Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

ALBANESE (—) (): Labor opposes this voter suppression legislation introduced during the pre-caretaker period for the upcoming election. It's unnecessary. It weakens our democracy; it doesn't strengthen it. If passed, this bill, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Voter Integrity) Bill 2021, will make it harder for Australians to cast their votes. It demonstrates how far this Prime Minister will go to try to maintain power. First he abandoned the truth, and now he seeks to attack Australians' right to vote.

We should be really proud in this country that we have one of the most democratic voting systems in the world, the envy of the world. Today our electoral system is underpinned by two core principles: the franchise is universal, and our elections are run by an independent Electoral Commission. This bill attacks the franchise, because it puts a barrier between voters and the ballot box. A Prime Minister who can't be trusted is saying that he doesn't trust Australians. That is what this legislation is about.

Under this legislation, Australians won't be able to do what they've done for 120 years: turn up to a polling booth on a Saturday in the relaxed way that Australians behave, get their democracy sausage to assist the P&C at the local school, and go through and give their name and cast their vote in secret, according to who they want to represent them in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Under this, voters will have to show ID before they can receive their ballot paper and put it in the box to be counted on election night.

It's not right to say that the Prime Minister doesn't understand what this bill means for Australians in remote communities, those who don't have English as a first language, young people and new voters. He knows exactly what he's doing. The extraordinary speech from the bloke opposite, I think, just says it all. He purported to say that he understands what First Nations people think about this legislation. While the member for Barton was in the chamber, he had the temerity to question her standing up for First Nations people. He should listen to what the Northern Land Council and the Central Land Council have to say and to what Indigenous communities are saying. This is largely based upon an assessment about Lingiari. That is part of the objective of what's going on here. It is as simple as that. He knows that many First Nations people in the remote communities don't carry around their birth certificates or their ID. Many of them don't have a wallet. They don't have a licence. So many of them, because of this government's cuts to the AEC, won't get a vote, because they haven't been put on the roll.

Here is some of the absurdity of the arguments: one of the members opposite who are supporting this has suggested, 'Well, as part of an arrangement, we'll get extra people to go and enrol First Nations people.' It's the wet season! You can't get into these communities. There's COVID, so you can't get into these communities. If there were any time to introduce this legislation, it's not during a pandemic. When local government elections are held next Saturday, in 10 days time, no one's allowed to hand out how-to-votes, because of the conditions in New South Wales. And that's far better than other parts, such as in vulnerable remote communities. But here it is—legislation that was never anticipated by conservative governments or by Labor governments that have been here for 120 years. Here it comes because nothing is beneath this Prime Minister. He's adopting the playbook of the right-wing Republicans in the United States, a playbook of voter suppression, of making it more difficult to vote. That's exactly what this is about. The Prime Minister hopes that voters will get turned off by the long queues that will appear at polling booths if this legislation is passed.

Why is this occurring? Because this bill is a solution looking for a problem. In the 2019 and 2016 elections, there was not a single prosecution. There has never been such a suggestion in this country at any election—not the last one or the one before. I've been here for 25 years. No-one has said, 'Someone stole the election.' What does that sound like? Where have I heard that before? It's from former President Trump in the United States and the commentators in the right-wing media who undermined United States democracy. We heard it here in this chamber from the previous speaker, who spoke about how he doesn't want to wake up and not be certain that an election has been legitimate. It's a shameful thing to do—undermining democracy and undermining Australia's capacity to have the best democratic system in the world, something that we should be proud of.

