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

In the time remaining to me in this debate on these electoral and referendum bills I wish to concentrate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010. This bill contains provisions that will restore the close of rolls period to seven days after the issue of the writ for an election and will repeal the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity before their votes are admitted for scrutiny. This bill arises out of recommendations from the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the conduct of the 2007 federal election.

When the coalition were in government we saw legislation that disenfranchised people and that basically presumed them to be guilty. There were allegations made of widespread fraud without any evidence being placed before the committee, or anywhere indeed, to sustain that, yet tens of thousands of voters were disqualified in terms of their right to vote. On page 47 of the report Dr Kathy Edwards is quoted as saying:

In Submission Number 205 to the Inquiry the AEC also assured of its ability to meet the high volume of enrolments made during the seven day close of rolls period in a fashion that protected against fraud and insured the integrity of the Electoral Roll. This Submission was not referred to or quoted in that part of the JSCEM Report that dealt with this particular issue.

It is important to emphasise that concerns regarding this matter do not come from the body charged with the responsibility of administering Australia’s electoral processes, i.e. the AEC, and, in fact this body is confident of its ability to meet its statutory requirements in this respect.

The abolition of the seven-day rule was not something that came from the AEC; it came from the political parties opposite—the Liberal and National parties—and it was done for pure political advantage. It was not done because there was any evidence of widespread electoral fraud. It is a disgrace that so many voters lost their right to have their vote counted in an election, particularly a close election, because of the base politics of the opposition. I think this bill goes a long way to remedying the problem.

Our recommendation on page 51 does stand up to scrutiny. We are in effect saying that we have faith in the Electoral Commission to update enrolments. We need to give people in a modern society, where there is a lot of changing of address, adequate time to change their enrolment details so that their vote can count. The opposition allows the rolls to close on the same day that the writ is issued. At the last election, because there were two public holidays in two different states, there were three days allowed for it.

Bring the evidence of electoral fraud to the committee, bring the evidence to the Electoral Commission, and then you will have some credibility in your arguments. The last time this system operated was in 1983, when Malcolm Fraser caused a snap election and disqualified hundreds of thousands of people because the rolls were closed on that day. It was as a result of that disenfranchisement in that election that the seven-day period was brought in.

The other matter is provisional enrolments. That is when people roll up on election day, their name is not on the roll, they fill out their ballot papers, they put them in an envelope and they sign it. We now require proof of identity from them by way of a drivers licence. If they do not produce that, their vote does not count and there is a table on page 60 of the report that shows the devastating effects of that particular provision. The table shows that, as a result of a number of changes to the provisional vote provisions, many tens of thousands of votes are not counted. Provisional votes from 1993 to 2007 are shown in figure 3.3. Back in 1993, there were 66,458 votes rejected and 44,886 admitted. In subsequent elections—in 1996, in 1998 and in 2001—the numbers roughly broke even. There was a change by a few thousand in how many were rejected and how many were admitted. In the 2004 election, 90,366 provisional votes were rejected and 90,512 were admitted. In 2007, what happened was that 143,470 votes were rejected and 24,212 were admitted—a massive turnaround.

The argument that these votes were fraudulent and were being admitted into the system can be dismissed very quickly, because the people who fronted up at the polling booth had to sign an envelope. The method of checking whether the person was a particular person, if there was doubt, was that the Electoral Commission would compare signatures with the original electoral enrolment form lodged or a variation of an enrolment form. Those votes were not just admitted willy-nilly. When scrutineers—and I have scrutineered in many an election—questioned a signature, the procedure within the Electoral Commission was to pull out the historic file and compare signatures. There was a check, and there has been not one piece of evidence placed before past committees that demonstrated that fraud was being perpetrated by provisional voters on any scale, if at all. The reason these votes were made harder to admit into the count was that, when you look at provisional votes, traditionally the itinerant vote favours Labor.

