Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The four electoral amendment bills before the House today, theElectoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, theElectoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and theElectoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010, represent a mix. They are mostly good measures but they do include some very bad measures. The coalition welcomes the decision of the government to not proceed with its original Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010. It was disappointing to see that the government had broken with tradition and had included both controversial and non-controversial amendments in the same bill. Under the previous government there were always two bills which came out of the JSCEM report into the previous election—a non-controversial one for machinery provisions and a controversial one for policy changes. I am happy to see that the government now, albeit tacitly, admits its original error and we will now be dealing with these matters as has been done in the past.

I will go first to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010. This bill represents schedules 1 and 2 of the original close of rolls bill. The coalition will be opposing this new bill. I do not wish to dwell too long on this bill, as the reasons for our opposition to these measures have been laid out previously, both by speakers in this House at the time of the consideration of the original bill as well as in the coalition members’ dissenting report on the inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

On the close of rolls, the fundamental point is this: the closure of the rolls seven days after the issue of a writ is a significant threat to the integrity of the electoral roll. The previous coalition government, in line with longstanding policy, moved to protect the integrity of the roll and prevent fraudulent enrolments by reducing the time period between the calling of an election and the close of the rolls. Closing the roll at 8 pm on the day the writs for the election are issued—which is usually three or four days after the election is called—for people enrolling for the first time and people re-enrolling after being removed from the roll currently gives the Electoral Commission an extra seven days to verify new enrolments and an extra four days to verify changes of address. At a time when the Electoral Commission is processing a large number of enrolments, hundreds of thousands in some cases, these changes have greatly assisted the commission in identifying and discounting fraudulent enrolments.

Under the old scheme, to which Labor want to return, more than 520,000 changes to enrolment or new enrolments were submitted to the Australian Electoral Commission in the seven-day period before the close of rolls during the 2004 federal election. Bear in mind that it was after the 2004 election but before the 2007 election that the previous government made this fundamental change—that the roll close on the day the writs for the election are issued—because of these 520,000 changes to enrolment or new enrolments being submitted to the Electoral Commission, giving them very little time to deal with them. The proposed time frame of seven days will again make it virtually impossible to exclude fraudulent votes from the count. The commission simply does not have the resources, whether people or time, to go through such large numbers.

Furthermore, official AEC figures show that under the coalition’s rules the number of people missing the close of rolls deadline in 2007 was 100,370, compared to 168,394 in 2004. In short, our scheme, the scheme of the previous government, was 40 per cent more effective than the scheme Labor is now trying to reimpose on the roll. The combination of a very effective campaign run by the Australian Electoral Commission before the 2007 election to encourage enrolment, combined with the fact that failure to enrol prior to the election being called would result in not being able to vote, had a very positive effect on encouraging enrolment.

Despite that difference in outcomes between 2004, under the system that the Labor Party is now seeking to reimpose, and 2007, we are now going back to a system which will be unable to be properly monitored and processed by the Electoral Commission, open up opportunities for fraudulent activity and work against the interests of democracy and the interests that all of us in this House should be aiming for. The 2007 outcome highlighted the virtue of an enforcement incentive over the liberalised approach that we are seeing in this bill.

The coalition consider that the existing arrangements ensure that the electoral roll contains a high degree of accuracy and integrity, and we are concerned that the extra time period allows for a return to a system which permits calculated, fraudulent enrolments to take place. The coalition also believe that a return to the previous system of seven days will serve to discourage citizens from making or maintaining their enrolment in the ordinary course of the year, as they will have the opportunity to delay such action until an election is called. The numbers support this: as I said, in 2007, 100,000 people had to be processed; in 2004, under the system that the Labor Party is seeking to re-impose, it was 168,000—a level which the commission would be unable to process, given the sheer weight of numbers and the resources that the commission has at its disposal.

On the question of production of proof of identity for provisional voters, the previous government, in line with longstanding policy, moved to prevent fraudulent voting by people impersonating other voters, by requiring that people who claim a provisional vote at an election produce evidence of their true identity and their enrolled address, either on polling day or in the week following polling day. It is simply a common-sense and sensible measure and not an unduly difficult requirement to place on people. The coalition is opposed to any weakening of the proof of identity provisions in relation to provisional voting on the grounds that it removes an important deterrent to citizens seeking to engage in multiple voting. According to the Electoral Commission, approximately 75 per cent of provisional voters showed evidence of identity when voting. Of the 33,900 provisional voters who failed to provide such identification on polling day, only one in five subsequently provided proof of identity by the cut-off date—that is, the close of business on the following Friday.

The government has argued, without any supporting evidence, that the attrition rate is a result of voter apathy as a result of the election result being known. This conclusion is difficult to reconcile with the fact that in the electorates of Swan and McEwen, for example, there were 260 and 188 provisional voters respectively who failed to provide their proof of identity in the week following the poll and each seat, as we all know, hung in the balance throughout the following week and well beyond. So here we have across two seats that went to the wire nearly 400 voters who the Labor Party asserts were just apathetic or knew the result of the election so did not turn up and provide proof of their identity.

The argument is made that the validity of these voters can be determined by comparing signatures; however, such a process would fail to provide any deterrent or consequence for voters who fail to meet their obligations to maintain their enrolment under the act. Such failures should trigger a requirement for a more stringent process. Any proposal to weaken the rules in relation to proof of identity for provisional votes should be opposed because it makes voting fraud easier.

The provisions that are in place now and are being removed are not punitive or unduly difficult for people to comply with. It is a reasonable request. It is common sense. You have to ask why the Labor Party are doing what they are doing on these two essentially common-sense provisions. It will certainly make it more difficult for the Electoral Commission. We had a better result under the previous government’s provisions in the 2007 election. It makes no sense that the government would move to make these changes other than to provide opportunities for people to run fast and loose with our electoral system. For these reasons, the coalition cannot support these two measures and will be opposing the close of rolls bill.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010 will be supported by the coalition. At the current time pre-poll votes are treated as declaration votes and must go through an administrative checking procedure in the week following polling day. This creates a significant and unnecessary administrative burden on the Electoral Commission. The government’s proposal seeks to treat these votes as ordinary votes, although electors who wish to cast them will still be required to fill out and sign a declaration asserting their need to cast such a vote. The benefit will be that these pre-poll votes will now be able to be counted on the night, leading to an earlier and more accurate result.

This is a sensible and significant provision, given that I have observed over the last few elections a very significant increase in pre-poll votes. I know in my seat that the combined pre-poll and postal votes went from around 14 per cent in 2004 to 20 per cent in 2007. I think that is probably true across many electorates too. If these votes are treated as ordinary votes—and they can be; there is no threat to the integrity of the system—we will get a far clearer idea in many seats on election night because they can be counted on election night.

There is an administrative amendment that allows the Electoral Commission to transfer workload relating to the processing of enrolments between different divisional returning offices. There are strong efficiency arguments to be made in allowing divisional returning offices to farm out work to other offices, particularly when there are high levels of demand or if sickness or leave requirements make a divisional returning office short-staffed for a period and unable to manage their expected workload. We support this measure.

The coalition supports the change to electronic updating of voter records. Increasingly, transactions are being done online for the sake of convenience and speed. By allowing individuals already on the roll to maintain their own records, you effectively cut out the double or triple handling of enrolment forms. The coalition note there is no provision for new enrolments to be lodged electronically. We support this restriction and reconfirm our strong view that all first-time enrolments should be done in hard copy.

On the question of single party nomination per seat: the coalition can see no reason for a party to run multiple candidates in a single seat other than as a campaigning tactic to try to push up the informal vote. As such, we support this measure.

Prior to the 2007 election the coalition moved to give blind and vision impaired people the opportunity for the first time in their lives to cast a secret ballot. Labor discontinued this on the basis that it was too expensive. This returned blind and vision impaired people back to the unhappy situation of having to cast a non-secret vote. The coalition supports this measure on the understanding that this is only an interim arrangement ahead of further consultations which will be held with various community organisations. As such, I can advise the House that the coalition will be supporting this bill without amendment.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010 will be supported by the coalition, but we are concerned that the response does not match the crime. We are reviewing provisions in that regard. It is notable that this bill arises because of a deliberate scam by the ALP in the 2010 South Australian state election. The South Australian ALP handed out how-to-vote cards that appeared to be official Family First how-to-vote cards, but the preferencing order favoured the ALP candidates. Labor operatives were brought in, some even from interstate, to wear T-shirts that appeared to indicate that they were Family First booth workers and to hand out the bogus how-to-vote cards.

This is not a one-off, sadly. It is a deliberate scam that the ALP have used before, both in New South Wales and Queensland, which was legitimised by the infamous cases of Webster v Deahm in 1993 and in Carroll v Electoral Commission of Queensland in 1998. It is nice to see that after only some 17 years Labor have now admitted that the decisions in those cases were morally wrong and that they are now seeking to correct the judicial errors. Of course it has taken the shame and the disgust of the community over the actions in the Adelaide election for Labor to move on this matter.

This bill would require all how-to-vote cards to place, in a prominent size, the name and party of the authoriser or face a fine of $1,100. A false authorisation would incur a similar fine. Given the hullabaloo which the Labor members on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters made about the unauthorised pamphlets, it seems a rather light penalty, and an insipid penalty if you like, for such a serious offence against the Electoral Act. There is no doubt that many operatives in the Labor Party would be willing to forgo $1,000 to ensure the victory of the local ALP candidate through false preferencing arrangements. After that election in South Australia the veteran Flinders University political scientist, Professor Dean Jaensch, said it was:

… the worst example of its kind I’ve seen in a 40-year career …

He went on to say:

It is deceitful, deliberately designed to mislead voters … No doubt at all.

On the primaries and two-party preferred, more people voted Liberal than Labor in that election, but Labor won more than the 50 per cent of seats they needed to form government through the vagaries of electoral boundaries and by using trickery and fraud. Three key marginals were so tight in that election that Labor needed them all. The material was deceptive and misleading and plainly showed nothing but contempt for the political process.

It is not drawing a long bow to suggest that the current government in South Australia is illegitimate because of the way in which this fraudulent activity influenced votes across three or four marginal seats. The government has been elected on a fraud. This was the case of an election that was rorted. It is the shameless thieving of an election result. You would think—on the basis of such a consequence of the democratic process being so compromised and being put under attack in this way—that the government, who have run 100 miles from this action but have condoned it not only in South Australia but in other elections in other places, would see the need for a penalty which met the crime. As I said earlier we will be looking to see what we can do to address that matter and we would hope to get the cooperation of those opposite. The penalty of 50 or more units might be far more appropriate especially in the instance of deliberate false authorisation details.

The coalition strongly supports the principle of the how-to-vote bill. We have not engaged in such activities but we have overwhelmingly been the victims of such underhand tactics by the ALP. We support the government’s belated attempt to place a legislative prohibition on its own party’s rorting. I will seek at a later stage to introduce some amendments which look at the severity of the penalty that will be imposed for any return of such action by any party.

Finally the fourth bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010, purports to be a series of uncontroversial minor amendments arising out of the unanimous recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2007 federal election. In the main this bill is acceptable but there are some significant problems which need to be addressed.

The first measure moves the Australian Electoral Commission towards a more digital system of records management. We will be supporting this measure. The second measure changes the evidence of identity rules for enrolments. It removes the mandatory need for a witness to attest to the identity of a person and reduces the acceptable identity documentation to a smaller field of items. We will be supporting this measure. The third measure allows for provisional enrolment at age 16 as opposed to the current age of 17. We support this move by the Australian Electoral Commission to get a more accurate electoral roll and, as a consequence, we will support this measure. The fourth measure moves the Australian Electoral Commission towards a more digital system of electoral roll management, distribution and use on polling day. It also allows for a more flexible production of ballot papers with appropriate security devices on polling day. We will be supporting this measure. The fifth measure, standardised mobile polling booth practices, is a sensible and welcome measure and we will be supporting it.

The sixth measure has both controversial and non-controversial aspects to it. The non-controversial aspects include the removal of the need for a witness in a request for a postal vote and allow the signature date as opposed to the postmark date on the postal vote to be accepted. The first point makes it easier for single people to request a postal vote. The second point goes a long way to addressing the very legitimate concerns that postal voters in rural and regional Australia have had given that they do not have every-day postal services. Of course we will be supporting these sensible measures.

However, Labor has added two controversial aspects. The aspects were not considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and we are disappointed that Labor has attempted to sneak these provisions through in an otherwise non-controversial bill. One proposal is that postal vote applications could only be returned directly to the AEC and the other is that there would be a prohibition on the attachment of extra material to a postal vote application form. The coalition can see no valid reason for the introduction of these measures by the government and strongly suspects that this has been done in a cynical attempt to undermine the extremely successful postal voting processes of the coalition parties. Even a simple reading of the voter returns shows that the coalition consistently polls higher with postal votes than with any other type of declaration vote.

