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

Yesterday I described the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 as putrid legislation—and that is what it is. It is putrid legislation because, for the first time that I can recall in my time, we have a government bringing legislation into this House—with the prospect of success because it has control of the Senate—that is about disenfranchising people, not about enfranchising them. The second limb of the bill, the triple-dipping component—that component relating not to public funding, the money we get from our parliamentary entitlements, but to fundraising—will hide the money that goes to political parties and political candidates, because of the threshold increase.

I served a number of years on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. My philosophy throughout the whole of that period was to have maximum disclosure and transparency. I was one of those who argued for low threshold levels. I also did whatever I could to ensure that people were able to vote.

I said yesterday that I regard a couple of the provisions—namely, the proof of identity requirement for provisional voters and for people enrolling or updating, and the early closure of the roll when the writs are issued—as the equivalent of the ‘hanging chad’ provisions. We all remember what the hanging chad provisions did in Florida: they disqualified a large number of voters and resulted in the election of a President who, it was subsequently found, did not have a majority of the votes. That is a manipulation of the system. These are not benign provisions that this government is introducing into the Electoral Act, which is now the only qualification for people voting.

There is no constitutional right to vote anymore. That has been overtaken by the Electoral Act. So you can actually stop people from exercising what was their entitlement by bringing in red-tape provisions that will disqualify them or remove them from the count. The last time a roll was closed was in 1983 when Malcolm Fraser ran to the polls to try and overcome the election of Bob Hawke as leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party. That is the last time we had the closing of the roll when the writs were issued, and 80,000-odd people were disqualified from voting.

The second submission of the Electoral Commission, dated 30 June 2005, to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the last election contained a very interesting table on page 11, ‘Table 5: Close of rolls enrolment transactions by type—States and Territories—2004 federal election’. It showed that there were 78,816 new enrolments in the seven-day lapse period for enrolment—the ‘safety net’, as I would like to call it, when it comes to enrolment.

We get told by the government that these provisions are all about the integrity of the roll and stopping the possibility of fraud. As the member for Melbourne Ports pointed out, an inquiry was held in 2001 by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in which the Australian Electoral Commission testified that it had compiled a list of all cases of enrolment fraud for the decade 1990-2001 and that there were 71 cases in total, or about one per one million enrolments. The member for Melbourne Ports points out that those 71 false enrolments were carried out for reasons not connected with a desire to influence federal election results; he contends that they were in the main in order for disqualified Queensland drivers to get back their drivers licences.

This government is bringing in a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. It has gone over the top in this instance. When one looks at the people who will be disenfranchised, it is mainly young people. Yes, they are a little bit slack in becoming enrolled. Of the 78,816 new enrolments, 37,007 were aged 18, 14,132 were aged 19, and 13,058 were aged 20. That is a lot of voters, and they are not all Labor voters. This government has not brought forward any evidence of fraud—any evidence of people voting who should not have been voting—to bring about an electoral change that is going to affect on average 70,000 voters at election time. It is a matter of fact that it takes until you get to 25 years of age for the enrolments to be pretty full enrolments for age categories. The band from 18 to 25 gets progressively better. By the time you get to 25 years of age it levels out. This government cannot point to any election to show that this has resulted in an improper election result. I am of the view that the maximum number of eligible voters should be allowed to vote at election time.

We have not seen an electoral system that has disadvantaged the Liberals. The Liberals have done quite well out of the current system. What we are seeing is the Liberal Party seeking to, in effect, get into the Electoral Act and purge sections of voters that they think might not necessarily be their types of voters—on spurious grounds. I come from a background of the defence side of the criminal law. It was always up to the prosecution to prove their case and to argue their case, not to just come in with suspicion and wild theories—and, quite frankly, prejudice, which this government seems to have done as the basis of their justification.

The other electoral enrolment provisions that I find offensive are those relating to documentary proof of identity for provisional voters and new voters. At the last election there were about 180,000 provisional voters. So what you are doing is introducing another layer to basically rule people out if they do not have a drivers licence or a prescribed identification document. What is that going to do for Indigenous people? It will basically bounce them out of the electoral system when, again, this government has not shown massive fraud in what is currently a good electoral system. On a whim, on the basis of prejudice, this government is going to cleanse from the voting list thousands and thousands of people if they are not able to produce a level of identification that it is happy with. I find a remarkable that a government would go down this track. In terms of the limited provisions that the government allows for enrolment after the issue of the writs, the explanatory memorandum at page 11 says:

44.           The proposed amendments provide that the date for the close of rolls shall be 8.00 pm three working days after the issue of the writ.  However, for new enrolments and re-enrolments, the roll will close at 8.00 pm on the day on which the writs are issued (note that there are two exceptions to this as outlined in paragraphs 45 (b) and (c) below).

45.           The roll will close at 8.00pm on the third working day after the issue of the writ for people:

a) currently enrolled but who need to update their details;

b) who are not enrolled but would attain 18 years of age between the day on which the writs are issued and polling day; and

c) who are not enrolled but may be eligible to be granted a certificate of Australian citizenship between the day on which the writs are issued and the polling day.

The close of roll transactions by age—and this will involve other transactions—were put in table 7 of the submission by the Electoral Commission. That table is actually quite informative. There are up to 345,177 transactions across Australia for ‘Close of roll other transactions by age’ for the 2004 federal election. This is going to introduce quite a bureaucratic red-tape nightmare for electors at the next election.

We are also going to have the best politicians that money can buy, but we are not going to be able to see the money. Last night we saw members of the Liberal Party trawling their wares around this House, coinciding with the budget, by having fundraisers with tickets at $1,000 a head for ministers and $600 a head for backbenchers. I do not have a problem with the Liberal Party having fundraising activities but, under the new provisions, a lot of that money will not be able to be disclosed; it will be hidden. I think it is quite a grubby operation, bringing in threshold increases in effect that are designed, I think, to give a different income stream. As a result of the raised threshold levels, coinciding with tax deductibility limits being increased from $100 to $1,500—in other words, the taxpayer is going to underwrite the donations to political parties—I can see the Liberal Party and the National Party, the new millennium foundation, going out there and picking up the professionals and saying to them, ‘We want you to donate this money. Your identity is going to be secure. You can help us when it comes to the next election.’

I do not mind them doing that. What I object to is the lack of transparency. If people want to put up money to fund political parties or candidates that is fine; that is the basis upon which we run our democracy. But you get into trouble when you hide that sort of money. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, who is at the bar table, knows very well that for years the Liberal Party has sought to hide its funding so that its donors are not known. But, for my part, if transparency is there you can see what influence is exercised.

I think expanding tax deductibility from $100 to $1,500 is a rort and that increasing disclosure of political donations from $1,500 to $10,000—and these figures all have CPI components—is an outrage because people could donate tens of thousands of dollars in such a way that they would not be exposed. I say that is corrupting our electoral system. It is introducing a cancer into our electoral system that will spread. It will turn our electoral system into one which will be criticised—a system which people will question.

We have one of the best electoral systems in the world, with public funding and compulsory voting. With the way the system is conducted at the moment, we are the envy of the world. We get election results, and tight election results, that people can accept. But this is being done for partisan political advantage. It is all about prejudice in the minds of some. It results in our fellow Australians missing out on their entitlement—to go along at election time and have their votes counted.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be to talk on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005. But before I start my remarks I want to reject a couple of the suggestions that have been made in the speech the member for Banks has just given to the House.

Firstly, there was an inference throughout his speech that somehow the government has looked at the electoral system and designed this bill to give us some sort of political advantage. That is just not true at all. This bill is designed to ensure the integrity of the electoral system. The member for Banks was somehow suggesting that voters who have not enrolled properly may be more inclined not to vote for the government. There is absolutely no evidence of that at all. I totally reject the suggestion that this bill has been designed to give the Liberal Party any political advantage, because there is no evidence that that is the case.

Secondly, the member for Banks asserted throughout his speech that there is no evidence of electoral fraud in Australia. Sadly, that is just not true. There is ample evidence of electoral fraud and that the electoral roll is not currently accurate. If he wants an example of this he might want to pop down the road to Curtin House and talk to the Assistant National Secretary of the Labor Party—he knows a thing or two about rorting the electoral roll. He would be able to explain not only that the electoral roll has been rorted but also exactly how you could go about doing that. So there is ample evidence of electoral fraud, sadly, and some has been aired in the Shepherdson inquiry in Queensland in particular.

I would not say that electoral reform is what the Prime Minister might term a barbecue stopper. It is certainly not something that has been raised with me by many of my constituents. But I think that everyone in Australia expects an electoral system that is 100 per cent above reproach. That is a vital element in our democracy.

From the electoral history of my own seat of Stirling, I can give the House a pretty good example of why that is the case. In the election of 1974, the incumbent at the time, Ian Viner, won the seat by a grand total of 12 votes. This story has been relayed to me—as the candidate and later the member for Stirling—on many occasions. I have to confess that I thought it might have been something of an urban myth. But I checked with the Parliamentary Library, and it is true that if seven people in the seat of Stirling had changed their minds in 1974, the seat would have been decided another way.

Ian Viner, who won the seat by those 12 votes, went on to have a distinguished career within the Fraser government. Even though it was a long time ago, I can certainly sympathise with the Labor challenger at the time. But we can see from this example how important it is to have a 100 per cent accurate electoral roll. As I said, there is ample evidence that in Australia the electoral roll is not 100 per cent accurate.

I mentioned the Shepherdson inquiry in my introductory remarks. Obviously that inquiry bypassed the member for Banks. He could not have been reading the papers or listening to television or radio during those few months. The inquiry shows that in Australia the electoral roll has been rorted for the basest political purposes. This bill contains a number of measures that will stop that from happening. It is very difficult for me to understand why the ALP would oppose any of these sensible measures, particularly when their own internal processes were being rorted in the examples that I just raised.

Following every election in Australia, a joint committee of the parliament is established to look into the conduct of that election and report back to the parliament about it. No-one suggests that the Australian electoral system is not very good, but this committee is designed to look at the system and report back to the parliament about improvements that can be made. This process of examination is a very important one.

Following the 2000 election, the committee, under the able chairmanship of the member for Casey, took submissions in the capital cities and in rural and regional Australia. Over 200 people presented submissions to that committee. The committee tabled its report on 10 October following the public hearings. As I suggested, the conclusion was that Australia has an excellent electoral system but that there are some areas where it can be improved.

The government looked at the committee’s report, and this bill contains the government’s response to it. It contains many of the reforms that were recommended by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The bill makes amendments to a number of acts, including the Commonwealth Electoral Act, the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act and the Income Tax Assessment Act. The amendments cover several important areas, some of which I will take a close look at today, including disclosure of political donations, increasing ID requirements for enrolment and provisional voting, the timing of the close of the roll, prisoner loss of vote, access to the electoral roll and political party registration.

Among the most notable amendments in the bill is increasing the declarable limit for the disclosure of political donations. The provisions will increase the disclosure threshold from $1,500 to $10,000 and increase the threshold in line with the CPI. It has been more than 20 years since the threshold for disclosure of political donations was first introduced at the level of $1,000. Even at that time, it was an absurdly low figure. The arguments for lifting the threshold are now even more absolute.

The purpose of disclosure is obviously very clear. The public needs to know that people who are making donations to political parties cannot seek to gain undue influence by doing so. The disclosure laws provide the necessary transparency to give the public confidence that they know where political parties are being funded from.

But as you would be well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, elections in Australia are now multimillion dollar affairs and electoral expenditure of both major parties exceeds tens of millions of dollars. We in this parliament therefore need to exercise some judgment about what is an appropriate level at which to disclose donations without subjecting people in the organisations involved to unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy. The threshold was much too low when it was first set, and it has subsequently been severely eroded by inflation. It adds nothing to our democracy except unnecessary red tape.

The reality is that the threshold is set way too low. Reducing the threshold even further, as has been suggested by some members in this place today, will not increase disclosure or increase transparency within our democracy. In 2003-04, prior to the last federal election, 88 per cent of all donations disclosed by the two major parties were in excess of $10,000.

Raising the disclosure threshold will also reduce the administrative burden on the AEC. An increase to $10,000 will see the donation threshold moved to be in line with that of similar sorts of democracies, such as the United Kingdom.

It is absurd to think that decreasing the threshold, as has been suggested here, would do anything to enhance our democracy. It may well result in little old ladies having to declare to the AEC the purchase of a $1 raffle ticket. I do not think that anyone is seriously suggesting that declaring to the AEC every whip-round or every raffle is in any way going to do anything apart from create an administrative nightmare. Our system is not made any more transparent by a low disclosure threshold; all it is doing is creating unnecessary administration. It is vitally important that the threshold is now raised to a sensible level.

I move on to donations to political parties and independent candidates. The provisions in this bill will amend the Income Tax Assessment Act to increase the level of tax-deductible contributions to political parties and independent candidates, whether by individuals or corporations, from $100 to $1,500 in any income year.

Under the current law, a taxpayer cannot claim a tax deduction for more than $100 of contributions to political parties registered under part 11 of the Electoral Act. The proposed amendments to the Income Tax Assessment Act will increase the tax deductibility value of contributions from an individual or from a corporation to a registered political party or an independent candidate in relation to Commonwealth or state elections from $100 to $1,500 and these amendments will commence at royal assent.

Political parties in Australia are actually very important community organisations. The two major parties—the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party—have historically been responsible for providing good government, not just at the federal level but at the state and territory level. This is a very important responsibility. Australians should be encouraged to contribute to political parties and to the political process, rather than be discouraged through the tax system. I maintain that politics is a very important community calling and that when people take the time and use their own financial resources to support that process, they should be rightly supported by the tax system, as they would be if they were donating to other community organisations.

A lot of the debate in this place about this bill has been about increasing the requirements for electoral enrolment and increasing the identification requirements for provisional voting. It is disturbing to think that it is harder to rent a DVD than it is to get on the electoral roll in Australia. Under the current system, there is also no requirement for a voter to actually prove who they are before they cast their vote. The intention of this bill is to introduce stricter requirements; namely, that people need some proof of identity when enrolling or updating their enrolment by showing their drivers licence or another form of identification or by having their enrolment application signed by two referees who are not family and who have known the applicant for at least one month and who must also provide a drivers licence number.

We cannot underestimate the importance of having an accurate electoral roll. It is a vital pillar of our democratic processes. At the moment, there is cause to believe that the electoral roll is only reasonably accurate, and I do not think that is good enough. This issue is of great importance to me as a marginal seat holder and because of the history that I outlined earlier about the seat having been won at one stage by 12 votes.

The AEC reported in February 2004 that in the electorate of Isaacs the electoral roll was only 90 per cent accurate. I do not think that is an acceptable level of accuracy and there is no reason to suggest that that is not replicated in other seats. Questions of accuracy and fraud, therefore, can arise in relation to election results. In the last election, in 2004, 27,000 people who cast provisional votes had them accepted in the count, although they were later unable to be put on the electoral roll because they failed to qualify. This meant that 27,000 votes were potentially incorrectly included in the count. It is not rocket science to work out that a 10 per cent error rate in our electoral roll could have a significant impact on the outcome of any individual election. Let us not leave out the potential for incorrect enrolments to help people create false identities and help people conduct social security fraud. Electoral enrolment can be used as 25 points out of a 100-point ID check.

Therefore, I think it is vitally important that we establish some moderate proof of identity requirements for provisional voting. An elector, other than a silent elector who wants to cast a provisional vote on polling day, will need to show either a drivers licence or a prescribed identity document of the same type required for enrolment proof of identity. This will be shown to an officer from the AEC at the time of casting the provisional vote or by close of business on the Friday following polling day. If the elector cannot show the document in person, they may post, fax or email an attested copy to the AEC. Ballot papers will only be admitted to the count if the provisional voter has provided suitable identification if they were not enrolled, or if their omission from the roll was the result of an error within the Electoral Commission. It is high time that basic identity requirements were required to protect the integrity of the roll.

I move on now to the closing of the roll. This refers to the time by which electors must enrol or change enrolment details prior to an election. At present this stands at seven days after the election writs are issued. This bill aims to reduce the close of roll period to provide that, in general, the roll will close at 8 pm on the third working day after the issue of the writ. However, persons who are not on the roll—with two exceptions, which I will set out—will not be added to the roll in the period between 8 pm on the day of the issue of the writ and polling day. The exceptions for persons who are not on the roll are either 17-year-olds who will turn 18 between the day the writ is issued and polling day, or people who will be granted citizenship between the issue of the writ and polling day. Persons in these categories can apply for enrolment up until the close of the roll at 8 pm three working days after the day on which the writ is issued.

The reasons for this are obvious. In the seven-day rush to enrol, massive amounts of pressure are put on the Electoral Commission, and this can put into question its ability to accurately check and assess enrolment claims. As I understand it, prior to the last election, 423,993 changes to enrolment were processed in the close of roll period. Of these, 78,816 were new enrolments and 225,314 were changes of address. This is a phenomenal amount of work thrust on the AEC in an incredibly short period of time. This seven-day period does nothing for our system other than increase the likelihood of error—and, sadly, of fraud. Contrary to some claims aired in the parliament, this move is not intended to disenfranchise anyone, particularly young people, as mentioned by the member for Banks. We must allow the AEC enough time to accurately process enrolments.

This bill will enhance the provisions for the disenfranchisement of prisoners. Currently, prisoners who are serving a full-time sentence of three years or longer are denied the right to vote. This bill will amend the voting entitlement provisions so that all prisoners serving a sentence of full-time detention will not be entitled to vote; however, they may remain on the roll or, if not enrolled, apply for enrolment. Those serving alternative sentences, such as periodic or home detention, as well as those serving non-custodial sentences or those who have been released on parole will still be eligible to enrol and vote.

If a court of law has judged that you have wronged society in such a way that you are to be denied your freedom then I certainly think it follows that you should be denied your right to participate in the democratic process. I do not doubt that the majority of Australians would agree that it is high time that people who have lost their freedom also lose the right to participate in our democracy. When you have committed an offence that is serious enough to be punishable by imprisonment then surely your views on the governance of the country should no longer be required for the period that you are incarcerated. We already have this provision in my home state of Western Australia, and it is high time that it was extended to the national scene as well.

I will move on to access to the electoral roll and provisions that provide for access to the roll by persons and organisations that verify, or contribute to the verification of, the identity of persons for the purposes of the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988 and provide that such use is not subject to the commercial use prohibition. This bill will also require that, in the future, divisional offices of the AEC must be located within divisional boundaries unless otherwise authorised by the minister.

I am also keen on the provisions in this bill that will increase nomination deposits, that will draw associated entities and third parties into the same accountability requirements as those that apply to political parties and, finally, that will remove the requirement of publishers and broadcasters to furnish returns on electoral advertisements. That was always an unnecessary duplication. (Time expired)

Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listened to the previous two contributions to the second reading debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005, and you could not get two more divergent views. We had the member for Banks—

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A good speech.

Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in a very good speech describing this particular bill and the provisions in it as ‘partisan political advantage’ and ‘prejudice’. He used the terms ‘rort’ and ‘outrage’. The speaker who followed him said that this bill is not ‘a barbecue stopper’, that our electoral system is ‘100 per cent above reproach’ and, indeed, that it is transparent. I wonder how transparent a system is when party candidates who have had hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on their campaign on their behalf can put in a nil return and the only way of trying to find out how much was spent on that campaign by that candidate is through looking at the media returns—in my case, in the electorate of Calare. We have a provision in this bill to exclude the media from providing those very details, yet we have people with the hide to describe these amendments and our electoral legislation as transparent.

In this place we say that we pride ourselves on our country’s democratic traditions. Key to true democracy is participation and transparency—participation by the people and transparency in the actions of their elected representatives and transparency in the very processes that determine how, why and under what circumstances support has been given and spent, whether it be in election periods or, indeed, with the privileges of public office. Participation and transparency should be encouraged and enhanced by every means possible. However, this bill is more about limiting participation and transparency than it is about encouraging it. It does nothing to enhance our democracy, our parliament and our electoral processes. In fact, I believe the bill separates the parliament and its representatives even further from the people and even closer to vested interest and the money that inevitably goes with it.

The bill is a comprehensive overhaul of our electoral laws. Despite the tenor of my opening remarks, which I do not resile from in any way, it does have some redeemable qualities, but they are very few. I do not have any problem with the provisions in regard to increasing the proof of identity requirements on enrolment. I made my support for this reform clear in debate on similar bills in the last parliament. I do not particularly have a position on the deregistration of parties provisions, save to say that I suspect that it is largely motivated by coalition party members to avoid situations such as the alleged misconduct of liberals for forests in the campaign for the seat of Richmond, as evidenced in the JSCEM report on the conduct of the 2004 election.

