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

I call the honourable member for Hughes.

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am the member for Bruce.

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

The member for Bruce, sorry.

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, that I should stand here today and see you make a mistake! I guess it has been a busy week and a lot of things have happened that have had implications for the future of the nation, but I have to say that that is the one that has shocked me probably most of all!

I stand here today to make it clear that Labor supports the Electoral and Referendum Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. The bill contains measures arising from the government’s response to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report on the inquiry into the conduct of the 2004 federal election and matters related thereto. I was a member of that committee and, on the basis of the deliberations of that committee, am happy to support this bill.

This is the second tranche of changes that have been brought forward by the government with respect to the recommendations of that report. I am happy to support these particular amendments, but it would be remiss of me not to comment—and I will comment to a greater degree later—on the earlier legislation which related to that report and introduced some very regressive measures to alter the electoral system. Those measures were clearly introduced by the government to try and seek partisan political advantage. But I will talk more about that a little later on.

This bill contains amendments for the expansion of postal vote provisions for ADF and AFP personnel, revised arrangements for the delivery of postal voting material, an increase in the number of AEC officers that are eligible to receive postal vote envelopes, the introduction of trials for electronically assisted voting for the visually impaired, and remote electronic voting for ADF personnel deployed overseas. Additionally the bill proposes to repeal defamation provisions that carry criminal actions and penalties for defamation against electoral candidates. I would now like to talk about these measures in more detail.

The committee’s report recommended that the Commonwealth Electoral Act be amended to specifically permit ADF and AFP personnel serving overseas to become general postal voters. These people will automatically be sent ballot papers for each election without first having to lodge a postal vote application, giving them more time to return their postal vote.

The act currently provides that an application shall be regarded as not having been made if it reaches the relevant AEC officer after 6 pm on the day before polling day, a Friday. Item 6 repeals subsection 184(5) and substitutes a new subsection to provide that the deadline by which postal vote applications must be received in order to be processed is 6 pm on the Thursday—that is, two days before polling day. This amendment is intended to enhance the prospect of postal voters receiving postal voting material in time for completion on or before polling day.

The proposal also inserts a new subsection 184(6) to provide that, for postal voting applications received after this new deadline, the AEC is required to make reasonable efforts to contact those applicants to advise them that their applications have not met the deadline and of the need for them to vote by other means. This item gives effect to the government’s response to part of recommendation 9 of the JSCEM’s report.

The Electoral Act currently provides that an elector who casts a postal vote shall post or deliver the completed postal voting envelope on which the postal vote certificate is printed to the appropriate DRO. Where it is unlikely that the completed postal voting envelope would reach the appropriate DRO within 13 days after polling day, the Electoral Act currently allows for the envelope to be returned to other AEC officers. These other officers are any DRO and ARO outside Australia, a pre-poll voting officer or a polling place presiding officer.

To provide postal voters with greater flexibility and options for returning their postal voting material in time to be included in the scrutiny, this bill expands the range of AEC officers who can receive completed postal voting envelopes. Whilst engaging in their normal work, these officers will be able to receive postal voting envelopes where it is unlikely that the appropriate DRO will receive them within 13 days after polling day. The expanded range includes electoral visitors at hospitals and prisons, mobile polling team leaders and certain office holders and ongoing employees of the AEC’s capital city offices. This item gives effect to recommendation 9 of the committee’s report.

This bill will insert into the Electoral Act trials of electronic voting methods and consists of two divisions. Division 1 provides for a trial of electronically assisted voting for sight impaired people and division 2 provides for a trial of remote electronic voting for defence personnel serving outside Australia. The trial will be rolled out on Defence’s secure network and involves approximately 1,500 people. The government have indicated they may consider extending the trial, as recommended by the committee, but have made no commitments.

The proposed method will produce a printed record of the vote a person has cast. Once a person has cast an electronically assisted vote, the vote record will be placed in an envelope upon which a completed declaration has been made. While the vote record will not be capable of identifying the elector, consistent with the process adopted for pre-poll voting, information on the outside of the envelope will enable preliminary scrutiny to take place. To ensure the secrecy of the vote is maintained, the vote record produced at the pre-poll voting office will not be required to be an exact replication of the ballot paper; however, the vote record must be capable of producing a document, whether it be a replication of the ballot paper or otherwise, that accurately reflects the voter’s intention for scrutiny purposes.