The Labor government is seeking to make substantial changes to a system of voting where the coalition does well, despite there being absolutely no evidence to support any need for such a change. There has been no argument which supports the move by the Labor Party. This is a totally cynical move and the motives of the Labor Party on these aspects of the bills need to be very seriously questioned. We will be strongly opposing those parts of the PVA measures which appear to have no merit other than that of being an attack on the coalition. This bill is not intended to be a bill used for the purposes of improving the electoral prospects of either side of the House. This bill is intended to improve the democratic process, yet it is very clear that without any arguments, good or bad, being advanced in support of it, the Labor government has sought to sneak this measure in without putting it before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. It is a pathetic attempt to overcome an advantage.

This process works well. People regard highly the opportunity to have their postal vote application assisted by this process. Both parties inform their electorates about positions of the party and the process that people need to go through. It has been a very satisfactory measure. There has been no community discontent with this measure. There have been no arguments advanced. It is a purely cynical measure by the ALP to remove a practice which we exercise more effectively than the Labor Party.

The seventh measure modernises the provisions for homeless voters. In principle, the measures were supported by the coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. However, the coalition has identified concerns about item 9. Item 9 seeks to repeal section 96(9)(a) of the act. This section states:

(9) A person ceases to be entitled to be treated as an itinerant elector under this section if:

(a) while the person is being so treated, a general election is held at which the person neither votes nor applies for a postal vote …

The implication that flows from such an amendment is that there is no practical provision to ever remove an itinerant elector from the roll. It is axiomatic that you cannot do a habitation review on a homeless person. Unless the itinerant collector is unusually diligent in keeping their enrolment details up to date, the only way to determine if they have left the electorate or died is if they do not show up on polling day.

This proposed amendment from Labor is an open invitation to abuse the integrity of the electoral roll. Once a person gets on the roll as an itinerant elector in a particular division, they will never leave the roll for that particular division, irrespective of their true place of residence. The opportunity for organising a campaign of fraudulent voting is obvious and the Australian Electoral Commission could never check the bona fides of any potential roll rorter. Thus the proposed repeal of 96(9)(a) is bad policy because it fundamentally weakens the integrity of the electoral roll. Again, under several provisions in this series of bills, we see the integrity of the electoral roll being fundamentally weakened. It is unacceptable and the government has provided no alternative mechanism for roll-cleansing of itinerant voters. I foreshadow moving amendments to schedules 6 and 7 in the detailed debate.

The eighth measure broadens and standardises the reasons for claiming a prepoll vote. In many ways this legitimises what has been existing practice in many DROs. It is well-known both to officers and prepoll booth workers that many people come in to prepoll because they will be out of the electorate or otherwise engaged on polling day. This measure is a sensible change to make voting easier for those who simply prefer to lodge an early ballot and we will be supporting this measure. The ninth measure is simply a series of minor technical amendments. These do not change policy in any way and, despite not having gone through the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, will have the support of the coalition.

In summary, we welcome the majority of the measures in this bill, but we will be seeking to make a number of important amendments to address changes which would eat at the heart of the integrity of our electoral process. We are concerned that a series of important bills, which should have the mutual support of both sides of the House, now present three changes which will fundamentally attack the integrity of the electoral process and one change which is simply a change out of spite—a change to remove a process which the coalition is currently more effective at using. It is quite unfortunate, but we will be seeking to make changes to some of these bills. The remaining measures will be supported, as I have indicated throughout my address.

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

I am very pleased to speak on this suite of four bills, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010, amending the electoral and referendum processes in this country. I say at the outset that I have some experience in elections. I believe I have now participated in 27 in total, seven as a campaign director and five as a candidate, with my sixth as a candidate coming up. I strongly support the electoral system that we have in Australia and I have been pleased to be able to do that as a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

We probably have the best electoral system in the world, and no lesser authority than a former US Secretary of State said so recently. We have a representative democracy. We have adult suffrage. We have equal suffrage. We also have compulsory voting, which is often a point of contention with some but I would contend that compulsory voting compels the government to give every citizen an opportunity to vote. Some of the amendments in this suite of bills actually go toward giving people the opportunity to vote, whereas obstacles have been put in the way of people doing that in the past. We also have—I am not sure that it is unique anymore—a wonderful system for the distribution of preferences. Elsewhere in the world this system is called the ‘Australian ballot’, because we invented it here. We can, if we will, also call it preferential voting, but the rest of the world calls it the Australian ballot—except in the United Kingdom, which is about to have a referendum on adopting the Australian system. They are calling it the ‘single transferable vote’  because, heaven forbid, that Westminster, which gave the world democracy, should import something from one of the colonies. I wish them well with that, and maybe they can pick up a few more of our advancements such as voting on the weekend so that workers do not have to get their boss’s permission to go out to vote. Ours is, without question, one of the best participatory democracies of a representative nature in the world.

There are a number of things that I would like to see happen in the future, some of which are non-controversial and others controversial, as the member for Goldstein would say. I am more than anxious to see a great deal more of our transactions, as voters, with the Australian Electoral Commission conducted online. It is quite clear now that most of us in this place, I am sure, would be using online banking. It is very difficult sometimes to get to a bank with our schedules, but we can do that with great safety and great security these days by banking online. I am sure a bank-like system could be adopted by the Australian Electoral Commission to enable voters to interact with the commission online.

I also dream of a day in the future when Indigenous Australians are able to participate in our electoral system in a manner similar to that enjoyed by Maori people in New Zealand. They are provided a separate Maori roll and people identifying as Maori are able to be on that roll or the general roll. There is a quota for Maori members elected to the New Zealand parliament. I think there are five Maori seats covering the whole country. This, of course, gives the indigenous people of New Zealand the enormous benefit of having seats at the table where the main decisions are made.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010 attracted the most opposition from the member for Goldstein in his presentation when he spoke before me on the suite of bills. In Australia today, we have an enormously mobile population. In my area, the population is mobile within the electorate as well as across electorates. In the Australian context, we do not have a 19-day campaign with a fixed election date, such as they have in New South Wales where the rolls are closed on the day that the writs are issued. We have an expectation, certainly amongst the community, that an election will be held this year but there is no certainty of that occurring because the election does not have to be held until 16 April 2011.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you telling us something?

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

I am not telling you anything, member for Fisher. The idea that the rolls should close when the writs are issued has an interesting side to it. The member for Goldstein said that this is a bad measure. If it is such a measure why did the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, wait five or six days after telling everyone when the election was going to be before issuing the writs? He did not announce the election and issue the writs immediately. He waited for a period of time. Any future government or future Prime Minister would also have the same facility available to them. Whether or not seven days is written into law, a simple administrative act by the government of the day can ensure that what is regarded as fair is put into place. So I question the suggestion by the member for Goldstein that the opposition’s proposals were 40 per cent more effective. I do not think he can draw that from the evidence that was given to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. It is not my recollection of the evidence given by the AEC that they believed that this measure provided an opportunity for identity fraud. In the past, people have had a week to correct their enrolment details. I doubt that that has acted as a discouragement in any way to people wanting to update their enrolments. In fact, it is more likely that in order to change the simplest detail, people have had to fill out the entire enrolment form again. This issue is being addressed in the bills before us.

The member for Goldstein was also very critical of the idea of people turning up to cast a provisional vote without having to provide proof of identity. We say that the AEC ought to be able to revert to the old system of checking the signature of a person casting a provisional vote against their previously held signatures. Whether or not we are fans of the genre, the forensic police programs that we view on television show us just how quickly material of that nature can be checked and sorted. The main point I want to make about this is that of course nobody attends a polling booth to make a provisional vote; they attend a polling booth to make an ordinary vote. They cannot make an ordinary vote when, for one reason or another, their enrolment details are not held and, hence, they need to make a provisional vote. I support—and I am not necessarily alone in this, but I have not had a great deal of support—each and every Australian voter being given a voter card, an electronic swipe card. Let us move towards using the technology. Every person’s right to vote would be directed by that card. However, that seems to be a little beyond what the people of Australia are looking for at the moment.

The evidence of identity for provisional voting and close of roll provisions in this legislation are going to be opposed by the coalition. The coalition will thereby be keeping in place barriers against people voting. One of the hallmarks of our voting system should be that people are able to vote with great ease. I note with a degree of pleasure that the majority of the measures in the modernisation bill are to be supported by the coalition. I think it is important, at a time when there are so many debates about the voting age, that we not lose sight of the issue at hand. People being able to place their name on the electoral roll at the age of 16 and vote in elections that occur no less than two years after they turn 16 will hopefully ensure that many more young people take an interest in the national affairs of the country.

The reduction in the material required as evidence of identity upon enrolment and upon change of name is a sensible move. People’s identities have to be proven in the first instance anyway, and I can think of no reason why people should have to continue, throughout their lives, to prove that they are who they say they are time and time again.

I am very pleased by the changes in the legislation to the postal voting system. I know, from the hearings of the Joint Committee on Electoral Matters, that the member for Maranoa was very keen to see some serious changes there—particularly because of the remoteness of a number of his constituents. I note that a number of members of my extended family are constituents in electorates just like Maranoa.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And they probably vote for our side of politics.

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

There is indeed a chance that they do. I think it is unsafe for the law to rely on the postmark of an envelope in deciding whether or not a ballot has been cast in time. The committee had a rather lengthy session with officers from Australia Post, who agreed that a letter posted in western Queensland may not be postmarked until it reaches Rockhampton a number of days later. That can cause valid votes to be excluded from the count, and that is a disenfranchisement of those voters. As I said earlier, many of the provisions in the legislation are to ensure that people are given the opportunity to vote. The capacity to apply online for a postal vote is another means of ensuring that these situations do not occur. Anyone who has experience in trying to contact known supporters who are overseas when an election is sprung on us would know that getting their postal vote application back from overseas, getting the ballot paper back to them and then getting their vote back in time is often quite a trying exercise.

The mobile polling consolidation makes a great deal of sense because it places in the hands of local Electoral Commission officers the ability to determine when mobile polling will take place. That will address some anomalies in the system. One of the big problems I find is that too many government services in my area—and I am sure it is the same in everybody else’s areas—are controlled by black-and-white rules and local government services lack discretion. I am very pleased to support the fact that, in this legislation, we are giving some discretion to local offices of the AEC to make provisions according to what is going on in their local community.

In his contribution on the legislation, the member for Goldstein reserved most of his invective for the how-to-vote cards bill. Let us not beat about the bush—what occurred in South Australia has led to this. But let us not lose sight of the fact that it was not only the Labor Party that engaged in this kind of activity. Let us be quite clear about the activity that was engaged in in that election. Members of the Labor Party wore T-shirts of an unusual colour for the Labor Party, with a slogan printed on them that included the name of another party and handed out how-to-vote cards, properly authorised, that suggested how another party wanted people to vote. None of what was wrong in that circumstance is covered by this legislation.

Let us not be shy about it. The Labor Party were not the only people doing it in the South Australian election. Health Minister John Hill in the South Australian parliament the other day suggested that the Family First Party—the party who made the big song and dance about the activities of the ALP—also acted in a similar way by dressing their operatives in a T-shirt of a colour not normally associated with the Family First Party and by having slogans on those that were taken from union campaigns of recent times. I am not going to say that either of them was right or wrong, but a couple of interesting questions occur to me in all of this.

First of all, second preference cards have been around for years. As I look around the members gathered here, I suspect that I am not the only member of parliament who has used a second preference card. These usually came about when we were looking for preferences from a party who did not offer them in their how-to-vote card or who you felt might have been offering them to the wrong side. Let us use the Greens as an example. They usually started with something like, ‘If you are considering voting for the Greens, please consider giving your second preference to’—then insert the name of the major party that was distributing the card at the time.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Jon Sullivan.

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

Or indeed Peter Slipper, as I have seen. This raises the question as to who owns that second preference. Certainly the Liberal Party does not own the second preference of anybody who votes 1 for the Liberal Party, nor does the Labor Party own the second preference, or the Greens or the Family First Party. The preferences are owned by the voter and the voter is entitled to get as much encouragement as he can get to place those preferences in a manner that he or she best sees fit. Clearly the voter owns their vote. I do not want to say too much because I know that there is an inquiry coming forward. We do need to make sure that, in placing that material in people’s hands, we do not engage in deceptive practices. In relation to that, these deceptive—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Coming from the Labor Party that is a bit rich.

