Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Are you arguing, Member for Mackellar, that all of those elections were somehow fraudulent? Are you saying that they were not won on a proper basis? We, of course, conceded the fact that they were won by your side of politics. And the system of comparing signatures, which we had had for nearly a century, was the system at the time. Come on. We know why these changes were made in 2006. It is blindingly obvious to everyone now.

Perhaps the most powerful endorsement of this legislation comes from the key institution responsible for safeguarding the integrity of our elections: the Australian Electoral Commission. In its submissions to the inquiries of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2007 and 2010 federal elections, the AEC—the neutral body responsible for our electoral legislation—commented that the requirement of evidence of identity for provisional voters should be repealed. A knife-edge federal election and the strong support of Australia’s key election body—I cannot think of any better reasons for repealing this unjust and politically motivated legislation brought in by the Liberals in 2006.

There are many things that this government is doing in the areas of early closure of the rolls in this area of provisional voting. They are completely the wrong issues. They are the issues that were focused on by the conservatives in order to divert from the fact that in a compulsory voting system we have 2.5 million Australians who for a variety of reasons did not participate in the last Australian election. This is a pattern that has been obvious for a long period of time. The Australian Electoral Commission, working neutrally, will do as much as it can if it is given the powers by this parliament to enrol as many people as possible. Surely this is the ethos that should inform all democrats in this parliament. As many Australians should be empowered to vote as possible, and getting people off the roll is exactly the wrong attitude. Disenfranchising Australians is the wrong attitude, and this is what we are addressing with this legislation. I am very proud to be associated with this bill.

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