Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My questions to the minister involve the earlier question I asked him in the parliament today in question time—how amendments to the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which are currently before the Senate, would improve participation by Australians in our electoral system. I note the member for Warringah earlier labelled them as Labor-Green amendments, as if there was a conspiracy by the Labor and the Greens in relation to the legislation. In his earlier answer, he indicated that part of the mindset of the Commonwealth was to have uniform systems and that these systems currently operate in New South Wales and Victoria. Can the minister confirm that the Liberal administrations of New South Wales and Victoria have not moved towards repealing automatic enrolment legislation that currently exists in their states, that they have accepted it? Indeed, that is the basis upon which the Commonwealth is proceeding, that in effect they are going to be long-term provisions in those states? The nub of it is that Liberal administrations in those two states are not seeking to wind back automatic enrolment that currently exists.

In relation to the Electoral Commission's financial position, I understand there has been an additional $58 million over four years to maintain the commission's operating capacity in support of electoral participation. In terms of departmental resourcing over forward estimates, it goes from $125.1 million in 2012-13 to $239.6 million in 2013-14, which I assume is as a result of an anticipated electoral event occurring in that year. Can the minister outline to the House strategies that he is aware of that the commission is undertaking in relation to improving electoral participation as a result of funding that has been provided? Are there any figures that he can enlighten the parliament on and are there any targets that have been set or any benchmarking?

Finally, Senator Carol Brown and I met with representatives from Blind Citizens Australia and Vision Australia yesterday. That was a very fruitful meeting. As I understand it, there has been collaboration with those groups and the Australian Electoral Commission to build on improvements to the electoral system that would assist those groups. I understand that there are some differences of opinion. I am interested as to the cost, because in their submission to me they say that the iVote system that was used in the last New South Wales election is one that they were very happy with. They are not particularly happy with going back to a human call centre operation. I wonder what the funding implications would be, if the minister has figures, in relation to that, if the Commonwealth were to adopt an iVote system, which would pick up blind and visually impaired but I assume could be extended to other people.

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