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

Madam, coming from you nothing would be too rich.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop interjecting

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

I am going to tell the House about the first time I met you in Western Australia. You were a senator and we were at a conference for legislative scrutiny committees. I love this story because at the time you were being touted as a potential Prime Minister. You sat down at a table with four Labor MPs from Queensland and proceeded to tell us that Bob Carr would never be Premier of New South Wales because he was not good looking enough. I have never thought of you as anything but a lightweight since then. We need to be careful that we do not create—

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Longman will address his remarks to the core of the bill before the House.

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

I am back to the bill, if you like, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not if I like; I am instructing you to do so.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And his time is almost gone.

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

The time is almost gone. I still have some white on the light. What I want to say is: we have a problem that we need to fix because it is deceptive practice. It is not fraud because it has been tested in the case of the South Australian election and found to be not contrary to the legislation. We need to fix it and make it sure. (Time expired)

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it is enormously important for all of us, regardless of where we stand politically, to support the principle of the integrity of the electoral roll so that the people of Australia, when they vote at an election and a result is declared, receive the government for which they voted. The Liberal and National parties in government and in opposition have always supported the integrity of the electoral roll. Unfortunately, until amendments were made by the Howard government, we had an electoral roll that basically was based on the honour of those people purporting to vote.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I suppose I stand before you as a person who arguably was a victim of the lack of integrity of the electoral roll in the election when I was declared to be defeated by Michael Lavarch who was elected as the member for Fisher. At that time it was reported that during the period immediately prior to the election large numbers of nom de plumes were enrolled on the electoral roll, which meant that, because these enrolments happened so late in the day, there was no chance for the Australian Electoral Commission to check those enrolments. Consequently those nom de plumes were placed on the electoral roll and those nom de plumes allegedly voted.

There was an inquiry undertaken afterwards and it appeared that, for example, on Bribie Island—an area which is now represented by the honourable member for Longman—a substantial number of residents were enrolled to vote on both sides of a street called The Esplanade. The Esplanade has people living on one side of it and on the other side is the ocean. Yet the Electoral Commission did not have the facilities to inquire as to whether nom de plumes seeking to enrol were in fact entitled to enrol. There was no requirement to provide proof that one existed and there were suggestions that prior to the election a canvass was done and large numbers of people who allegedly lived in caravan parks were also enrolled to vote even though correspondence subsequently sent to those enrolees was returned unclaimed. So we had an electoral roll based on an honour system. While it would be wonderful to have a country where everyone, regardless of his or her political allegiance, was a person of honour, it is really important that we, as members of the Australian parliament, endeavour to ensure that the Electoral Act includes provisions to guarantee—or come to as close as we can to guaranteeing—that the electoral roll on polling day is genuine and that we have in place procedures and processes which guarantee, as much as one can, that the result as declared following an election is the result for which the Australian people voted.

We are dealing today with four bills: the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010. As was indicated by the .shadow minister and by his representative in this place, the provisions in this group of bills contain ideas that are good and positive and ideas which are negative and destructive and which militate against the integrity of the electoral roll.

Let me place on the record my admiration for the local officers of the Australian Electoral Commission in my division of Fisher. Over the years I have been privileged to represent this area of the Sunshine Coast region. I must say that I have been enormously blessed with the quality of the officers of the Australian Electoral Commission who have been based in the division of Fisher. I think it is really vital that, as much as possible, the divisional returning officer is actually based in an office geographically situated within the division for which he or she is responsible.

Turning to the bills before the House, the first bill I wish to refer to is the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010. It really is the responsibility of all Australians who are eligible to vote to join the electoral roll as soon as they are legally able to do so. I think it is important that the government makes sure that people are aware of their obligations to enrol and we ought to create in Australia a culture that people do enrol as soon as they are eligible. I know that there are provisions to extend the early enrolment to those aged 16 just to make sure that they are on the electoral roll if they happen to turn 18 by the time an election is called and that is a good measure.

However, I think that it is very unfortunate that the government is trying to undo the reforms of the former Howard government. The former Howard government made sure that there was a higher level of integrity in the electoral roll because of the early closure of the electoral rolls. That should not disadvantage anyone entitled to vote if that person had in fact followed the obligations of the law—namely, that that person enrolled to vote as soon as he or she was entitled to do so. Labor wants to return to the former arrangement whereby there are huge numbers, I think half a million in the last instance in 2004, of enrolments or new enrolments in the seven-day period before the close of rolls.

Such an arrangement is a rorters dream because, even if one accepts that the Australian Electoral Commission is honest and has a high level of integrity, there is no way it has the wherewithal or the resources to inquire and guarantee that the 520,000 people who enrolled in 2004 before the close of rolls were in fact eligible to be on the roll. I understand that in that situation lots of people were written to and many of those letters came back unclaimed. So one has to put a big question mark against whether the ALP has a vested interest in rorting, whether by returning to the former system this government wants to again steal an election by not making sure that we have integrity of the electoral rolls. In fact, as the shadow minister pointed out, the scheme introduced by the former Howard government is some 40 per cent more effective than Labor’s in getting people onto the roll. We also made sure that there was a much higher level of integrity of the electoral roll, which is very much what all of us should be supporting.

It is the view of the Liberal-National opposition that, were the parliament to carry the proposal put forward by the government, it would in effect be a green light to those people who left everything until the last minute, those people who did not observe their obligation to get on the electoral roll and update their details so that when an election was called they were on the electoral roll at the correct address and were therefore able to vote. I might slightly digress at this stage without incurring your wrath, Mr Deputy Speaker, to say that I am a person who believes that in a democracy it is inappropriate for there to be compulsory voting. Although I do support the principle of compulsory enrolment to vote so that, when the election day comes along, people are able to determine whether they support one side or the other or an independent. If they feel that nobody is worthy of their vote, they ought to be able to abstain.

Australia brought in compulsory voting at a federal level in 1924. It was rushed through the parliament in just a matter of a few hours with the suggestion that the compulsory voting arrangement would bring about, as I think someone said, a wondrous new understanding of our electoral system and how we are governed, with the implication that it would remove the level of ignorance and misunderstanding that we now have. I understand that Australia is one of only two English-speaking countries which actually do have compulsory voting. I think that it is the antithesis of democracy that after the 1993 election a substantial number of people were imprisoned because they chose not to exercise their theoretical right—which is not in fact enshrined in law—to vote. In other words, these people decided that no-one was worthy of their vote and they elected to vote with their feet by not going to vote. In many cases people who did not pay their fine were actually imprisoned. In my view, that is the antithesis of democracy, because in a democracy people ought to have the right to vote or not to vote as the case may be. However, Madam Deputy Speaker, the matter of compulsory voting or otherwise is not included in this debate, so I ought not tempt your wrath by proceeding further down that particular line.

The former government required that persons who claim a provisional vote at an election be required to produce evidence of identify—in other words, evidence that they exist and also evidence of their enrolled address—either on polling day or during a period of seven days following polling day. The Liberal-National opposition is opposed to any watering down of the requirements for proof of identity in relation to provisional voting. That is on the basis that it removes one of those disincentives for people to rort the electoral system by engaging in multiple voting. When I became interested in politics, I was told that Labor Party supporters liked to vote early and often. While I know many Labor Party people, like the honourable member for Melbourne Ports, who is sitting opposite, would not support any such arrangement, I think that, regardless of whether one considers that a political party has integrity or that its supporters have integrity, we ought to have enshrined in the legislation ironclad guarantees as to the integrity of the electoral roll, the electoral system and the voting process so that we are not dependent on the goodwill of people, regardless of the party that they support, to make sure that the electoral system and elections are not rorted. I understand that it is seen in the Australian community as being highly undesirable for the proof of identity provisions to be watered down. I hope that the government provision to give a green light to rorters will in fact be rejected by the parliament.

There are matters that are supported by the Liberal-National opposition. For instance, the pre-poll votes bill will be supported by the Liberal-National opposition. Currently these votes are treated as declaration votes. It really does not make a lot of sense for this to occur. It seems to me—and I suspect other honourable members, regardless of the parties they represent, would confirm this—that as elections go on more and more voters, particularly elderly voters, seek to cast pre-poll votes. If a pre-poll vote is cast in an electorate it does make a lot of sense that the government is proposing to treat such votes as ordinary votes. That would mean that the count would be more streamlined. I cannot see that there would be any undermining of the electoral system were this to occur.

The Liberal-National opposition will also support the electronic updating of voter records. Indeed, the Liberal-National opposition will support a provision that only one nominee of each party should able to nominate in each seat. I do not agree with this provision that the opposition is supporting. I think that in a democracy if a political party wants to put up a couple of candidates, to allow the community to determine who ought to be the elected representative, then it should be a matter for the community and we as a parliament ought not be mandating against that particular requirement. The first Indigenous representative in the Queensland parliament, Eric Deeral, was elected in 1974 for the state electorate of Cook. He was one of two National Party candidates who were put up and obviously there were a multiplicity of other candidates. Through the preferential system Mr Deeral was the first Indigenous person to be elected as a member of the Queensland parliament. In the same election my former father-in-law, Max Hooper, who was previously the Independent mayor of Townsville, was one of two endorsed National Party candidates in the seat of Townsville West. The Liberal Party had a candidate, the Democratic Labor Party had a candidate and undoubtedly there were also other candidates. Through the preferential system Mr Hooper was actually elected as the member for Townsville West and subsequently served as the minister for marine services and fisheries in the National-Liberal government of Queensland.

So I do not see that there is any problem with a political party endorsing a couple of candidates. It might be that in some of these huge rural seats, where it is perhaps two or three thousand kilometres from one end of the electorate to the other, a political party, for geographic reasons, might want to put a couple of candidates up and they exchange preferences and the people determine who is actually elected. It does seem that I am very much in a minority here, because the government is putting forward a proposal that there should be a single nomination from each political party and the Liberal-National opposition appears to be supporting the government on this. I think that is regrettable. However, I suppose that there is nothing much that I as a single member am able to do about this and that, obviously, that particular proposal will pass through the parliament even if, hopefully, some of the other proposals put forward by the Rudd Labor government will not.

The member for Goldstein highlighted the important initiative of the former Howard government to give blind and vision-impaired people the opportunity to cast a secret ballot. It is a scandal that the current government—that is, the Labor Party government—has discontinued this on the basis that it was too expensive. This provision in the bill is supported by the Liberal-National opposition on the understanding that this is only an interim arrangement ahead of further consultations which will be held with various community organisations. I just think, however, that if people are disadvantaged as far as their sight is concerned they—like you and me, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird—ought to be entitled to have a secret vote.

Time is short and I am not able, therefore, to address in detail the provisions of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. That particular bill has been well covered by the honourable member for Goldstein in his contribution. It is important, however, that the shams we have seen from the Australian Labor Party in South Australia and elsewhere are brought to an end. It is important that voters are not tricked. (Time expired)

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

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010 because in my view it balances our ethical duty in a compulsory voting system to ensure the maximum number of people participate in elections and at the same time to ensure integrity of the roll. I will return in a minute to the issues of the close of the rolls under the system Australians had always experienced prior to the last election and the requirements for provisional voters. This bill also modernises enrolment processes to enable voters to update their enrolment details electronically. It allows the AEC to manage its workload more efficiently by enabling enrolment transactions to be processed outside the division for which the person is enrolling. Those two elements are very important because, to our disgrace, the number of people participating in Australian elections has fallen over successive years as we have had this continuous roll update done electronically by the use of government databases to take people off the roll. Every member of parliament knows how this works. People are continually taken off the roll, as it is the right of the Australian Electoral Commission to do that; but we do not have a system for equally seeing that people do not drop off the roll before an election when they move to another address, when many people do not return the snail mail that is mandated by black-letter law.

From my point of view this bill does two things. Firstly, it restores the close-of-the-roll period to seven days after the issue of the writ for an election. Secondly, it repeals the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity before their votes are admitted to scrutiny. As honourable members know, I have been campaigning on these issues ever since the Howard government’s regressive and undemocratic amendments to the Electoral Act were implemented five years ago. This bill implements the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in its report into the last election.

On the first point, the bill implements one of the government’s pre-election commitments to restore the close-of-the-roll periods to seven days after the issue of the writ for an election. This amendment will provide sufficient times for new voters to enrol to vote in a federal election or for existing electors to update their address details with the AEC. In a compulsory voting system, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that as many people as possible who are on our electoral roll have the opportunity to enrol. That is what we used to do with the previous system of provisional voting and the previous system of a seven-day period of grace. Particularly as it affects younger people, I think what the previous government did was disgraceful because it meant many younger people—who may not have politics at the front of their minds when they are 17, 18 or 19 but who may be responsible enough when an election comes upon them to want to put themselves on the electoral roll—were systematically excluded by the previous government at the last election. These are the kinds of voters we should be least excluding. We should be encouraging young people to participate in the democratic system in Australia because—eventually even the Liberal Party will discover this—doing such things deauthorises democracy. We in opposition opposed the Howard government’s decision to restrict the time available to enrol when the election was called, and we said we would repeal this provision when we returned to government.