This was the hanging chad of Florida, where safety net provisions were removed from the Electoral Act to disqualify voters from having their vote counted. It was not about fraud but was because in relation to a lot of those votes Labor did better out of provisional votes than did the coalition. That is a disgrace, and that is why that provision as it once stood needs to be reinstated. We are not dealing with 10 votes or 100 votes here; we are dealing with 70,000 votes in this instance. That is the estimate of the difference, and the table shows it. (Time expired)

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this package of legislation, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010 and related bills. This is a debate about several important changes to the rules governing our electoral process, and nothing could be more important to the proper functioning of our democracy. All of us involved in the political process rightly take pride in the operation of the Australian democratic system. The work of the Australian Electoral Commission is absolutely central to that, but obviously it operates under rules laid down—laws laid down—by this parliament.

This is the second time I have risen to speak on some of these measures, in view of the fact that these measures were included in the original bill put forward earlier this year—the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010. At the time, coalition speakers made it clear that we disagreed with—we were opposed to—some of the key provisions in that bill. We note that some of those objectionable provisions have now reappeared in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2). There has been a little bit of repackaging, but the repackaging has not changed our position. The measures we were opposed to when the original bill was brought forward we remain opposed to.

There are two measures in particular on which we think the case for change has simply not been made. The first of those measures is to change the current arrangements so that the rolls would not close until seven days after the issue of the writs. The second of those measures is to remove the requirement for declaration voters to produce identification. Our opposition to these measures reflects a degree of suspicion about the motivation of the Labor government in bringing forward these changes to the existing procedures. I am sorry to say that, when you look at the track record of the Labor Party on electoral matters, it is not unblemished.

A gentleman named Mike Kaiser came to the attention of people interested in telecommunications policy, as I am, when he was recently appointed to the role of head of government relations at the NBN Co, putting him in the remarkable position of being responsible for government relations for a company in which the government is the 100 per cent shareholder. Mr Kaiser was recommended for that role, it has become evident, by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy. At an earlier stage of his career, Mr Kaiser was the State Secretary of the Labor Party in Queensland. He was then a member of the Queensland parliament, until he abruptly retired from his position following an appearance before the Shepherdson royal commission, which dealt with certain irregularities which had occurred some years before. In particular, it emerged that Mr Kaiser, a Labor member of the Queensland parliament and former state secretary of the party, had enrolled at an address that he later conceded he had never lived at. It is very unfortunate that somebody holding a position of responsibility in one of the major political parties in our nation should engage in such conduct.

It is the proven and regrettable experience that such conduct occurs from time to time, and that informs the degree of caution and intelligent scepticism with which those of us on this side of the House look at measures proposed to change the arrangements under which elections in Australia are conducted. There are, regrettably, examples of people falling prey to the temptation to fiddle the system. Of course, it is not just officials of the Labor Party; people can fall prey to temptation to cast votes in circumstances where they are not entitled to. If that occurs, it undermines confidence in our electoral system. Therefore, it is very important that our electoral system build in appropriate measures to prevent such behaviour. When we have clear evidence on the record that people do, from time to time, fall prey to temptation, it is very important that our electoral system build in appropriate measures to protect against such conduct, to protect the integrity of the system under which votes are cast and tallied.

Unfortunately, people casting votes which they are not entitled to cast is not the only evil we need to guard against. We also need to guard against activities which are designed to confuse voters and to trick them into casting votes which would have a result different from what the voters intended. In the by-election in Bradfield held in December 2009, we saw a troubling instance of this. The Christian Democratic Party put up nine candidates, all under the same party name, all endorsed by that party, and the result was that there were 22 candidates in total on the ballot paper. As a consequence, a significant number of voters had their intentions frustrated and ended up casting informal votes. They were defeated by the complexity of correctly completing a ballot paper with 22 names on it. I am therefore fully supportive of the provision contained in one of the bills in this package which would prevent a party from nominating more than one endorsed candidate for a House of Representatives seat.