I am a big supporter of this measure. Any measure that makes it easier for our brave fighting men and women to exercise their civic duty, while in operations, is to be duly welcomed. Depending on the results, this trial could lead to further reforms, and it is another example of new technologies helping to improve our system of democracy.

A continuing challenge for future Australian governments in this area will be how we make new technologies work for the administration of our democracy. Social, cultural and technological forces will always impact on how we administer and perceive our democracy. However, the impact of new technologies in this area has often been underanalysed, yet in the past they have had a great impact and will continue to do so in the future. One only has to look at the impact the printing press has had on the development of democracy.

It is new communication technologies that are having an impact, with the most noticeable being the internet. I welcome any technology that allows for greater participation and partnership of Australians in our great democratic project. While these reforms only implement a trial of electronic voting, the possibilities this holds for a number of areas are large. It is for these reasons that I look forward to the results of this trial and the possible reforms that may follow.

It is also proposed that alternative documentary evidence may be supplied by people enrolling from overseas under sections 94A and 95 of the Electoral Act. In order to assist people enrolling from overseas to meet the first tier requirement, it is proposed to provide these people with the option of supplying either their Australian passport number or their driver’s licence number as documentary evidence of their name.

There is also a provision that allows the AEC to establish a pre-poll voting office when, due to exceptional circumstances, it would not be possible to gazette the declaration prior to commencement of the operation of the pre-poll voting office. This provision will operate as an exception to the general requirement to gazette pre-poll voting offices. This will allow pre-poll voting offices to be established in circumstances where the AEC is required to quickly ensure that electors are able to cast votes. The AEC will still be required to publish a copy of the declaration in the gazette as soon as practical after the declaration has been made.

Section 350 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act makes it an offence for a person to make or publish any false and defamatory statement in relation to the personal character or conduct of a candidate. This bill will repeal this section. Following repeal of the section, cases of defamation will be dealt with in accordance with the civil law of defamation existing in the relevant state or territory jurisdiction. This will bring candidate defamation actions in line with existing laws and the move to uniform national defamation laws. This item gives effect to recommendation 46 of the committee report.

The vast majority of the measures in this bill are positive reforms that arise from that committee’s report. It is interesting to contrast, as I mentioned earlier, this legislation with earlier legislation that the government has moved as a response to that committee’s report. This legislation, although not dramatic, has some important basic reforms which are designed to enhance the operation of our system to provide people with a greater opportunity to be able to cast a vote. With electronic assistance voting, allowing Defence Force personnel to register as general postal voters, and providing different provisions in terms of who can receive postal votes after they have been filled in, this legislation will improve the operation of the democracy that we are all a part of. It will provide people with a greater capacity to enhance their involvement.

That is fantastic, but it is in direct contrast to the last bill in this area that this government moved in response to the committee’s recommendation. That bill produced a number of changes which in fact had exactly the opposite effect to the effect this legislation would have with respect to the operation of our democracy. At that time we had a situation where we had provisions around the earlier closure of the electoral roll. There is absolutely no doubt that closing the electoral roll early would produce an administrative nightmare, with people being incorrectly enrolled, and would lead to a large number of people excluded from being able to cast a valid vote—and that would actually impinge on the operation of our democracy. There is absolutely no doubt that, if the changes that were made had been implemented for the last election, up to 80,000 Australians might have been unable to enrol to vote and up to 280,000 people in total could have been affected by having a substantial fault in their enrolment. There is absolutely no doubt that the changes that were made then—in contrast to the changes that are being made now—would create real problems for the operation of our democracy.

On that issue—and this is germane to this particular legislation because it is about the operation of the electoral system through the Electoral Act—what we saw at that time was a situation where the AEC changed their position on these sorts of changes and changed the position that previous electoral commissioners had had over the last decade. When these sorts of proposals were put forward by this government on earlier occasions, the AEC rejected them. The AEC said that this was not a good idea for our democracy. The AEC said this would have exactly the impacts that the Labor Party and many independent experts had said it would have. The AEC criticised it and they did not recommend that it go forward. This particular Electoral Commissioner has changed that and has said that he can implement it and he believes it will be fine.