The second part of the bill repeals the requirement of provisional voters to provide evidence of identity. The Electoral Act currently specifies that a person who needs to cast a provisional vote at a polling place on polling day must provide officials with evidence of identity at the time of voting or by the first Friday following the polling date. If the elector does not provide evidence of such identity by the deadline, his or her votes will be not counted. What used to happen, by which each government was elected since 1996, was that responsible polling officials were able to get someone who had a change of address within that electorate to cast a vote, their vote would be put in an envelope, they would sign the outside of it, this would be compared by responsible electoral officials with their signature back at the electoral office and, if the signatures matched, they would be included. Again, the ethos was to include as many people as possible who had legitimately tried to exercise their vote. In a compulsory voting system, in a democracy like Australia, this should be our aim. The AEC estimated that over 27,000 provisional voters were excluded from the count at the 2007 elections due to the operation of this new evidence-of-identity provision. In accordance with the recommendations of the electoral matters committee, the bill repeals the requirement for voters casting a provisional vote to provide evidence of identity at the polling place and will instead insert the new requirement that, where there is any doubt as to the bona fides of the elector, the signature on the envelope containing the provisional vote be compared with the signature of the elector on the previously lodged enrolment record.

The previous speaker, the member for Fisher, said that this was to prevent rorts. The previous government was elected at every election—until they had control of the Senate in the period prior to 2007—with provisional voters being admitted to the roll like that. The member for Fisher is suggesting that there was something bodgie about the election of the Howard government between 1996 and 2004, because all of those provisional votes were included under that commonsense and fair system until then. In accordance with the recommendation of the committee on electoral matters, we are going to repeal that requirement.

When I first spoke on this bill earlier this year I said that it represents the fulfilment of commitments made by Labor at the 2007 election. It also keeps commitments that I made in 2005, when we presented the minority report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. I said then that we would overturn the Howard government’s regressive changes to our electoral laws. This bill fulfils that commitment.

The changes made by the Howard government had the effect of disenfranchising tens of thousands of Australians at the 2007 election, which is exactly what I predicted would happen. At least 50,000 people who, on the basis of past experience, we know would have enrolled during the traditional seven-day period of grace after the calling of an election were prevented from doing so. They were primarily young people, and, if you study it, this has a permanent effect in the electoral system.

Many more people were disenfranchised when they changed addresses by being taken off the rolls by the AEC and then deterred from re-enrolling by the more onerous enrolment procedures. In 2004, 77,000 people were added to the rolls after the close of the rolls because they had been incorrectly removed. In 2007 only 1,400 people were able to be added. This was entirely due to the deliberate changes made by the Howard government.

The AEC estimated that 27,000 provisional votes were excluded from the count at the 2007 federal election due to the new identity provisions but, in my view, the impact of the Howard government’s changes was much greater than that. I estimate that about 100,000 Australians were prevented from enrolling or voting by the changes made by the Howard government. What happened was that, when people got to the polling booths and saw that there were these onerous requirements, they thought, ‘Go to hell; I’m not going to participate.’ And they did not—you can see from the fall in the number of provisional votes in individual seats that would previously have been cast.

The AEC’s report on the 2007 election found that more than 27,000 provisional votes were rejected because they did not comply with the new requirements. The number of formal provisional votes fell from 112,000 in 2004 to 42,000 in 2007—so, of the 42,000 votes, 27,000 were rejected yet the number of people applying for enrolment declined. Did the population of Australia decline? No. Did the number of electors decline? No. This was the effect that was deliberately sought. A disproportionate number of these voters would, I think, have been Labor voters, and this was the motivation behind these changes. In my view, if the number of provisional voters in the 2004 election were compared to the number in the 2007 elections, enough Labor voters were disfranchised to allow the coalition to win at least four seats—Bowman, Dickson, McEwen and Swan—that they would otherwise have lost.

Professor Brian Costar, of Swinburne University, one of Australia’s most respected political scientists, told the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters:

I think a case can be made that it changed the result … We know that provisional voters, because of their choice, are not a mirror image of the electorate as a whole. They tend to be more Labor and Green than they are Liberal, National, or anything else.

I have yet to see any member of the opposition deny that this was the Howard government’s intent. I do not say that all of them knew that this was what they were doing, but the hardheads who were behind all of the salami tactics in changing electoral law understood the intent of this.

The Howard government’s justification for these measures was what they called the ‘protection of the integrity of the electoral roll’. That was what they alleged in their majority report in 2005 and it is what they said in their speeches but in fact there was no evidence of any significant degree of electoral fraud in Australian federal elections. These claims were nothing but a fig leaf to cover the coalition parties’ desire to rig the electoral system for their own benefit.

Let me provide you with some well-known figures to show the hollowness of the opposition’s claims. There were 12.4 million votes cast at the 2007 federal election. After the election, the AEC identified 20,000 possible cases of multiple voting. That represented less than 0.2 per cent of all votes cast. Of these, 18,037—87 per cent—were found on investigation to require no further action. What happens is that often brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, mothers and daughters vote at the same electorate, and the electoral official, not hearing them in the rush of votes, crosses them off. Then the AEC, in comparing the votes later, works out that the officials have made a mistake and there has been no case of multiple voting.

Only 1,167 of the possible cases of multiple voting identified by the AEC were found to represent actual cases of multiple voting. Of these 1,167, a total of 955—82 per cent—were found to be the result of confusion in the mind of elderly voters who voted once by post and again on polling day, having forgotten their earlier vote. There was no desire to rort the electoral system and no evil intent—it was a simple mistake that all of us have encountered among elderly voters in our electorates but it is not an attempt to rort the electoral system.

After the AEC’s exhaustive investigations, a grand total of 10 votes in the whole of Australia were found to have been deliberately cast more than once, and these cases were referred to the AFP for investigation. That is less than one vote in a million—a very striking figure. There can be few countries in the world whose electoral systems are as clean and as free from corruption as Australia’s, and that is something we should all be proud of.

So the AEC found that in 2007 there was no evidence whatsoever of any significant level of electoral malpractice. Even more remarkable was the fact that there was no substantial difference between the 2007 figures and those recorded at the 2001 and 2004 federal elections—in other words, the regressive changes made by the Howard government made no change to the level of electoral malpractice for the very good reason that there was no significant evidence of electoral malpractice to start with. That should not surprise us, because that was not the intent of the legislation; the intent was to create a partisan advantage. The Howard government knew perfectly well that their justification for making the amendments was spurious.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: standing order number 90 is about reflection on members. The member is reflecting on and imputing improper motives to members.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is underway according to the normal procedures. I do not find that there is a point of order.

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

If the member recalls, I said there are many people here in this House, including him, I am sure, who were not aware of the intent of this legislation—of how this works on the ground—but the grand poobahs who were behind this legislation were aware of it.

In the AEC’s submission, it said:

It can be clearly stated, in relation to false identities, that there has never been any evidence of widespread or organised enrolment fraud in Australia.

In 2001 the AEC said:

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

The last time I spoke on this bill I quoted Emeritus Professor Colin Hughes, a highly respected former Electoral Commissioner, and I think it is appropriate to do so again today. Professor Hughes wrote in 2005:

The thorough review of the electoral roll conducted in 2002 by the Australian National Audit Office concluded that ‘overall, the Australian electoral roll is one of high integrity, and can be relied on for electoral purposes’. There are adequate safeguards in the current electoral laws and procedures to deal with any future attempts at fraud without stripping the vote from hundreds of thousands of citizens.

This is a man who is revered by all sides of politics, who is an academic expert appointed by the previous government to many roles within the Electoral Commission and whose views should be listened to.

Let me return to the provisions of the bill. Schedule 2, part 1, item 2 inserts a new paragraph in the Electoral Act which is designed to reduce the number of provisional votes being rejected. It states that when a divisional returning officer examines the declaration envelope that contains a provisional vote, and where the DRO has some reason to doubt the signature on the declaration envelope is the actual signature of the voter, then the divisional returning officer may check the signature against the most recent record that contains the elector’s signature. Only if the divisional returning officer is of the view that the signature on the envelope and the signature on other records is not the same should the vote be excluded at this point of the count. That has been the system since at least the late seventies. This was a system that tried to incorporate and involve as many Australian citizens as possible. As I have said, we have a compulsory voting system in the democratic system: it is our ethical responsibility as democrats on all sides of parliament to include as many people as possible.

I understand in the Senate that some of the current opposition’s obsessions with integrity of the electoral roll are being addressed by an amendment that would allow the Liberals, without losing face, to keep their obsession with people producing photo identity at the polling booth but also give people the common-sense rights that they had and under which the previous government, the current opposition, was elected time after time after time.

This is a very important provision. We know from the evidence presented at many hearings of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that the overwhelming majority of people casting provisional votes are genuine voters who are trying to cast a vote and have no intention of misleading or deceiving the returning officer. In nearly every case, when they have made a mistake in completing and signing the envelope, it is the result of inadvertence rather than malice. Many such voters are elderly, do not have a high level of education or may not have proficient English. It is not fair for their votes to be excluded because they made an honest mistake.

The provision will give the divisional returning officer the discretion to check the voter’s signature and make an independent judgment about the voter’s bona fides, rather than automatically excluding the vote. This will, I hope, reduce the number of provisional votes unjustly excluded from the count. The member for Fisher said that the period of grace that was given Australian voters when the writ was issued—that is, five working days after it is issued—and the previous system of comparing signatures for allowing provisional votes were ‘a rort’. I call them democratic necessity, ethical democratic behaviour and the kind of system that the previous government was elected under. I find it a great shame and a great traducing of Australian democracy that this issue has not been made more of and that the Liberal Party has been allowed to get away with this rort. What I fear is that, if people who have gone to divisional returning officers and changed their electoral address were expecting to be able to vote via the provisional voting system and then become aware at election after election that they are going to be rejected, they will be ‘routinised’ into not trying to exercise a vote. This will be a great victory for the antidemocratic element in the previous government that tried to change this legislation.

As I have said before, this bill fulfils a Labor election commitment, and will help to make our already great election system even better—fairer, more open and more inclusive. I commend this bill to the House.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on this cognate debate of four bills, including the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010. The fact that we have four bills represents the first failure of leadership from this government in relation to the electoral reform measures that we see in front of us today. The member for Melbourne Ports spoke about the great shame of the Howard government in many of the measures that it sought to reform the Electoral Act, but the fact that we have such partisanship in relation to our electoral laws and in relation to many of the measures contained within these bills means that we are not meeting our fundamental responsibility as a parliament to ensure we have a fair and democratic system.

In fact, in reaching across to some of the speakers who have spoken in this debate, I would certainly reach out to the member for Longman. He came forward and stated that with all of his experience at elections, and he outlined some extensive experience, he would favour a vote card, a form of voter identification—that is, a voter identification card. I want it recorded that I want to reach out to the member for Longman and say that that is a very worthy idea. That is a missed opportunity within these bills. That is something that we have not seen brought forward by this government, and the fact that we have not, I think, underscores what is going on in many of the provisions within some of these bills before us tonight.

It is true to say that the integrity of the electoral system is paramount. It is not something that should be the subject of partisan politics. The public want to have confidence that if they are forced to attend a polling booth on polling day and cast a vote then they ought not to be at the mercy of those with malicious intent. They ought not to be at the mercy of those who have the goal of manipulating our electoral system—and there are those out there in our community who we have to assume will seek to manipulate our electoral system. Indeed, there are many notable examples and cases where people have attempted to manipulate the electoral system.

Some of the measures in these bills do have some merit. I am happy to say that and to extend my support for some of the bills that have been proposed. There are many measures in electoral reforms that both sides of this chamber can agree upon. In particular, I want to record my support for the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010. That seeks to allow the counting of pre-poll votes on election night. That is something that we all support and endorse. It also seeks to allow the AEC to better manage the workload of the state and divisional offices of the AEC. That is common-sense reform.

In particular I want to record my support for the measure to prevent parties from nominating more than one endorsed candidate for a particular lower house seat. I am a New South Wales member and witnessed firsthand the Bradfield by-election, where a particular political party nominated multiple candidates—I think in the order of 11—for the same electoral division. We are all unenthusiastic about that outcome. We do not want to see any particular political party seek to manipulate the electoral process by nominating multiple candidates to confuse voters, to lift the rate of informal voting or to cause general disruption to the ballot system by extending the length and nature of the ballot papers. There are certainly some worthy measures in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010. The fact that we have two or three bills that we can support and yet there are bills that we cannot support underscores that really we ought to seek a consensus before we move on electoral matters. Indeed, that would be a worthy goal of this parliament.