The truth is that the Australian Electoral Commissioner, Tom Rogers, has said that the number of multiple votes in Australia is 'vanishingly small'. According to the AEC, out of more than 15 million votes cast at the last election, there were just over 2,000 multiple votes recorded. Some of these mightn't have been multiple votes at all; they could have been due to human error—someone's on the roll as Richard Marles and someone's below them as Ricardo Marles, and they've just crossed the wrong name off. Human error can occur. But what we do know is that there were no prosecutions and that the Electoral Commission—independent—has said that multiple voting is not a problem. Under this bill, of course, a person who has ill intent could attend, have some form of voter ID—a false ID—and vote at multiple booths. All they would need to do is take along a fake ID. But there's no evidence. Quite frankly, if you're going to spend all that time working out cleverly how to get an extra five or six votes for the member for Brisbane—the member for Brisbane would be better off going and talking to constituents and winning over many more of them than spending hours and hours and hours plotting. That mightn't be successful, it must be said, because Madonna Jarrett's coming for him!

Let me say this. There are not just concerns about First Nations people; there are concerns as well about the people from CALD communities.

The truth is, for a whole range of cultures, particularly for older people in those cultures, people who came here after the Second World War, people sometimes change their names. The Morris brothers, who sat in this chamber, didn't start off as Morris. They were Greek. They anglicised their names. People shortened their names. Demetri becomes Jim. Giuseppe becomes Joe. I'll give you another example. Joe Hockey, his name was Hokeidonian. I knew his late father—a great man who came to Australia for a better life. As part of creating that better life and the success he had as a real estate agent in the northern suburbs of Sydney, he changed his name—in part because you could be more successful and open more doors. So he changed his name to Hockey. He was an Armenian, from ethnic descent, born in Palestine.

It happens, and it will create confusion in many Asian cultures. It is very common to have a name and then what is often referred to as a Chinese name. In communities, when the Pakistan cricket team are here, you never know whether it's Imran or Khan. You never know, because in some cultures the first name is the family name, and, in other ways, these things get sorted out. There are going to be all sorts of issues raised here, and I suspect that that is part of the issue.

But of course it comes from a Prime Minister who is the only leader of a democratic nation in the world who refused to call out the attacks on the Capitol building on 6 January—attacks on United States democracy, encouraged by the outgoing US president, which got the condemnation they deserved from democratic leaders right around the world. Angela Merkel, Boris Johnson, Jacinda Ardern—right throughout the world, they all joined in. But not this Prime Minister. Of course, he was a close observer of former president Donald J Trump. In 2019, he told journalists that the two of them share a lot of the same views, and of course he attended a rally for the president in Ohio.

But, for those opposite, I just say that this sort of attempted manipulation in a precaretaker period is not in keeping with the high standards that this parliament should be conducting itself according to. It's an attempt to go out and once again cast aspersions against our democratic processes, which the previous speaker just did. If you're going to do that, then you have to argue that there is a reason for it. You have to argue whether it is legitimate that people are sitting in this place or not.

I have been, unfortunately, on the wrong side of most election outcomes. Guess what? In this country, the person who loses the election stands up and concedes first. And then the winner of the election, be they a prime minister or a premier or chief minister, accepts the outcome, and people come here and it's not controversial. Why is it that we are questioning the legitimacy of our democratic processes? Someone once said in this place, 'If you change the government, you change the country.' This bill shows that if a political party in government changes the Prime Minister, you change the nature of that political party. Tony Abbott never tried this. Malcolm Turnbull never tried this. But the bloke we have now has no foundation of values. That is what we are seeing played out throughout this system. We have a Prime Minister who is just focused on doing whatever it takes, on political preservation at all costs. It is extraordinary that the Liberal party room has been so cowed that it has agreed to a bill like the one before us. The Liberal Party of Ian Macphee, Peter Baume and so many fine people would just not have copped this. They would not have copped this for a minute. But this Liberal Party is liberal in name only these days. There's nothing liberal about it. Having suppressed liberalism inside his own party, the Prime Minister is now determined to suppress voting rights.

Well, Labor will oppose this bill in this place and in the other place. The fact is that this is not appropriate legislation. It undermines rather than strengthens our democracy. Labor trusts Australians. Labor trusts our democracy, and we will always defend it.

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