But what have we found since then about the operation of our electoral system? To me, one of the key indicators between elections is the maintenance of the electoral roll. What have we seen? Figures in the AEC annual report showed that, for the first time in nearly 10 years, the total enrolment under the Australian electoral system in fact went down. It has been years and years since that has occurred. When the commissioner was questioned about this at Senate estimates, he admitted that the AEC were seriously concerned about what that meant. They were seriously concerned about the maintenance of our electoral roll, which underpins the operation of our democratic system. It is the very basis by which we elect our governments, the very basis by which we have a system which we can have confidence in.

But the commissioner, in his wisdom—and I use the word loosely—came forward and changed his position and the position of the commission around the operation of these changes as proposed by the government, when at least three previous commissioners had said that they did not agree with it. He said, ‘If the government enacts it, we can implement it’—yet we have seen concrete evidence that there are real problems with the maintenance of the electoral roll under the current system. I for one have grave concerns about the quality of our electoral roll under these circumstances. I for one am genuinely concerned about how well the AEC will be able to administer the electoral roll, given the fact that there is clear evidence that their current systems appear to be having real problems.

I know there has been some increase since that time due to the fact that there have been some state elections, but nonetheless—even allowing for that particular aspect of the electoral cycle leading to a growth in enrolments—the fact of the matter is that there is clearly an issue there. When we already have an electoral roll where there are problems and we then close the roll early, the probability is that even greater problems will result.

The Electoral Commissioner has also said that he thinks that, with respect to issues like the administration of the roll, plenty of work could be done through advertising campaigns and that those advertising campaigns can be successful. Again, I point to the fact that it is pretty clear that what the AEC have been doing in recent years has not been working very effectively, because it is clear from their own figures that the roll is becoming a problem. Many experts, in considering the earlier changes made by the government, raised concerns about these issues. I will quote several of those experts. In response to the JSCEM inquiry into the 2004 election, Antony Green, the electoral commentator and expert from the ABC, said:

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 ...

Professor Brian Costar also made a number of points with respect to that issue. On the question of advertising campaigns and their likely success during the days in the lead-up to an election after an election has been called he said:

Let us remember that, at that period, lots of other noise is going to crowd out an election advertising campaign. Who is interested?

There is absolutely no doubt about the impact of the changes, so it is good that with this legislation we will see electronically assisted voting and some of those other changes regarding postal voting. The government is finally on this occasion, in some minor ways, actually going to try to encourage people to be part of the electoral system and to actually cast valid votes. But this is at odds with its performance just a few months ago and the changes made that are relevant in this case because they relate to the operation of the electoral system, which is what this act is about amending and, in those circumstances, are of real concern.

Other changes which have gone through and which have a direct impact on the operation of this system relate to issues like greater identity requirements for enrolment. As I mentioned, some of these changes were additional allowances made for identity provision for enrolment for people overseas, but there is no doubt that, with what the government now requires with respect to the general operation of enrolments under our system, it will make it harder for people to enrol and harder for people to be able to cast a valid vote. We can see that already in the context of the requirements for provisional voters to provide identification now on election day—all of this when the government has acknowledged, and ministers have repeatedly acknowledged, that there is not an issue with fraud within our Australian electoral system.

In terms of the changes made earlier this year, the provisions will make it harder to cast a vote, harder to enrol to vote and harder to ensure that that vote is actually counted, while at the same time massively increasing the capacity for donations to be made to political parties. As an interesting aside, after the coalition has been saying that it is really important that we make these changes, that the administrative issues here are very difficult for political parties and that it is only reasonable and fair to do it, we actually came across a letter from the Prime Minister to the Premier of New South Wales from several years ago where he talked about how he saw no reason to change the disclosure levels. On the proposal from the then Premier of New South Wales, who suggested there could be some changes to the disclosure regime, the response from the Prime Minister was, ‘No, there’s no problem.’ It was fine; but, all of a sudden, just a year or so later, the government of which he is the leader has come back around and said: ‘We can make changes and we will make changes. What we’ll do is make it a lot easier for people to make donations, for those donations to be secret and not disclosed publicly. We’ll remove transparency from the system so that people can have more concerns about what is actually going on behind the scenes.’