We can also support, however weak, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. This is in response to the South Australian election, where we so recently saw an attempt to manipulate a democratic outcome of a state election. While it was not a federal election, all people interested in democracy and the fair and free flow of the democratic process would understand that by handing out Family First material in very questionable circumstances the Labor Party in South Australia, in particular, really put a severe question to the electoral system in Australia. We saw Labor people wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan ‘Put your family first’ handing out material. These people handed out what we would regard as misleading how-to-vote cards designed to get South Australians who were seeking to vote Family First to preference the Labor Party. There is nothing wrong with political parties seeking preferences, especially in a compulsory preferential system, as long as it is doing so honestly, and clearly articulating that it is a particular political party seeking the preference of another political party. That is why it is easy to support this measure. The token approach within this particular bill—fines of $1,100—is regrettable, however. It could have been dealt with much more substantially. Most voters out there, when considering this bill or thinking about what it is intending to do, would feel short-changed if a political party sought preferences and did not clearly say what it was doing. Most voters would feel that we ought to prevent that in the electoral system. This bill would require all how-to-vote cards to have placed at the top of the card and in a prominent size the name and the party of the authoriser or face a fine of $1,100. A false authorisation would similarly incur a fine. That is worthy legislation and worthy of this parliament’s attention.

However, turning to some of the more controversial measures, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010 is something that we cannot support. It is something that I have particular concerns with. We heard the member for Melbourne Ports articulate a case that hundreds of thousands of young people were deliberately short-changed at the last election by the Howard government. At the last election I was contesting a federal election for the first time and I saw a greater emphasis being placed on the enrolment of young people that I had seen at any previous federal election that I had borne witness to as a voter. I do not think it is a bad thing that there was a campaign conducted by all sorts of people saying, ‘You’ve got to get on the roll; you’ve got to get out there and vote.’ That is a fine thing. That is the way it should be. But to say that it was somehow the intention of the Howard government to prevent a whole range of young people from enrolling to vote is something I reject and regard as false. It naturally follows—and this argument has been made many times—that when you call an election you ought to prevent anybody seeking to engage in obtaining a large number of enrolments for anybody’s benefit for any reason. The roll ought to be consistently maintained and up to date and there ought not to be a penalty against those who maintain a correct enrolment at all times versus those who do not. If we are to be serious about future electoral measures and ensure we identify who voters are at polling booths, and if we are to have a system that has integrity and is above manipulation, then of course ensuring that the cut-off for people to enrol to vote prior to an election is not open to manipulation is something that is common sense.

The measures within this particular bill, seeking to close the roll seven days after the issue of writs in particular, goes back to that system which allows for that attempt at manipulation. I do not see that it disenfranchises young people at all. The member for Melbourne Ports had an odd construction on young people—that they do not have an interest in politics or voting. This is fairly typical of a Labor member of parliament’s approach to individualism. Every individual is different. Some young people have a passionate approach to politics, some have less passionate approach to politics and some have a combination. That is a matter for the individual. However, the electoral law requires that everybody over the age of 18 be on the electoral roll at their principal place of residence. We know that many people—in particular, young people—do not comply with that law in Australia. We ought not say that, if a person chooses not to comply with the electoral law, somehow they are worthy of an extension rather than all of those young people who go and take great care to maintain their enrolment from the day that they are able to enrol.

I find the government’s argument in relation to this odd. Yes, of course we want participation in our democracy. It is something that we all want to see in our democracy: greater participation and young people being enthused about politics and parliament. But it is not appropriate to say to all of those people who have correctly enrolled, ‘Now we are going to add an extension period for those who have not correctly enrolled.’ This is not for people who turn 18 within the extra week between the issue of the writs and the close of the rolls; this is not to get around a whole bunch of people who have been unfairly cut off from information or denied knowledge of our electoral system. In today’s society the opportunity for young people to enrol is the same as any age group. We should take measures to encourage all young people to be on the electoral roll and maintain the correct electoral enrolment, as we do all of our citizens.

The second measure that is quite difficult for the opposition to support is the removal of the requirement for declaration voters to produce identification. These are things we have always opposed. We have always supported the requirement for declaration voters to produce identification. Coalition members on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters have rejected these proposals on the basis that we believe they substantially reduce the integrity of the electoral roll. I note that the member for Melbourne Ports also spoke to the Senate’s desire to ensure that voters’ signatures were matched by the divisional returning officers in the Electoral Commission. He reflected on the Senate’s will in that regard. We do not know what will happen in the other place yet except that there are proposals to amend this particular provision to ensure that there is matching of signatures. That reflects not just that this is a concern of the Liberal Party and the National Party but that there is concern on the crossbenches and in other places that, if you are casting such a vote, the simple requirement that it be identified and verified adds that integrity that the member for Melbourne Ports was speaking about—but then, of course, he argued that we do not need it in this case. We would support any move to strengthen the integrity of the electoral system, particularly those around a greater identification of provisional voters.

I also want to record at this point that I certainly support greater measures in relation to the identification of voters at polling booths, particularly photo identification. Societies like the HS Chapman Society, who have many times approached me about matters that they are concerned about, have highlighted cases over the years where it could be demonstrated that there was untoward activity in our electoral system. In a society like ours, when you go to hire a video you have to produce photo identification and verification of your finances and your place of residence. Simple activities require the highest form of identification and yet for perhaps one of the most sacred parts of our democratic system, the right to vote, we do not require even the most basic level of identification at the point of voting. That is a very difficult thing for us to continue with into the future. Of course, in older democratic societies in ancient times the numbers of people were much smaller. People and families were more readily identifiable because of the system and the nature of our societies. In our complex and distant modern societies, where technology is often the prime motivator and mover in our society, it is not unreasonable to argue that technology should be used to enhance democracy so that we all have complete and utter faith in our system going forward.

There are other parts of these bills that can be supported. In particular, there are plenty of non-controversial features in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010, including a move towards a more digital system of records management within the Australian Electoral Commission. It is similar to what I have been talking about in terms of the greater use of technology. This is the argument that I am making. Certainly in some of these bills, particularly the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill, there is this trend towards digital records and standardising practices in the management of the electoral roll—using technology in a way that will help us verify and make the process of voting simple, accessible and legitimate. They are things that we all in this place would seek to do.

There is a measure within this bill, however—the seventh measure, the provisions for homeless voters—the objective of which I find a little bit lost. The worthy nature of some of the intent behind this particular measure is lost in its actual application within this bill. There are concerns about item 9. The implication of this is that there would be no practical provision to ever remove an itinerant elector from the roll. We argue that you cannot do a habitation review on a homeless person. Under the current system, if a homeless person is unable to vote or does not vote in one election then they are removed from the roll. Under this provision, the repeal of 96(9)(a), you would see the situation where that would not happen and a homeless person would continue to remain on the roll, even though they had not voted, which would create a separation and a difference with other voters.

It just seems odd to me. Of all the priorities and problems that a homeless person would have—in particular, legitimate priorities such as the need for shelter and food, which are things that we ought to do more about in this place—this is really a lower order priority and an oddly designed measure. These are the sorts of things where partisanship ought not apply. We have a difficulty with this because it separates these particular voters from other voters. This is where more bipartisanship could produce a better result that all sides of the House could support.

There are more minor technical amendments within that particular bill that are easy to support, but, in general, the fact that we have this suite of bills before us today is regrettable. It is regrettable that we cannot all support electoral reform. Electoral legislation is a legitimate function of government. Some would argue that a prime function of parliament in a democratic society is to administer the electoral system and do it in a fair way, beyond partisan politics, and with integrity. I am happy to support some of the bills, as I outlined, but I have grave concerns about many of the measures contained in other bills, which we will oppose.

The ability of a third party to collect postal vote applications has been changed in what is the most unworthy measure within the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010. This goes to the heart of the partisan nature of this legislation and to the breakdown of any agreement in relation to this. The Labor Party has seen that one side has an advantage. It is not an advantage that is in the legislation itself. It is not an advantage that exists because of a law. It is just an advantage because of the construct of the Liberal and National parties. Unions are an advantage for the Labor Party—but we do not outlaw unions, because they conduct a legitimate and proper activity in a free society. So is the behaviour of collecting postal votes on behalf of people, to lodge with the Electoral Commission. It is not a process that the government maintains is open to corruption or fraud. It is not a process that it suggests has been misused. But the government is now seeking to bypass that system, purely for partisan advantage—underscoring what has happened in relation to these bills and why we have this cognate debate today. With those grave concerns and rejecting those measures which would undermine the integrity of the system, I conclude my speech on these bills today.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, theElectoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. I spoke earlier on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010. It is interesting, because those opposite are railing against so many of the provisions of this legislation. They are in favour of some modernisation, but conservatives, generally, have been opposed to the opening up of rolls which would allow people from all strata of life to vote. Conservatives through the Western world have always opposed that.

For much of the history of Australia, from settlement onward, we were in a situation where the average person could not vote. It was only from the beginning of the 20th century that we saw a situation where the average Australian could cast a ballot at a local, state or federal election. It was often without the requirement of a property franchise and often without the requirement of ensuring that the person was of the male gender. Women were not allowed to vote throughout much of Australia’s history as a colony and also at the beginning of Federation. Universal suffrage for adults was not something that conservatives in this country universally supported. I am pleased to say that it is likely those opposite would now support the idea of universal adult suffrage, but it has not always been the case. Conservatives in this country have been opposed to many reforms, when it comes to electoral outcomes.

I come from the great state of Queensland, where the National Party, in particular, and the Liberal Party made gerrymandering and electoral maladministration an art form—where votes in rural areas had four times the value as votes in cities. With respect to this legislation before the House—

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order, with regard to standing order No. 90, relating to reflection on members. The member is saying that rural members on this side of parliament gerrymandered votes by 400 per cent. To say that that is outrageous does not even come close!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The point of order has been made. The member will resume his seat. Firstly, I would point out that the member was talking about a different parliament and not this parliament and, secondly, I would point out that this is a normal process of debate. There is no point of order.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition is always sensitive about this particular matter. The LNP in Queensland is particularly sensitive about this because of the zonal system that they introduced. At one time Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was elected with 18 per cent of the primary vote. That is the extent to which they are involved in this process, so it is a bit hard to cop lectures from those opposite when it comes to alleged rorting. In 1983 we had dead people voting in elections when certain Liberals changed their enrolment—they ceased to be Liberals and became Nationals, to give Joh Bjelke-Petersen a majority. The truth is that, historically, in Queensland the coalition has made an art form of electoral rorting. That is the truth.

There is a bit of history to this and to what we are trying to address today. Let us have a look at the history. In 1996, the Howard coalition were elected to be the government of this country. They were re-elected in 1998 and again in 2001 and again in 2004. During that period, we did not see some great inquiry into electoral rorting or something like the Cole commission into this particular aspect of electoral law. What happened was that when they got control of the Senate they opportunistically changed the law to advantage them electorally. They closed enrolments early and made sure that proof of identity would be required in relation to provisional voting. Why was that? We have heard the perceptions and worries of the member for Fisher and the member for Mitchell over there about what will go on if we change these laws. You would think that since the seven-day closure of roll provision came in there had been some flurry of people giving false names and falsely enrolling. There is not a scintilla, a jot or an iota of evidence that that is the case. The truth is that the Howard coalition government opportunistically changed the laws with respect to this—changed the electoral process—to advantage them. Why did they do this? The truth is that history shows that provisional voting favours the Labor Party.

The amendments in these bills are important. But it is important to get to the reality of this. In 2004, the total two-party-preferred vote for Labor nationally was about 47.3 per cent. For provisional voting, the total was 53.5 per cent. In 2007, the two-party-preferred vote nationally for Labor was about 52.7 per cent. For provisional voting, the total was 60.9 per cent. You can see that, if they could reduce the number of people voting provisionally, it would advantage them. That is the truth. They knew that was the case. That is why they set about reducing the number of people who could vote provisionally. There was a reduction of 73 per cent in the number of people who could vote provisionally. Putting proof of identity provisions in the legislation was about advantaging the coalition electorally.

In the Blair electorate—my electorate—in south-east Queensland, in 2004, when I was a candidate, there were 483 provisional votes cast. When it became more difficult for those with disadvantage, those who are poor and those who may be itinerant to cast their vote—when they put in place obstacles and barriers to democratic participation—provisional votes went down from 483 in 2004 to 99 in 2007. What they were concerned about, obviously, was the high level of Labor voters voting provisionally.