I do not support the changing of electoral laws simply because the coalition parties—or the ALP or any other party, for that matter—feel disadvantaged by the campaign of a competing political party. I have seen enough party material in my time as a candidate and sitting member to know that the parties will push the envelope of acceptability under electoral laws as hard as they can, as well as abusing what are only guidelines for use of the entitlements of office. The running of dummy Independent candidates would seem to me to be little different from the arguments raised against liberals for forests.

I do not, of course, have a problem with the equalisation of tax deductibility for donation rules to include Independent candidates. This has long been a disadvantage for Independent candidates, and this change will help level the playing field for those who choose to run on their own and who seek financial support—something I do not do, relying on my own resources and public funding, any balance of which I distribute to my electorate. I am a supporter of the symbolism of this amendment more than its practical effect, as I would be more than happy to see donations banned from politics altogether. I will be moving reforms that I hope will reduce the reliance on huge donations in the political sphere in Australia and bring democracy back to its basic principles where the best local candidate is elected because of their talents and commitment and not because of the size of their campaign budget or, indeed, the party shenanigans of branch stacking and other methods that are employed in various nuances by both major sides of politics to achieve factional objectives.

The bulk of this bill I cannot support. I will move amendments in the consideration in detail stage of the debate to remove the provisions that are contrary to the democratic principles so often espoused but so little practised. Obviously I do not expect much, indeed any, support for these amendments, but it is important that they be aired, and they will certainly be aired in as wide a forum as possible through any means possible—through the networking of Independents in their own constituencies to raise these issues leading up to state and federal elections in the next 18 months.

I will be moving to retain the seven-day window with regard to the closing of the roll once the writs for an election have been issued. I will move to retain the status quo with regard to prisoner voting rights and to retain the requirement that publishers and broadcasters lodge returns relating to electoral advertising—an absolutely crucial provision in this bill, which is completely contrary to claims of transparency in our electoral system. I will move to remove the increases to the disclosure thresholds and instate a disclosure threshold of $200 for all political donations. I will move to install a campaign expenditure cap so that no individual candidate’s campaign for the House of Representatives or the Senate can exceed a designated limit, regardless of the source of funding. Any general party advertising or campaign material, including that which does not specifically name a candidate, would have to be accounted for within the candidates’ campaign limits of that party. I will move to install a requirement that all candidates, regardless of party endorsement, lodge comprehensive returns of campaign expenditure for the election campaign period for that particular constituency, and I will move to remove above-the-line voting for the Senate ballot paper and provide for partial preferential voting for election of candidates to the Senate—and I will explain some of the reasons and background to those in the consideration in detail stage.

This bill, of course, had another incarnation in the last parliament. At that time, there were three bills: access to the electoral roll, enrolment integrity and prisoner voting. This time around, ‘integrity’ has been built into the title of a single bill, and the provisions of this bill make a mockery of that very word. Integrity means moral excellence and honesty. This would be a joke if it were not such a serious matter. This legislation is dishonest in the extreme, especially around the ceiling on donations to political parties before such donations need be declared.

It is sobering to note that in the last parliament the Senate amended the previous legislation to strike out early closure of the roll so as not to disenfranchise an estimated 375,000 mainly young people. I am puzzled by the contradictory position of the Electoral Commission on this point. In its 2005 submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the 2004 election, the commission showed no inclination to accept an early closure of the roll, yet 12 months later the commission, albeit with a new head, gave tacit approval to the changes contained within this bill. Why was seven days grace to enrol or update enrolment not a problem 12 months ago but now, according to the commissioner, the removal of this provision makes life easier for the commission?

I have a little story to illustrate this. Recently a 19-year-old constituent of mine was killed in a car accident near Molong. When I attempted to check on his electoral details and the address of his parents, whom I know, I found that his name was not on the roll. That is not surprising for a 19-year-old young fellow operating as young fellows do—driving, enjoying life, whether he be a student or a young apprentice. Come election time, young people of 19, 20 or even 21 suddenly realise that an election is coming up and that they have to get on the roll. This relates not only to this young fellow, sadly deceased, but to the 375,000 people, at last count, who move or who have very little interest, it may be said, in an election, in the political process, perhaps until an election occurs—and here we have a system that denies them an opportunity to register and vote.

The argument about the enrolment being some form of roll stacking has been debunked by Professor Brian Costar, as was pointed out by the member for Bruce when he made his contribution to this debate. Professor Costar is no lesser light in the world of electoral matters and, in evidence to the Senate, he said:

I think that this conspiracy theory ... that there is out there a vast army of villains who want to take advantage of every nook and cranny of the law to sign up phantom voters ... to rort the system is not based on evidence.

I would suggest that the evidence might be in the demographic research that has been done by the Liberal Party, perhaps, which has found that the voting intentions of these disenfranchised people may not necessarily be sympathetic to the conservative cause. Indeed, horror of horrors, they might well be young students, young people who may see an attraction in a vote for the Greens or, indeed, an Independent. I think it is more about deliberate exclusion—we can even go to that. It seems to me that it is not about roll stacking but about denying access to the roll, and access to the roll is a fundamental right of every individual in this society.

Back in 2000, in its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the integrity of the electoral roll, the AEC said:

... the early close of rolls will not improve the accuracy of the rolls ... In fact, the expectation is that the rolls for the election will be less accurate, because less time will be available for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received.

I suppose the change in attitude is reflective of the change in the CEO of the commission, with former commissioner Andy Becker more willing to express an opinion than his replacement. I only hope that the new commissioner is candid in his reporting to the inquiry into the next election if, as I suspect, there are many thousands of people who miss a vote because they are unaware of these changes, which, as I say quite frankly, denies the franchise to a huge number of Australians. I will be moving an amendment to retain the status quo, allowing voters a sensible seven days grace to enrol or update their enrolment.

The last Senate struck out an attempt to double the threshold for reportable donations from $1,500 to $3,000. It also removed a provision that cancelled voting rights for any prisoner serving a full-time sentence. With full control of both houses, the government has now reintroduced all three provisions, as it did with the unfair dismissal threshold. It has increased not to $3,000 but to $10,000 the reportable donation threshold. It jumps to the extreme end of the spectrum as soon as it can, as it has done with industrial relations and with security laws. But wait, there is more to come. If the Minister for Finance and Administration—that advocate for even tougher workplace laws and the champion of non-compulsory voting—has his way, that will be next. The banning of prisoners from voting sends exactly the wrong message if we are truly serious about rehabilitating people to take an interest and a role in the processes of society—a society that has an Indigenous prison population of 22 per cent. I will further outline my concerns about this aspect of this bill in the consideration in detail stage when speaking to my amendments. I entertain no hope that the government will show the vaguest interest, but the proposed amendments outline the kind of electoral system we should have if we dare to call ourselves a true democracy.

The recent South Australian elections, in particular, and other state polls and by-elections in recent times have shown that people are searching for alternative representation to that by the major parties. In most states we now see a fair to large grouping of Independents, as voters seek and find representation with more relevance to the modern political reality of continuing engagement on issues rather than a winner take all for three or four years. The above-the-line process in our Senate voting system, with its due preferential process, delivers a distorted outcome, as evidenced at the last election. Any fair system would surely provide, at the very least, for below-the-line-only voting—in fact, there should be no line at all—with partial preferencing. Voters then need choose only the number of candidates required to fill the vacancy and, if so desired, can indicate further preferences. This and other matters that should be in a so-called electoral integrity bill I will cover when I move my amendments.

I must express dismay that, despite the heartfelt words of the member for Banks and the logic, coherence and sense of his comments, we have nothing more than a second reading amendment from the opposition here; indeed, it includes opposition to several of the measures that, by any objective observer, may be regarded as reasonable. The Labor Party have described the proof of identity requirements as undemocratic provisions; I wonder what they are on about. They mention the disclosure thresholds being increased to $10,000 as undemocratic provisions and I agree. They refer to the tax deductibility of political donations. As I have said, to level the playing field to a certain degree, that may be necessary. But, if you put a cap on the spend, you automatically trigger, as best you can, a cap on the donation. That is what constituencies around the world—notably New Zealand and, I believe, the UK—have in place to ensure, as much as the political party process will allow, that people have something resembling an even opportunity to stand for parliament.

I condemn this bill. It is designed to shore up a crumbling and discredited two-party electoral system.

Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am astonished at some of the speeches by members of the opposition. It is incredible that they would oppose measures that seek to improve the integrity of our electoral system. As parliamentarians, as believers in the democratic process that put us here and as participants in our nation’s democratic institutions, I would have thought that we would all equally and unequivocally be committed to do all we can to improve the integrity of the electoral roll and the validity of our electoral results. I am staggered that, for some members of the opposition and, indeed, some of the Independents, this is highly qualified.

There are two fundamental questions here. First, under the current system, is abuse, infringement or, indeed, rorting possible? All but the most naive would admit yes, it is. Some might question its prevalence and some might question its scale, but no-one would seriously deny the possibility of irregularities and fraud in the current system. Dr Murray Goot, Associate Professor of Politics at Macquarie University, quoted in the book Frauding of Elections? by Dr Amy McGrath, says:

There is absolutely no reason why it [rorting the system] could not be done. The only question is how often.

So the first question is: is it possible that the current system can be abused? The answer unequivocally is: yes, it is. The second question is whether the proposed reforms would reduce that possibility. Again, clearly the answer is yes. Few have argued that they would not. The opposition’s arguments have been about rhetoric, civil liberties, disenfranchisement and concerns of people being frozen out of the process, but no-one would seriously admit that the reforms at least will not tighten up that process. Surely we need to do all we can to protect the integrity of the electoral roll, electoral processes and electoral outcomes.

Let me go into the background here. In this country there has been a long history of allegations, anecdotal evidence and, in some cases, hard evidence of irregularities, infringements and deliberate fraud. There have been accounts of whistleblowers, reports of investigative journalists, occasional confessions of participants and even convictions—yes, convictions—and the work of academics such as Dr Amy McGrath in the Frauding of Elections? and The Stolen Election. These cases enumerate a number of elections and electorates where allegations of fraud have been made.

Just some examples of allegations of fraud are: a number of marginal seats in the 1987 federal election, especially the seats of Fisher, Eden-Monaro and Parramatta; the 1988 Victorian election in Ballarat South; the 1988 Western Australian election, where six seats were challenged due to voting irregularities; in the New South Wales 1988 election, multiple voting occurrences in 11 electorates; in the 1990 federal election in the seat of Richmond; The Entrance in 1991 in the New South Wales election; in the 1993 federal election in the seats of Dickson and Macquarie, very close to home for me, where the incumbent, Alasdair Webster, was defeated by a mere 164 votes with some very serious allegations of irregularities; the infamous Mundingburra electorate in the 1995 Queensland election and also in Redlands; and numerous—too numerous to count—cases of concern about union ballots.

These irregularities include a whole range of activities, such as fictitious enrolments. For example, in the seat of Macquarie following that result in 1993 the defeated member, Alasdair Webster, did a fairly extensive phone and visitation audit and found a number of irregularities, such as people registered on the roll from garages, from hotels and from vacant blocks, and even a cat registered to vote on the electoral roll in the seat of Macquarie. It is outrageous that this could happen. Other examples include: names assigned to the wrong electorates, usually, conveniently, to neighbouring electorates; cases of cemetery voting—that is, voting in the names of deceased persons; cases of multiple voting, not just on the day but also pre-polling and postal voting; people being given the wrong ballot papers—again in Macquarie in 1993 there were 415 cases of voters turning up to vote and being given ballot papers for electorates other than Macquarie; cases of large numbers of 17-year-old provisional voters being left on the roll and therefore being able to cast votes; enrolments in multiple electorates; nonresidents on the roll; the use of safe houses; and many others—we can go on.

There is no doubt that these things can happen and do happen. They are too serious and too many to be ignored. The question, of course, is not whether these things can happen and not whether they do happen but whether they happen enough to alter the results in any particular seat or in any particular election. When seats are won or lost on the narrowest of margins, it is most likely that this does happen and can happen. If this does happen, it presents a powerful argument for supporting these reforms put forward by the government in this piece of legislation. Australians’ sense of fair play and Australians’ sense of decency demands that we ensure our electoral system works fairly. We must have confidence that it works fairly. It must be fair and it must be seen to be fair. If we are to increase confidence in our system, even the perception of the possibility or the likelihood of fraud must be eliminated.

The reforms proposed in this legislation are fair. They are reasonable. They are sensible. The whole purpose is to bring about improvement. Yet we have had criticisms from the other side about so-called efforts to enhance our own electoral position. We had the member for Banks here earlier this morning talking about the motivation being harvesting political advantage for the coalition. I cannot believe the hypocrisy of the other side on this particular piece of legislation. Remember the reforms introduced by the Labor Party in 1984 and remember the book by the former Labor powerbroker and frontbencher Graham Richardson, quite appropriately called Whatever it Takes. In his book he admitted about the electoral reforms in 1984:

... Labor could embrace power as a right and make the task of anyone taking it from us as difficult as we could.

What a travesty. The motivation, according to Graham Richardson, of those 1984 reforms was to make it difficult for Labor to lose office. Who was the Special Minister of State when those reforms were introduced? None other than the current Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand. The purpose then was to make it harder for Labor to lose office, to entrench Labor’s position, whereas the reforms currently proposed and currently in front of the House are reforms recommended by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters as a result of investigations into our electoral system. They are aimed simply at reducing fraud and improving the integrity of our electoral processes.

There are a number of main provisions in this legislation. The first involves, clearly, those measures aimed at improving the integrity of the roll—making sure we know that the people whose names are on the roll to vote are qualified to vote. This is fundamental to the way our system works. I refer to a report by the Australian National Audit Office in 2001-02 entitled Integrity of the electoral roll. This report by the National Audit Office—not by the Liberal Party, not by the coalition, not even by a parliamentary committee, but by the National Audit Office—said that the electoral roll was 96 per cent accurate—that is, four per cent of the electoral roll was inaccurate. Four per cent of 12.6 million voters on the electoral roll means that roughly half a million voters are on the roll who perhaps should not be. When four per cent is inaccurate, you have problems, particularly given that there are 29 marginal seats with margins of less than four per cent and 17 seats with margins of less than two per cent. You do not need many irregularities in enrolments to change those outcomes. The conclusion of the National Audit Office was:

At the same time there are areas of AEC—

Australian Electoral Commission—

management of the roll that can be improved ...

‘Better identification and management of risks to the integrity of the roll’ were listed by the National Audit Office. They went on to say:

... the ANAO considers that the AEC should give priority to finalising and implementing a fraud control plan specific to enrolment activities.

That is from the report of the National Audit Office on the Integrity of the electoral roll, and that is what this legislation is trying to address. What does this legislation include? First and foremost, it includes proof of identity to enrol to vote. It is just commonsense. If you go in to put your name on the electoral roll, you ought to be required to produce some evidence to say who you are, rather than be able to just walk in and say: ‘I’m Joe Bloggs. I live at a particular location or I have a particular postbox and therefore I have a right to vote.’ The ludicrous situation currently exists that anyone can put their name on the roll. They can use a post office address, enrol multiple times under multiple names and thereby cast multiple votes in an election. When we have seats won or lost by a handful of votes, this can make a difference. Only the most naive or the most ignorant would refuse to acknowledge that this can happen. It is a fundamental right in this country that one person has one vote. The possibility that one person could have two, five, 10, 20 or 50 votes is outrageous and a subversion of our fundamental democratic rights and our democratic system. I am staggered that the opposition and the Independent member for Calare, whom we just heard, are opposed to measures to improve the integrity of the roll.

The second provision is the earlier closing of the roll. It is worth remembering that from Federation—that is, from 1901—until 1984, coincidentally, the roll was closed on the day the writs were issued. It was only under the reforms introduced by the Labor Party in 1984 that that changed. The difficulty with the current system is that allowing a massive number of enrolments in the week after the writs are issued makes it impossible for the Australian Electoral Commission to verify the validity of those enrolments. In the week after the writs were issued for the 2004 election, for instance, there were 2,976,181 transactions with the Electoral Commission. It was an absolute impossibility for the Electoral Commission to even begin to check the validity of those enrolments, again casting serious doubts on the integrity and the accuracy of the roll. Our provision in this legislation that for new enrolments the roll closes on the day the writs are issued and for re-enrolments and change of address three days after will mean that to check the validity of new enrolments the Electoral Commission will get an extra seven days and to check change in address an extra four days. This will go significantly to reducing the potential for fraud in those late enrolments.

The third provision related to this is the provision for the Australian Electoral Commission to have access to databases of state and territory governments and authorities such as the RTA so they can check enrolments against drivers licence details et cetera. Again, that is a commonsense provision which allows a greater chance of checking the accuracy of the roll.

The first main provision is improving the integrity of our electoral roll, which is fundamental to our democratic processes. These are commonsense, reasonable changes that for some reason the Labor Party are opposed to. I do not understand why they are opposed to improving the integrity of our electoral roll. The second main provision is better identifying voters. There will be a requirement to provide proof of identity to cast a provisional vote. If you turn up to cast a provisional vote because your name is not on the roll, there will be a requirement that you provide some proof of who you are. There will no longer be the possibility of just turning up on election day and saying, ‘Oh, my name’s not there; I’m Tom Smith and therefore I want to vote,’ and then casting a provisional vote that is not checked afterwards. That is more than reasonable. It is recommended in the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters reports of 2001 and 2004 that to have the right to vote some proof of identity—that is, a drivers licence, a passport or a Medicare card—should be shown to the polling officers instead of it simply being taken on trust, as has been the case in the past. Again, there is no sustainable argument against this provision.

The third main area of change I want to focus on is the naming provision for political parties, which is aimed simply at removing the deception, or the confusion even, of voters as to the real allegiances of minor parties. The requirement in this legislation is that all non-parliamentary parties—that is, parties not represented in this parliament—will have to re-register to be recognised as official parties. The reason for this is that it is too easy to confuse voters on voting day as to the allegiance of minority parties and where their preferences will go. There was a classic case in the last federal election in the seat of Richmond, which was lost by just 300 votes. The party liberals for forests ran in the seat of Richmond. They wore blue T-shirts with ‘Liberals’ in large letters on the front. Their how-to-vote cards had ‘Liberals’ in large letters and the Australian flag highlighted. To all intents and purposes, they were passing themselves off as the Liberal Party. Liberal voters then would have expected that, if they voted for liberals for forests, their preferences would flow to the Liberal Party. But liberals for forests directed their preferences away from the Liberal Party.

It was a deliberate fraud that confused voters and resulted in—I suspect, and we will never know—a number of people who had intended their preferences to go to the Liberal Party having them directed away from the Liberal Party to the Greens and the Labor Party. Interestingly, in that electorate the incumbent, Larry Anthony, lost by 301 votes. Yet there were 1,417 primary votes cast for liberals for forests. The bottom line is this: people should be left in no doubt as to who they are voting for. This initiative in the legislation will remove that possibility. I am amazed that the Labor Party dismissed this as ‘a political stunt’. How can they dismiss so lightly a piece of legislation that will attempt to remove the confusion that voters face and remove or reduce the chances of them being deceived in the way they vote?

I could go on. There is a lot more to say, but time is running out. I will quote briefly from a book entitled The Frauding of Votes by Dr Amy McGrath, which most people in this place would be familiar with. Dr McGrath has done an immense amount of research into Australia’s electoral system, including another book, The Stolen Election, which talks about the 1987 federal election. She makes this point about our electoral system:

I no longer have illusions about Australia as a great democracy. Our electoral system is a dangerous farce, obscured by jargon and whitewashing practice. No democratic country can afford the luxury of an electoral system based wholly on honour and trust. History is replete with lessons of warning.

The fact is that it has been far too easy to date to get your name on the electoral roll; it has been far too easy to vote multiple times; and it has been far too easy to vote in the name of other people. For the first time there is legislation with a chance of being passed that introduces changes which will tighten the accuracy of our electoral roll and which will improve the integrity of our electoral system and the validity of our electoral outcomes. We can no longer leave this to chance. We can no longer leave it to trust. There is far too much at stake here.

