Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I did. I handed them to the officers when they came to visit my office. That is the sort of thing that causes people to question the integrity of the electoral roll.

The other area is caravan parks. There is a very transient population in caravan parks and it is difficult to track them and make sure that they stay on the roll in the area they have previously designated. It is the same with homes with tenancies and with fly-in fly-out workers. The member for Brand has the highest number of fly-in fly-out workers in a metropolitan electorate in Western Australia. I have the second highest number in my electorate. They are very mobile and very transient. Tracking them is very interesting. I note that the AEC is trying to do something about dealing with them at the airports. This has been a little bit difficult to deal with over the years. They are having to find new ways of either getting the people on the roll or, when they need to vote in the various state or federal elections, getting them to vote in time. As you know, those workers can have two or three weeks on and one week off. They might miss the opportunity to vote. I had people from mines ringing me and saying, 'I'm on a mine and I haven't voted. I don't know how I'm going to vote because I don't get back until after Saturday. Can you tell me what I can do. They do not have a polling booth at the mine.'

It is all interesting stuff. What I am saying in relation to this bill is that giving the onus to the Australian Electoral Commissioner to make a judgment, based on a range of factors where he believes somebody should be entitled to vote, is drawing a very long bow and it is rather risky. For those who want to rort the system this is a precarious position in a marginal seat. Over the years there has been plenty of evidence to that effect from inquiries that have delved into the rorting of these systems.

We do not want to be a Zimbabwe or somewhere where you have to dip your finger into a bottle of indelible ink to check that you have not voted twice. We have been to those countries and we know that we are better than that. We need to ensure that the maintenance of the electoral roll stands up to scrutiny. We do not want to see the support diluted by taking away resources such as electoral officers from our electorates.

Return mail is another example. We used to be able to send bulk return mail to the AEC for checking. You will recall that the member for Hinkler said in this place that, if he had not kept the return mail in one particular election some years ago and checked it against those wanting to do provisional votes, he would have lost his seat. He was able to provide that database to the scrutineers and to the Electoral Commission during the count and have those votes set aside until they were checked.

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