So let us not have all this self-righteousness and sanctimony that we hear from those opposite on this matter. Somehow you would think that the Electoral Commission would not be able to cope. It was able to cope with a seven-day provision in 1996, in 1998, in 2001 and in 2004. What was the problem? They did not seem to have any concern then. But they changed it for their electoral advantage. Let us tell the honest truth about this: that is what they did it for. When they are over there complaining about what we are doing here, they are just whingeing, moaning and carping while trying to disadvantage people who want to exercise their democratic right to vote and participate in representative democracy but who cannot do so because those opposite are putting barriers in place. That is what this is about. That is what they are trying to do.

We Australians are a socially mobile group. One in five people, according to the Electoral Commission, changes their residential address in the three years between federal elections. That means that they move. Anyone knows that, when people move to a new estate or move house, one of the last things that they think of doing is changing their enrolment. They change their electricity account details; they change their licence details; they change their details for their doctor, dentist or accountant; they stop the newspapers being delivered to their old place. But electoral enrolment is often the last thing that they think of.

You will see, for example, huge areas of new estates across South-East Queensland—and we get these things from Electrac. There is one particular part of my electorate in which there are new houses going up everywhere. There are 256 people on the electoral roll in this CCD, the suburb of Springfield Lakes in my electorate, which is being redistributed to the electorate of Blair. I had a mobile office there the weekend before last. There are houses everywhere—hundreds and hundreds of houses. There are many new people coming into the area. Obviously, the number of enrolments is not keeping up with the number of people moving to that estate—that is clear.

If you do not think that that is the case with respect to South-East Queensland, you should have a look at the redistribution figures. In 19 February 2009, the quota was struck for redistribution. Queensland beat New South Wales in the State of Origin, and we will do it again on Wednesday night, and we beat them in the Electoral Commission: they lost a seat to us. We go up to 30 seats and New South Wales goes down to 48 at the next election. That is based on population. That is what the Electoral Commission looks at: the ABS data from different states. It looks at the population 13 months after the recall of parliament after the election. Queensland needed to get an extra seat and New South Wales needed to go down.

The interesting thing is that enrolments are not matching population growth. That is why it is important that these provisions go ahead. The quota struck in New South Wales for the 48 seats was 94,353 electors. In Queensland, it was only 88,343, which justified the increase in seats. Clearly, enrolment is not matching. That is the evidence that was given to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. At the 2007 federal election, more than two million of the 13.3 million votes were early votes. There were 1.1 million pre-poll votes and 830,000 postal votes.

The interesting thing in relation to all of that was the number of people who did not cast a ballot or were not on the roll. One of the things that was clear was that there were about 1.2 million Australians who should have been on the roll but were not. So those who are on the roll are deciding to cast their vote early, and that is an increasing trend with prepoll, postal and provisional votes, but the enrolment is not catching up with the growth in population, particularly in states such as Queensland. Socially mobile Queenslanders who should be on the roll are not. Giving people the opportunity when the election is called to think, ‘I’d better change my enrolment—I’ve just moved into Springfield Lakes where I’ve built myself a new house, so that’s a good idea to get on the roll,’ is a sensible reform that will increase the participation of Australians in the electoral process. I cannot see how that could possibly be about trying to rort the system. I cannot see how, with the Australian Electoral Commission universally accepted as an institution of integrity and real competence and effectiveness, that could possibly be considered to be Labor trying to undermine the electoral process. I think it is really about participation. It is about improving the situation for Australians.

Senator Joe Ludwig, the Cabinet Secretary and Special Minister of State, issued a press release on 2 June 2010 in which he said:

These bills remove a range of barriers which currently make it unnecessarily difficult for citizens to exercise their democratic right to vote.

Sure, there are some modernisation provisions. Sure, the legislation addresses issues in relation to the circumstances in the recent South Australian state election. I think the provision which aims to ensure that electors know on whose behalf a how-to-vote card has been distributed is an important reform. People want to know, when they go to the ballot box and are given a how-to-vote card, who is giving them that card and on whose behalf it is being offered. That is important.

The significant change to modernise enrolment arrangements and reduce the age of provisional enrolment from 17 to 16 years is a good thing. As members of parliament we go to citizenship ceremonies in our electorates all the time and see the AEC fulfilling their role by getting new Australians on the electoral roll. But we also see them at speech nights and graduation ceremonies at high schools and in shopping centres across the whole country taking steps to ensure that young people get on the roll. Young people often do not get on the roll until an election is called. They are often motivated to do so because they realise it is the first time they can cast a vote. Not every person over the age of 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or even over the age of 18 years is a political junkie like most of us here in this parliament, who live and breathe and die by politics and are interested in it all the time. They are interested when an election comes around and they have a chance to exercise their democratic right to vote. On a number of occasions I have seen young people come to the ballot box with a camera and ask someone to take a picture of them outside the polling booth because they are casting their vote for the first time. They see that as an important rite of passage, like getting a drivers licence or graduating from high school. It is important for young people to be able to do that, so anything that allows and encourages young people to get on the roll to vote is important. The seven-day grace provision is important in that regard.

What we need to do in this country is increase our citizenship and civic responsibility education. That is very important. I think we are failing in that. I do not think we have adopted what I would consider a 21st century response to making sure our citizens choose to participate the way they should. We need to take steps to encourage our young people to be involved in this. The facts are that the seven-day period allowed hundreds of thousands of people to re-enrol. They were not able to do so because of the Howard government’s cut-off provisions which guillotined the franchise straight after an election was called.

I think these provisions restore integrity to the electoral process. They rid the electoral process of unnecessary barriers to people participating. They get rid of many of the burdens and irregularities and difficulties that people face in a very socially mobile country like Australia. The range of measures we are bringing in here are important to modernise our response. Keeping enrolment up to date is critical in a democracy. I applaud the AEC for the work they do, but there is more to be done. These reforms are important from the first point to the last. It is a disgrace, in my opinion, that the coalition cannot fully support every single one of them.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on these four bills: the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. It is always very interesting to follow the member for Blair, who always has an interesting, shall we say, take on history. He suggested that the coalition in Queensland gerrymandered boundaries, but forgot to mention the historical fact that it was Labor who started all of this in Queensland. Bah, humbug, Member for Blair! Bah, humbug! These bills are about the electoral roll and election practices. This is very important legislation because the government is trying to pass legislation that reduces the integrity of the electoral roll, which is never a good thing.

I find it interesting that members from the government are saying that we have to have seven days to allow people to enrol. If you look at the figures and what Labor is trying to take us back to, you see there were 167,000 people who did not enrol at the 2004 election but, when we tightened it up for the 2007 election, there were actually only 100,000 that did not get their names down on the roll. So it is not about whether you have seven days to enrol; it is about having a good advertising and promotion program to make sure that young people, especially, enrol to vote. It is also important to recognise that with those changes we brought in you can do a pre-enrolment three months before you turn 18, so if you are keen you will do that.

The Australian electoral laws are in place so that a level playing field can be established and an open and transparent political system that reflects the Australian voters can be retained. Earlier this year my home state, South Australia, held their state election. As many people would know, there was speculation about fraudulent voting and dodgy practices. Results in many of the seats were very close, and it is at times such as these that it is more important than ever for the process to be accountable and fair.

Unfortunately at this year’s South Australian state election the ALP breached moral ground and did something that fundamentally ruins the trust voters have in political parties to do the right thing at election time. It was unethical. It sought to confuse voters. It sought to trick voters, and it was just plain wrong. Impostors, some even sourced from interstate, turned up to the polling booths dressed in misleading T-shirts that said, ‘Put Your Family First,’ and then proceeded to hand out how-to-vote cards which directed voters to award their second preference votes to Labor, when in fact Family First had made Labor their sixth preference. The how-to-vote cards carried the Family First logo and to the none-the-wiser voter, looked to be authentic. Only the fine-print endorsement gave away that they were not in fact produced by Family First, and very few people saw that.

This was trickery at its worst. Faced with the possibility that the race was going to get tight, the Labor Party clutched at straws and then decided to play it dirty. This was on top of leaving the issuing of the writs to the very last moment to make it harder for voters to get the postal vote applications back in time. These dirty tricks are not welcomed by the coalition and it is a real show of character that they are welcomed by the Labor Party, because, as Kevin Foley, the Deputy Premier in South Australia said: ‘That’s politics. That’s what you do.’ When an election comes down to the knife edge, the Labor Party is willing to stoop to new lows, even for them, at the expense of Family First to secure those few extra votes. According to Deputy Premier Kevin Foley, ‘That’s what you do in politics.’ If the con itself was not bad enough, then that pathetic excuse is enough to make anyone question the ALP’s core ethics.

I note that the member for Longman stood up in this place tonight and said, ‘Labor weren’t the only ones doing it.’ I find this a very poor excuse for very poor behaviour anyway, but he could not point to any examples of where the Liberal Party had been involved in that sort of deception. It is really nothing out of the ordinary for the ALP to stoop to this sort of level. In the extremely tight 1993 election the ALP posed as Democrats to secure preferences, and in the 1998 Queensland election they posed as One Nation. It is an utter disgrace, and tactics like this just show how juvenile and dirty the Labor Party is.

When first elected in 2002, the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, introduced a ministerial code of conduct that prominently featured party representational behaviour at all times. Like his federal counterpart, he seems keen on backflips as, although silent on the Family First impostors, it can be said that nothing speaks louder than silence. With the federal election looming, this is what we can expect from the Labor Party: for them to revert to their nasty impersonation habits to get extra votes that they cannot earn from their own merit.

After the absolutely disgraceful handling of the issue by the state divisions of the Labor Party, Mr Rudd decided he would step in. This legislation is his answer to the problem: a quick sweep under the floor and all is fixed. That is how Labor fixes everything. The coalition supports measures to ensure how-to-vote cards remain transparent and clearly indicate which political party the card is representing. However, the Prime Minister’s proposed legislation that stipulates exactly how and where and what size the political party’s name must be on the card is a little over the top. All or nothing—that is the Labor way.

In stark contrast to that bill, the next bill seeks to open the door to fraudulent voters. The logic is breathtaking. The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010 is the controversial half of the old bill that was split in half after coalition protest. The two measures contained in these bills are, firstly, to seek to close the rolls seven days after the issue of writs and, secondly, to remove the requirement for declaration voters to produce ID. So in fact it would be easier to get a vote at the federal election than it would be to get a DVD from your local DVD store. Firstly, this does not allow time for the Australian Electoral Commission to check the legitimacy of the voter—and that was a concern that they raised—and, secondly, it allows impostors to vote. Shame on you, Labor! The Labor government are seeking to reduce the integrity of the electoral roll and they are also opening the door to fraudulent voters.

There was more controversy at the South Australian election. At the election one family voted not once, not twice, not three times, but 159 times! A letter published claimed the frauds were from a group of siblings calling themselves ‘The Election Team’. They said they committed the fraud in two marginal seats to make a point about poor identity checks and other problems with the Electoral Act. They certainly showed that up.

Labor want this to continue; they are more than happy to introduce legislation that would take away the accountability of the electoral roll. So, the federal government has decided to take action. Kevin Rudd on the one hand makes legislation to stipulate how political party names are placed on how-to-vote cards but then on the other hand, instead of addressing problems allowing fraud to occur, he makes it easier for it to happen. Encouraging fraudulent voting is a blatantly wrong activity to endorse. The Prime Minister  has no problem with endorsing dodgy practices—the home insulation disaster and BER cost blow-outs come to mind. This is just another piece of legislation that is poorly thought through with no consideration about the consequences it may have—or perhaps it was thought through, with a view to giving them an electoral advantage.

I cannot support legislation that encourages fraudulent voting, and I cannot believe the other side is willing to reduce the integrity of the electoral roll. The amendment the coalition is supporting is one moved by Senator Nick Xenophon. It would require every signature on a provisional vote envelope to be compared with the elector’s original signature, thereby preventing fraudulent votes being accepted into the tally and providing evidence, if there is any, of attempts at fraudulent voting. I support this measure; I support open and transparent processes and a level playing field. The Rudd government must do the same. The government must support fairness at election time and must not encourage practices that are dodgy and immoral and unethical.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 contains mostly amendments that we are in support of but I note there are some that we oppose. One of these measures that we do not support is in schedule 6, which contains a controversial addition by the Labor government—postal vote applications can only be returned directly to the Australian Electoral Commission, which bypasses party collection, and the attachment of extra material on a PVA form is prohibited. The Liberal and National federal directors are strongly opposed to both these parts of the measure. The seventh measure, item 9, also cannot be supported by the coalition as it is concerning that there is no practical provision to ever remove an itinerant elector from a roll. We must have those sorts of practical measures available.

