Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In standing to speak briefly on matters relating to the committee’s report, I offer the chamber the apologies of my colleague, Mr Danby, the member for Melbourne Ports. He would have liked to have spoken on this report, being a member of the committee, but, as we all know, from time to time there are conflicting responsibilities and so he is not able to be with us here today.

It is now fairly common knowledge that the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has not supported the continuation of the trial of electronic voting that was introduced as a consequence of the report of the committee in response to matters raised after the 2004 federal election. That does not mean that the idea of electronic voting for either ADF personnel or vision impaired people is a bad idea. What it really means is that this was not the method that is going to be the solution to the main problem. The main problem I believe was the rate at which people in those two groups have been able to exercise their franchise to vote. Put very simply: this system was too clunky and too expensive.

At the outset I acknowledge the disappointment of the vision impaired community. For the first time, some of them were able to exercise a secret vote if they had access to the polling booths where this trial was conducted. The electronic-voting provisions for vision impaired people could not be extended to all vision impaired people in the country and, as both the chairman and the deputy chairman indicated when the report was introduced into the House of Representatives chamber, the cost was somewhat prohibitive, at $2,500 per vote cast.

It is important to note that this report has not been able to recommend an alternative method of voting for vision impaired people beyond that which existed prior to this trial. Despite the committee’s rejection of the trial for ADF personnel, we were able to make a recommendation for a change to the electoral act and a recommendation relating to an administrative matter within the military to establish a process for voting that satisfies both the needs and the situational circumstances that ADF personnel sometimes find themselves in as well as the needs of the AEC. That system should ensure a greater participation rate of ADF personnel in voting. At this time we have not been able to make similar recommendations in regard to voting for vision impaired people.

Anybody who has been following the public hearings of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters will have noticed that quite a deal of attention has been paid to electronic voting in general, and we discussed a number of issues at our most recent hearings. Electronic voting is not new. It has been used quite recently in relation to the primary voting for the US presidential election. There are many systems available. We are moving towards a situation where the community can trust that new systems are able to deliver a proper result, as is the case with the transparent methods of voting we currently use. Despite the claim that was made by the deputy chair of the committee, Mr Morrison, I am not necessarily conservative in these matters. I believe that we can move quite quickly with electronic transactions in relation to our franchise to vote simply by adopting a model similar to that used by banks.

I jealously guard my right to vote and my right to vote for my chosen candidate on every occasion—and my chosen candidate on every occasion would be no secret to most people. Some people like to be a little bit coy about who they vote for, but I am quite happy to admit it. I also guard my finances, yet I trust my finances to electronic banking. One of the reasons I do that is that it is very difficult to find the time in this job to go down to a bank to conduct transactions. I believe that over time we will gradually be able to move to a fully electronic voting system, similar to the system used for electronic banking. The system I use with my bank—and I will not give them an ad—is called NetBank. They provide me with an electronic account number that is attached to my bank account. I determine a password and I have to provide them with the answers to two questions as a further check that I or somebody to whom I have entrusted my information are the only people accessing the account. I think a similar system could work with the AEC.

Hopefully we as a committee will move to make some recommendations with regard to one of the issues that confront us generally with people and their voting franchise, and that is making a change of address to your enrolment details. Apparently anybody who makes even a very small change to their enrolment details has to fill out the entire form, which is in itself a daunting form. If it can be done online we could ultimately arrive through that to a system whereby people can make an application for a postal ballot online. From that, we can arrange to arrive at a situation where that ballot paper will be issued online. I think ultimately we will be able to arrive at a situation where the electronic system is trusted to an extent that people will be able to vote online. I think that will enhance people’s access to their voting rights even more.

The number of articles that have been appearing over recent years in newspapers, in magazines or on those television shows that follow the news—I cannot give them any title other than that, to be honest—about the uptake of the internet by elderly Australians is simply because their grandchildren are teaching them how to use it as a means to keep in contact. I think we are moving to a situation in this country where computer literacy is growing in all areas, particularly amongst the young, who are the least likely to be involved in the electoral process at the moment. My understanding from some evidence we were given in public hearings a few days ago is that only four in every five people aged between 18 and 24 are on the roll. Twenty per cent of young, new voters are not engaging with the system at this point. I believe that is the case.

I also know that people with vision impairment are able to use and access their own computers using audio, voice technology and special keys. I think that if we can develop electronic transactioning with the Australian Electoral Commission along the lines of developing and building trust in that system amongst voters then we can get to a situation where a great deal of what we do in the process of conducting elections can happen online. For those of us who are considered to be practitioners, that does raise a particularly interesting point: how do we communicate with people who are going to vote? How do we place in the hands of a voter the information that we would like them to have before they make that decision? In the same way that those who seek to break the law seem to get hold of technology a lot quicker than those who seek to uphold the law, once technology changes are taking place in relation to people’s interaction with the electoral system, my political party and the political party of those sitting opposite will move very quickly to ensure that we are able to have those interactions that we believe we need with voters in order to have them exercise their vote in a way that we would like them to. They may not particularly be able to be encouraged to do that, but we have changes of government in this country and that clearly points to the fact that people are able to respond to the arguments that we make from time to time.

As a member of the committee, it is unfortunate that as a consequence of the practical trial that was run in the 2007 election it has been determined that a recommendation will be made to government that that trial not be continued. That does not rule out trials of another nature at another time or that the government will pick up the recommendation. The government, in making its decision, will be mindful of what the committee has said about the trial.

The report also encourages a continuous effort by the AEC to look at better ways to provide these opportunities, particularly for people with vision impairment. While we have made recommendations about the way in which the electronic-voting trial went for Australian Defence Force personnel serving overseas and have recommended some changes based on advice given to us by the AEC and the ADF, we have not had any advice from military personnel who availed themselves of the system as to how they felt it worked. Essentially, it was again too expensive and too clunky, particularly for the military, to operate.

In closing, I thank all the members that I served with on the committee—the senators as well as the members of the House of Representatives. I particularly acknowledge the work of the committee staff, the secretary, Stephen Boyd; the inquiry secretary, Kai Swoboda; Terry Rushton, who is a great help with information of a technical nature; and administrative officers Renee Van Der Hoek and Natasha Petrovic. These people have served our committee well in the course of this inquiry and with the couple of small interim reports that we have released. I am sure that they will continue to provide us with excellent service as we move towards developing the principal report, which is not that far away.

Debate (on motion by Mr Broadbent) adjourned.