We talk about open, transparent and accountable government. If we look at what this government has done with respect to the issues in the electoral system, we see an example of how they have behaved in many areas. Frankly, we can draw correlations and lessons with things like AWB. Right across the board, when we look at the changes they have made in a range of areas, there has been a lack of proper administration and a lack of transparency—and certainly a capacity to allow allegations to be made because it cannot be established from the primary material what in fact has occurred. That is exactly what we have seen happen with respect to the operation of the electoral system.

I am pleased today to be able to welcome the changes in this legislation. I think they are a step forward. But they are a small step forward after a massive leap backwards, which occurred earlier on with the changes made by this government to the operation of our electoral system. We will have to wait to see how both these measures and the earlier measures actually work with respect to the next federal election.

I will make a prediction with respect to some of the changes that were made earlier on. There will be, in some respects and in some areas, real problems. There will be many Australians who are denied the capacity to exercise their rights within our democratic system as a result of those changes. There are already questions about how accurate the electoral roll is under the current AEC systems. They have acknowledged that they have serious concerns. These changes, in my view, will make things much harder.

That will create issues. It is designed to create issues, in my view. It has been designed right from the start. It was very clear from the speech of the former Special Minister of State to the Sydney Institute that he saw this issue as being a political response. He argued that it is a political response to an earlier political response by the Labor Party in terms of changes we made some 20 years ago. The bottom line is this: independent experts right across the board have come forth and said the system as it operated was designed to encourage participation, to encourage people to exercise their rights to be part of the political process, and that these changes introduced by this government in fact do the very reverse. In fact, that is what it was all about right from the start.

The government can be congratulated for these particular changes today because they do provide some minor but important improvements to the system and they actually are about improved access and ensuring that people get a better chance to be part of the system and to play their role. But the government ought to get a very big kick for what they did earlier on with respect to this legislation and the alterations to the act. What they did in that process was to make it harder for people to participate, harder to enrol, harder to vote, and they created a circumstance that is already allowing massive amounts of money to be hidden from public scrutiny. That is a blight on our democracy. It is unnecessary. It is unfair and it is unreasonable and, for that, the government should stand condemned. We recommend the passing of this legislation because it is a good step forward, small though it is.

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

I welcome the support of the opposition for the Electoral and Referendum Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. In the spirit of solidarity, and of course in the spirit of the season, I stand with my opposition colleagues and friends on this legislation. This legislation is very important to people in my electorate. It is very important to the members of the Australian Defence Force. The member for Gilmore will also know the importance of it. Our Defence Force has been extraordinarily busy for the last 10 years. We go at a moment’s notice, because things occur around the world. Our ADF responds in Australia’s name, but we do not get notice of it. As an example, our people deployed to Fiji at the moment had very little notice. We do not know how long they will be there. If there were an election called, how would they participate in the democratic process? And so it is with having to go to Timor and the Solomons. When Australian troops last went to the Solomons, from the point that they got notice in Townsville to when they were on the ground in Honiara, on Guadalcanal, was 18 hours. A company of soldiers from Townsville responded as part of the ready deployment force, and that happened because an AFP officer had been involved in a nasty incident and Australia responded.

As the member for Bruce has said, this is about allowing people to participate in the democratic process and to have their right to vote. I well remember some years ago, when soldiers from Townsville were in Somalia, the fact that they did not vote caused a court challenge in the election of a candidate for the state seat of Mundingburra. It caused the election to be overturned. It caused the candidate who was successful in the first election to lose in the second round and in fact it caused the Labor government of Queensland at the time to fall. They are the kinds of implications there can be. That has happened in recent times, when members of the Australian Defence Force have not been able to exercise their right to vote. This legislation now allows a trial of electronic voting.

I say, as the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters—and I note that the deputy chair, the member for Melbourne Ports, Mr Danby, is present—that we have certainly taken a very keen interest in electronic voting and how it is proceeding in the world. Some countries embrace it; others are very reticent to have anything to do with it. The ACT government has been trialling electronic voting, and quite successfully. The key problem seems to be that the electorate does not trust electronic voting. They think that it can be manipulated and that it can be subject to fraud. Particularly in the United States, this is a reason why it is not widely embraced. But the AEC, being the professional organisation that it is, thinks that it can conduct a trial whereby there will not be any question about the correctness of the vote, that it can be done on Defence secure systems so that it cannot be hacked into and that we will get the voters’ intended outcome. So I am very pleased, on behalf of the men and women of the Australian Defence Force, to support this legislation.