I am astonished and disappointed that the Labor Party and the Independents are opposed to these changes, which will make our system more transparent and more difficult for irregularities and fraud to occur and which will make it much more likely that our electoral roll will reflect the list of names of people who have a right to vote, thereby improving the integrity of our system. This is good, sensible, reasonable and balanced legislation. I strongly support the bill before the House.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There have been a number of significant electoral reforms in this country since Federation in 1901. Just a year after Federation, Australia was among the first to give women the vote. In 1967—pitifully late and 111 years after they had been given the right to vote within South Australia—we as a nation gave Aboriginal Australians the vote. In 1973 we lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Importantly, each of these measures allowed more people to vote. At no time have women, Aboriginal people or young adults been unaffected by the decisions of the Australian government, so it is only just that they are allowed a say in deciding who should govern Australia. Electoral reform which increases involvement in the democratic process makes a great deal of sense. But the changes in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 are not about increasing involvement. They are generally about narrowing participation and, as such, are undemocratic.

However, some of the changes in the legislation are understandable. Having a requirement for people to show identification when they go to vote does not seem unreasonable to me. Voting is a very serious business. If you need ID to borrow a DVD or a video, you should need ID to cast your vote at election time. Having said that, it appears that there is actually no need for this in Australia because electoral fraud is almost nonexistent. The number of convictions for electoral fraud is very low in this country. As I said, it is nonexistent.

I also support moves to ensure that the electoral roll is accurate and up-to-date. But making it harder for people to enrol will not improve our democracy. Young Australians, in particular, who are not experienced in participating in our national democracy and who are just starting their lives as young adults are naturally going to be preoccupied with concerns other than politics. We should not be trying to exclude them for failing to be ultraconscientious with the timing of their enrolment. On the contrary, we should be encouraging their engagement with the process.

Requiring new enrollees to substantiate their identity and address will mean that the Australian Electoral Commission’s attempts to enrol students while they are still at high school could be hindered. It will mean that, whereas someone might have quickly completed an enrolment form or changed their address details and posted the form off without much thought, they will put it off indefinitely because they will need to send proof of identity or take the documentation to the AEC personally. The result will not be an improvement in the integrity of the roll. It will instead result in fewer new enrolments—fewer people whom we expect to vote being able to vote.

Closing the electoral roll on the day the election is called rather than allowing for five working days for people to enrol or to update their address details also narrows rather than broadens participation in our democracy. Fewer people will update their address. This legislation does the opposite of improving the integrity of the roll. It makes it much more likely that tens of thousands of people, just within South Australia, will be voting for candidates running in electorates other than the one in which they live. It will mean that people will have to vote for or against candidates whom they probably have never heard of and whose election material they certainly have never had the opportunity to peruse. It will mean that election results in any given division could be skewed in favour of preferences of those with the most stable accommodation arrangements and a high proportion of those who have already moved out of the electorate. The result would also be potentially skewed against the preference of the first-time voter.

In South Australia, closing the roll early would make it harder for almost 50,000 voters to cast their vote in the next federal election. At the last election, just within the seat of Hindmarsh, 4,854 voters corrected their enrolment details in the five days immediately after the election was called. Throughout South Australia, 49,893 voters updated their enrolment details during that period. Because younger people tend to move house more often, younger voters would be most disadvantaged by this change.

In 2004 in Hindmarsh, 872 voters who updated their details were first-time voters. Throughout South Australia, 9,163 voters who would be excluded under these changes were first-time voters. Had these changes been in place in 2004, there is a good chance that many young people and people who had changed their address would not have voted in the seat of Hindmarsh. I am sure the case is mirrored in many electorates and many marginal seats around the country.

There are times when a small number of votes determines the election of MPs and even governments, so it is essential that our system is as representative of the whole population as possible. Virtually all adult Australians have an equal right and obligation to vote, and those who from time to time move house should have as much of a voice as those who live in one place for decades.

The bill seeks to change the definition of ‘associated entity’. Under the Electoral Act as it stands, an associated entity is one which is ‘controlled by one or more registered political parties or one which operates wholly or to a significant extent for the benefit of one or more registered political parties’. The former Special Minister of State, Senator Eric Abetz, addressed the Sydney Institute about this matter in early October. It seems he was incensed that organisations with charity status were vocal and active during the federal election campaign of 2004. He referred to the campaigns run by the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society, the World Wildlife Fund and the RSPCA. He was distressed that these organisations spoke up about the environment policies of the two major parties.

I am distressed that he would seek to stop organisations from speaking up. When a member of the public makes a donation to one of these organisations, they do so because they expect them to speak up at such times. It is the responsibility of these organisations to try and influence government policy, so it is ridiculous and enormously undemocratic to limit the tax-deductible status of these organisations because they comment on government policy. If there is strong and sensible opposition to government policy coming from these groups then it is incumbent on the government to consider what is being said. It is undemocratic to try to shut up organisations—or shut them out—on the basis that they disagree with you. It shows a lack of genuine conviction on policy matters if you are afraid of open debate on these issues.

The matter of party names is interesting. In much the same way that brand names are copyrighted, there is in my view some room for reform in this area to ensure that voters are not misled by party names. Moves towards using improvements in technology to improve our voting system are interesting and, in my view, should be investigated. Electronic voting could increase participation by voters who would otherwise find it hard to vote—for example, those living overseas and those who cannot get to a voting booth for health reasons. Electronic voting could also help to reduce the number of accidental informal votes, and that would help to improve our electoral system. Upcoming trials are of great interest to me. While it is obviously essential that we ensure the security of these systems and continue to allow people who are not comfortable with the technology to cast their vote in the old-fashioned way, I think a gradual move towards electronic voting makes a great deal of sense.

People’s fear of electoral fraud—and by that I mean fraud by the system and its players, not fraud by voters of doubtful identity—will naturally be a brake on any progress made in this direction. Some people still look with suspicion at the prospect of completing their ballot papers with a pencil for fear that some apparatchik in a backroom will rub out their preferences and insert those that will produce the correct result. But I am sure that this and similar misunderstandings are on the decrease.

I also think a four-year set term makes sense. It is hard work to develop and implement policy and see results within three years. In some portfolio areas a four-year term will not make much difference, but an approach which allows for steady, longer term policy decisions makes for better government.

I am pleased that so-called voluntary voting is not on the cards in this round of electoral reforms. I think the South Australian approach of being more inclusive deserves more consideration than the idea of voluntary attendance at voting booths. In South Australia, with the use of registered tickets—similar to the above-the-line voting system used to direct preferences in the Senate—even votes that the AEC may consider informal can be included in the count. If, for example, a person votes ‘1’ for the ‘Sandgropers Party’ and nothing else, and the Sandgropers Party has registered a ticket for that electorate, the vote can eventually be counted as formal. If and when that candidate is eliminated, the vote simply follows the preferences indicated on the ticket. It is very simple and, more importantly, highly inclusive. It takes compulsory preferential voting to a new high. From memory, it is the exact opposite of what is happening in New South Wales.

We have the privilege of living in a democratic country and we should not see the quality of our democracy eroded by accident. When people show up at the polling booth on election day, if they do not want to vote they just tick off their name. If they want to tell politicians how frustrated they are, they may choose to vote informally by leaving the ballot paper blank. If they think that one candidate or party better represents their values than another, they vote and mark their preferences accordingly. But they do show up; they do not fail to vote because they have been caught up with other things that day or because they think the system does not want them involved. People should have no reason to even suspect that this system of government does not care for their input, that it does not want them involved. More than any of the changes flagged in these reforms, it is people’s attendance and necessary involvement that protects the integrity of our electoral system.

In a genuine democracy all votes are equal; under these electoral reforms it seems that some votes are more equal than others. In a strong and healthy democracy, the people who have to live by the rules and decisions of the government get to elect the decision-makers; citizens are supported and encouraged to participate, and their right to do so is never restricted or eroded; and everyone has the right to speak up about what matters to them, regardless of what they believe, how much they earn, where they live or how long they live in a certain place.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 bolsters the very foundations of our democracy. We might well reflect on the words of Thomas Jefferson:

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government …

Safeguarding the will of the people can only happen if we eliminate fraudulent activities from our voting system. At the very heart of our system of government, and the maintenance of its integrity, is the voting process and the various elements related to that process. To this end, the bill contains reform measures stemming from a number of government-supported recommendations in the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report on the 2004 federal election, along with some additional reform measures considered a priority by the government. This bill will go a long way towards remedying some of the flaws and loopholes which currently exist in our electoral process, a number of which have concerned me greatly throughout my time as the member for Hinkler.

One point I must make is the astounding hypocrisy of Labor on this matter of electoral reform. When questioned on the issue last October, the Leader of the Opposition made the outrageous statement that ‘when it comes to rort merchants, nobody beats The Nationals’—a terrible slur not supported by any sort of evidence. A little further in my speech I will use previous polling results in my electorate of Hinkler to demonstrate what a duplicitous statement that really is.

When it comes to proof of identity, I wholeheartedly endorse the introduction of the need for an individual to provide proof of identity when enrolling or needing to change their enrolment details. I found the contribution by the member for Hindmarsh, who spoke just before me, somewhat bewildering. He spoke against that, saying that narrowed the opportunity for people to be enrolled, but at the same time he said that he would like to see identification at the ballot box when people came in to vote. It seems to me that the very starting point of this is getting the right person on the roll: that someone who is on the roll happens to be who they say they are. If you do not get that process right, a falsely enrolled person can come in and vote, because all they have to do is produce some false identity that coalesces with the false name. The starting point is to make sure that the people on the roll are genuine people. The member for Hindmarsh went on to say that there had been very few instances of electoral fraud. That is broadly true, but enrolment is the area in which there has been electoral fraud, and we have had a number of cases in that area in Queensland in recent years. Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, as you are from Townsville, you would know only too well that is where the system has fallen down.

Some say this arrangement is too onerous for those at risk of disenfranchisement and that young people will not be able to follow it. But I am yet to meet a person who cannot provide some form of identification. When I go to pick my ticket up at an airport, I have to show proof of identification, as does everyone else who travels. The opposition’s member for Bruce is on the record as saying that a more rigorous identification system for voters would ‘make it harder to get enrolled and therefore be part of the democratic process’. That is absolute rubbish. People receiving Centrelink pensions, benefits, allowances and services have to provide identification, almost every single 18-year-old can provide ID to get into licensed premises—all the young people I know do not seem to have any trouble doing that—and elderly Australians whip out their seniors card to get discounts on buses and trains and in shops. For heaven’s sake, as even the member for Hindmarsh said, you have to have ID to hire a video or a DVD. Given that, I cannot see why it is so onerous for anyone to provide proof of identity when they want to enrol.

But all that aside, the government has put in place a number of alternatives for individuals who cannot provide a drivers licence when enrolling to vote or changing their address. People have the option of providing alternative identification—such things as a birth certificate or a Medicare card. Failing that, there are even more measures so that someone seeking to enrol can change their address provided that any such documentation as to their enrolment claim can be countersigned by two voters who are not relatives, have known the individual for at least a month and can provide their drivers licence for verification. So there is ample opportunity for people to be able to identify themselves.

My support for these measures stems from my own experience in fighting an election where questionable voters could have skewed the final result. When it comes to proof of ID for provisional voting, I take a much stronger view. I endorse the requirement that individuals must provide proof of identity, such as a drivers licence or other valid identification, when they come in to register a provisional vote. As all honourable members know, a provisional vote is when you claim a vote on the basis that you believe you have been wrongly excluded from the electoral roll. I have previously told the House about highly suspicious trends related to provisional votes which emerged in my seat of Hinkler after elections and referendums stretching back to 1990. Between the 1990 and 2001 federal elections there was an 80 per cent increase in the number of provisional vote applications made but only a 63 per cent increase in the valid provisional votes cast. That 17 per cent variation must lead one to conclude that there is a fair degree of dodginess in those figures. More to the point, the gap between valid provisional votes and applications made doubled from 0.17 per cent to 0.35 per cent over the same time frame. In the 1990 election, 123 provisional applications were disallowed. In 1993, that figure had grown to 190. In 1996, 288 were disallowed; 0.36 per cent of provisional vote applications were disallowed. This was the largest single discrepancy, and it just happened to follow Hinkler’s move to coalition representation.

I understand there will be some degree of discrepancy between valid and invalid provisional votes, but there is absolutely no logical reason for this aberration. Clearly, it would have been easier if voters had been required to provide identification on election day. In other words, if the measures contained in this bill had been enacted we would not have encountered the problem at all. Under these measures, no valid voter turning up on election day without an ID will be disenfranchised. If someone on their way to fishing walks in in stubbies and a T-shirt and has not got all his identification on him, he will have seven days to validate his vote. In other words, the vote goes into an envelope that is sealed and he will have seven days to come in and verify the details on the front of his provisional vote application. So no-one who may be without identification on the day itself will be treated badly.

The bill also provides for the close of the roll at 8 pm on the day the writ is issued—that is, the day the Prime Minister informs the Governor-General that he intends to hold an election and the Governor-General approves it. The bill further allows for people who will turn 18 during a campaign or who are due to be granted citizenship during a campaign to have until 8 pm three days after the issue of the writ to update their enrolment. Apart from a handful of exceptional circumstances, I do not believe this is an unreasonable or unfair measure. Election date speculation starts months out from an election: ‘I think it might be on this month. No, it might be that month. Will the Prime Minister go early or will he go late? How late can he go? How early can he go? Will we have a double dissolution? Would we split the Senate vote off from the House of Reps vote if he went at this time?’ This goes on endlessly over the last six to nine months of any electoral cycle.

It is hard to believe that people could be so dumb and not know that an election is pending some time over the next few months. Election date speculation could start, as I said, from six to nine months out. Commentary, analysis, letters to the editor and news stories clog up the media: ‘Will Howard go early? Will Howard go late?’ And so it goes on. So people cannot say they were not aware that an election was in the air. What this speculation does is put people on notice that they need to enrol when the idea of an election is starting to take place. It could also be argued that today, as never before, people have greater access to an array of news and media sources. Given that this is the case, it is quite realistic to expect individuals to take responsibility for their timely enrolment and change of details.

I previously mentioned the member for Bruce, who said that the ‘requirement for enrolling voters to show proof of identification would add to the administrative burden of the AEC’. The member for Bruce must not be aware of the huge administrative burden the AEC already has because of existing regulations for the closing of the roll. Some interesting statistics came to light in 2004. The Australian Electoral Commission processed almost 424,000 enrolment transactions in the seven days after the writ was issued. Of these transactions, 78,000 were first-time enrolments, 78,000 were re-enrolment applications and 225,000 were applications to change address details. These things could have been done months ahead of that time. I would have thought that more timely enrolment by voters would make life easier for the AEC, not more difficult. Avoiding the administrative rush and, therefore, reducing the risk of human error throughout the process must surely be a good case for closing the roll at 8 pm on the day the writ is issued, and allowing three working days for those people turning 18 or being made citizens to rectify their enrolment details will help.

I also have a view on the location of divisional offices. I am not against the idea of having co-located divisional officers where, for example, you have two electorates joining on a major street or where they are close to a major shopping centre and you can co-locate two offices. There is no zealotry in what I say, but I think it is important to have divisional returning offices scattered throughout Australia so that there is access to information and services in the main provincial cities. The idea of having to bring in a team of vote counters and others, especially in my seat, where the count is generally very close, is perhaps not the best. On one occasion the count in my electorate went to 3½ weeks. Imagine what it would have been like if there had been no AEC office in Bundaberg and the AEC had to bring all those staff from, say, the Sunshine Coast, Rockhampton or Brisbane and have them located in Bundaberg for that length of time. It would have been a massive expense. I cannot see why, if this is part of the democratic process, the core provincial city in each electorate should not have a divisional returning office.

Two key points were raised in the submission to the joint standing committee by the Hinkler Divisional Council of the National Party which are entirely relevant to voters in regional Australia. One related to the centralised system of postal vote distribution and the other to the lack of divisional returning offices, which I have just dealt with. The essential point of both is that the electoral system needs to be more responsive to the needs of the wider community, and most particularly to the needs of voters living, visiting or travelling through regional Australia. I believe the Australian Electoral Commission needs to have a greater on-the-ground presence in regional areas—a case in point being a move away from the centralised agency system of administering postal votes. I am quite ambivalent about that. I suppose if you introduce it and it goes on and on, over time you will eventually get it right.

But we had some very unusual circumstances, as you would be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think in the electorate of Maranoa people received ballot papers for a different electorate. Some people got Senate papers for another state. No-one condemns people for making an honest mistake or for the malfunction of a machine but, when you talk about country voters who get the mail, say, only once or twice a week, having to report getting the wrong ballot papers and then getting the new ballot papers sent out and then having some declaration that has to go back to the electorate office and then come back to you will quite often disenfranchise people, through no fault of their own. That happened quite a bit in the last election, when centralised postal voting was undertaken.

Another thing is that we have a lot of tourism, especially on the New South Wales and Queensland coasts. Although there are divisional returning offices at Brisbane, Nambour, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns, there are still major centres between those places where there are resorts. In your area, for example, Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, you have places like Bowen, Ayr, Ingham and Tully, and you could talk about places like Mount Isa, Roma and Longreach—key places where a lot of tourists and visitors congregate.

I give the AEC credit. In my own electorate, for a fortnight before the election they run an office in Gladstone, which is a major centre of nearly 30,000 people. I think that could perhaps come down to strategically placed centres, say of about 10,000 people or more, that would give tourists and travellers a better opportunity. This, of course, applies only to interstate travellers. You can vote at any booth anywhere in your home state, but if you come from interstate you can vote only at a divisional returning office. To have some temporary divisional returning offices, as is the case in Gladstone, would make access a lot easier for tourists and it would cut down the complexity of postal voting that we have at present.

There are some other interesting features of this bill that I applaud. I think the clarification or the validity of the naming of parties is very important. These sorts of names like ‘liberals for forests’ are deliberately used to deceive. There is a fair body of evidence—or a fair body of opinion, if not evidence—that says the result in the seat of Richmond was skewed by that sort of practice: people pretending to be Liberals, having their how-to-vote cards in similar colours and formatting. That sort of thing is quite wrong and the use of names in that way is also wrong and needs to be stamped out.

Another thing that I applaud is that after 20 years we have at last raised the disclosure thresholds from $1,500 to $10,000 and, from here on in, locked them in with CPI. That means that we will not have that problem in the future. Some people say that is too high. I am not sure that it is. It is roughly consistent with the UK’s threshold, which is about $A12,000, and New Zealand’s, which is about $NZ10,000. So at $10,000 we are much in line with other English-speaking countries.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What was that?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You get a lot of them in Hinkler, do you—$10,000 donations?

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I get donations over that.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! This is not a question and answer situation. The member for Grayndler will reserve his right to respond.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am fascinated by his interest in my electorate. I think tax deductibility is another area that needed to be looked at. The $100 threshold did not reflect the situation. A lot of people want to donate to their political parties at election time to keep the electoral system vibrant, and I think the raising of that threshold to $1,500 is a sensible measure. All in all, this is very good. I do not think any alarm needs to be raised because of some of these measures and I commend the bill to the House.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now the honourable member for Grayndler may have his response.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 represents a fundamental attack on Australian democracy. It contains some odious changes which Labor fundamentally opposes. The bill will make it far harder to vote but much easier to secretly donate to political parties. Labor is opposed strongly to the provisions in this bill which will see the electoral roll close early, introduce new proof of identity requirements, increase the disclosure threshold for political donations to $10,000 and increase the size and scope of the tax deductibility regime for political donations to $1,500.

The member for Hinkler has just contributed to this debate, and I had the privilege of being in the member for Hinkler’s electorate just last week. I went to Gladstone and marched and spoke at Labor Day. Let me tell you, and I say to the member for Hinkler: not many of the men, women and families that I met in Gladstone were about to donate $10,000 to the National Party, the Labor Party or anyone else. The idea that $10,000 should be able to be donated and not be disclosed is simply obscene. It will lead to a corruption of the political process, and that is what it is designed to do. I have no problem whatsoever with an individual, if they are wealthy enough, donating $10,000 to a political party. The issue here is that it should be disclosed, that the Australian public should know that that individual has contributed $10,000 to that political party. I assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, there are not many people in my electorate of Grayndler who can afford to donate $10,000 that they have as discretionary funds to any political party. It is just not the case. So why is it that the Australian public should not know about that?

Regarding the size and scope of the tax deductibility regime for political donations, we know if you combine the two measures that there will be a lot of functions held by all political parties where the entry fee is a donation of around $1,490 or so. We have seen continually in the past that prices are set just below the threshold for disclosure. What will happen now is that not only will prices be set just below the disclosure level but also they will be able to be claimed as tax deductions; therefore, government receipts will be less by 45c in the dollar after 1 July. So the Commonwealth taxpayer will be subsidising these donations that no-one will know about except that government receipts will be less. As much of a budget surplus as we have, do we as a nation really have enough money in the long term to be sure that we have covered off on skills, on infrastructure and on adaptation to climate change to suggest we can promote these provisions? It is a huge increase in tax deductibility from $100 to $1,500 in one hit.

