Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think that it is important to make a couple of points. Firstly, the existing legislation was passed in 1984 by the Hawke government. There were referenda in 1984. That is a long way past 1912.

It is important that people are properly informed, and that is why we are insisting that the pamphlet should be sent to each elector, not a household where it can simply be taken by one member of the household and disposed of and nobody else can even see it. It is important that it goes to each elector. I cannot stress enough how important it is—when we are talking about either the electoral roll for election purposes, or we are talking about conducting a referendum—that individual electors have to be the centre and main focus, not some grandiose plan that you can put information out there and hope that people will pick it up via advertising, squandering money at a time when we simply do not have any money.

The reason that I made a differential between what happened in 1999 and what is happening now is that then we had the money we could afford to spend. This time we do not have the money to spend. We have a government which is going to bring in another deficit here tonight, a deficit every year from Mr Swan in perhaps swan song. Indeed, if we are to be seen as fiscally responsible—as we wish to be—and live within our means, then you do not squander money on a campaign which is not necessary and at the same time deny the right of electors to receive directly information concerning that change.

We had a lot of fire and brimstone from the Attorney-General, and that is fine in firepower terms, but I do not think it is very convincing in terms of the need not to spend money unnecessarily, but to properly inform electors with the emphasis on electors as distinct from householders, and also to ensure that we do not go down the slippery slope of thinking that without properly connecting each individual elector you can have a proper referendum with people being properly informed. Point No. 1: if you want people to be informed, send the information to them directly and as an individual, not as a collective.

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