I note that the other major component of this measure—that is, allowing a new arrangement for blind and visually impaired people—has been very well received within that community. They will be able to cast a secret ballot under this trial for the first time in a federal election. It will cost some money, but the Australian government has provided additional funding to the AEC, and that will allow the purchase of computer hardware and software related to the trial of electronically assisted voting for sight impaired people and for the trial of remote electronic voting by ADF personnel serving overseas. Incidentally, it will also be used for the delivery of postal voting material to postal vote applicants by means other than post, which is covered in this legislation.

I again welcome the opposition’s support of the legislation and join in supporting it myself and recommending it to the House.

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

I rise today to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, parts of which outline further arrangements to disenfranchise Australian voters. The Labor Party, as has been said, will support the bill because parts of the bill do provide that a few more people will be able to vote, and it does ensure that ADF personnel serving overseas and sight impaired people will be able to vote. Whilst it does have some deficiencies, which I will come to, on balance, the whole package, as has been said previously, does take us forward.

The bill deals with a number of matters which the government did not deal with in the earlier bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005. That bill has now been enacted, and we are beginning to experience the difficulties people are facing as they seek to enrol to vote.

Ever since I have been in this place—and I served for many years on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters—I have always been about enfranchising people, not disenfranchising people. Every recommendation when we were in government—and the honourable member for Brisbane was on this committee as well and was a distinguished chair—was about enfranchising, not disenfranchising people.

We did not have a paranoia about the Electoral Act. Indeed, a number of legal cases—Snowdon v Dondas in particular—have basically put to bed the idea of the constitutional right to vote, which was never there for the territories; it was in terms of the original states. Basically the right to vote and the ability to vote are now contained in the Electoral Act, fair and square. Governments have, through cunning amendments to the Electoral Act, the capacity to disenfranchise voters—by the use of red tape, by closing the rolls early or by closing the time that postal votes are received early—and it can have quite a marked effect. The last big effect was, I think, the early close of rolls in 1983, which disenfranchised—

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

380,000 people.

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

I do not know what the problem is for the government in terms of the Electoral Act and their paranoia, because it has actually served them well. We have the best electoral system in the world. I am a great supporter of compulsory voting, and I have no problem with a government being booted out of office if the voters do not want them. But I do have a problem with Florida type provisions, like the hanging chad, being introduced into legislation—provisions which might not have an intention of disenfranchising voters but which, in the end, do disenfranchise voters. I had a strong view about the earlier bill in relation to the closure of the rolls.

Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Talk about the bill.

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

I am going to talk about the bill. What I am talking about, Minister, is the philosophy. The party that says, ‘We want to cut red tape,’ keeps introducing red tape, and it is going to result in people being disenfranchised on election night. I do not care how they vote, or how they want to vote; we should be about enfranchising not disenfranchising. The parts of this bill which are in relation to the trials, and other parts in relation to electronic voting, are to be welcomed. You were not here when I said earlier that parts of this bill are to be applauded because they do enfranchise.

The provision about voting for the visually impaired is to be welcomed. The pity is: it is in only 30 centres. It does not follow the recommendation of the standing committee that it should be in each electorate. I do not know whether that is a resource thing or not. But I know, for instance, when we did the two-candidate preferred vote when I was on the joint standing committee and it was recommended, there was a trial in part and then it was extended in a subsequent election.

What I would like to see eventually is that provision, if it proves successful, extended to every electorate in the country—not a random situation. So I applaud that, Minister, because it is about helping people who are disadvantaged and who have particular problems. We are there to assist them to get their vote and to get it right—unlike with previous amendments to the act where funding was cut and there were problems with Aboriginal education and other things, in the earlier days of this government. That has had some impacts. You would know, Minister, because of your involvement in the Northern Territory, how remote communities, Indigenous communities, need to be assisted. We made changes in relation to remote communities and made it easier for farmers in terms of postal votes and being on the registered list of postal voters. What true equality requires, Minister, is differential treatment for the disadvantaged—to make us all equal in terms of voting—and, in relation to young people, an acknowledgement that, whilst they might be a bit slack, you do not refuse to cut them any slack, which will disenfranchise them.