I come to the provisions designed to disenfranchise Australians from the voting system. Surely, the electoral system should enfranchise as many eligible Australians as possible and be as transparent as possible. The only reason for this bill is to enable the coalition to get partisan political advantage at future elections. The government plans to close the electoral roll at 8 pm on the day that an election writ is issued. Current legislation allows for a seven-day period of grace after an election writ is issued for people to enrol to vote and update their existing details on the electoral roll. The government justifies these changes by saying that the AEC does not have time to adequately process the details of people who are enrolling to vote or updating their details in the period between the issue of the writ and polling day, hence leading to more errors on the electoral roll. What absolute nonsense! The AEC itself has said that the current seven-day arrangement does not prevent it from taking adequate steps to prevent fraudulent enrolment. In fact, the AEC, critical of similar changes proposed about five years ago, said that closing the roll early would make the roll:

... less accurate because there will be less time for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received.

Because of these changes the ability of some 280,000 Australians to vote could be jeopardised and most of those will be young people. Presumably, John Howard does not think that they vote for the conservatives.

History shows that closing the roll on the day that an election writ is issued will see tens of thousands of Australians excluded from voting. In 1983, Malcolm Fraser played a dirty trick and closed the roll the day after the election was called, breaking over 80 years of convention. Approximately 90,000 people found that they could not vote because they had not enrolled in time. In 1983 a lot of people went to vote, found they were not on the roll and just walked out of the polling station. John Howard should not return to the disgraceful tactics of Malcolm Fraser and take away people’s right to vote.

In my electorate of Grayndler, from one election to the next almost 25 per cent of names on the roll will change—every three years. I have an enormous number of students and young people in my electorate. Grayndler has among the highest numbers of people who rent rather than own their homes. This will mean that some of these people will be disenfranchised and will inevitably attempt to vote using their old address, thereby reducing the accuracy of the roll. This bill threatens a strong disenfranchisement of voters in my electorate.

We strongly oppose the disclosure threshold being increased to $10,000. The current threshold of $1,500 is a good benchmark. It ensures the Australian public have access to information on who provides substantial funds to political parties. This information is vital to ensure that voters can hold governments and political parties accountable. The increase in the disclosure threshold could see tens of millions of dollars received by political parties disappear from public view.

I want to outline some details that show that not just the major political parties will be affected by these changes. Minor parties use electoral tactics to secure political advantage. In mid-April this year, an advertisement appeared in a newsletter of the Fundraising Institute headed ‘National fundraiser wanted’. The job paid $80,000 per annum plus superannuation. The organisation offered an ‘outstanding, high-profile opportunity for the right fundraiser with a strong track record looking for a new challenge’. It stated that ‘the fundraiser will develop and implement a national fundraising strategy targeting wealthy individuals and small companies’. I repeat: ‘targeting wealthy individuals and small companies’. The organisation was looking for:

• Demonstrated success in developing and conducting significant fundraising campaigns;
• Demonstrated skills in organising large fundraising events that generate large amounts of funds;
• Exceptional people skills;
• Outstanding networking skills;
• Articulate and well-presented;
• Very comfortable operating in ‘business settings’ and dealing with high-net worth individuals;
• Demonstrated skills in conducting high level negotiations;
• Demonstrated skills in developing and managing budgets;
• Demonstrated high levels of energy and tenacity;

According to the advertisement, ‘After a three-month probationary period, continued employment will be strictly contingent on reaching agreed fundraising targets.’ The location was negotiable, and inquiries and applications were to be sent to the following email address: nationalofficer@greens.org.au. That is right, the advertisement was not for the Liberal Party, the National Party or the Labor Party but for the Greens. The advertisement went on to say that the Greens were ‘very proud of their record in refusing corporate donations’.

Hang on a minute: on the one hand the Greens say they refuse corporate donations when on the other hand they are openly targeting ‘large fundraising events’ and want someone who is ‘comfortable in business settings with high-net worth individuals’. I repeat: the Greens say they refuse corporate donations but they want a professional fundraising officer to target these events. It shows that in the political system the Greens, just like other political parties, engage in these activities.

I draw the attention of the House to some of the hypocrisy that the Greens run when they talk about corporate donations. Recently, the Daily Telegraph exposed the corporate money received by the Greens through investments in the Wholesale Mortgage Fund. The Greens’ receipt of over $5,000 from the Wholesale Mortgage Fund was disclosed in their electoral funding disclosure return for 2004-05. This $5,000 represented interest on an investment. The Wholesale Mortgage Fund is a managed investment scheme and is part of the Challenger Financial Services Group, whose board of directors includes James Packer. I quote from the fund’s commercial strategy:

In buying, retaining or selling underlying investments we generally do not take into account labour standards or environmental, social or ethical considerations.

The fund has, according to its website:

... an impressive record in securing large scale, high quality property assets, predominantly in the office, retail and social infrastructure sectors.

Like every other investor, the Greens made a conscious choice to invest their money in this organisation—this organisation that does not ‘take into account labour standards or environmental, social or ethical considerations’. I ask the Greens how this sits with the rhetoric that they engage in on these activities. The fund could invest in property development, overseas sweatshops, logging—anything at all, based upon the high rate of return. The fund is of course entitled to do that. But the Greens are not entitled to pretend they do not receive corporate money and that they engage on a different ethical basis to other political parties, when they are quite clearly able to get $5,000 in interest alone from investments in this fund. Understandably, the Greens are uncomfortable that they have made money from investing in development. They are uncomfortable because it has been brought out. That is the cold, hard truth.

That is consistent with other issues. In Queensland copies of minutes and emails between party officials of the Greens in August 2002 showed that the party sought donations from—and I quote from the Greens’ minutes—‘sensitive developers’. That was one point. They went further, though. The minutes of those meetings indicate that a motion was moved on 8 August that year:

... we approve that donations be made to the Rainforest Information Centre who will re-route the money to the Queensland Greens.

This is a problem because of a lack of disclosure, but it is also a problem because good environmental outcomes are undermined if organisations such as the Rainforest Information Centre are used to channel funds through to a political party. This was raised by Richard Nielson, the Greens candidate for Brisbane at the last state election, when he said:

With regards to the minutes circulated, I’m not sure that Drew’s idea for re-routing of donated money is good minute material.

He does not question the substance but questions the fact that it was recorded in the minutes. This certainly is an area of concern.

But there is form. In my electorate of Grayndler the Greens are particularly active at local government level. Two elections ago Sylvia Hale, now a Greens MLC in the New South Wales upper house, was a candidate for the No Aircraft Noise Party. She was a candidate in that election, in the south ward of Marrickville council. Her main opponent, and the person whom she just defeated for the last spot on the council from that ward, was the candidate for the Greens party. So Sylvia Hale, No Aircraft Noise Party candidate, was running for a spot essentially against the Greens candidate. But when the disclosure of that local government election occurred, what appeared was that Sylvia Hale, No Aircraft Noise Party candidate, had donated $5,000 to the Greens campaign in the very election where she was standing for a different political party.

These are the reasons why political disclosure is important. These are the reasons why we should not be increasing the figure for disclosure up to $10,000. Had these provisions applied, we would never have known that Sylvia Hale was running for one political party but funding another political party in the same election. And Sylvia Hale found herself elected on preferences, just defeating the Greens candidate for that fourth spot. A year later Sylvia Hale left the No Aircraft Noise Party and joined the Greens party. Did she do the principled thing and resign her position, as Cheryl Kernot did when she changed political parties and decided to join the Australian Labor Party? No, she did not—she retained her spot on the council. A short period of time later she became a Greens candidate for the New South Wales Legislative Council.

I am an opponent, as people in this chamber would know, of privatisation in general, as a political philosophy. Here we have a situation whereby the New South Wales Greens had privatised a spot in the New South Wales upper house! We would not have known about the connection between funding just prior to someone changing their political party and being preselected for public office in the New South Wales upper house were it not for the disclosure provisions that are there. That is why these provisions are important—because, regardless of which political party people represent, the Australian public is entitled to know where the money for people’s campaigns comes from and the Australian public is entitled to draw conclusions from that. Whether rightly or wrongly, there will be conclusions drawn on the basis of political donations.

I draw the attention of the House today to the activities of the Greens. The Greens, I think, have been particularly hypocritical in this regard in that they have been prepared to accept donations and have invested in funds which clearly state that they pay no regard to labour, environmental or other ethical standards. They change political parties and donate to other political parties and they attempt from time to time to channel funds through environmental organisations, as they did in Queensland. I think these provisions should be opposed. They are an attack on our democratic system; they are an attack on the accountability that the Australian public deserves. (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was rather bemused to hear that the member for Grayndler is more concerned about the Greens than he is about the coalition. I was also bemused to hear him talking about duplicity, because if ever a party has taken duplicity to its highest realm it is the Labor Party in New South Wales. I will go into some detail about that. One of their methods at present is standing so-called Independents in coalition seats when the so-called Independents have been members of the Labor Party. The Labor Party do not stand a candidate in the election campaign, but they back, with funding, the Independent and say to the people, ‘You’re voting for an Independent.’ It is fairly clear that they are not voting for an Independent; they are voting for a toady who supports the Labor Party. For the member for Grayndler to stand here and talk about duplicity from the Greens is quite hypocritical.

I do not want to bore the House for too long, but there are some very important provisions in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 that I support very strongly. I have been in politics now for just on 23 years and I have seen quite a few of these things in action over the years. I have listened to a number of speeches in the debate on this bill. The feigned anger of the Labor Party on a couple of these issues is quite strange, frankly, in relation to some of the issues that they are bringing forward, having seen them in action over the years. The fact is that we have a system at present whereby people can enrol without having any identification whatsoever. If I want to enrol my pet dog under my surname, I can do that. It is very unlikely it will be checked and that I will be found out. It is quite extraordinary. But if people hire a video, they must have identification.

I have heard numerous members of the opposition talking about how this is an impost on people by requiring them to identify themselves. We have to identify ourselves for everything in life these days. Everyone has a Medicare card. Surely it is very simple to identify yourself so you can enrol to vote in an election. I think I heard the chairman of the committee say yesterday that we have a very good system in Australia. I agree. But we can certainly finetune it in some of the areas where I think it is lacking. It is certainly lacking in the fact that, when you enrol, you do not have to identify who you are. That is just fundamental, as far as I am concerned, when putting your name on the roll.

The member for Grayndler and others have talked about the impost of the closing of the roll and people possibly missing out on voting. I can remember quite clearly what happened a long time ago. In those days when you turned 21, in my era, you put your name on the roll. You could not vote at 18 in those days; it was 21. I will never forget, when I had my 21st birthday, my mother saying to me, ‘Now the first thing you do, son, is go down to the post office and enrol.’ I did. It is fundamental that if you have a right to vote in Australia then, as soon as you turn of age, you go and enrol. If you change your address, you change your address on the roll. Who is even suggesting that you would not change your address for your mail? You have to do that. The arguments that are being put forward by the Labor Party on many of these issues are very spurious indeed.

The member for Grayndler talked about $10,000 donations et cetera. I would love to get a $10,000 donation. I do not think I have seen one. It is quite ridiculous to suggest that somehow people are going to hide behind this. If I get a $100 donation, I am doing well with most of the constituents that I have. We do not have large amounts of money to spend in an election campaign. That is just the nature of a country seat. I do not see anything in this that is the devil that the Labor Party are talking about—this idea that you can be bought for $100 or even for $1,500. That is a ridiculous argument. I might remind the member for Grayndler that it is automatic that part of a union fee goes to the Labor Party. We know that people who do not want to donate to the Labor Party are forced to do so because they have to join a union in certain circumstances. Part of that union fee goes to the Labor Party. They should admit to that.

There are a few other issues that I want to consider. Yesterday some of the speakers talked about the fact that people would be disenfranchised when we close the roll. I heard a lot about academics who had done some studies and what the Electoral Commission had said. I have to say that I think in many instances the Electoral Commission has its head in the sand and does not look at some of the issues that are out there.

I can recall instances as a state member when the roll has been closed. I am pretty certain that all members get a list of new enrollees. I remember in particular when one election was called having a list of 1,500 new enrollees who had gone on the roll from the time that the election was called until the roll was closed. As local members, most of us send out a ‘Welcome to the electorate’ letter to people who are new on the roll. Mr Deputy Speaker, would you believe that 30 per cent of those letters came back marked ‘Not known at that address’ just a couple of weeks after the election? I leave it to the general public to conclude why we would have such a thing. When I sent this information to the Electoral Commission they did not even give me the courtesy of a reply on the fact that we had this anomaly.

I want to talk about the last federal election. I am a neighbour of the electorate of Richmond, as you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker. There were a couple of things that occurred there that I found quite disturbing. First of all, we have heard on a couple of occasions mention of the liberals for forests, who also stood candidates in my seat and got more votes in my electorate than they did in Richmond. Thankfully, I had a bigger buffer. They stood candidates in that election deliberately to defraud and deceive. When I was discussing this matter on the ABC, Dr Woollard came on and admitted that that is what they were about. He said it was because they did not like John Howard. They deliberately went out to deceive the general public. They dressed in the same colours as The Nationals who were handing out how-to-vote cards, they had how-to-vote cards that were the same colour as genuine Liberal how-to-vote cards, they employed backpackers who were not even Australian residents and paid them for the day and they walked up to constituents saying, ‘Liberal.’ They were not Liberals. No. 2 on the ballot paper was Labor. This was the liberals for forests. That has got to stop. You cannot have that deception. I wonder what the Labor Party would think if I started a party called the Workers Party to support the workers, whom they claim to support, and I put my No. 2 preference to the Liberal Party. It is the same thing. It is taking advantage of people who do not listen clearly, I suppose, to what the party is about. I believe that is wrong.

Another issue is provisional voting. Again, as an example, I will use the seat of Richmond. It had an extraordinary number, although the AEC says it is not extraordinary, of provisional votes—something like 1,100. Quite a number of those provisional votes came out of Byron Bay. I was quite suspicious of these votes and soon after the election I asked the Electoral Commission to do a check of, say, 100 or so and get a percentage to see just how many were genuine and how many were not. The Electoral Commission said they could not do it; they did not have the time. Subsequently, way after the time had expired in which we might have appealed the electoral decision, we found out that, of the 1,100, 252 people from memory did not exist but had claimed a provisional vote. Again, I leave it to the general public to conclude what went on there.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have to say to you—and it is not sour grapes; it is just the facts—that the liberals for forests and the provisional votes elected the Labor Party in Richmond. That might give us some indication as to why the Labor Party are opposing some of these amendments so strongly. I think it is fundamental that, if you are going to claim a provisional vote, you should identify yourself. You should clearly identify yourself—I know you have to do it now when you fill out your address—so that you can be traced, because at the present time you can put a name down and, if it does not exist, it is still counted as a vote in provisional voting. Quite frankly, that is just contrary to our democratic rights in this country.

I do not believe this bill is outrageous. In fact, I would probably go some way further if I had the opportunity. I will put it this way—

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Crean interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hotham is mumbling under his breath, but I will put it to him this way: in the past you had to go to your local booth to vote and your name only appeared at the local booth so that your name could be crossed off; now you can go to any booth in the electorate. Quite frankly, I think we should update this and use computers to make sure that a person can vote only once. We have long heard from the Labor Party, ‘Vote early and vote often.’ In one instance after an election I found out that one person had voted four times and five dead people had voted. They were recorded as voting but they were dead. Someone voted for them. Of course, we would not know which way they voted, but that is an anomaly and it should not occur. I think that if we had a computer system whereby those people who had the right to vote could be crossed off or eliminated from the computer once they had voted then they could not vote more than once in an election. I strongly support this bill. I do not think it is outrageous; I think it goes to the core of some of the issues we are trying to address. I think that it will give us a better and fairer voting system in Australia.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 moved by the member for Bruce and to oppose key aspects of the bill. The fact of the matter is that this bill is a joke, but the contents of it are deadly serious. It is called the electoral integrity bill but the fact is that it has no integrity. This bill is about making it harder for people to vote but easier to sling anonymous political donations. It will not strengthen our electoral system but debase it, and it has the capacity to corrupt it. In many ways the title of this bill is in the same tricky style that the government uses so often to hide the real intent and meaning of a bill—not saying what a bill means and not meaning what it says and giving bills names that give the opposite impression to the real intention of the bill.

There are a few earlier examples: the Fair Dismissal bill, which makes it easier for employers to sack people; the More Jobs, Better Pay bill, which is not about better pay or more jobs; and, of course, the infamous Work Choices bill, which is not to give people choices. The last thing that is about is choice and it in fact restricts the choice of employees choosing to bargain collectively. Now we have the electoral integrity bill that lacks integrity.

This bill will make it harder for people to vote. It will undermine the strength of the compulsory voting system that has served this democracy so well for so long. It will make it easier for donors to political parties—the Liberal Party in particular—to conceal their identities and to secretly influence government policy. That is why Labor opposes this bill. We do not oppose every aspect of the bill, but we most strongly oppose the key aspects—the real intent—of this bill. In essence, we are demanding that the bill be withdrawn and that the offensive provisions be struck out. Were that to happen, we would be happy to support valid changes to the legislation—legislation which we think in parts is in need of reform.

One of the main provisions of the bill is to increase the threshold for donations to a political party from $1,500 to $10,000 and then to index it to the CPI. Clearly, we oppose that. We oppose the decision in this bill to close the roll earlier after the announcement of an election and to reduce the present seven-day grace period, by which once an election is called people have time to get themselves on the roll, and to bring that back to 8 pm on the third working day after the issue of the writs. There is a proposition to extend the definition of ‘associated entities’ so that it applies to entities with membership of political parties and entities with voting rights in political parties. We do not oppose that proposition, nor do we oppose the proposition to require third parties to furnish annual returns under the Electoral Act. We do oppose the proposition to deny the vote to any person who is serving a sentence of imprisonment. We do oppose the proposal to introduce stricter requirements for identification on enrolment. We do not have a problem with the issues going to deregistering misleading political party names, nor do we have a problem with the removal of the requirements for publishers and broadcasters to furnish returns on electoral advertisements.

Let me go to the political donations part of the legislation first. The government argues that the threshold limit for political donations should be lifted from $1,500 to $10,000. It says that the $1,500 was too low. Of course, you would expect the Liberal Party to say that; it is, after all, supported by very wealthy businesses. It says that that figure of $1,500 has been eroded by inflation. You would have to think we were in the inflation mode of some Third World country for that sentiment to apply. The government says that not only has it been eroded by inflation but it adds nothing to Australia’s democracy other than unnecessary red tape. The fact is that the $1,500 limit adds transparency and, through it, accountability—something seriously lacking in this government. You have only to look at the scandal surrounding the Australian Wheat Board. We understand why the government wants to escape scrutiny and accountability—because it is not good at it. It believes it can do as it wants and not be held accountable for it. That is why those limits were imposed.

The government has been trying to get these changes through for years. Labor has been able to reject them because of the circumstances in the Senate. Now the government has seen its chance, so here it is back again doing something it has always wanted to do—lift the threshold. If you look at the figures released by the Electoral Commission, you will see they show that, if the threshold is increased to $10,000 and if donations were to be made at the same rate as they were at the last election, $8 million would go to the Liberal Party with no public scrutiny and no indication as to who put that money in. Think about it: $8 million was a huge slice out of the budget of the Liberal Party at the last election that was not met by public funds. I think that demonstrates the whole thrust of why we oppose this insidious aspect of the bill. It is designed to cover up the government’s wealthy mates so that it can squirrel more money into the Liberal Party, curry more favours behind the scenes and not be accountable to fund its election campaigns.

The government will make it a lot easier to donate in secret and to influence government policy for private gain, and the Liberal Party has form here. In the past, the Liberal Party has exploited loopholes in the Electoral Act to avoid scrutiny of donations. Members might recall the Greenfields Foundation, which lent over $4 million to the Liberal Party in 1996-97. If political parties choose to conduct their business by way of loans rather than grants, that is an issue for them; but, as Senator Faulkner asked back in 1998 when this issue came to light, what were the terms of the loan? Was it required to be repaid? Was it in fact a donation and simply designed to be called a loan to circumvent the principles? Should it have been declared? Most importantly, what was the source of the funds? If these are legitimate funds and if people are willingly making these donations and not expecting anything in return, why should they not be disclosed? Yet the government is introducing this proposal to ensure less transparency and less requirement to disclose.

