Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Western Australia) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] It is good to be joining you here from my cave in Western Australia! I'm speaking on behalf of the Croods of WA, the 2.7 million people who the Prime Minister continues to insult and attack. Our cave has all the modern conveniences, including an internet link to the federal parliament. Elections should be about raising the standard. Instead, the Prime Minister uses cartoon analogies to speak down to voters and to lower the standard.

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Counting, Scrutiny and Operational Efficiencies) Bill 2021 and associated bills are about democracy. Democracy is a value we make every new Australian citizen affirm their belief in. Democracy means that politicians can say whatever they want but are held accountable at election time. So, when the Prime Minister says that Western Australians are 'cave people', we will hold him to account for that. When the member for Pearce says he agrees with Clive Palmer rather than with the people of Western Australia, we will hold him to account for that. When Liberal backbenchers roll out this standard line that's clearly in their talking points, that Western Australia is 'a hermit kingdom', we will hold them accountable for that, too.

It might be worth the Prime Minister watching The Flintstones. Bamm-Bamm, in The Flintstones, had a baseball bat. So, too, do Western Australian voters. The fact that not one Liberal politician dared speak against the Prime Minister's insult, not one of the 16 Liberal members from Western Australia, shows how gutless they are. Silence. Weak. What happened to the party of free speech? It's just another attack day on day from this Prime Minister, who has failed in the jobs he was given—failed on vaccines, failed on quarantine.

When it comes to the main bill, Labor supports the bill and the changes that it makes to our electoral system. It's important; improving our democracy always is. We must constantly improve our democracy. But we can't fool ourselves that democracy is certain or stable; events this year in the United States, Myanmar and Afghanistan have reminded us it can be very blunt, in very brutal ways. Currently in Australia some 17 million Australians are registered to vote. The AEC estimates that 96.2 per cent of eligible Australians are enrolled to vote. Democracy is important, and Australians know it. It's important not just for those who can vote but for all 25 million Australians who live here.

Democracy is important to me. I remember handing out cards with my parents at Bicton Primary School in the 1990s for the local member for Fremantle, Carmen Lawrence, and for Prime Minister Paul Keating. I have spent most of my life—as has the member for Franklin, sitting at the table—in the business of democracy building and democratic participation. It has highs and it has lows, but you always need to respect the rules.

These bills are about the integrity of our democracy. Increasing the membership requirements of registered parties from 500 to 1,500 members will increase integrity. In Western Australia we recently saw the perverse electoral results that occur when political parties with very few members manage to harvest preferences. It resulted in the Daylight Savings Party electing a member to the Western Australian parliament with just 98 votes. By strengthening membership requirements, parties will require a genuine base of community support. That's what members want when they join a political party: a genuine democratic party, not one that hides their constitutional platform.

I'm a proud member of the Australian Labor Party, the most open and democratic party in Australia. Our platform and our constitution are publicly available. Our conferences are open. We don't hide from the media like the Greens political party do. We make sure that we see being an open democratic party as part of educating the people of Australia about democracy. This bill kind of does half the job. We also need to increase voter education and reduce voter confusion. Reducing the similarities between the names of political parties will help to ensure voters' intentions are accurately captured. We've heard the stories about novelty names making improvements to electoral outcomes, the claims that adding words like 'marijuana' or 'sex' can deliver as much as an extra two per cent to the vote. That's is democracy. But having microparties using counterfeit names and false branding is wrong. No party should be proud of electing people as a result of trying to fool voters.

I believe that we also need to do more on voter education. We have unacceptably high unenrolment and we have unacceptable results when it comes to informal voting. We know that we have unacceptably high unenrolment when it comes to Indigenous communities and amongst younger Australians. That's why I support the member for Scullin's amendment. It is unacceptable that the Northern Territory's enrolment rate lags behind the rest of the country, with only 85.6 per cent of eligible electors enrolled to vote. Unenrolment in the north of Western Australia is also unacceptable. In Western Australia we just have 67.6 per cent of Indigenous voters enrolled to vote, the worst Indigenous enrolment anywhere in the country. That's 22,087 Aboriginal Western Australians with no voice. It's gerrymander; it's undemocratic. The electorate of Durack has an enrolment of less than 80 per cent, along with Lingiari, the lowest in the nation. It's another gap we must urgently close.

The opposition amendment also calls on the government to close the gap by providing more resources to the Electoral Commission so that people living in disadvantaged and remote and regional communities can exercise their democratic rights. This problem also extends to WA mining and resource projects. With just 12 days of prepoll, those on longer swings of more than four weeks on remote worksites, where they may not have regular mail deliveries, risk not having their voice not heard. I've been a longstanding advocate to the Electoral Commission saying they need to do more remote polling at remote mining sites where we have hundreds of workers who deserve to have their vote heard. One of the challenges that the Election Commission, election on election, has failed to solve has been Barrow Island, where long swings combined with no remote voting has left voters without a voice in elections.

We sadly also have too many informal votes—voices wasted. We need to do more about reducing informal voting. One of the areas where I know we need to do something about reducing informal voting is the confusion that's caused by local governments and, indeed, local governments here in Western Australia using imperfect and inaccurate systems of voting. Where local governments advocate for people to tick or just number a 1 or use first-past-the-post voting, it leads to informal voting at other levels of government, including the federal government. I call on local governments to stop using these 19th century forms of voting, because it doesn't do anything for our democracy at large.

The more consistent we can make voting for Australians across the levels of government the better for our democracy in the long-term. I've been lucky to see democracy in action all over Australia and I've always believed that we can do more to strengthen our democracy in the parliament, in our electoral systems and in our political parties. I was proud to work with Kevin Rudd when we introduced reforms to democracy in the Australian Labor Party, for the first time giving party members a say in who leads their party. These rules have been adopted by Labor Party branches across the country, including here in Western Australia. It leads to more vibrant and democratic political parties and it means that members have more say.

But, when it comes to vibrant democracies, when it comes to actually listening to the people of Australia and their views expressed at elections, I find it interesting that the assistant minister who introduced these bills spoke at length about the importance of electoral integrity. But this seems completely inconsistent with his position on the unnecessary Roe 8 road. At the last two state elections, Western Australians have overwhelmingly rejected the Liberal Party's Roe 8 proposal, yet the member for Tangney continues to push for an old 2000 Colin Barnett project. He's got $1.2 billion locked up—

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