Giving Australian Defence Force personnel the ability to cast a vote electronically is a terrific idea. We should make those special provisions. I do not care how much they cost. We should not apologise for them. In my view, if someone is prepared to put the uniform on for this country then we should do everything we can, whatever the cost, to ensure that they get a vote in an election determining the government of this country. So I applaud the government for those particular provisions in relation to defence personnel. I know that there are some more details to come about how these things will be implemented, and I have confidence in the minister, who has vast experience in electoral matters. He knows the significance of changes to the Electoral Act and of the drafting of regulation and what it means. He was also a distinguished chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

I also want to talk about some provisions that are not in the bill but were in the Joint Standing Committee’s recommendations in relation to postal votes and privacy of postal votes. I want to use this opportunity to add something in terms of my own personal experience because, whilst it is not in the legislation, it is something that the committee recommended be looked at. Recommendation 13, as the minister knows, said that a return to double envelopes would not be required. I did get a lot of complaints about the frustrations of postal voters in terms of the period of time they were forced to wait for their voting forms, and I was surprised that the forms designed did not ensure that individual privacy was protected. They did not do that at all.

I do not accept the part of recommendation 13 that says, ‘Let us not have a double envelope,’ in terms of privacy. I will tell you why, Minister: I scrutineered in the federal seat of Parramatta, and I was quite happy with the result; but, in relation to the one envelope, inadvertent as it was, there was a situation in which privacy was not protected because of the way the envelope was cut open and the ballot paper was taken out. The name was exposed. It was not intentional, and I drew it to the attention of the returning officer and it was fixed. I know, because I was there and witnessed it. But the potential was there. It was not deliberate, but it was shown with that one envelope, in the way it was designed and the way that the ballot paper was taken out. It was taken out inadvertently face-up and not face-down, because they were being unfolded. That needs to be looked at, because privacy is an issue.

I have concerns, and I raise the issue with you now, Minister, because it is not contained in the package of legislation that is before us, but you are entitled to know of my experience in relation to it. I do not blame anyone for that. It was not intentional; it was unintentional. We need to look, when we look at these procedures, at not just intentional but unintentional things in relation to some of the people handling the processing of the ballot papers and things like that, because it is the process that can actually guarantee the integrity of the privacy and prevent a little thing like that.

I think there has been an increase in red-tape provisions, but I do not want to dwell on that. The proof will be in the pudding. I say this to the minister and to the government. You have the numbers in the House of Representatives and you have the numbers in the Senate. It will go through. I have a plea to you. You say you are doing this with honourable intentions. We will take you on face value in relation to that. If a problem arises, I am sure, Minister, if you are in charge, that you will genuinely look at fixing it. I am not trying to cry wolf or say the sky is falling in. What I want is the maintenance of what is one of the best electoral systems in the world, and red tape can make it very difficult.

It is like the Langer amendment. The provisions to overcome Mr Langer’s conduct disenfranchised many more voters than the provisions that were there previously. We used a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. We are sitting back and saying we are proud of the current system, but actually a lot more people are disenfranchised than were disenfranchised by what Langer did. I was not on the committee then, and I think that those provisions were put in genuinely by members of the committee, but that is a classic example. If you look at the figures—and I asked a number of questions in relation to this when I was on the committee—what we did actually disenfranchised a lot more voters than the earlier provisions did.

According to the explanatory memorandum, the deadline by which postal vote applications must be received in order to be processed is 6 pm on the Thursday—that is, two days before polling. I do not like that provision. I understand the problems of applications coming in in the last couple of days. I have been intimately involved in election scrutineering—and so have you, Minister—for the last 30 years. My concern with that provision is that it will mean fewer not more voters. It will divert the energies of the electoral officials in terms of what you are asking them to do in those last couple of days to overcome that earlier deadline. There are other provisions there, as you know, that say that they will attempt to make contact.