What was the Greenfields Foundation in any case, with trustees who were all well-known Liberal Party associates with postal addresses shared with other bodies associated with the Liberal Party? The fact is that the Greenfields fund was a front for the Liberal Party—a slush fund, a money-laundering device, a means of breaching the spirit of the act and the principle of public disclosure of donations to political parties. That was the Liberal Party before these changes. Imagine what it is going to do when it gets these changes through.

We in the Labor Party believe strongly that the public has a right to know who the donors to political parties are. That is why when we were in government back in the eighties we introduced legislation to do just that so that the public could make a judgment on government decisions. This bill reverses that. It conceals the identity of significant donors. It makes it more difficult for the public to make a judgment.

On the issue of the enrolment changes, the former Minister for State, Senator Abetz, justified the proposed enrolment changes as reducing the opportunities for election fraud. Not only has he not produced any evidence to back that claim of fraud but the provisions that they are producing here actually disenfranchise many present and potential future voters. For example, the need for more rigorous identification procedures will discourage many voters from enrolling. The reduction of that seven-day grace period after the calling of the election will mean that many people will not get on the roll. The argument that the rush of enrolments means that insufficient scrutiny is given to those enrolments can be answered, of course, by providing better resources for adequate scrutiny.

On the seven-day grace period, the Electoral Commission’s own publication, Behind the scenes: the 2004 election reportand this is borne out in table 5 in that document—says this, and it is pretty revealing:

During the 2004 federal election, a large number of Australians used the close of rolls week—

this is the seven-day period that is going to be abolished—

either to enrol for the first time or to check their enrolment details and if necessary to update these details. The AEC replied to almost 10,000 email enquiries during this period.

There were 10,000 email inquiries during that seven-day period. It continues:

The AEC received a total of 423,975 enrolment cards in the week between the announcement of the 2004 election and the close of rolls date. Of the enrolment cards received in the last week, 78,816 were new enrolments.

The former minister says that the seven-day grace period does nothing for our electoral system other than increase opportunities for fraud. The changes would disenfranchise those 78,000 people. This provision certainly does nothing for them. His assertion that the seven-day grace period does nothing for the electoral system is patently nonsense. The independent Electoral Commission has said that in the last year were it not for this period there would have been 78,000 people not entitled to vote. Make your own judgment. Why doesn’t the Liberal Party want more people voting in elections? Because basically its hidden agenda is to get rid of compulsory voting and go to voluntary voting. This is the thin edge of the wedge.

The government claims that these measures are necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral roll and to prevent fraud. It has not substantiated that. The ANAO report Integrity of the electoral roll in 2002 found that independent data-matching of the electoral roll demonstrated that, of the enrolments matched to the Medicare data, over 99 per cent appeared to be valid. There is not much evidence of fraud there. That was an independent assessment. Where is the government’s evidence for the necessity to make these changes? All we are hearing is self-serving assertion. The real reason for these changes is that the government believes it will gain electoral advantage.

Australian citizens should be encouraged to vote and to participate in their democracy. These proposals will have the opposite effect. They will discourage participation. The government’s proposed changes will make it harder to vote but easier to donate to political parties. The changes will have a disproportionate effect on already disadvantaged people—young people, people with lower levels of education, Indigenous Australians, Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds, people who move frequently or have no fixed address, and prisoners who are serving sentences of less than three years. The change to the seven-day grace period for enrolments will also seriously disadvantage rural and regional voters who may need to make a special trip or allow extra time for postage to lodge their enrolment.

The ALP endorses the maintenance of compulsory voting. We make no apology for that. Every citizen should have a stake in the political process. We have seen in last night’s budget how budgets can be about choices and governments determining those choices—were they the right choices? Having the ability to determine that is a terribly important entitlement. We believe it is to be encouraged as strongly as possible, and that is why we support compulsory voting.

But the Liberals do not believe in compulsory voting. This is not the first time they have tried to erode it. This is an attempt to whittle it away, to bring in voluntary voting by stealth. There is ample evidence that some ministers in the government would prefer to have voluntary voting. Senator Minchin has said so. So has Minister Nairn, when he said that he will ‘take a closer look at voluntary voting’ once this bill is passed. The Prime Minister, as usual, has distanced himself from the debate—let it run, see what the reaction is. Let us not delude ourselves: this is another example of the thin edge of the wedge of undermining the compulsory voting system in this country.

The minister says that it is illegal not to be correctly enrolled. That is true, but we also need a commitment to effectively enforce that requirement. The National Audit Office’s report of 2002, which I referred to earlier, noted that the Electoral Commission had set a performance target of 95 per cent of people who are eligible to vote being included on the roll. Since 1999 the AEC has moved from habitation surveys—in other words, physically doorknocking—to a computer based method of updating the roll. The ANAO reported in 2002 that it was an effective method of managing the roll—that it was capable of producing a roll that is accurate and complete. Up to that time, it had not been implemented in a nationally coordinated and strategic manner; in other words, it could have been done but it had not been implemented properly. Again, it is the question of the will, the intent and the preparedness of government to get behind it and see that it is done. In the meantime, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that significant numbers of younger people do not enrol, do not vote and have never become engaged in the political process. And there is no process of identifying them or enrolling them.

I could go on at length in response to the member for Page who said, when he spoke before, that as a member of the National Party he was not able to get big donations. We only have to pose the suggestion that, apart from the public funding the National Party gets, it has always been able to get its pork barrel from the government as part of buying the National Party’s silence and its becoming the branch office of the Liberal Party before every election. We have seen the rorting of perfectly valid and important schemes such as the Regional Partnerships program and the readjustment packages down in the electorate of Eden-Monaro by the Special Minister of State, Mr Nairn. We have seen all of those examples, and we will come to those on another occasion to highlight the hypocrisy. Suffice it for me to say that we have serious concerns about this bill.

I support the remarks of my colleague the member for Bruce in his second reading contribution. I support the second reading amendment. I make the point again: this is an undemocratic bill and it is a bill that should be withdrawn. It is a bill that is unacceptable as long as it contains the undemocratic principles and provisions that I have outlined: reducing the period of time that citizens have to enrol to vote, the provision to introduce new and unnecessary identity requirements and this lifting of this outrageous cap on political donations. Labor oppose the bill. We will fight it. We hope that we will win the argument in the Senate. If not, when we come to office we will correct the undemocratic provisions of the bill.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005. The bill seeks to reform numerous elements of the electoral system. Some elements of the bill are positive and are supported by Labor. These include increasing the Australian Electoral Commission’s powers by giving it power to access information held by Australian government and limited state and territory agencies, which may help to improve the integrity of the electoral roll; requiring that AEC divisional offices be located within divisional boundaries; and bringing internet sites into line with regulations on paid electoral advertising. However, Labor is strongly opposed to other elements of the bill.

Labor is concerned that the Howard government’s proposed electoral reforms are all about making it harder to vote and easier to donate to political parties. I will outline some of the reforms to which Labor is opposed. As a result of this legislation, there would be greater identity requirements for enrolment of provisional voters. People who want to enrol to vote or to update their details will have to provide one or more of the following: a drivers licence, a prescribed identity document to be shown to a person who is in a prescribed class of electors and can attest to the identity of the person or an application for enrolment signed by two referees who are not related to the applicant, whom they have known for at least one month and who can provide a drivers licence number.

This requirement is unnecessary. The government claims that it is introducing these requirements to protect the integrity of the electoral roll, but that claim is purely fictional. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted a thorough investigation into the integrity of the electoral roll in 2001 and found only 71 cases of fraud between 1990 and 2001. During this time there were five federal elections and a referendum. The AEC noted that these false enrolments were not deliberate attempts to corrupt or unduly influence the electoral results. So I think it is an exaggeration to say that we have a serious problem with fraud of the electoral roll.

The government’s true motivation in introducing several of the measures in this bill is to secure for the coalition government an electoral advantage. The minority report from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 election shows that, in all the states and territories, between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of adults do not have a drivers licence. So a large proportion of people will find it more difficult to enrol to vote or to update their details. And what about the homeless? The 2001 census shows that there were about 100,000 homeless Australians. That is what the census shows, but the reality could be significantly different from that. How on earth can they enrol or change their details with these new changes?

This bill will make it harder for Australians to get enrolled and to cast a valid vote on election day. It will also increase the administrative burden on the AEC and potentially disenfranchise thousands of potential voters. Another major concern is that, if this legislation is passed, the electoral roll will close on the day the writs are issued. Current legislation allows for a seven-day period of grace after an election writ is issued for people to enrol to vote and to update their details on the electoral roll.

The government justifies these changes by contending that the AEC does not have time to adequately process the details of people enrolling to vote or updating their details in that period between the issuing of the writ and polling day; hence, this leads to more errors on the electoral roll. That is the government’s claim. The AEC has said that the current seven-day arrangement does not prevent it from taking adequate steps to prevent fraudulent enrolment—in fact, quite the contrary. In relation to proposals to close the roll early, the AEC, in a year 2000 submission to an inquiry into the integrity of the electoral roll, stated:

... the AEC expects the rolls to be less accurate because there will be less time for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received.

According to figures provided by the AEC, at the 2004 election over 280,000 people enrolled to vote or changed their enrolment in a substantive way in the seven days between the issuing of the writs and the close of the roll. This figure includes approximately 78,000 new enrollees, 78,000 people changing or updating their existing details, 96,000 people transferring intrastate and 30,000 people transferring interstate. So, under this government’s proposed changes, on the figures from the 2004 election, the ability of over 280,000 Australians to vote stands to be jeopardised.

History also tells us that closing the roll on the day that an election writ is issued will see tens of thousands of Australians excluded from voting. In 1983, the electoral roll was closed on the day that the election writ was issued. As I alluded to earlier, on polling day approximately 90,000 people found themselves unable to vote because they had not enrolled in time. An AEC official who recalled the 1993 election said:

It created a lot of confusion and a lot of provisional votes, and a lot of people go in to vote, find they are not on the roll and just walk out.

The people most affected by these regressive provisions will be those in our community who already face the greatest disadvantage and the most difficulty accessing our country’s decision makers. There is a wide consensus amongst experts in this area that closing the roll early will have the greatest impact upon those who do not have a complete understanding of our political system.

In the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 federal election, leading electoral commentator Antony Green asserted:

If suddenly the election is called two or three months early, people will not have regularised their enrolment. You will cut young people off, as the numbers show ...

It has been clearly established in a report by the AEC, titled Youth electoral study, that young people are disengaged from the electoral process. A key point of the report is that, generally, ‘young people do not understand the voting system’. In addition, the report asserts that young people ‘do not perceive themselves, generally, as well prepared to participate in voting’. Given the lack of understanding and preparedness of those young people, closing the electoral roll early will serve only to ensure that even fewer of them are enrolled to vote and, hence, able to vote in federal elections.

In his submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 election, Professor Costar emphasised:

Good reasons would need to be adduced to justify the denial of the vote to such a large cohort of citizens; especially the new enrolees, most of whom would be young people, who need encouragement to become civically engaged.

No good reason to disenfranchise thousands of young Australians has been produced at all by the government.

At the last federal election, almost 1.7 million people between the ages of 18 and 25 enrolled to vote for the first time. This bill will exclude a significant proportion of these young Australians from lodging a vote, stripping them of their democratic right to participate in a federal election. This has serious implications not only for the next election but also for future elections. How can we expect young people to develop respect for parliamentary processes when the government apparently works so hard to exclude them at the first available opportunity?

I am very conscious that the government has made some comments in the lead-up to this debate about the personal responsibility of people to their enrolment obligation. In my view, Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds will also lose out as a result of this bill. In a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2004 election, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre pointed out that this group is disproportionately represented in the group of citizens who register to vote in the period of seven days after the issue of the writ. This is hardly surprising, given that many Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds may not be familiar with the Australian electoral system or have the language skills to properly understand information with regard to their electoral obligations. While the government has provided increased funds to the AEC for various purposes, including advertising, an advertising campaign cannot offset the number of people who would have enrolled to vote in the additional seven days after the issue of the writ.

I just want to consider for a couple of moments the government’s view on this call of personal responsibility. I have heard this in the debate and in the media leading up to this bill. It is all very well for the government to say that it is entirely up to the individual to exercise their personal responsibility for their civic duty and their obligation to enrol for voting. That is all very well as long as we equip them adequately and completely to do so. That is not being done. While we see record levels of massive multimillion dollar government advertising in the promotion of all sorts of government campaigns, let me assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, we will not be seeing multimillion dollar advertising campaigns to remind people to enrol to vote. I can guarantee that that will not be happening to the level that would even be remotely required to address this action of the government.

The previous speaker, the member for Hotham, made reference to the issue of compulsory voting. We all know that a number of members of the government at high levels who have an absolute belief, a commitment, that one day they will drive policy to the point in this country where they remove compulsory voting. Let me put it straight and clearly on the table that, as far as I am concerned, that would be the most detrimental thing we could ever see happen to the Australian form of democracy—one of the strongest and best forms of democracy in the world historically. In my view, this legislation is the beginning of that sort of thing. If you are going to expect the population to show regard for the wonderful democratic process in which we operate, you have to give back to them the regard that is required.

As part of this legislation, another nasty Howard government plan is to increase the declarable limit for the disclosure of political donations from $1,500 to $10,000. This is an enormous jump in the limit required before donation details must be made public. Massive sums of money will go into party coffers without the public knowing. In the Canberra Times on 27 March 2006, Mr Norm Kelly, who teaches politics at the Australian National University, wrote:

In a healthy democracy, voters make their decisions based on representations from a diversity of parties and candidates. To make an informed decision, it is important that voters are aware of who is funding those parties and candidates.

However, the Government’s proposed measures will result in a higher proportion of political donations being hidden from public scrutiny, and therefore voters will be kept increasingly in the dark as to who is bankrolling our political parties.

It sounds so much like the American system, doesn’t it? It raises the question. The government claims that these reforms will increase the transparency of the electoral process and avoid instances of electoral fraud—again, that claim. In my view, the only transparent thing in this legislation is the Howard government’s agenda. This government will make it easier for people to donate to influence the democratic process while at the same time making it a lot harder for them to actually exercise their democratic rights. This is another example of an arrogant and out-of-touch government that is ready to use its control of the Senate to ram through policies which are designed only to give it a political and financial advantage at future elections.

The government’s justification for this legislation is, frankly, dishonest. The claim that the legislation is designed to combat electoral fraud in this country is contradicted by the simple fact that Australia does not have a history of electoral fraud, as testified by the inquiries to which I have referred. The real basis for this legislation appears to be that the government believes it will gain a partisan advantage at future elections as a result of the reforms—or that it just has a philosophical bent and this is the way it sees democracy in Australia. It is not the way a lot of us see democracy in Australia, I can assure you. This bill ought to be condemned, and Labor’s amendments ought to be passed.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 should be renamed the ‘Changing of the Democratic Function in Australia Bill’ or the ‘Harder to Vote, Easier to Donate Bill’. This is classic Howard government legislation. It is driven by a government with the ideology that it is born to rule. It is the belief of the government that it is the party of government and the ALP should be the party of opposition. This legislation puts in place a structure to achieve this. It is a step along the way to ensuring that the Howard government has ultimate control of the political process in Australia. The Howard government will do whatever it takes to get this control, so another name we could give this legislation is the ‘Whatever it Takes Bill’. The bill makes it harder for ordinary Australians—the people who decide who should be the government of the day—to vote, particularly once an election has been called. Only one word can describe this legislation: disgraceful. It is disgraceful legislation which makes it easier for the government’s mates to donate to the government without disclosing their donation. It also increases the tax deductibility of a donation—and I will go into that in more detail as I discuss the legislation.

Whilst I oppose many of the provisions in this legislation, I do support the increased power being given to the AEC and the requirement that AEC divisional offices be located within divisional boundaries. Currently, the divisional office for the electorate of Shortland is outside the boundary, and I find that difficult. I think it is a very poor situation for an AEC divisional office to be allowed—or forced—to operate outside divisional boundaries. The government has renegotiated the lease and ensured that the AEC divisional office in Shortland remains outside the boundary, so I welcome the change in this bill. Another change that I think is important is to bring internet sites in line with the regulations for paid electoral advertising.

This bill seeks to change—the government uses the word ‘reform’, but I would say the changes are retrograde—voter enrolment practices, financial disclosure and tax deductibility thresholds for political donators, and financial reporting obligations for third parties associated with entities, broadcasters and publishers. There are changes to the requirements, as I mentioned, relating to internet advertising and the AEC. There are also changes relating to political registration, and the nominal deposits for election candidates will increase to $500 for House of Representatives candidates and $1,000 for Senate candidates.

The areas that I am particularly concerned about are voter registration, relating to the identification that is required, and the closure of the electoral roll. I also have some concerns about the right of prisoners to vote. I am also extremely concerned about the disclosure provisions, and I will deal with those first. This legislation increases the non-disclosable amount that can be donated to a candidate or a political party from $1,500 to $10,000. That means that a company or an individual can donate a non-disclosable $10,000 to a particular political party. If you look at this in a historical context, this provision will bring the percentage of the total donations disclosed down from 75 per cent, or $78 million, under the current regime to 58 per cent in the 2004 election—so just over half the donations to political parties will be put on the public record.

You might ask why this is important. I think it is very important because it is important for the people of Australia to know who is donating to political parties. The people of Australia have a right to know if individuals or big corporations, trade unions or whatever organisations they may be are making a donation to a political party, because large donations have the potential to influence the policies and direction of a government. I am not saying that they do, but large donors will always find that they have easy access to the government of the day and as such the people of Australia need to know and have a right to know who the people that are making big donations to both sides of politics are. So I feel that provision of the bill is a retrograde step. I see this increase to $10,000, which will be indexed, as having the ability to pervert the course of democracy within Australia.

The next thing that I would like to touch on is the increase from $100 to $1,500 in the level of tax deductibility for contributions to political parties or independent candidates. If you donate to a political party, you do it because you believe that the political party or its candidate is the best one to represent you, your state or our nation. It seems quite strange to me that a person should be able to claim a tax deduction for following through on their belief in or their commitment to a particular ideology, party or candidate, so I do not believe that provision is the right way to go. I think that tax deductibility allows those people that have a little bit more disposable income to influence the political process.

That brings me to what I think are two of the most important provisions of this legislation: the identification requirements that will apply to voters needing to enrol and the early closing of the electoral roll once the writs have been issued for an election. Under this piece of legislation, the government seeks to introduce proof of identity requirements for people enrolling or updating their enrolment which will mean that they will need to show a drivers licence. If they do not have a drivers licence, they can show some other prescribed identity document. If all else fails, they must have their enrolment application signed by two referees who are not related to the applicant, have known the applicant for at least one month and can provide a drivers licence. On the surface, people may say that is reasonable. But not everybody has that proof of identity. Older people in particular would struggle with that drivers licence requirement. I have had many constituents come to my office because they are required to have photographic identification and the fact that they do not have a drivers licence creates a problem.

That brings me to the secondary requirement. It is reasonable to expect a person to present that proof, provided they live the kind of life that members on the other side of this House do, but many people will be disenfranchised by this requirement. Those people living in Indigenous communities will find it very difficult to meet this requirement. The member for Lingiari has emphasised this fact to me on many occasions. Those people who are already disadvantaged, many of them being his constituents, will be disenfranchised by this legislation. Also, young people will find it more difficult to have the correct ID needed to enrol and homeless people and itinerant workers will also be extremely disadvantaged by this change to increase the identification requirement. Things will also be more difficult for provisional voters. The requirement will be more strict than it is now. They will have to abide by those changes and present their identification within the required period to the AEC.

I have always believed that we should encourage people to cast their vote and have a say about the direction in which our nation should go. But it seems to me that the government is actually discouraging people by making it harder for them to vote. The government has this belief that the people who will find it harder to meet these requirements tend to vote more for the opposition than for the government, so the government says, ‘Let’s see what we can do about making it more difficult for them to enrol to vote.’ Quite frankly, I do not think that is the way we should go. I believe we should be increasing the number of people that participate in the democratic process in our country.

I know that many people in Australia would be aware of the debate that has been raging within the government about removing compulsory voting. The government is once again driven by its philosophy that voting should be a choice and that the people who choose to vote are more likely to be those people who will vote for the government. When you look at figures in the United States, the United Kingdom and other overseas countries you see that less than 50 per cent of people vote in elections. I feel that that undermines the whole democratic process. I feel that the proof of identity requirements in this legislation are designed to limit people’s involvement in the political process.

