Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to contribute to the debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. These bills amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act. They arise from the inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the conduct of the 2007 federal election. The first bill is said to implement the government's response to recommendation 10 of that report and the second to recommendations 1 and 24. I need hardly add that these recommendations were not supported by the coalition members on the committee. The key provisions in the set of bills before us today will do two principal things: firstly, they will allow the Electoral Commissioner to directly update an elector's enrolled address following the receipt and analysis of what is determined by the AEC to be reliable and current data, from sources outside those already maintained by the AEC, which indicates that an elector has moved residential address; and, secondly, they will grant the AEC the capacity to directly and automatically enrol new electors.

What is the framework in which the coalition analyses the policy measures proposed in the bills which are put before the House for its consideration this morning? The coalition approaches these bills as it does every piece of legislation brought forward by the Rudd and Gillard governments on electoral matters and the electoral roll—in a spirit of intelligent scepticism. Naturally, we wish to believe the best of this government and all who comprise it, but as that great conservative statesman Ronald Reagan so well articulated, a good principle by which to live your life is 'trust, but verify'. As we apply this principle to the motives which may lie behind the Rudd and Gillard governments bringing forward this package of changes to the law as it governs the integrity of the electoral roll, we think it is important to look at the historical matrix and ask ourselves the question: does the Australian Labor Party have form when it comes to rorting the electoral roll?

The answer to that question is very plainly on the historical record. The Australian Labor Party does have form when it comes to rorting the electoral roll. I am sure you are familiar, Mr Deputy Speaker Leigh, with the Shepherdson inquiry, which looked into matters of electoral roll integrity in the state of Queensland, and I am sure you would be familiar with the episode in which a member of the Queensland parliament and former state secretary of the Queensland ALP was asked, under cross-examination, about an address he was listed as living at which had appeared on the roll some years before. He was asked whether he had actually lived at that address. After being forced to admit that he had never lived at that address, he retired to consider his position. Very shortly after, the parliamentary career of Mike Kaiser came to an end. I note parenthetically that, happily, his very good friend the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy put him into a $400,000-a-year job as the head of government relations at NBN Co. An onerous job, you might think—managing relations with the government when the company is 100 per cent owned by the government—but far be it from me to ask whether the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy had carefully turned his mind to the question of whether the government was getting value for money.

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