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

I regret to advise the House that as of 2006 only 48 per cent of all 18-year-olds were enrolled to vote. Of the people in that age bracket, some 260,000, the AEC has only 126,000 enrolments—that is, 134,000 18-year-olds would not have been enrolled to vote if we had had the federal election last year. With state elections in Victoria and New South Wales we will see some young people being picked up by the AEC and a slight improvement in the numbers enrolled. The figure that was cited to me by one of the very capable representatives from the Electoral Commission, Mr Pickering, was that after the federal elections in December 2004 only 68 per cent of 18-year-olds were enrolled to vote and that figure had dropped to 48 per cent by 2006. He was expecting that it would once again rise to a figure like 68 per cent, but that still leaves an enormous number of people off the electoral roll, particularly in the younger age group.

As alarming is the fact that 17 per cent of all 21- to 25-year-olds were not on the electoral roll as of 2006. As at December 2004, 82 per cent of 19-year-olds were on the roll after the election, but only 66 per cent were on it last year. For 25-year-olds the figure was 85 per cent after the election; it is now 79 per cent. It is therefore clear that a vast number of young people all across Australia are not enrolled and will not be participating in the next federal election. I estimate that if you added all of those figures together you would have nearly half a million young people not on the electoral roll. These are very alarming figures.

There are many ways of approaching this. One is to say that it is an ongoing problem, increasing over time, that we have to deal with using long-term solutions. I know that people at the Electoral Commission are planning to do something all around Australia, which I commend them for, and that is to take addresses where there were previously enrolled voters and physically doorknock them. This is a vast expense to the taxpayer but it is something that is really worth while. It shows the seriousness of the Electoral Commission in dealing with the matter of young people being enrolled to vote.

One of the long-term ways of handling this would be for Australia to move, like other countries have, to a fixed election period. People would know when the election was coming and they or the AEC could get themselves on the roll. I favour the great plan of the former Labor Prime Minister and visionary, Mr Gough Whitlam, that we move to a fixed four-year term. I think that would provide more stable government for Australia. Both political parties could support that. It would also have the democratic effect, in a compulsory voting system, of allowing people—especially the missing 500,000 young people—to get onto the electoral roll.

I have to end this speech by pointing to the cynicism of the government. While the Electoral Commission is working overtime to get these people on the electoral roll, particularly the 500,000 missing young Australians, the government has come up with a plan, which we all know about, to close the electoral roll for young people, first-time voters, on the day that the election is announced. We know that this will be a disaster. Its motivation is not based on any fact of electoral integrity. There have been 72 proven cases of electoral fraud over six elections, where 72 million Australians voted. It is one per million. Therefore there is no serious threat to electoral integrity here, yet 80,000 young Australians who would have been able to use the week of grace that they have been given in every previous election from the early eighties to now will now be disenfranchised. I call on the government to, even at this stage, revise its ridiculous legislation that will disenfranchise young people. (Time expired)