Another issue which I feel is an absolute disgrace and one that will reduce the number of people who will have access to voting in elections is the early closing of the roll. Effectively, this change will mean that at 8 pm on the day that the writs are issued the roll will close. Currently, people have a seven-day period to enrol. The government undertakes a massive advertising campaign, encouraging people to register to vote. The government has decided to go in a different direction and will now discourage people from voting, because closing the roll at that particular time will disenfranchise a significant proportion of the population. Included in this bill is a more generous—if you can call it generous—requirement in that 17-year-olds who turn 18 between the day the writ is issued and polling day and people who will be granted citizenship in that time will have until 8 pm on the third day after the writ is issued to enrol.

Senator Abetz stated that there was a problem with the current-day rule. He said that it puts incredible pressure on the Australian Electoral Commission, and he went on to say that there is a rush to get on the roll after the calling of an election and that the level of scrutiny of applications simply cannot be what it is in a non-election period, when the AEC receives enrolments at a much more steady pace. That is quite contrary to the way that the AEC sees it. The AEC is on the record expressing its concern at the suggestion of abolishing or shortening the period between the issuing of writs. The AEC stated that the current-day rule does not place incredible pressure on the AEC, that it is quite up to handling it and that it is very important that this period be available for people to vary their enrolment.

The minority report following the 2004 election opposed that position. One of the problems associated with the early closing of the roll is that only 40 per cent of people advise the AEC in the first instance of enrolment entitlements or changes in accordance with the act. So it is only when an election is called that people realise they need to enrol. At the last election, nearly 300,000 people enrolled in that seven-day period. Under this legislation before the parliament today those people would have been disenfranchised. I do not think that is good enough. In this parliament we should be making it easier for people to vote. In this parliament we should be putting in place open and transparent legislation. To be honest: this legislation does neither of those things. This legislation makes things less transparent in that Australians will not be aware of which people donate to political parties, it increases the tax threshold for donations and it makes it much harder for the people of Australia to cast a vote.

I see this legislation as typical of the Howard government and its arrogant disregard for the people of Australia. I believe this legislation needs to be taken back to the party room and looked at again, and then brought back to this House in a form that actually increases the ability of people to participate in the democratic process and that improves openness and transparency.

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to place on the record my fierce opposition to clauses contained within the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005. Whilst I recognise that I am not here for a counselling session, I must say that I am deeply saddened and deeply angered by the fact that our national parliament is debating these measures. On several occasions since my election I have been in this House and seen the government putting their own self-interest ahead of the national interest. I have seen this with the sale of Telstra; I have seen this with industrial relations. But what we are doing here today is watching the government try and put their own self-interest ahead of our nation’s democracy, and I think that is an extreme low.

The proposed electoral and referendum amendment bill is little more than a political stunt by the coalition, and the intended changes are merely an extension of the Liberal Party’s ideological agenda. The Australian government is planning to push through ideological changes that will make it harder to vote but easier to donate, and the Labor Party will not stand for it. These proposals have long been part of Liberal Party policy. We saw it in 2004 and we are seeing it today. Once again the Australian government is using its control of the Senate to ram through its ideological changes.

My view is that when the Australian Electoral Commission, Australia’s expert on electoral and democratic matters, repeatedly warns the government that a piece of legislation would be immensely damaging to democracy the government should probably heed that advice. In a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in 2002, the AEC again expressed its concern about any change to abolish or shorten the period between the issue of the writs and the close of the roll. The AEC remarked:

That period clearly serves a useful purpose for many electors, whether to permit them to enrol for the first time … or to correct their enrolment to their current address so that they can vote in the appropriate electoral contest …

The AEC considers it would be a backward step to repeal the provision which guarantees electors this seven-day period in which to correct their enrolment. It is about time the government took its head out of the sand and started listening to the AEC—and the rest of Australia, for that matter. In the inquiry into the bill conducted by the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, 35 of the 52 submissions received by the committee were strongly opposed to this move, with only three—those of the Festival of Light and the Liberal and the National parties—in support of it.

These proposals make it easier to buy influence in the democratic process but harder for our constituents to exercise their democratic rights, and Australia knows it. The only people supporting this bill are those who stand on the other side of the chamber, and it is publicly known that they have been so blinded with arrogance that they cannot see that this is the most ridiculous piece of electoral reform ever introduced.

I would like to further reflect on the proposal for the early closure of the electoral roll. These changes will not just be a backward step but in fact a backward leap. These amendments propose to close the electoral roll at 8 pm on the third working day after the issue of the writs. However, as we know, the roll would effectively close at 8 pm on the day the writ is issued, because most people not on the roll between that time and 8 pm on the third day will not be added.

Amongst the constituents who will be most impacted by these changes will be young people, and I believe that, at a time when there is so much talk about a vast apathy towards politics amongst young Australians, reducing their democratic rights is outrageous. I have heard personally from high school teachers in my electorate how hard it is already to get young people to enrol to vote, as many think there is no point and that politicians are unrepresentative of their needs and attitudes.

It is estimated that around 80 per cent of eligible Australians aged between 18 and 25 are currently registered on the Australian electoral roll and are thus significantly less likely to be on the roll than other Australians. To be honest, when these reforms are introduced I will not blame the youth for taking such a stance or for holding these beliefs. Already they are a part of society that feels excluded by politics, and now they will feel even more so when they forget to enrol to vote, suddenly an election is called and they are stripped of any further opportunities to exercise their democratic rights. I passionately believe that as members of this House we should be out there encouraging our constituents to get more involved in the political process, not making it harder. Each of us goes about this in a different way. Personally, I am passionate about getting out and about in my electorate, being as accessible as possible and making it as easy as possible for the electors of Adelaide to have their say. But this government is heading in the exact opposite direction.

In the seven days after the writ was issued for the 2004 election, 78,000 people enrolled for the first time, and 345,000 updated their details after the seven-day period. A further 150,000 tried to enrol. Under the proposed law, all of the 78,000 will be excluded from voting, as will a certain percentage of the 345,000. Clearly a majority of those 78,000 people who enrolled for the first time in 2004 were young people. If those 78,000 people were denied their right to vote in 2004, as the government had intended, then I think it is pretty likely that most, if not all, of them would have harboured a certain cynicism towards politics for a long time to come. Our democracy must be an inclusive one. Thus, if anything, the period of grace between the issue of the writs and the closure of the roll should be extended, not shortened. Any change to this system will be a regressive blow to Australia’s democratic system. To advocate these changes as a positive development is laughable.

This government really is amazing—and I do not say that in a positive sense. Comparable Western democracies are actually trying to increase the electoral participation of young people—a possibility never considered by the Australian government, it seems. For instance, Canada allows young people to enrol on the day when they turn up to vote, and New Zealand gives them until the day before the election to enrol. In New Zealand young people can now ask for their enrolment form through a free text message, which has proven to be a popular option. But, unlike Canada and unlike New Zealand, the Australian government will be telling its youth that it will be closing its electoral roll for new voters far earlier than comparable democracies and at least 33 days before an election.

We have heard Minister Nairn and Minister Abetz suggesting that Labor has no point for argument because at both state and territory levels it closes the roll early. However, in several states, including my home state of South Australia, there are fixed term elections, so there is plenty of notice of an approaching election. Thus, at this level the closing of the roll not pose a threat to democracy.

Yesterday in this place the member for Prospect called on the government, if it pursued these measures, to commit itself to an advertising campaign to inform people of the changes to the law and to let people know that, if they move house or turn 18, they will be obliged to update their enrolment immediately to maintain their right to vote. I absolutely support these sentiments, but I would also say that, if the government is worried about the historical trend of young Australians not supporting the coalition, perhaps its efforts could be better directed in another area. Perhaps it could address policy concerns which young people are passionate about. Perhaps it could stop attacking young Australians by stripping them of quality education and of trades and skills. But instead the government has chosen another path.

The bill also includes an increased requirement for identification on enrolment, a provision even stricter than that introduced with the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Enrolment Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2004. These clauses are completely unwarranted. In the JSCEM report, the majority of the committee advised that no evidence has been produced justifying updating the 2004 act with an even stricter requirement. Rather it will mean that the AEC will just have to spend extra time processing applications due to the range of verifying documentation. This would create a backlog of applications in the period prior to the closing of the roll, impeding the AEC’s ability to perform its job properly. These so-called moves to ‘tighten up enrolment’ are likely to diminish the comprehensiveness of the roll and have a disproportionate impact on young and disadvantaged sections of the community. In fact, they are likely to exacerbate existing problems of underenrolment in these groups.

Requirements for new enrollees have been strongly resisted by state Labor governments due to both the cost and inconvenience of increased identification. These obstacles are absolutely not required. In 2002 the National Audit Office found over 96 per cent accuracy of information, which rose to over 99 per cent when matched against Medicare data. In the absence of any evidence whatsoever of corruption or fraudulent behaviour in our system, surely our efforts are better spent making it easier rather than harder for Australians to be involved in the political system.

I would like to turn to the proposed changes to the disclosure thresholds. The government has proposed changes to the thresholds for disclosing donations to political parties and candidates from $1,500 to $10,000. Such a change will diminish the transparency of the disclosure laws remarkably and mean that further donations to parties and candidates will go undisclosed. The Australian people have every right to know who holds influence over the government and how much influence they have. In a liberal democracy such as ours we cannot afford to make changes that ebb transparency. This proposition has no real merits. The current threshold of $1,500 has so far ensured adequate transparency and, at the very minimum, must be maintained. The Labor Party will continue to fight for transparency in the political system.

Today the government has argued that these measures will encourage participation in the democratic process by providing tax relief. But the ability to donate money should not and must not be a requirement for participation in political debate. Increasing the disclosure threshold to more than $10,000 will create such a gap in the disclosure scheme that describing this as a ‘loophole’ is laughable. Parties will be able to accept larger sums without disclosing details of the donor. This renders the whole notion of disclosure thresholds meaningless. Further, if a donor decides to contribute to all of the state, territory and federal divisions of the same party, $90,000 a year will remain hidden from the general public.

The suggestion that a $10,000 sum is not large enough to create risks of corruption or influence is absurd because donations of around this amount have initiated previous controversies. Eighty per cent of donations received by major parties in 2004-05 were $10,000 or under, thus almost $25 million could be hidden from the public view—therefore 80 per cent of donations would not be disclosed if this bill were enacted. An increase to $1,500 also skews political influence to the wealthier in society. Higher earning individuals will also receive a proportionally higher, taxpayer funded subsidy.

I would like to make note of Peter van Onselen’s contribution to the Democratic Audit at the ANU, where he stated:

We seem to have reached a state where politics is so replete with unethical behaviour that the prostitution of democracy is publicly promoted by some political leaders.

By changing the disclosure thresholds, the Howard government certainly is prostituting our democracy. We need to be closing the loopholes that incite corruption, not extending them.

In this debate it is important that we also touch on the provisions in this bill relating to third parties. The bill attacks the free speech of charities and community groups while imposing a financial burden that may be unsustainable. The government has argued that, when community organisations spend money on campaigns that coincide with ALP policies, they are effectively campaigning in favour of the ALP. These provisions are ludicrous. In a healthy democracy we should be encouraging community organisations and those third parties at the forefront in viewing and studying the consequences of government action or inaction to speak out and enrich the national debate on these issues.

By changing the definition of an electoral matter, charity and community groups will be unable to make a reference to past or present public policy issues. Donors and the public are likely to make fewer donations, to avoid being labelled as partisan political players. To inflate the problem, the government is planning to create yet another administrative burden for these groups by requiring them to file annual returns with the AEC. Senator George Brandis may have argued that these would be ‘unintended consequences’, but they are consequences nevertheless. The government has acknowledged these flaws, yet it will not do anything about fixing them. What we have here is an utterly complacent and insensitive government—a government which is more intent on silencing any opposing voices than on reaching the best possible outcomes for our community.

I want to turn briefly to the issue of prisoner disenfranchisement. This bill proposes to deny the vote to any person serving a sentence of imprisonment, but those released on parole or a similar scheme will still be entitled to vote. As it stands currently, those serving sentences of less than three years are allowed to vote. Based on 2004 figures, the total number of people disenfranchised under the new provision will be 19,236. The number of people allowed to vote under the existing provisions but disenfranchised under the proposed provisions is 9,375. It is clear, therefore, that these provisions will exclude another section of the Australian community, and I think that is worthy of some reflection by this chamber. There is, of course, an argument that prisoners, upon committing a crime, have already made the decision to exclude themselves from our community and therefore the right to participate in our democracy.

I think that it is important for this House to also consider the best interests of the community in this matter, though. Our criminal justice system aims to punish criminals and to rehabilitate them. One must question whether further excluding prisoners, removing them even further from the society that they are soon to rejoin, will in fact aid their rehabilitation. The prisoners who are disenfranchised by this legislation are the very prisoners who will be rejoining our communities in less than three years time. At a time when we ideally should be encouraging prisoners upon their release to become active, community minded individuals who are keen to make amends for their crimes, is it really wise to be cutting them off further from society and ensuring that they cannot play any role in our civic responsibilities?

In addition to these philosophical arguments there are some strong legal points that must be considered in this debate. In 2002 in Canada the Supreme Court found that disenfranchisement of prisoners under the Canada Elections Act was in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the UK in 2004 and 2005 the European Court of Human Rights found that the United Kingdom’s denial of voting rights to all prisoners was ‘arbitrary and harsh’ and thus in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This bill arguably places Australia in breach of its obligations under article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 25 provides that:

Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity ... without unreasonable restrictions:

(a)

To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives;

(b)

To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors;

One may argue that this is just another international agreement that has been ridiculed by the Australian government. This parliament must also be mindful of the Australian Constitution, which states that members of the Australian parliament will be ‘chosen by the people’. Measures that exclude large numbers of Australians from our political process cannot be taken lightly by this chamber.

Before I conclude I would like to acknowledge the increased powers for the AEC in the form of more power to access information held by government agencies, which may help to improve the integrity of the electoral roll. I would also like to pass on my support for the requirements that the AEC divisional offices must be located within divisional boundaries and for the plan to bring internet sites in line with regulations regarding paid electoral advertising. But just because there are some positive aspects of this bill does not mean it should be passed willy-nilly without properly addressing the aspects which seriously erode our democracy.

This government conveniently chops and changes its commitment to democracy. This government hypocritically hailed the virtues of democracy when it was clutching for reasons to justify our involvement in the war in Iraq after the initial reasons fell through, yet at the very same time back home it is hacking away at the provisions within our own electoral system that ensure power for the people and that uphold a truly wonderful democracy.

When it comes to elections, governments all over the world have a choice. They can attempt to win elections by appealing to their constituents, by looking after those who need looking after and by ensuring that no-one is limited in their economic and personal aspirations. They can win by having a solid track record that clearly demonstrates they have done the best job they could. Alternatively, governments can lie, they can use wedge tactics, they can simply forget their own errors and hope the Australian people will too and they can carefully pick away at their nation’s democracy to try and gain a partisan advantage. It does not take a genius to work out which sort of government we have here and which route it is choosing to go down. Unfortunately, the government will probably get these laws through and they will come into effect. But the day they come into effect will be a very sad day for Australia and it will mark a massive erosion of our democracy. I think that will be a sad day and that this chamber should avoid it at all costs.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to also oppose the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005. This bill is a serious attack on the democratic processes and principles upon which our political system is based. This bill seeks to disenfranchise some of the most disadvantaged in our society and to allow a massive increase in the amount of political donations that can be made without the need for public disclosure. In short, this bill seeks to make it a lot harder to vote but a lot easier to make larger, and secretive, political donations.

Some of the worst changes in this bill are: the increase in the disclosure threshold for political donations from $1,500 to $10,000; the increase in the level of tax deductible contributions to parties and candidates from $100 to $1,500; the closure of the electoral roll on the day the writs are issued for an election, rather than the current seven days after the writs are issued; the further restriction of the voting rights of prisoners; and the introduction of proof of identity requirements for those people enrolling, updating their enrolment or casting a provisional vote.

There are some other changes in this bill that are positive and which we do not oppose. However, the vast majority of provisions in the bill are regressive, undemocratic and unnecessary—for instance, the lifting of the disclosure threshold for political donations. Currently, any individual or organisation making a donation to a political party or candidate of $1,500 or more must declare that donation. If we pass this legislation it will be possible to donate up to $10,000 without having to declare that donation. That figure of $10,000 will be indexed by CPI each year, allowing it to escalate. How wrong are the priorities of this government? It has not even been able to support increases in the minimum wage to the level of CPI over the past 10 years yet the big, secret political donations will just keep on getting bigger each year.

But it gets worse. Because our political parties are set up along federal lines, donations to each of the federal, state and territory divisions count as separate donations. This actually means that a private organisation or individual could donate up to $90,000 without having to disclose this fact. That is $90,000 that can be pumped into a political party without anyone ever knowing. Where is the transparency and accountability there? Australia-wide we know that about 80 per cent of the donations received by major political parties in 2005-06 were donations of $10,000 or less. That means that, if this bill passes, $25 million in political donations will be hidden from any public scrutiny—that is, 50 per cent of all donations would be secret.

I do not have a problem with political donations per se. I appreciate the donations that I receive from individuals and organisations in my electorate. There are a great many people in my electorate of Newcastle, from pensioners to corporate owners, who understand the political process, value good representation and want to support their local member. There are people who desperately want a Labor government and want to contribute through donations. I remain touched by the generosity of people in my electorate, who are generally of modest means. I appreciate their support and I have no problem with receiving such donations. However, I also believe that those donations must be fully disclosed.

We already have a generous system of publicly funded candidates based on the number of first preference votes that we receive. At the last election, it was about $1.97 per vote for each candidate or Senate group that received at least four per cent of the primary vote. So the public are also contributing very solidly. After the 2004 election, the public purse paid $41.9 million to candidates and their political parties. After the last election, the New South Wales branch of the Australian Labor Party received about $72,000 in public funding based on the number of votes that I received in Newcastle—that is the system.

The public funding of candidates and parties strengthens our democracy. It is provided in a transparent, accountable way and figures are published after each election by the AEC. For private political donations the current $1,500 disclosure threshold is adequate to ensure transparency and accountability. This bill will effectively kill off any notion of transparency and accountability in the way we fund our political system. How this is supposed to improve our democracy is anyone’s guess. Simply increasing the amount of money slushing around in the system does nothing to improve democratic standards. In fact, when you increase the amount of money and reduce the amount of public scrutiny, you are actually taking democratic standards backwards.

Australia has traditionally set the international benchmark for democratising the political process. We were world leaders in the introduction of the secret ballot in Victoria in 1855. We were world leaders in the introduction of women’s suffrage in South Australia in 1896. Sadly, if we pass this bill, we will become one of the world leaders in the introduction of secret donations. Do we want to have the Howard government, once again, take us down the path of the United States—the world leader in megabucks politics? Earlier this year we saw a top US lobbyist sentenced to 11 years in jail and forced to repay at least $25 million for bribing politicians with campaign donations. The lobbyist Jack Abramoff organised contributions to 220 members of Congress and about 20 of those members of Congress are expected to face charges themselves. This is not sponsorship, promotion or payment in kind; it is downright, blatant bribery. It is cold, hard cash being used to buy cold, hard votes. This case has led to calls in the United States for reforms requiring greater disclosure from lobbyists and members of Congress regarding political donations. The US is learning the hard way about what happens when big bucks, lobbyists and political donators are allowed to dominate the political process and therefore corrupt it. The Howard government seems to want to put Australia in the same position. Shouldn’t we aim higher? Is this really what we want for Australia?

The Howard government argues that businesses are shy about donating to the political process because they do not want it publicly known who they are supporting. Quite frankly, if someone wants to lurk in the shadows secretly trying to buy influence, they should go somewhere else. We do not do democracy in the shadows in this country. The brown paper bag days should be over and we hope they are over. We put things in the open; we argue our case and we let the people decide. Well, we used to. Yes, the cost of political campaigning has escalated. Yes, we would all love more money to run our campaigns, but do you think the Australian people really want more ads on TV and radio? Do you think they really need more junk mail in their post? Do they want us filling their email inboxes? Do you think every single Australian needs a personal message from John Howard on their answering machine or an SMS from Peter Costello perhaps? I do not think so. I think what we have here is a 10 -year-old government that is so addicted to the unlimited Commonwealth advertising budget that it cannot bear the thought of ever having to go cold turkey when it eventually ends up in opposition.