In terms of the problems that the provisions may bring about, the solution may well be worse than the current situation. I have asked you to have a look at that again genuinely after the election. I think this will create some problems. The truth is that there are limited resources and the last couple of days are days of frenetic and frenzied activity in electoral offices. I know and you know that pre poll has been relaxed over the years and more people are actually voting pre poll. Where we can, a lot of us encourage people who might have been postal voters to vote pre poll. But I do not like that provision because I think on balance it will mean more disenfranchisement.

I am quite proud of the Australian Electoral Commission as a result of all the experience I have had with them and their officers and their professionalism, when I was on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and from seeing the diligence with which they conduct elections. They are the best in terms of our democracy and our national system, properly resourced. My returning officer for the electorate of Banks, Doug Clarke, I think is one of the best in the business and has been on a number of occasions involved in elections overseas as a result of his expertise. There are many like him through the electoral process.

I know that on some of the issues in this bill the minister is well intentioned. With respect to the other bill, I think that certain people—not necessarily you, Minister—have had an obsession with wanting to go down a particular track. Quite frankly, I think that experienced hands like you, Minister, need to stand up to them.

In terms of the Electoral Act, I believe it is imperative that we as a parliament attempt at all times to achieve bipartisan support. I do not have any time for those party apparatchiks who want to bring in provisions that, in their view, might favour one side or the other and who are too smart by half. There are provisions—not in this legislation—that are like that. We are seeing in Iraq today people putting their lives on the line for democracy and the right to vote, which is precious, which should be encouraged, which should be protected and which should be preserved, irrespective of which way you are going to vote.

As I said earlier, with respect to the vulnerable in our community, the itinerants and others, I do not apologise for supporting special provisions in relation to them because of their special needs and problems, as long as we are sure that they are exercising their free will and that it is the particular person involved who is exercising the vote. As I said, there are some provisions here that I applaud because I think they are taking us into new areas of the Electoral Act for the right reasons—enfranchisement, not disenfranchisement. To me, that is what it is all about.

Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank the members who have contributed to this debate on the Electoral and Referendum Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, particularly the member for Banks, who was an eminent member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters for some period of time. He served on that committee well before I was elected to this place in 1996 and he has provided great input over the years on electoral matters. I thank him for his kind words and also his vote of confidence that after the next election I might be the minister who will look at the matters. I will make a couple of comments on some of the issues that he raised.

As members have pointed out, some of these provisions have been extremely well received, particularly those providing the ability for visually impaired people, for the very first time, to be able to lodge a secret ballot at a federal election. That has not happened before. Such people have been voting for many decades but have never been able to cast a secret ballot. With the introduction of this trial, they will be able to do so.

I mentioned in introducing the bill in the House that I went to Melbourne a couple of weeks ago to observe the trial for visually impaired people being undertaken by the Victorian Electoral Commission. The one I visited was conducted at Vision Australia in Melbourne, and the feedback from blind and visually impaired people was very positive. This was their first experience of it. In fact, there was also anecdotal evidence that some people have never been on the roll because of the fact that they would not be able to cast a secret ballot. The fact that there was a trial encouraged them to enrol for the first time. That is all good because that is enfranchising people further, which is very positive.

The member for Banks raised the issue of the number of locations. It is technically quite difficult to put this in place, as is the resources aspect of it, so we believe that 30 was probably quite an extensive network of locations. It is not known exactly how many people would avail themselves of it. We have some idea of the numbers of people who are either blind or visually impaired who could use it, but it is not known how many will. We may get some idea of that when we have the final figures—which I have not received yet—for how many used it in the Victorian state election recently. But it was felt that because of the challenges involved in putting this together we should start with this sort of number, and 30 will ensure that we get reasonable coverage. We are working very closely with organisations like Vision Australia to ensure that the locations that we choose are known to people with that sort of disability so that we can maximise their use. If the trial proves to be very successful, we would be looking at expanding the number.

The other aspect of the electronic voting is with respect to Defence Force personnel overseas. As I indicated in my introduction speech to the bill, we estimated that something in the order of a third of Defence personnel who were deployed overseas missed out on voting in 2004. That is about 1,500 people; there are in the order of 4½ thousand Defence personnel deployed. There are two aspects within this bill that address that. There is not only the trial of electronic voting, which will be done on the Defence secure network. That in itself is not an easy task either, but I am very encouraged by the cooperation that we are getting from Defence—from the secretary of the department and the Chief of the Defence Force right through—to put that in place. But it does pose a few technical difficulties, which we are quite confident that we can solve. That is a significant number of personnel. That was the first thing we have done to address that problem.