We are arguing against some of the measures in these bills and that is because we simply cannot trust this government to get it right. Any changes to weaken the electoral roll weaken the fundamentals that make it strong in the first place. If you make provision for trickery and fraudulent practices then you take away what makes Australian elections open and transparent. We do not believe the Rudd government can be trusted; we do not believe they can get it right, because they have got it wrong so many times before. That is one of the reasons we are opposing these measures.

Labor has a strong record of trying to rig the voting system by impersonation of, in turn, the Democrats, One Nation and Family First. Labor wants to reduce the voting age to get an advantage; Labor wants to keep its advantage with compulsory voting and its inherent donkey vote, when voluntary voting is the norm in other countries, including our neighbour New Zealand. They do quite fine with that system. With voluntary voting you actually have to convince voters that you are worth their support. With compulsory voting, you do not. If we want real electoral reform, it is my belief we should go to voluntary voting. However, this is not even addressed in these bills.

Australia has a proud tradition of voting integrity that is only abused by Labor. Indeed the secret ballot was invented in Australia, and in many of the states in the United States of America the secret ballot is called the Australian ballot. But we have seen Labor with a long history of fraud in elections, a long history of deceptions in elections—this is Labor’s way. We should all remember when Mike Kaiser was sacked from the Queensland parliament for his role in fraud with respect to branch stacking. We also know that he was appointed to an unadvertised position with the National Broadband Network at a salary of some $450,000. Not bad for a fraudster. Labor has form on this, and it is no wonder that we do not trust Labor with electoral changes. That is why we cannot agree to these four bills.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill and cognate bills for many reasons. Amongst those reasons, which I will enumerate, I will principally discuss how the bill recognises the need for people with impairment to be given greater support in their participation in elections. I do this because one of the frustrations of having an impairment is the fact that you are constantly dealing with systems that are designed as if you did not exist. Doors that are too narrow for a wheelchair, workplaces that are not equipped for your needs and a hundred other small variations and obstacles are a constant reminder that when you have a disability you are the exception; you are treated as the square peg that will not fit in the round hole. This is often a reminder that practical equality is still a long way away for many of our Australians who live with impairment.

When we witness this unending struggle with a world that is all too often indifferent to the needs of people with impairment, a world that wastes the time and drains the energy of people with disability, and when you can also see how often these problems could be avoided with a little bit of thought or creativity, I can understand why the frustration of people with disability increases tenfold.

I will return to this theme, but there are many other good things in these bills. We are reducing the age of provisional enrolment from 17 to 16. We are introducing provisions to make it easier to enrol, and keep on the electoral roll, people who are homeless—a matter that I know is very dear to the heart of the Minister for Housing, who is in the chamber. We are making it easier to apply for a prepoll or postal vote. We are limiting political parties to one endorsed candidate in each electorate to stop flooding of the ballot paper and the confusion of voters. We are removing the bizarre provision brought in by the previous government that the electoral rolls closed the day an election was called, and are restoring the seven-day enrolment period, which will allow more people to exercise their right to vote. Shutting down the electoral roll at the very time people were most interested in getting onto it and ensuring their addresses were correct was a shabby piece of political manipulation by the previous government, now the opposition, and it is only right that this be corrected.

But, as I said, I want to focus on the fact that these bills, for the first time, give the right to a secret ballot to people who are blind or have impaired vision. If you told the average Australian that there was a group of 300,000 people who did not have the right to a secret ballot in this country, they would be shocked. I think they would also struggle to identify the group, which is often the case when we fail to realise that not everyone possesses the abilities we take for granted.

While people with impaired vision have the theoretical right to cast a secret ballot, and have done since 1902, in practice this right has not existed. Australia was the first country to introduce and make standard the secret ballot—we did that in the 19th century—and we were also the first country to guarantee the right of the blind to vote. But somehow we have not quite connected the two things in practice. For over 100 years intelligent, sensible men and women with strong opinions on how this country should be run have been forced to get the help of a friend, or of an electoral officer, to fill out their ballot. This is a patronising and demeaning situation which unfortunately reinforces the inappropriate second-class status that people with impaired vision are often treated as having in our society.

In 2007 the Australian Electoral Commission ran a trial of electronic voting. This proved extremely popular with people with impaired vision. Graeme Innes, the Disability and Race Discrimination Commissioner, has spoken of his delight at finally, at the age of 50, being able to cast a secret vote through this process. The trial has been considered since then as a very costly exercise and a decision was made not to repeat it at this election. The cost was $2,500 per vote cast in the trial locations, although I believe this would come down if the scheme were extended more broadly. However, the government has moved to legislate to authorise the Electoral Commission to facilitate secret ballots for people with impaired vision.

In the next federal election—whenever that is—voters with impaired vision will be able to ring a call centre and have their vote processed anonymously. This measure will be reviewed after the election and the Australian Electoral Commission will work to improve the system in future elections and ensure that the best and most contemporary technology is used to help people with impaired vision exercise their democratic right. I want to congratulate the Australian Electoral Commission on their work in this area and their recognition that the right to vote, and to vote in secret, should not depend on your impairment.

As we work towards ensuring that people with impairment have equal participation, the Australian government is developing a national disability strategy, which aims to improve the inclusion of people with disability in all areas, and the work of the Australian Electoral Commission fits admirably within this goal.

But I want to note that I think there is more that the AEC could be doing to guarantee access to polling places for people with impaired mobility and to ensure that voting booths themselves can be accessed by as many people as possible.

I know, as do all members of the House, that votes are cast across Australia in a wide variety of buildings and that without fixed terms the Australian Electoral Commission is hamstrung in what it can do in picking the same buildings with the right disability access on all occasions. But the right of people with disability to be able to enter a polling place with ease and dignity needs to be encouraged.

Australia is one of the oldest members of the global family of democracies. We have a system of compulsory voting—or, to be precise, compulsory attendance at the polling booth—which does seem unusual to some visitors to our country. But I believe that it is as uniquely and importantly Australian as our coat of arms. It is a way of ensuring that every government elected can rightly claim the support of the majority of the population.

This contrasts positively with the great United States of America, where, despite its many strengths, congressional representatives or senators win office in elections where less than 50 per cent of the adult population votes. I believe the drift away from people voting in elections can only be a negative in any democracy and weaken the faith of the people in their political system. Democratic societies create responsibilities as well as rights. I believe one of those responsibilities is participation in elections. But this creates a responsibility for governments to preserve the right to vote by making the practice of voting as easy as possible.

These bills hold up our end of the bargain by giving people who cannot see the right to a secret ballot. The prejudices and barriers faced by people with disability are entrenched, systemic and subtle. They are embedded in all too many of the systems and institutions of our society.

I believe it is not the disability or impairment of the voter that is the problem; the rest of society’s inability to deal with it constitutes the real barrier. This legislation shows that when the will and desire to remove a barrier is there, that barrier can be removed. This measure is in some ways a small one but it is one of the many small battles that need to be won in the greater fight to remove inequality for people with disability.

This legislation contains the values of the Rudd government in their commitment to upholding and strengthening the rights of people with disability. It reaffirms our belief that the entire community has a duty to take the reasonable steps that are required to deliver equal access to people with disability. I understand that we may not be able to immediately change people’s negative attitudes towards disability. But we can ensure that people with disability are given the opportunity to achieve their potential and to be included in society in all areas, including the right to vote. By doing so, we change attitudes in the long term.

It is important to note in any discussion about this legislation and its improvement for access for people with disability that there are two million Australians with a severe or profound disability, or who are primary carers of people with disability. This legislation is part of the government’s general values of advancing the case for disability. Consistent with that is the same set of values which have seen the referral of a national long-term care and support scheme to the Productivity Commission to investigate. Such a scheme has the potential to change the way disability is supported in this country just as this legislation tries to change the way that people with vision impairment are encouraged to participate in the elections. I commend the bills to the House.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on these four bills: the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. These are very important bills to ensure that our democracy remains strong, that the integrity of our electoral roll remains and that we can continue to have successful and corruption-free elections—and we face one in the very near future.

I think we should be very proud of the system we have built in this country over a long period of time. As Parliamentary Secretary Shorten talked about in his contribution before me, we do have a proud history in Australia of having an electoral system of great integrity. The occasions when election results have been questioned have been very rare; there have of course been some but none were examples of enormous voter fraud, or electoral fraud, in our country. If we compare ourselves to some of our democratic friends, we can be proud of our record. Anyone who is interested in United States history, as many of us in this place are, will remember some examples of questionable results in their past—something we in Australia have not faced, which is a very good thing. We should continue to maintain the integrity of our electoral roll, and I believe very much that we must always protect the roll and our electoral system, especially from weakening it to the point where it can be misused or corrupted in any way. So the bills before this House are very important and we should treat them as such.

It was disappointing, though, that the Rudd government originally decided to introduce bills that combined controversial aspects of electoral reform with non-controversial aspects of electoral reform, a practice which is unusual in this place. It is usual to split the bills. There is some controversy over policy decisions rather than the mechanics of how the electoral roll operates. So it was pleasing that the Rudd government took our advice in the end and split these bills into the four separate bills we are dealing with this evening in this cognate debate.

The main bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, contains the most controversial aspect of the original bill before it was split. The coalition continue to oppose these measures for very good reasons. The government is seeking to overturn the move introduced by the previous government to close the roll at 8 pm on the day the writs are issued. The very good reason we oppose it is that the reform brought in by the previous Howard government has worked, in the sense that it reduced quite significantly—I think by about 40 per cent, from a comparison of the 2004 and 2007 elections—the number of people ‘missing’ from the electoral roll at the election. This is a measure which has worked. It protects the integrity and adds to the strength of our roll, and that is why we will maintain our opposition to the Rudd government trying to overturn this decision. It will put into question the integrity and the accuracy of the roll and it will open up the possibility of fraudulent enrolments in very tight marginal seats. Of course, coming into a very close election like this one will most probably be, we want to ensure that the electoral roll information is absolutely spot-on so that the government has complete legitimacy to make decisions, important decisions—like great big new taxes on mining—when it is elected. So we maintain our very strong opposition to this provision.

We also oppose the reduction in the identification requirements of provisional voters, again to protect the integrity of the roll. We believe very strongly that our system needs a corruption-free electoral roll and we do not support any measures which reduce the protections of that roll and increase the possibility that it can be rorted in any way. So we do not support this measure. Provisional voting is a small subsection of our voting system; however, we think that we need to have not-too-onerous requirements for producing identification. It is something I believe should be added to the system much more broadly. To add an additional strength to our system, we should have much more of a requirement to produce identification to prove who people are. I think it is right and proper, and it gives an additional strength to the electoral roll and its integrity.

We are in large part supporting the second bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010. We are in large part also supporting the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010, summarised as the modernisation bill, except that we do not support the provisions in relation to the postal vote applications going directly back to the AEC. This prevents parties from having the opportunity to add how-to-vote cards or additional material to the postal vote application. This, I think, is an attempt by the Labor Party to reduce a strength of the coalition, which has been to very efficiently and properly process postal vote applications, which means we have done better out of the postal vote system than the Labor Party have. Instead of trying to improve their campaigning systems, the Labor Party are trying to ban us from having that advantage. That is very typical of the Labor Party: where there is an advantage to someone else they will try and ban it; where there is an advantage to them they will try and drive a semitrailer through it—for example, union donations, which of course are so enormous these days that they very much call into question the system itself. I think there was $60 million before the last election, from wholly owned subsidiaries of one section of Australian society. That is a problem I think we have in our electoral system—absolutely something which should be addressed at some point in time.

I think a failing of the Howard government—if I can say that—was that we did not address election funding, we did not address the millions of dollars being spent on election campaigns and we certainly did not address the outrageous campaign contributions by one section of Australian society: the trade union movement, who wholly and solely fund the Labor campaign and their own campaign, which backs up Labor’s as well, with massive amounts of money. We will see that in the coming months as we head into the next election. The Labor Party are in trouble and it will be a very tight election. We will see this Labor Party outspend the coalition by most probably four to one, largely fuelled by the massive union donations they get. The unions do not seek permission from their members to do so; they just hand it straight over to the Labor Party.

We do not support the provisions in the modernisation bill. While we support many of the measures in the bill and agree with bringing a modern approach for the AEC into the system, we do not support the sixth measure in that bill.

The third bill is I guess an attempt by the Labor Party to hide its shame over what it did in the South Australian election. David Nason in the Australian wrote:

Democracy was seriously diminished by this low exercise and those behind it … should feel ashamed.