This is a government that has been spending unprecedented public funds on so-called public information campaigns, public relations consultancies and market research services. In short, it is the million-dollar spin and the billion-dollar fix. In 2003-04, the Howard government spent $291 million on consultancies. In 2004-05, it was up to $309 million. Over 10 long years of the Howard government, the total spend on consultancy fees has been $2.7 billion. Last year we saw $55 million wasted in advertising and promotion for Work Choices. Before that we had the ‘unchain my heart’ GST campaign, the Strengthening Medicare package and, of course, the ‘be alert and not alarmed’ fridge magnets. So this is the Howard government’s recipe for democracy. No thought for good public policy or service to the Australian people; just add money, spend up big on consultancies and try to bluff your way through.

The government also hopes for more money from donations by increasing the level of tax-deductible contributions to political parties and candidates from $100 to $1,500 per year. Labor strongly opposes this measure. We do not believe political donations need to be tax deductible. If people are donating to political parties because they believe it will strengthen democracy then that is fine, but let us not have people donating because they will get a tax break. This is just another excuse for the Howard government to bring more money into the system to fund its ever-increasing reliance on public relations, advertising and more virtual reality to keep itself in power.

The two proposals outlined above are all about the government making it easier and more attractive to hide political donations. There are also proposals in this bill that are going to make it much harder for people to vote. Firstly, the Howard government is seeking to effectively close the electoral roll on the day that the writs are issued for an election. This is usually the day after the election is called. The only exceptions will be for people who either become an Australian citizen or turn 18 between the issuing of the writs and election day. These people will have three days after the issue of the writs to enrol. Currently all people have up to seven days after the issue of the writs to either enrol to vote or update their enrolment details with the Australian Electoral Commission. Why make this change to reduce the time available to enrol after the calling of an election? The government argues that having seven days with a lot of enrolments coming in is just too difficult for the Australian Electoral Commission to handle. No-one ever said democracy was easy. Those of us privileged to represent our communities in this place, we of all people, should know this. All Australians benefit from our political process, so all Australians should be entitled to participate in it, no matter how difficult it might be.

The government argues that, in the seven days between the issuing of writs and the close of the roll, the commission gets overworked and cannot effectively stop electoral fraud. Senator Eric Abetz, the former Special Minister of State, said:

Incredible pressure is placed on the Australian Electoral Commission’s ability to accurately check and assess the veracity of enrolment claims received.

Effectively, the government is saying that it believes there is electoral fraud going on during the seven-day grace period between the issuing of writs and the close of the roll. Does it have any evidence of this? If so, it did not present any to the Joint Sitting Committee on Electoral Matters when it inquired into the conduct of the 2004 election. In fact, according to the AEC:

It has been concluded by every parliamentary and judicial inquiry into the conduct of federal elections, since ... 1984, that there has been no widespread and organised attempt to defraud the federal electoral system ... and that the level of fraudulent enrolment and voting is not sufficient to have overturned the result in any Division in Australia.

What is the government up to with this proposal? Put simply, the government wants to disenfranchise people for its own partisan political advantage. If these proposed laws were enforced at the time of the last election, 78,816 Australians who enrolled for the first time during the seven-day period after the election was called may not have been able to vote. In all, between the issuing of the writs and the close of the roll at the 2004 election, there were about 280,000 people who enrolled, re-enrolled, moved to a new electorate, changed their address or otherwise updated their details. In my electorate of Newcastle there were 3,005 enrolment transactions in that period—the fifth highest in New South Wales.

The people who will be most seriously disadvantaged through these changes are first-time voters, young people, people with lower levels of education, Indigenous Australians, people from non-English-speaking backgrounds and people with no fixed address. Even people who simply move house are going to be disadvantaged by these proposals. People today are more mobile than ever. They are following work; they are travelling. This is a lifestyle trend that should not be punished by this legislation.

I also note that this proposal will make it even harder for Liberal shadow treasurers in the Victorian parliament to be correctly enrolled to vote. Dr Robert Dean was unable to contest the 2002 Victorian state election because he did not update his details after moving house—and this is when we had seven days after the issuing of writs to do it. I often imagine how many Liberal candidates could be caught up in a system like this. Actually, it would not be many. They will all no doubt get a tip-off from the Prime Minister as to when the election will be called and a reminder to update their affairs.

In this inclusive nation, the country of a fair go, we do need to be encouraging democratic participation among disadvantaged groups of people—indeed all groups of people—not making it harder. The Electoral Commission knows this proposed change is antidemocratic. In its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the AEC said:

It would be a backward step to repeal the provision which guarantees electors this seven day period in which to correct their enrolment.

Of course, we should be encouraging people who have turned 18 and those who have moved house to enrol or change their enrolment details as soon as possible. However, the fact remains that only 40 per cent of people advise the AEC of such a change within the specified time frame of one month and 21 days.

Census projections are that in my electorate of Newcastle there are about 2,000 18-year-olds. If only 40 per cent of them advise the AEC that they are now eligible to vote, and the rest of them do not get the seven-day grace period after an election is called, that is about 1,200 young people in my electorate alone who would not get the chance to cast a vote. Enrolling to vote is simply not the first thing that young people think to do when they turn 18. They are finishing their HSC, they are beginning employment, they are starting training, they are starting at university, they are planning 18th birthday parties, they are going on working holidays and some of them are travelling overseas. There are many great activist young people who are interested in politics and want to be involved. In Newcastle we try to encourage that sort of participation, but the reality is that many young people either do not know that they need to enrol or put it off until an election is called. If this bill is passed, putting it off until an election is called will mean missing out on a vote altogether. The government should look at the reality and try to assist people to have their democratic say. It should not just throw up its hands, say it is all too hard for the AEC and disenfranchise thousands of young first-time voters.

There is another antidemocratic provision in this legislation, and that is the provision that people serving any sort of custodial sentence will not be allowed to vote. Currently, those serving sentences of less than three years are entitled to vote. I would have thought that was enough punishment. There is no need to further disenfranchise an additional 9,000 people. While prisoners are obviously being punished for their crimes with a loss of liberty, should we really be punishing them by removing their democratic rights completely? Even if you are in prison, you are still part of our society; you are part of the system. Indeed, you are in the system big time—doing time. Basic principles of human rights would suggest that you should be able to help determine how that system is run. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

Every citizen shall have the right and opportunity … to vote … at genuine periodic elections.

Rehabilitation should always be the goal of imprisonment. We do not take away the citizenship of people when we imprison them. We should not be taking away their right to vote. Once again, the Howard government is taking us down the American route, where the laws on prisoner voting are so extreme that in eight states convicted prisoners are not even allowed to vote after their release. It is no surprise to find that a large proportion of people in these circumstances are African-American, low-income earners and young people.

In Australia, the Bureau of Statistics tells us that, as of 30 June 2005, seven per cent of all prisoners, 1,734 people, were female and 22 per cent, 5,656 people, were Indigenous. The median age of all prisoners was 32 years. The majority—60 per cent—of prisoners in custody at 30 June 2005 had served a sentence in an adult prison prior to the current episode. This paints a picture of people who are already disadvantaged, who have lost their liberty through imprisonment, who will now be further disenfranchised by the Howard government’s electoral changes.

We should be including, not excluding, as many people as we can in the democratic process. But, just to make it that little bit harder to vote, the government proposes greater identity requirements for enrolment, including for provisional voters. As I mentioned, the government is supposedly worried about the administrative burden on the AEC during that seven-day period between the issue of the writs and the close of the roll. Its answer to that: close the roll earlier and introduce a new requirement that the AEC check people’s drivers licences when they enrol. I am not sure how that will ease the administrative burden on the AEC. It will not; it will make it even more burdensome.

This is a ridiculous reaction from the government to a problem that does not exist. There is no history of significant fraudulent enrolment in this country. As there is no evidence that these changes are needed, only one conclusion can be drawn. Obviously, the coalition wants to keep people who do not vote for it off the electoral roll and it wants to make it easier for the people who donate to it to make those donations bigger and much more secretive. In the name of democracy and probity, I absolutely join my colleagues in the opposition in opposing this legislation.

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 is quite clearly driven by partisan self-interest. The reality was perhaps summarised by the member for Casey, who said that Australia ‘has a better than good system’. For many years the conservative coalition parties have sought to make it far more difficult for people to participate in our political system. That sentiment is based on the kinds of comments of the member for Macquarie, who spoke of anecdotes. He said, ‘It is possible that there is fraud.’ He said there have on occasions been convictions and allegations and anecdotal evidence, and then he relied on some rather questionable material from a group of people who perhaps have been rather obsessed with this issue over recent decades. Their publications do not stand up to analysis. Just because people put out publications does not mean that one has to believe in the Moonie Unification Church or a flat earth or anything of that sort. The reality is that not very much evidence has been produced by those opposite with regard to systematic fraud in our political system.

Those of us who are interested in alternative systems look at the United States where, on election day, they have to largely rely on volunteers and retired people to staff their polling booths. The United States do not have an independent electoral commission to determine boundaries in a way which both parties in this country do not really dispute. They have state systems of selection of electorates in their national parliament based on partisan determinations within that state. In California, if the Democrats control the lower house of that state assembly then the boundaries will be skewed in their favour, and that is the reality there. That is a system that is held up to us by many people opposite.

We have a strong drive in this legislation to restrict people’s access to the system. It is claimed by coalition members that this legislation is not partisan and that they are not doing this because they wish to either marginalise or deprive a particular group of people of voting rights; it is just that they want to make the system cleaner, more thorough and more protected. However, despite the fact that they say there is no evidence that these things can be driven by partisan consideration, international evidence is to the contrary. I do not need to spend months scouring through material in the Parliamentary Library. This week, amongst material that I was offered, I noticed an article by David Hill entitled ‘American voter turnout’. Admittedly, this article deals with the contrast between states in the United States that have difficult registration laws and those that have very liberal registration laws.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Baldwin interjecting

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘Relevance,’ the member says. This article deals with how people are enrolled and it deals with the registration process in the United States. The author says:

Not surprisingly, nations with compulsory voting laws have high voting rates, with a mean turnout of 87 percent. Nations with automatic registration have a mean turnout of 76 percent, while the two voluntary registration countries, France and the United States, have substantially lower rates of 65 percent and 55 percent respectively.

That is about compulsory voting as opposed to non-compulsory voting. It is about registration needs as opposed to registration difficulty, but it is the same fundamental point. He goes on:

Because voluntary registration is a relatively burdensome task that must be fulfilled in most cases at a time prior to the election (in most states thirty days) and thus takes place before the campaign peaks, individuals who are not engaged with the political world are less likely to register than those who are engaged.

He further states:

The first pattern of note in the table

that is, in the article—

is that across all three forms of registration individuals with higher socioeconomic status (education and income), older Americans, and whites register in greater proportions than individuals of lower status, younger Americans, and racial/ethnic minorities.

A final quote from that article:

Given that the pool of registered voters is always skewed toward privileged groups and that registered individuals from privileged groups vote at higher rates than individuals from non-privileged groups, the voting population in the United States tends to be substantially skewed toward higher SES groups, older Americans, whites, and those who do not change residence frequently.

The reality is that people who are less likely to enrol are those with NESB backgrounds, those with lower educational accomplishments and those who move more frequently; and thus, fundamentally, are people who are renters rather than owners. For all the insistence of the member for Stirling about how we have laws in this country and they should be enforced and therefore we should now try to stop people who have been too slack from getting on the electoral roll—we should stop them from voting and participating—we all know that the movement of people in this country and internationally is far greater than it ever was. People have less job security and people are forced to move more often for employment and other reasons. As I said, that article, as do many other articles, points out that younger people are amongst those disenfranchised.

I noticed that the member for Macquarie in his tirade spoke of his sadness or his anger that, on election day, 17-year-old provisional voters were given ballot papers and that some people were given ballot papers for the wrong electorates. What the hell has that got to do with these proposals? Nothing whatsoever. It has also been interesting to hear from government members that they are concerned that during the week of the election the AEC workers have too much to do and cannot properly scrutinise the avalanche of new applications. I am afraid to say that, historically, the AEC has not had the same concern. As an independent authority of public servants, respected by most people in this country and seen as far more professional and neutral than authorities in other countries, it has not made the same complaint. These complaints have come from a number of political parties in this country who have a passing interest in denigrating the system, driving it down and using this as justification to disenfranchise and marginalise people’s participation in the political system.

They say that people are overworked, that the workers cannot manage this huge avalanche—the AEC has systematically denied that over decades; they say they can do it because they hire more people during that period to deal with those numbers that are expected and do occur—but in this legislation, they bring in new demands upon the workers with regard to how many people are going to sign papers and that type of thing. There are a number of other similar provisions that go towards increasing their workload. This measure is driven by partisan considerations.

I would like to cite another very recent article. As I said, I have not had to go back through 5,000 articles on this matter; there are very few people in the world who follow these issues—professionals, academics, politicians—who have the hide to push the line put here today that there is no connection between who is likely and who is unlikely to vote as a result of these changes. There is no-one internationally who would argue that there is no connection between who is being marginalised and voting intention. I refer to an article—once again it is a very recent one; we do not have to go back very far through the avalanche of articles on this matter—titled ‘The effect of socioeconomic factors on voter turnout in Finland: a register-based study of 2.9 million voters’ by Pekka Martikainen, Tuomo Martikainen and Hanna Wass published in the European Journal of Political Research in 2005. Their conclusions from that very thorough survey were:

The results show that income and housing tenure are more important determinants of turnout among older voters than among younger voters, whereas education has a dominant role in determining young people’s turnout. Moreover, class has maintained its discriminatory power in determining turnout in all age groups even though working-class under-representation in participation can be partly attributable to previously obtained educational attainment. Furthermore, the lower turnout of younger voters remains unexplained even if socioeconomic factors are held constant. Lower turnout among lower social classes and among the young will affect the legitimacy of the prevalent model of party democracy.

What they are saying is what everyone else in the world knows, including a multitude of US researchers and academics: there is a clear relationship between the ease of participation in the system, the degree to which people are encouraged, the degree to which people have opportunities to participate in it and certain socioeconomic factors. It is clearly related to racial minorities—

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where’s the Australian research?

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where is the Australian research? All Australian research says the same thing. As I said, I am citing these two articles only because they are so recent.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Baldwin interjecting

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is pathetic. The article further says:

Income and housing tenure derive primarily from paid employment. Income provides individuals and families with necessary material resources and determines their purchasing power.

…       …            …

In effect, demobilisation of young voters seems to have developed over time into a general pattern, which is to a large extent independent from the social backgrounds of these youth.

So not only do we have the fact that there are clear connections with socioeconomic circumstances—employment, housing tenure et cetera—but we have a parallel development of youth disinterest. This legislation is going to worsen that reality, because a very high proportion of those people who are not enrolled are those in the younger group.

On the issue of false enrolment, it is preposterous to say that either major political party in this country has the time or the resources to run around trying to double vote in large numbers on election day. For all of the citation of instances of this, it usually involves people who are cheating social security, people who are trying to get drivers licences and that type of thing. Members opposite have quite rightly also cited instances in the Queensland branch of the Labor Party, where it occurs for internal Labor Party reasons. No-one is denying it can occur, but to defeat this marginal problem—and the government has said there is very little evidence to show it has any impact on any electorates whatsoever—should we marginalise and try to deny 300,000-plus people a vote every election day? There are a few exceptions that will allow enrolment for 17-year-olds who become eligible to vote during the election period and for people who become citizens in that week, but they are a minor part of it. Essentially, 300,000-plus people are going to have difficulties voting.

Should we go down that road because of innuendo, anecdotal evidence or allegations by a defeated candidate in his own seat, and I can think of one case where, quite frankly, the Labor Party would suspect the complainant. It is very interesting that one of the things that emerged in the Macquarie electorate was that a particular religious group, which was very attached to the coalition member at that time and which had religious reasons as to how and when it voted, voted via other people. It is very interesting that one of the main things that came out of this investigation was that the members of a group that one would largely see as being attached to the coalition, because of their religious motivation and their religious reasons as to when they vote, were the ones who seemed to have voted. One must suspect who it was that actually might have done any voting on their behalf.

Should we use such a draconian rule to deprive people and make it difficult for them to vote, marginalise them from the system, have them become less involved, make them more cynical et cetera? One of the realities is that the average person down at the hotel or at the soccer game on the weekend whinges and whines about having to go and vote. But, at the end of the day, having done that, people feel they have some involvement, that they have some responsibility for the outcome. They might not have been that interested, they might not have voted for the government, but at least they were part of the process. The alternative is to have a political system that has a large number of people further disenfranchised, further disillusioned. Even if, for a moment, we give one-tenth of a degree of credibility to the claims of those opposite, to go down this road is to go one step too far.

I do not deny for one moment that there are instances of this. In fact, I am one of the few members to have written to the AEC about specific cases, including one involving the Regents Park branch of the Labor Party in my electorate some years ago. If the Liberal Party wanted to really do something worthwhile to destroy genuine fraud in this system, they would look at the difficulties in relation to sections 101.5 and 131.6 of the Criminal Code. We have a situation where, if a person enrols at an address and it appears that they failed to change their address—but that it was not really malevolent or deliberate—then they have to be prosecuted within a year of that action. Large numbers of people, because of the interaction of the Commonwealth Electoral Act and the Criminal Code, cannot be prosecuted because of time limits. So if those opposite want to do something practical about the very real fraud that occurs to a very minor degree in this system, they should do something about that.

Another issue in this legislation is the question of political donations. Once again, this is just driven by crude politics. For all the concern they have expressed for little old ladies sending them $10, and the material of that kind that has been dished up in previous debate, the truth is that this is essentially to facilitate a cover-up of where donations come from.

The average Australian will think it is quite reasonable that, if people are giving large amounts of money, they should know whether that affects political decisions. Whilst there might be many people in this country who are civic-minded and just like supporting political parties, anyone who has half a brain, quite frankly, knows that a large number of political donations, the vast preponderance of them, are given by corporate interests and others—trade unions et cetera—who have a vested interest in political outcomes.

When you consider issues like privatisation and the controversy over the Smartcard in the last few days, people would like to know whether a particular political decision of a party was motivated by the $20,000 or $5,000 donation that it got or whether particular companies in particular industries seem at a particular election to be more interested in funding one political party than another.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The trade unions would have no vested interest in your decisions?

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have just said that it is quite right and proper that donations from the trade union movement should be out there in the public arena. I am not resiling from that. Of course they should. I have never had a complaint about that.

The truth is that this measure is aimed, essentially, at making sure the Australian public has less knowledge of who is donating and why. Tax deductibility, we all know, once again, is more likely. I can only speak from my own experience and probably that of the adjacent electorate of Parramatta, looking at the campaigns of the previous member for Parramatta, and at my campaign and my opponents’. The Labor Party is less likely to get donations over $1,500 at a local level, particularly, than the coalition. So to change the tax deductibility of donations is also, quite simply, quite crudely, quite obviously, related to trying to advantage the current government.

The other issue I want to talk about is the question of prisoners and their voting rights. I think the comments of Chief Justice McLachlin in the Canadian Supreme Court in Sauve v Canada are very telling:

... denying penitentiary inmates the right to vote is more likely to send messages that undermine respect for the law and democracy than messages that enhance those values.

That is the truth.

People are in jail for a variety of reasons. We know that Indigenous Australians—who, coincidentally, live 17 years less on average than other Australians—are severely overrepresented in the system. Are they professional heroin dealers and murderers? No. They are usually in jail for street offences, alcoholism and issues related to their poverty. Now we will have a situation where they will be denied a say in the political system.

I am not saying that the Liberal Party is going to go down this road, but we could look at the situation in Belarus. All of Europe has been campaigning over the jailing of Alexander Milinkevich in recent weeks because of the sham elections in Belarus. If we look at the United Kingdom, there was a huge political issue about the poll tax. Many people were jailed—for a political reason. And now, under this system, the government  would be saying that people who disagree with them could possibly be denied the franchise. I do not want to say that they are going that far, but this is a Pandora’s box that has been opened. If you start saying that anyone who is serving a sentence cannot vote in the Australian system then obviously there is the possibility that in a crisis, particularly with a dramatic political event in the country, people who object to the policies of the day—whether about the Vietnam war or whatever it was—could be denied their say in the political processes and their right to participate in changing that system. You could go around the world and find such examples—famous writers or people who were very wealthy in later life. A particular senator of this parliament served a term in Sydney during the famous IWW cases of the early part of the 20th century. A senator of this parliament had actually been convicted, as had another member in South Australia. These people, the government is saying, should not have the right to vote.

As I say, this is only the thin edge of the wedge. If we want to look at international comparisons, it is quite interesting to look at Europe. If we look at the countries that we would most associate ourselves with—the Western democracies—very few if any of them have these kinds of restrictions. Where do we find anything like this? We find similar restrictions in Hungary, Estonia, the Czech Republic et cetera—hangovers from the Soviet period, and maybe a reaction there.