As the member for Goldstein said when he spoke earlier in this debate, there are a number of sensible measures in this package of bills which we are happy to support, but there are also measures which we do not support because we think they are ill-conceived. It is unfortunate that the kind of behaviour I have just described in the Bradfield by-election, behaviour calculated to confuse and even to mislead voters, is not restricted to minor parties. Again, it is unfortunate to have to note that the Labor Party has been involved in a very serious example of such behaviour, which we saw in the recent South Australian state election.

If you turned up at a polling booth to vote and a person approached you wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the message ‘Put Your Family First’, what would you expect was the identity of the party supported by that person—particularly having regard to the fact that there was a party in Australia known as Family First which was running candidates in that election? You would expect, quite reasonably, that the person wearing that T-shirt, coming towards you to hand you a how-to-vote card, was from the Family First party.

In fact, the unfortunate reality, the distressing reality, is that the people wearing these T-shirts were participating in an operation designed to mislead and confuse voters—an operation conducted by the Labor Party, an operation explicitly sanctioned by the state secretary of the Labor Party in South Australia. The whole exercise was cynically misleading. It was designed to trick people into casting a vote which would benefit Labor, people who very likely had no such intention and thought they were casting their vote in a very different way. It is a shameful episode in Australian electoral history.

Accordingly, on this side of the House we look with a certain scepticism at Labor’s proposed measures in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010. These measures are put forward supposedly to demonstrate that the Labor Party has now seen the error of its ways. We are, frankly, sceptical and, as other speakers have indicated, we believe these measures need further scrutiny. We do not think that this was an episode which reflects any distinction at all on the Labor Party and we think that further work is required on this front.

We also look with scepticism at the measures contained in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2). These two measures, which I have already referred to, are designed to reverse important safeguards introduced under the Howard government—safeguards designed to ensure and protect the integrity of our electoral system. The first of these measures concerns the closing of the rolls seven days after the writs are issued. This would be a change from the current law, which says that the rolls close when the writs are issued. This typically occurs three to four days after an election is called. The consequence of the current procedure is that the Australian Electoral Commission has at least seven days in which to verify new enrolments and four days in which to verify changes of address. This period is of considerable value, we believe, in allowing the Electoral Commission to identify and discount fraudulent enrolments. The change which is proposed—extending the enrolment deadline by another seven days—will remove the capacity for the Electoral Commission to conduct this verification process because the time lines will have become so compressed.

We acknowledge that this factor—that is, having adequate time to conduct verification—must be weighed up against the down side, which is that some people will miss the enrolment deadline. We note, however, that in the 2007 election, when the current deadline provisions were in place, the number who missed the close of rolls was 100,370, a 40 per cent reduction on the number who missed the deadline in 2004, when the law said that the deadline was seven days after the issue of the writs—that is to say, when the law was what the current bill proposes it again become.

We believe that certain responsibilities attach to the privilege of being an Australian citizen. One of those responsibilities is to get onto and maintain one’s enrolment on the electoral roll. There are regular public information campaigns conducted to encourage Australians to enrol. For example, the Australian Electoral Commission mount a campaign directed at those who are approaching the age of 18, encouraging them to enrol for the first time. Recently I attended a forum at Killara High School with 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds which was conducted under the auspices of the AEC’s campaign and which was designed to encourage those young people in attendance to get on the roll and to inform them about the responsibility of voting which they would shortly exercise.

So we do not accept the argument that the rolls should be kept open for a further seven days after the writs are issued in view of the fact that claims about the numbers of Australians who are disenfranchised as a result are overblown and that the clear consequence of this change would be to reduce the AEC’s capacity to check for fraudulent enrolments. On this side of the House we attach a high priority to being able to take measures to prevent fraudulent enrolment. We think it is prudent to attach such a priority to it in view of the clear experience of fraudulent conduct in the Australian electoral system. Sadly, as I have noted, the Labor Party and people acting on its behalf have, from time to time, been involved in such conduct—and I have given some examples.

