to one year is simply not consistent with the decision of the High Court or with decisions of the previous, Howard federal government.

The bill gives effect to two judgments of the High Court that found that amendments to the Electoral Act made by the coalition in 2006 were inconsistent with the Constitution. One of the coalition’s 2006 amendments removed the right to vote from all persons serving a full-time sentence of imprisonment. This was the first time in many decades that the right to vote in federal elections had been completely stripped from full-time prisoners. The bill amends the act to reinstate the situation that existed prior to the coalition’s 2006 amendment. That is to say it reinstates the situation that existed for 10 years of the Howard government. It would provide prisoners serving a full-time sentence of less than three years the right to vote.

The amendments to the bill now proposed by the shadow minister would remove the right to vote from prisoners serving a full-time sentence of one year or longer. The government has received legal advice on the international law aspects of this proposal from the Attorney-General’s Department that states that limiting the right to vote in the way envisaged by the shadow minister’s amendments would ‘not be objective, reasonable or proportionate according to the standards of international law in this area’. The advice concludes: ‘Such a ban would be unlikely to comply with Australia’s human rights obligations.’ The obligations in question are contained in article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by the coalition government in 1980, a government led by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, ably assisted by former Prime Minister John Howard. Of course, a member of that government was Mr Philip Ruddock, the member for Berowra, who is currently a member of this place.

The shadow minister is now proposing to ignore this international legal obligation entered into by a coalition government and supported for over a decade by the former coalition government. She is intent on trashing Australia’s reputation on the world stage in relation to civil and political rights. I do acknowledge that this would be entirely consistent with the long-running assault on the achievements of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and that the measures in the bill would be considered far too liberal—truly liberal, indeed—for the member for Mackellar. Not only this but she wants to blindly pursue a political objective which the shadow minister knows has been exposed by the High Court as being contrary to our Constitution.

However, we need to be crystal clear here. The shadow minister is using this amendment as a smokescreen to hide her real intention to attack other key provisions of the bill, namely, the reinstatement of the seven-day close of rolls period. The provision seeks to give effect to the second High Court decision, that of Rowe v Electoral Commissioner, a decision which resulted in 57,732 additional Australians being added to the electoral roll. The bill would update the Electoral Act to reflect the current constitutional position as declared by the High Court in the Rowe decision to restore the close of rolls period to seven days after the date of the writ for a federal election or a referendum.

The opposition’s real motive here is to deprive Australians of their democratic right to elect their political representatives. The opposition’s obsession with this goal has produced an approach that regards ignoring the High Court—ignoring Australia’s Constitution—and our international obligations as simply acceptable collateral damage, even a political tactic. The High Court has made decisions, finding aspects of the coalition government’s 2006 amendments to be unconstitutional. What part of this don’t we get? Our duty is to faithfully reflect those judgments in the electoral law of the Commonwealth.

We now seek to achieve this in the bill before the House today. The government seeks no more than to simply enact the principles determined by the High Court. The government simply does not support the opposition’s irresponsible amendment. Instead, we will continue to follow an approach that is based upon historic precedent, our international obligations, our electoral culture, practices and conventions, decency and proportionality and the consistent and unswerving commitment to the fundamental principles of our democracy, our Constitution and the decisions of the High Court.

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