So we have a situation where those that we would most like to emulate—progressive Western countries—do not have such restrictions. Where they do have these restrictions is in the United States. We have seen the situation in Florida where the President’s brother actually disobeyed Florida state law which says that people who have been jailed in Florida can never vote again—not just cannot vote while they are in jail but can never vote again. They basically got a private corporation, not an electoral commission like in our country, to scour the Florida electoral roll and they tossed off the roll people who had served sentences in any other American state. Those people could not get access to the legal system to get themselves back on the roll. And we all know that Florida was won by a very small vote. So that is the long-term outcome of these possibilities. (Time expired)

Carmen Lawrence (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bill before us, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 does, as the previous speaker was suggesting, pose a full-frontal assault on core democratic principles, particularly that very important principle of political equality in exercising control over decision making. Democracy is after all based on the principle of government by the people—and that means all of them. The bill is a vivid illustration to me of one of the consequences of unfettered government control of both houses of parliament, because less ambitious proposals than these failed in 2004 in the face of Senate opposition. And I think the bill should raise questions about the role of political parties in the Australian political system and the adequacy of the existing system of political finance in Australia, as well as the specific provisions of this bill, and I intend to address both those questions.

As former speakers have indicated, the key provisions raise disclosure thresholds for private donations to parties and candidates from $1,500 to $10,000 and increase tax deductibility. Below the level of disclosure, people will not be required to specify the amount or the source—name, address and so on. There are also provisions for early closure of the roll. The legislation will make enrolment more difficult, allegedly to protect the integrity of the roll despite the AEC’s repeated assurances of its continuing integrity. It will also amend the definitions of associated entities and third parties to encompass groups such as trade unions and environment groups. It will disenfranchise prisoners. It will prescribe a scheme for deregistration and re-registration of parties. And it will remove requirements for publishers and broadcasters to furnish returns—curiously, and with no justification that I have been able to discern.

Today I am going to speak principally on the question of disclosure requirements. The minimum requirement of any representative democracy is that the government be elected. But it is important that all adults should have an equal right to vote and that votes should be of equal value. In broad terms, this has been achieved in Australia, with universal suffrage, electorates of roughly equal size and independent electoral commissions to determine electoral boundaries and prevent gerrymandering—unlike in the United States, I might say.

This bill will make it much harder for some people to exercise their rights. As we have heard, there are estimates that over 300,000 people will be disenfranchised by early closure of the roll and removal of prisoners’ rights to vote. In that case, what we are doing—what this government will do; I certainly do not endorse it—is further marginalising the already marginalised. We should be doing everything we can to keep people in touch with citizenship.

But it is important to recognise that the promise of democracy goes further than equal voting rights. Each citizen should share equally in political power. That is much harder to achieve. Already many Australians are suspicious that not all of them are equally able to influence their representatives. This breeds cynicism and the belief that the ordinary voters’ needs and views are ignored while preference is given to the interests of the wealthy, big business and political cronies.

Some features of our political system already contribute to these attitudes. Substantial campaign donations to the major parties by corporations and large organisations such as unions and business foundations inevitably foster the perception—and perhaps the reality—that it is possible to buy privileged access to MPs and ministers and that this influence is in proportion to the amount of money that is donated.

The disclosure that business leaders pay $10,000 a head for dinner at The Lodge indicates that not even the Prime Minister’s office is free of the practice. And reports on the extraordinary level of what was at the time secret access to the Prime Minister afforded to the CEO of the Manildra Group, Dick Honan, and the favourable treatment of his ethanol producing company—over $20 million in taxpayer funded subsidies at last count—quite understandably sparked controversy. People saw the purchase of influence going on.

Like many Australians, I am perturbed at these tendencies, wherever they are. We run the risk of becoming a corporate democracy run by money politics—a ‘donocracy’, as it has been called in other places—in which the number of shares you have purchased in the party of your choice determines your effective voting power. While there has been extensive debate about big money politics in the United States, for example, there is still a conspicuous silence on the issue among a lot of Australian politicians.

Public funding of elections was supposed to reduce the parties’ reliance on private corporations and union donations, but all that has happened is a blow-out in both public and private funding as parties engage in an increasingly expensive bidding war at election time. Corporate contributions have become an accepted part of the election landscape. We are unlike our New Zealand and Canadian cousins, who have placed wide-ranging legal restrictions on such contributions, with the explicit aim of limiting the political influence of the wealthy.

The substantive problem is the possibility that such donations can actually purchase influence. Controversy surrounding the exercise of ministerial discretion on the issue of visas some time ago gave credence to this concern.

I do not know of any comparable Australian data, but there are surveys of major corporate donors in the United States. Some of those companies are the same ones that donate in Australia. The surveys show that they do not donate out of a charitable impulse or a sense of civic duty; they expect a return for their money. A Business Week-Harris poll, for instance, surveyed 400 senior executives from large public corporations to explore their reasons for donating to political parties. Over half nominated securing access to law makers to ensure consideration of matters affecting their businesses as the main reason. A further 27 per cent indicated that gaining access was at least part of their rationale, while 58 per cent nominated losing influence to the unions or to environmental organisations as relevant considerations. In addition to those not very honourable reasons, a worrying 41 per cent said that at least part of the reason that they made political donations was the hope of receiving ‘preferential consideration on regulations and legislation benefiting our businesses’. That is precisely the reason for my concern.

As retired US senator Paul Simon said in speaking on this issue, anyone who has been a candidate for major public office and says that campaign contributions do not affect them is simply not telling the truth. He went on to say that ‘the financially articulate’, as he calls them, ‘have inordinate access to policy makers’. By way of example, he cited his own responses, which I think are probably pretty typical. He said:

I have never promised anyone a thing for a campaign contribution. But, when I was still in the Senate, if I arrived at a hotel in Chicago at midnight there might be twenty phone calls waiting for me. Nineteen of them are perhaps from people whose names I did not recognize, and the twentieth is someone who gave me a ... campaign contribution. At midnight I am not going to make twenty phone calls. I might make one. Which one do you think I am going to make?

As I say, there is no reason to believe that the same observations do not apply to Australian MPs. Reliance on donations may also create a strong inducement for political parties generally to bias their policies toward business and high-income earners who provide the bulk of funding, thus conspicuously undermining that very important promise of democracy that we all share equally in political power.

A few years ago, during the debate on native title, some people may have noticed the threat by the mining industry that they would withdraw campaign contributions altogether from both major parties unless they made changes to native title and other policies. That they should say so publicly shows just how blatant the exercise of such influence had become.

Donations to political parties and candidates are often controversial, and rightly so. They have the potential to corrode democracy and in some cases may amount to outright corruption. Transparency and accountability are fundamental; we should be doing everything we can to improve them, not to undermine them as this bill does.

A key question for democracy was highlighted in a recent Democratic Audit of Australia conference. It is a simple question: how democratic is the way political parties are funded in Australia? It is not enough that we call ourselves a democracy. How do we fund our parties?

It is reasonable to say that parties need funding. Funding is necessary to enable parties to perform their functions in democracy. Parties are central. They have a privileged position. There are the functions of representation, agenda setting, participation and engaging as many people as possible. There is the function of governance. We do after all form governments in every state and territory in the Commonwealth. At the same time we must ensure equality in participation and freedom of political association. They are reasonable objectives.

The truth is that any reasonable examination will show that the existing system falls well short of these ideals. We should be seeking to improve, not further undermine, the quality of our democracy. The risk that we face with the sort of funding we have, underpinned in this bill, is that funding as we have it favours existing parties and incumbents. It denies electoral choice and reduces the competition of ideas. It is possible that funding and other electoral laws entrench the interests of the major parties. I am a member of one of them, so in some senses I am speaking against my own self-interest; but I do not think it is good for democracy—what the Democratic Audit of Australia called ‘corruption as partisan abuse’. Some people simply cannot get the money to run campaigns.

The second risk with the current way we fund our elections and our parties is that funds are misused for personal benefit or for the benefit of partisan allies, and I have touched on this. Some people will have followed the recent furore over the nomination to the House of Lords of big donors to the British Labour Party. We are all aware of the appointment to the Reserve Bank here of a Liberal Party benefactor.

A third risk is that political donations might be made to favour donors—that is the ‘corruption as undue influence’ described by the Democratic Audit. That violates the key principle I was speaking of earlier, equality of voters. We should have equal concern for the interests of all citizens, regardless of whether they have given us or our parties funding. They should all have a capacity to influence the outcomes of political decisions, which should not be distorted in favour of party financiers. Australian Election Studies data shows that almost half the voters in this country actually believe that it is the preferences of big interests that determine policy and not the preferences of the voters. So people out there clearly believe it already.

Transparency is fundamental to preventing abuse. We need to know who is donating and how much. We need to hold parties and members of parliament responsible. We need adequate disclosure of the sources of funds, as well as the uses to which funds are put, and we also need the media to play its part in bringing information to public attention. This legislation is going to make it harder to identify sources and does nothing to improve the already inadequate provisions relating to use. We do not know the uses to which many of these funds are put.

We need to remember, too, that all parties now rely heavily on private funding—for the major parties it is approximately 80 per cent. Most of it appears to be used for advertising and electioneering, and those other functions I mentioned do not get a look in. We do not know how much is actually used for other political participation, policy development, research, increasing membership and so on, but I would hazard a guess that it is not much.

The existing provisions fall short of desirable standards. Firstly, there is inadequate information regarding the donations. It is not required under the existing law to accurately categorise receipts as donations or otherwise, and it is actually very difficult to track sources right now. The sale of political access is a worrying trend and an increasing source of funds for which there is no disclosure. Some receipts which most would presume are donations are not so declared. They involve the direct purchase of political access. Parties will access directly or through third parties seats at the table, for instance, of a minister or the Prime Minister. An example—and examples are on our side as well—is the ALP ‘It’s time’ dinner; $10,000 a table. The Prime Minister’s table is worth a bit more—$11,000 at the last election.

Through fundraising organisations like the Millennium Foundation, companies can be sponsors and the cost need not be publicly specified. For their sponsorship, they get a variety of entitlements that are not available to ordinary citizens, including access to ministers, briefings and so on. There is no public information about who is contributing and how much. It is precisely these payments, in my view, where disclosure is vital, because of concerns about undue influence. It is also more readily available, with these big price tags, to the already well-off; and there is an unfair advantage to the incumbents, who are able to put ministers and the Prime Minister at their tables rather than shadow ministers from the opposition, who are not nearly so politically attractive.

Under the existing legislation, disclosure is not timely. We need to know before an election, not after, whose promises are being funded. There is right now a lack of compliance. Democratic Audit and the AEC have both expressed concern on a number of occasions about a culture of evasion, that the parties are not according sufficient priority to disclosure and that they are siphoning large sums through associated entities that make up between half and 80 per cent, depending on the year. This compromises transparency and makes funding less visible to the media and more resistant to a disclosure regime, and bodies like the Greenfields Foundation are included in this criticism.

Democratic Audit of Australia researcher Joo Cheong Tham concluded that disclosure schemes are limited by the inadequate disclosure of the nature of contributions and delays in disclosure. There also seems to be a culture of noncompliance. The inevitable attempt by parties to exploit loopholes appears not to be sufficiently counteracted by robust enforcement and regulation. In short, such schemes are leaky sieves that permit evasion of adequate disclosure. That is the current system.

Lack of transparency will be compounded when this legislation passes. Members will be aware that the Parliamentary Library estimates that, allowing for some lack of precision in the definitions of ‘donations’ versus ‘other receipts’, current disclosure requirements mean that details of funding were available in approximately 82 per cent of the 144 million receipts in 2004-05. Of this, 118 million, or 28 per cent, were donations. Lifting the threshold would mean that details would be disclosed for only 70 per cent, with 25 per cent classified as donations, or just 17 per cent of total declared receipts. Averaging over the last seven financial years, it is clear that the proportion of receipts for which the coalition and the ALP would be required to disclose details will drop from three-quarters of their declared receipts to about two-thirds—a clear loss of transparency and accountability. When account is taken of the fact that multiple donations can be made to separate branches of the parties, changes proposed in these bills could allow a donation of as much as $90,000 a year, depending on the party, without triggering disclosure. Partners in a relationship could each give this amount, so you could end up with $180,000 without disclosure.

Disclosure legislation should be crafted to reveal relationships between politicians and donors, not hide them; to enable scrutiny of their subsequent relationship; and to prevent graft, which our law does but only indirectly. It cannot establish causal links between donations and subsequent actions, but it should at least allow for the public testing of relationships, as we saw with Minister Ruddock’s ‘cash for visas’ controversy—at least it did see the light of day. Generous support of the Liberal Party by an appointment to the Reserve Bank board did eventually become public.

A fundamental principle is that everyone should have the same chance to influence government decision making. Corporate interests and trade unions make up approximately 40 per cent of donations to the major parties—probably more, in fact. Even for the ALP, business interests are more substantial contributors. Unions, in theory at least, are democratically constituted; corporations are not. So we do not have democracy in these bodies. Such dependence on these big donors is likely to facilitate special treatment and access for such bodies over ordinary citizens.

Institutional dependence on this ‘interested money’, as it is called, means that we do not have the necessary accountability, particularly because those institutions themselves are not accountable. Companies are not required to consult shareholders. Even in democratically elected union committees, the danger is that officials will contribute to further their own careers rather than to protect their members’ interests. The risk is that MPs and party officials will not form independent judgments of public interest but shape their positions according to the interests of financiers. This gives advantage to the already established and well-heeled parties in our democracies.

We should have fair competition. If we measure how private funding compares with electoral support, for instance, it shows that the current system is unfair. The ALP gets roughly $22 a vote; the Liberals, $18 a vote; The Nationals, $28 a vote; the Democrats, $6 a vote; and the Greens, $8.50 a vote. This is a dramatic inequality, and it shows and entrenches the privileges of the two-party system. It is very difficult for the minor parties to be heard. When access is sold, as it is, there is a very real possibility of corruption and the exercise of undue influence. Without scrutiny, that becomes worse. Of course the costs are prohibitive for ordinary citizens. They simply cannot get a foot in the door.

It is time we stopped tinkering and followed the lead of many Western European countries, as well as Canada and New Zealand. While I oppose this bill, our existing system does not work very well either. I have said elsewhere and I want to repeat today that it is time to rein in the exponential growth of corporate donations—union donations as well—and to curtail the proliferation of content-free, coercive media advertising that passes for policy debate during elections. That is what we are funding, after all. Most of that rubbish comes from corporate donations. The retention of public funding of elections should be accompanied by measures to limit the size of individual private donations to $1,500 or thereabouts and to proscribe—in other words, to stop—any donations from corporations and large organisations, as exists in parts of Europe. An extension of free-to-air radio and television could accompany these changes so that political parties are able to compete in getting their messages and policies across to the Australian people, so that we have a genuine democracy worthy of the name.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in opposition to the government’s Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005, because it weakens our democracy in several ways. The member for Fremantle has spoken eloquently about the issue of donations to political parties. This legislation increases the allowable donation threshold and raises the tax deductability threshold. But there are two other things that this legislation does that I believe also weaken democracy considerably. Firstly, the legislation makes it significantly harder for people to vote, by closing the electoral roll at the announcement of the election. Secondly, it makes it significantly harder for people to vote, by requiring a drivers licence or some other photo identification before they are able to cast their vote. These measures will significantly disenfranchise many hundreds of thousands of young people particularly. I oppose these measures wholeheartedly.

The argument that the government puts forward is that these measures will ensure the integrity of the electoral roll. I do not think this is about the integrity of the electoral roll at all; I think it is about disenfranchising young people, who do not, by and large, vote for the Howard government. The solution to the electoral enrolment process, according to the government, is to close the electoral roll on the day the election is called; not give people the ability to update their correct enrolment details; not give people—particularly young people—the chance to enrol in the days after an election is called; and, as I said earlier, have people provide a drivers licence or other photo ID before they can cast a vote.

Why are they doing this? Is there enormous proven fraud with regard to the electoral roll? Certainly not. You would be forgiven for thinking that examples of fraud must be widespread for the government to initiate this bill and to put forward these arguments for the bill. The arguments from the government have been all about integrity. It seems curious, then, to actually prevent people from fixing up their electoral enrolment once the election has been called, to prevent people from correcting their wrong addresses once the election has been called. How does that contribute to integrity?

There have been several significant parliamentary committee examinations of the electoral roll and electoral fraud, and there is not a single credible authority on electoral matters that supports the government’s changes in this area. Professor Brian Costar, who is a researcher at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research and a well-known academic and expert on electoral matters, told the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee that the notion that there is widespread fraud is a ‘conspiracy theory’. In his evidence to the committee he rejected the notion:

... that there is out there a vast army of villains who want to take advantage of every nook and cranny of the law to sign up phantom voters ... to rort the system ...

Indeed, a comprehensive review of the roll in 2002 by the Australian National Audit Office concluded:

... overall, the Australian electoral roll is one of high integrity, and ... can be relied on for electoral purposes.

Even Minister Abetz is on the record saying that there is little evidence of fraud of our electoral roll. He said that as late as last October in a speech to the Sydney Institute. The acknowledged experts are the Australian Electoral Commission, the people that actually administer the roll and run our election day voting. In their submission to the 2000 parliamentary inquiry into the integrity of the electoral roll, the Australian Electoral Commission said:

... early close of the rolls will not improve the accuracy of the rolls for an election … In fact, the expectation is that the rolls for the election will be less accurate, because less time will be available for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received.

In 2001 the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted a thorough investigation into the integrity of the roll and found that, in the five federal elections and one referendum to the year 2001, there were 72 million ballot papers cast and just 71 known cases of false enrolments. You really can say that known fraud is one in a million. These fraud rates seem even more ridiculous when you consider that the Australian Electoral Commission does not consider that any of them were deliberate attempts to corrupt or influence an electoral outcome. Professor Costar, whom I quoted earlier, and Peter Browne are both researchers at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research. They said in the Age on 4 April 2006 that last year:

... when it made its first submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the 2004 federal election, the AEC expressed no concern whatsoever about the workload it faces at each election, when voters are given seven days’ grace to enrol or to update their enrolments. Nor did it express its support for the argument that the last-minute rush of enrolments creates opportunities for electoral fraud. Although several members of the committee repeatedly returned to the issue, they failed to persuade the commission to support the closure of the electoral roll as soon as the prime minister calls an election.

It is difficult to understand why the government would persist in the face of opposition from the people who are charged with administering the electoral roll and polling on voting day. If they say that it is not too big a workload for them, who is the government to say that it is too big a workload for them? The Electoral Commission is also quoted as saying last year:

This expected outcome is in direct conflict with the stated policy intention of the Government to improve the accuracy of the rolls. Further, it will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the franchise, an outcome which the AEC cannot support.

I want to repeat that: the AEC say that they cannot support this proposal.

I am advised that since 1940 the average gap between the calling of an election and the closing of the roll has been more than 19 days. Allowing people to enrol or fix up their enrolment in those 19 days has had no demonstrable ill impact on the quality of the roll. Indeed, in our most recent election in 2004, we saw almost 1.7 million 18- to 25-year-olds enrol to vote for the first time. In the seven days after the writs were issued for the 2004 election, 78,000 people enrolled to vote for the first time. Under this proposal, those 78,000 people would not have had the chance to vote for the first time. Why would you want to disenfranchise these 18-year-olds? Why would you want to stop them voting for the first time? Another 345,000 people updated their details in 2004 in the seven days after the writs were issued. In fact, once the roll actually closed after that seven-day window, another 150,000 tried to enrol or fix up their enrolment details. If this proposed law goes ahead then those 78,000 kids enrolling for the first time would have been excluded from voting, as would many of the 345,000 people who sought to update their electoral enrolment details. Given that there were 150,000 people still trying to enrol after the closing of the roll, you could make a pretty strong argument that in fact you should extend the period rather than shorten it.

If you look at the 1983 federal election, the only election since the Second World War where the roll was closed on the same day that the election was called, you will see that there were some 90,000 people who found themselves unable to vote because they had not been enrolled at the time of the announcement of the election. The Electoral Commission noted at the time that the effect of this was seen on election day, when there was much confusion, with many provisional votes issued and major inconvenience to the Electoral Commission polling booth workers. (Extension of time granted) These changes both are unnecessary and will weaken our democracy and the integrity of our electoral system. They will disenfranchise young people and contribute to the roll that does not have the most recent addresses and details for voters.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.