The other aspect in this bill is automatic postal votes for people deployed overseas. That cuts out just one aspect of the mail going backwards and forwards; they will not have to make an application if they are listed as automatic postal voters while they are deployed overseas. They will have a choice under this bill to either vote as a postal voter, if they can get it all happening in time, or use electronic voting. I will be very keen to see this particular trial and, once again, if that is successful, we would be looking in subsequent elections to expand that to other personnel stationed outside of Australia. The obvious ones are places like the Antarctic, which was raised in the joint standing committee’s report.

I will be keeping an eye on the other matters that the member for Banks raised, and I am very happy to have a look at the aspects that he mentioned about increasing red tape and perhaps some of the Langer amendments. I am more than happy to have a look at that. I was the chair of the joint standing committee when the problem of Mr Langer first arose, so I am more than happy to have a look at that as well. If the changes that have taken place have caused greater concern than the original concern, I would be very pleased to look at that and also the aspect of privacy of envelopes. That is an issue that has been debated quite a bit—about how we can get all of that sort of thing right.

The 6 pm cut-off on the Thursday was something that was really pushed to me by the AEC because of some of the difficulties that they have in doing all those things in the last few days. The reason we have put this in is that we are concerned that quite a number of people miss out on voting because they think that they have made an application in time but the ballot paper does not come back in time, because they have left it too late, and they then do not make other arrangements. The provision within the bill is that, for any that are received after that 6 pm on the Thursday before polling day, the AEC—and the member for Banks acknowledged what a brilliant organisation they are and how well they work—will be doing all they possibly can to contact the people whose applications arrive after that date to try and work out a way in which they can have an alternative vote.

Those people can perhaps go to a pre poll on the Friday, if they have put in a postal vote application because they are not going to be there on the Saturday. Perhaps they can get to a pre poll on the Friday or at least make other arrangements for the Saturday. In discussions with the AEC there was concern that people just assumed that they were going to have it all done in time but ultimately missed out on voting as a result of the enrolment arriving too late for the AEC to process. The AEC needs time to get the ballot paper back to those people so that they can then post it and have it postmarked in time to be an eligible vote.

I think that covers the main provisions of this bill. There were aspects to do with defamation which are just legal things, but I do not need to go back through those because I detailed them in the introduction to my bill. I thank the members who have participated in the debate. I thank the opposition for their support of this bill as a non-controversial bill, therefore allowing it to go swiftly through the parliament. I should also comment that one of the other aspects of this bill was proof of identity and the change that we are making there to make a passport for people overseas to be the first tier. The member for Banks might also be interested to know that the AEC and my office have been working closely with the states to have the proof of identity regulations introduced.

The New South Wales Premier requested that we hold off the formulation of these regulations until after the New South Wales election, as he was concerned about new regulations starting at the time that people are thinking about making sure they are on the roll correctly, leading up to the New South Wales election. He was concerned about inconsistency between documents and things like that. Our original intention was to have the regulations in in January, but I have agreed to Morris Iemma’s request that we leave it till after the New South Wales elections. We are putting everything in place such that the regulations will come into force in April, which I think makes a lot of sense. We do not want to cause confusion for the New South Wales government. However, I hope that we have that full cooperation subsequent to the election so that the arrangements can be quickly put in place and all the necessary documentation and new forms be finalised well ahead of a federal election, which will be due, presumably, later next year.

I appreciate the cooperation that, hopefully, we will be getting from all the state governments in finalising that matter. We want to have a continuation of the one roll and the one type of form between the states. There is enough confusion for people as it is, unfortunately, between state and federal elections because of some states having optional preferential voting. It is a cause of a lot of informality of the vote because people think that at a federal election they can just vote 1, as they can in some of the state elections. There are other states that are still fully preferential. Let us try to keep everything else as consistent as we possibly can without causing further confusion. I am pleased to finalise the debate on this bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Order that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.