The second measure in the bill which we do not support is the measure which will change the act so as to remove the requirement that identification be provided by persons wishing to cast a provisional vote. We are wholly opposed to any measure which would weaken the proof of identity requirements. These provisions are an important deterrent, acting to prevent citizens from failing to maintain their enrolment and from seeking to engage in multiple voting. We also note that the persons to whom the identity requirements apply are persons who have failed to meet the requirement to maintain their enrolment at their current address. We are deeply sceptical of the method which has been proposed to confirm the identity of individuals in these circumstances. That proposed method is for the returning officer to compare the signature on the envelope collected when the vote was cast with the signature of the elector held in the Australian Electoral Commission’s records. We think this is an unreliable measure and an ill thought through measure, and we do not support a change to the law in this fashion.

On this side of the House we attach the highest importance to maintaining the integrity of the electoral roll, and we view with prudent scepticism measures which in our view would compromise that important objective. Another measure in this package of bills which we are opposed to is the measure which would change the existing postal vote process, which works well. We are concerned that this has been slipped in by the government, by the Labor Party, with a view to accruing electoral advantage. This was not a matter that was considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and the proposed requirement that postal vote applications be sent directly to the Australian Electoral Commission is a change to the current procedures. We do not believe the case for the change has been effectively made. We believe that the current postal vote procedures work well. Certainly, the coalition parties have been able to work effectively to encourage Australians to cast a postal vote and to exercise their democratic right. We are suspicious that the motives of the Labor Party in proposing a change to these arrangements have nothing to do with the integrity of the roll, nothing to do with the efficacy of our voting system and everything to do with an attempt to change the current calculus in terms of which side of politics has been more effective in using the existing postal vote provisions to give Australians an opportunity to vote and to cast a postal vote.

We are opposed to that measure as well as to the other measures that I have spoken about in my remarks today. We think the measures to which we are opposed go in the wrong direction. We think they will reduce the integrity of the electoral roll rather than increase it. We think they will undermine the effectiveness of the Australian voting system and the record of integrity in that system, in which all of us take pride. We consider therefore that these measures should be opposed. (Time expired)

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

This is a very interesting debate and one to which I attach a lot of importance. It deals with 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. In essence it gets down to a number of important adjustments or would-be adjustments in these four bills. As the member for Bradfield said, this has to be motivated not by what is of political advantage to one side or the other but by what upholds the integrity of the electoral process, the rolls that are used to define who is entitled to participate in that process and the various recording and counting mechanisms that are part of coming to a final figure on election day.

For some time now we have had various people saying that we can simplify this and we do not need to do that. All the measures being looked at in these bills are there for a reason. Let me take you back to another incident that the member for Bradfield spoke about, and that was how certain personnel associated with the Labor Party, particularly in Queensland, rorted the rolls. That saw a number of members of state parliament resign or be dropped from important positions within the ALP. Quite frankly, they were enrolling themselves or other people at addresses at which they were not resident. There is good cause to believe that went on quite extensively over the years. I can remember my former colleague the member for Petrie as she was at the time, Teresa Gambaro, telling me how she went out and checked some of the mail that had been returned to her office. She found that in a number of circumstances the mail came back from vacant blocks of land. In one instance 20 items had come back from a single address. Obviously in her electorate people had been busy putting in false claims for enrolment. We have elections in Australia—and I have been the victim of one of these—where seats are won or lost by margins of less than 100 votes. In my instance, it was 69 votes and on recount 64. So I have always taken a profound interest in these matters.

In these bills there are two particular issues that we should watch with a great deal of interest. The first one is that the government wishes to restore the closing date for enrolments to seven days after the issue of the writs. On the surface of things that sounds innocent enough; it used to be that in the past. But it did not allow the Electoral Commission sufficient time for scrutiny and effectively at the last election the then government, the Howard government, reduced that to three days.