He wrote that two days after the South Australian election, on 20 March this year. As the House is aware, the Labor Party in key marginal seats got their campaign workers to dress up and act like they were Family First booth workers. Many were shipped in from Queensland and other places. In fact, the partner of one candidate was photographed with this T-shirt on, but he denied that he knew that that actually occurred in his seat of Mawson. The T-shirts were blue, which is the Family First colour, and had printed on them ‘Putting your Family First’, which is the Family First slogan. They handed out false, deliberately misleading how-to-vote cards which had changed the order of the preferences that were to be allocated by Family First. Family First had preferenced the Liberal candidate, but instead the cards preferenced the Labor candidate.

It was an absolute disgrace. The tactic was authorised and endorsed by Michael Brown, the South Australian State Secretary of the Labor Party, so you can bet your bottom dollar that it was endorsed, authorised, supported and encouraged by Premier Mike Rann and the highest levels of the Australian Labor Party. I note that the Australian Labor Party have not ruled out using this tactic federally. The provision in this bill is a weak, insipid response to what was an absolute and utter disgrace. It was the lowest act we have seen in an election for many years, certainly since brown paper bags have been around.

In addition to that you had the tactic of registering with Australia Post the South Australian Leader of the Opposition, Isobel Redmond. They used these low-rent tactics because they were so desperate to hang onto power. They chucked out morality to win. That is the modern Australian Labor Party. They will do anything. They will climb through any sewer and use any tactic they have to to win an election. In this case they were well behind in the lead-up to election day and they used every tactic in their marginal seats to win.

They scraped over the line with less than 50 per cent of the vote. Some people say that that means it is an illegitimate government. I do not agree with that. You need to win 50 per cent plus one of the seats. That is our system. The two-party preferred is an indication about where people want their government to come from; however, that is not our system. Our system is based on how many seats you win. However, I say the Rann government is illegitimate in that it used tactics like the Family First how-to-vote cards. That makes it completely illegitimate. It is an illegitimate government because it defrauded the Australian public. It intended to. It deliberately went about using this absolutely outrageous tactic. This low-rent tactic lowers the level of our democracy.

It should never have come from a major party in this country. Of course, parties on the fringes in this country have in the past done things at polling booths which we would never agree with, but that is what happens when you are a fringe party or a fringe element in our political system. But never before has a major party stooped to such levels, to such low-rent tactics, to slip through and hold onto an election. It is an illegitimate government led by an illegitimate Premier who should go. Of course he will go shortly. It was reported in the Advertiser today that he will be out of the state by Christmas and off to some appointment if the federal Labor Party gets re-elected. You can be sure of that.

This modern Labor Party, who pretend to believe in democracy, will use any tactic and will throw morality out of the door to win an election. I would not be surprised if we see similar tactics used and authorised by their national secretary in the federal election campaign coming up. That is the level the Australian Labor Party have got to. Their response in this bill is so insipid. It is purely public relations media spin to try to appear like they have acted on their own disgraceful behaviour, their own disgraceful tactics, which should never have been endorsed or allowed.

All credit goes to Chloe Fox in Bright. She held on by about 50 or 60 votes in the end. When she got the call from Michael Brown she said: ‘That is too low rent for me. I will not do that. I would rather lose than sell out my principles.’ It is unfortunate that more of those on the other side do not have the strong principles that Chloe Fox did in ensuring that she did not act in that manner. She refused to use that tactic.

The response in this bill in my view is completely insipid. The Labor Party lowered our democracy on the day of the South Australian election. They did it purely to hang onto state government. They did it because they were so desperate to hang on and were so out of touch that the South Australian people wanted them gone that they had to find any way, any gutter to crawl down, to hold onto government, and that is what they did. It makes them illegitimate.

Any Labor Party member who stands up in this place and pretends that they believe in democracy and pretends that they believe in protecting our electoral system, should distance themselves from the tactic used by Mike Rann and his cronies in South Australia. They should also rule out using it later this year because the Labor Party will use any tactic to hold onto government.

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

Mr Melham interjecting

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is insipid, member for Banks, and you know that. You know that what they did in South Australia was a disgrace and you would not have agreed with it. It is an absolute and utter disgrace, and this is an insipid response. There should be a much stronger response than this. It should be ruled out completely and your national secretary should rule it out being used this year.

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

Mr Melham interjecting

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Give me a break—a $1,100 fine would be a union whip-around. This is an insipid response which should be stronger, and that is my very strong view on this. It was a deliberate tactic used at the booth and authorised by the state secretary of the Australian Labor Party, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it was authorised at higher levels than that. We need to see it ruled out before the next election because the Australian Labor Party will use any tactic. We have already seen the campaign start with negative ads about the Leader of the Opposition. It will be a purely personal, negative campaign just as they ran in South Australia and they will crawl along any gutter to hold onto government.

I support moves in this place to protect the integrity of the electoral roll and our electoral system. We have a very proud record in this country. We should be extremely proud of the fact that we are largely corruption-free particularly at federal elections. We have an election nearly upon us, which will be very tightly fought. I believe that one of the great aspects of our democracy is that the government that wins the day will have a mandate and support of Australian people because they trust the result.

I give credit to the AEC for the role that they undertake. It is a difficult role and they need support. There are, of course, always difficult and close ballots and we need to ensure that our electoral roll and our electoral system are very well protected. Acts such as handing out fake how-to-vote cards and dressing up as someone you are not to try and fraud someone else into an election outcome they do not want should never be supported. It should be completely ruled out in this place by both major parties and by those who seek to govern both Australia and the states of our Commonwealth.

In that respect we support some of the moves by this government on some of these bills but we do not support the close of rolls bill. And we certainly think there should be a much stronger response to the outrageous, disgusting tactics used by the South Australian Labor Party.

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

I rise to support the four electoral bills, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010 before the House this evening that are being dealt with together. I am pleased that it looks like the opposition will be supporting three of those bills with some qualifications. I look forward to the amendments coming from the opposition in relation to the how-to-vote bill.

The member for Mayo correctly summarised my position. I do not condone what happened in South Australia; I condemn it. Indeed, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which I chair, is undertaking a reference into that matter which was sent to it from the Senate. We will not be pulling our punches in relation to that. It is in the interests of all parties that we have some integrity in the system and that those sorts of events are not allowed to occur again. If the opposition has amendments that they believe can strengthen this bill, I suggest to them that they place those amendments before the Special Minister of State so that they can be looked at.

In relation to the pre-poll voting and other measures bill and the modernisation and other measures bill I understand from what members opposite say that they are broadly supportive. Those bills arise from unanimous recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. We looked at a lot of those issues as a committee and there were a number of unanimous recommendations. I want to point out a couple in particular to the House which are to do with pre-poll voting and other measures. In the second reading speech it was pointed out that the amendments followed our inquiry and will:

• modernise enrolment processes to enable electors to update their enrolment details electronically;
• allow the Australian Electoral Commission (the AEC) to manage its workload more efficiently by enabling enrolment transactions to be processed outside the division for which the person is enrolling;
• enable prepoll votes cast in an elector’s ‘home’ division to be cast and counted as ordinary votes; and
• provide a legislative framework for people who are blind or who have low vision to cast an independent and secret vote.

They are amendments to the act that all sides can support, and I anticipate that support to be forthcoming from the opposition. In relation to the bill on modernisation and other measures, that bill:

• repeals redundant provisions;
• gives the Electoral Commissioner flexibility rather than prescription; and
• places more technological tools at the Australian Electoral Commission’s (AEC) disposal so that the AEC can continue to deliver the best enrolment and election practices.

Again, that comes off some unanimous recommendations. One in particular that I am proud of, which the commission supports and which the committee took up unanimously, is allowing provisional enrolment at the age of 16 rather than 17, thus dropping the age that people can provisionally enrol by 12 months. That will allow people to automatically attain full enrolment on their 18th birthday. Provisional enrolment is voluntary but the beauty of bringing it back to 16—I think this is the sort of enrolment that can take place in the UK—means that electoral officials can actually capture more students while they are at school. They do not get as many at age 17 because they are doing their HSC year at that age.

The commission’s response to provisional enrolment at 16 was very positive and the committee was unanimous. That measure does not favour one party or the other, but people at 16 are, I think, more interested in politics or maybe they are not as cynical as some of those who are 17. Once they are on the roll, if an election comes around and they are 18 you have captured them. The statistics show that enrolment is not as high from the age of 18 all the way through to 25. It is not until you reach the 25-year-old age group that you are getting 95 per cent enrolment. I think this provision is an improvement. I think that this bill is also not contentious.

I turn to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. It regulates the authorisation of how-to-vote cards to make it clear who will benefit from the preference flow suggested on the how-to-vote card. Secondly, the bill prohibits a person from causing to be printed, published or distributed, including by radio, television, internet or telephone, anything that may mislead or deceive an elector in relation to how to cast a vote. I do not want to repeat the second reading speech, but the conclusion of the second reading speech says:

The government is committed to reducing the potential for voters to be misled and to give voters the means to make informed decisions about voting.

I again repeat my challenge to the members of the opposition: if there are deficiencies in this bill, we should be told about them—we should be told how it can be improved—and not on the day the bill is going to be discussed in the Senate. Come up with some meaningful amendments that the Special Minister of State can have a look at to ensure that what happened in South Australia does not happen federally. I do not intend, as my learned colleague was once captured saying, to be seen to defend the indefensible. What happened was indefensible. It was a cute trick. It might have got people over the line, but it was immoral. It has no place on a continuing basis in our system.

That is why I favour regulation. I do not allow the free market to determine what the parameters should be in these sorts of circumstances. I believe in regulations, tight regulations, so that the system is fair to everyone. Deception should not be part of our electoral system, the system that determines whether a government or opposition wins an election and whether someone wins a seat. I am actually quite proud of our electoral system, and I am quite proud of our Australian Electoral Commission, because I think they are the finest in the world. I support compulsory voting and I support full preferential voting, because 95 per cent of people attend on election day and 95 per cent cast formal votes. That gives credibility to the result at the end of the process.

You only have to have a look at what happened in the United Kingdom recently to see the stalemate they achieved. You had 35 per cent of the vote for the Conservatives, 29 per cent for the Labour Party and 22 per cent for the third force, the social democrats. They now have a coalition government. But when you have a situation like ours, you do not get 60 per cent attendance, you get 95 per cent attendance. You do not want activities such as those which occurred in South Australia to discredit a system—or activities like those in Greenway in 2004. Unknown persons ran a smear campaign that cost the Labor Party the seat of Greenway. In 2007 they were pinged in Lindsay. They were caught and, to his credit, John Howard disowned them at the drop of a hat. He did not defend what they did. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters looked at that situation and we ended up with a unanimous report. We came up with recommendations for the parliament so that those sorts of things do not happen again.

The one bill that I do want to spend a bit of time on—and I know my time will run out shortly—is the close of rolls and other measures bill. It restores the close-of-rolls period to seven days after the issue of the writ for an election and it repeals the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity. The coalition put forward the age-old chestnut that fraudulent activity is the reason for the measures they put in when in government, measures that disenfranchised many tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands. Let us be clear: under the old system for provisional voting, if you rolled up and your name was not on the roll, you could get a provisional vote and then you signed the envelope. That envelope and signature were then checked against the Australian Electoral Commission’s repository—from when you first enrolled or when you transferred your enrolment from one electorate to another. Signatures were compared in the event of doubt. That is the best proof of identity there is. Instead, the Liberal Party came up with this concoction that you had to produce a licence—and 27,000 people got disqualified. In all the time I have been on the committee—some 12 years out of the 20 that I have served in this place—we have had no evidence at all of wholesale fraudulent activity. Indeed paragraph 3.59 of the report said:

The committee has received no evidence that fraudulent activity was reduced as a result of the amendments to the close of rolls. On the contrary, there is no evidence available that indicates systemic fraudulent activity exists.

It is the same with provisional voting.

A lot of people missed out because of the withdrawal of the seven-day rule. There was a $30-odd million campaign and there was a reduction in the number of people who missed out compared to 2007, but, if ten miss out, if a hundred miss out or if a thousand miss out, that is ten, a hundred or a thousand too many. We have computerisation. Seven days into a 33-day cycle allows the Electoral Commission to produce a roll that can be looked at. We have a more mobile population—young people moving. If you look at the census figures you will see the level of movement. The party that says it is not in favour of red tape introduced red tape to knock people off. At the last election in 2007, you could have had the rolls close on the day the Prime Minister called it. The reason we got three days was that there were public holidays in two states, so there was actually a three-day grace period. That three-day grace period before the close of rolls allowed a lot of people to get on the rolls who otherwise would not have been on them. These were people legitimately tidying up their electoral enrolment. It is red-hot that a system in place since 1983, about which there was no evidence of systemic fraud, was withdrawn, leading to hundreds of thousands of voters being disenfranchised.

Debate interrupted.