The outcry from the ALP was that we were depriving people of being able to enrol to exercise their franchise, to which I would make the observation that for all federal elections in Australia we live on a three-year cycle. We all know when a federal election is coming up. The papers are alive with it for the six or seven months before the date of an election. We all know what is going on—we are all aware that an election is getting close and the polls are read and interpreted with frenzy—so it hard to believe that people do not know that it is time either to get themselves on the roll or, if they have shifted their place of residence in the intervening three years, to have that corrected.

But what is even more telling is that when we compare the number of people who missed out under the seven-day rule with the number of people who missed out under the three-day rule—I am quoting rounded figures for illustrative purposes—under the seven-day rule approximately 170,000 people missed out in the 2004 election but under the three-day rule only 100,000 people missed out. You would have to ask yourself whether the shortness of time was actually an advantage. Under the seven-day rule people can put it off for a few days and say, ‘I might do it then,’ or, ‘I might do it on Friday.’ But under the three-day rule they knew that, if they wanted to be on the roll and had been dilatory over the three years or they had not got around to changing their address or whatever it might be, they had three days to get themselves organised. My view is that the three-day rule focused the mind. People went in and enrolled and fewer people missed out than under the old rule. You can understand, then, why the opposition will oppose this measure and will seek to stay with the existing rule that was introduced in 2007. We oppose it not just for that reason but also because, as the member for Bradfield very elegantly proposed, it gives the Australian Electoral Commission time to scrutinise any fraudulent applications.

The second issue is the requirement of proof of identity when a person is seeking a provisional vote. The provisional vote is the most problematic of all our forms of voting. It is when a person comes into a polling station to vote and their name is not on the roll. In most instances, with fair-minded people who generally attend to their business, they should be on the roll. However, they may have been dropped off by some clerical error, they might not have been at home when the AEC was checking addresses or for some other reason they have been left off the roll. They fill out a form stating the reasons, it is witnessed and, if that is validated, the vote is counted.

At the 2007 election we brought in a rule that people had to identify themselves, and the ALP railed against this. Why would you rail against that? Ninety per cent of people who go to a polling booth to vote go in a car. Sure, a few people might live handily to a polling booth and walk there or go on a tram or bus, but about 90 per cent or so drive to a polling booth. It may not be a great distance, but they get in the car and drive there, which is evidenced by the number of cars you see around polling booths on election day. To do that, you are required by law to have your drivers licence on you. It is not a great deal of inconvenience to ask a person to produce some form of identity and for them to whip out their drivers licence and say, ‘I am Bill Smith; here is my drivers licence.’

That they cannot produce identification is also interesting. I have made a study of this over the years and I always provide my scrutineers with a list of addresses from which mail has been regularly returned. Isn’t that an enlightening thing? If you are getting correspondence back from an address, one of the reasons it may have occurred is that someone fraudulently enrolled at that address. Isn’t it funny that, when things have been returned from that address many times, suddenly that address becomes activated in provisional voting? It makes you wonder if that has not been a sleeping—for want of a better expression—voter, a dual voter. I have noticed over the years how, despite the fact that, as electronic means of recording things has improved, as the electronic wizardry that is available has improved and as our electoral officers and the AEC have improved, provisional voting has increased rather than decreased. Why would that be? Nobody can give me an adequate explanation.

For example, when I first became the member for Hinkler back in 1993 there were 275 valid provisional votes admitted to the count. By 2004 that had gone up to 527—it had nearly doubled. The character of the Hinkler electorate had not changed that much between those dates because it was essentially the cities of Bundaberg, Gladstone, Childers, and some shires of Burnett which changed off and on over the years. Of more recent times it now includes Hervey Bay. But up to that point, the electorate was somewhat stable and there were no big variations in the character or demographic of the Hinkler electorate. Yet the number of provisional votes increased at a time when you would think the trend would be for a reduction in them.

But wait for this. As I told you, last time, in 2004, the numbers were 527 votes. Once these new measures had been placed on provisional votes in 2007, that figure dropped to 83. Isn’t it strange that it would drop to 83? One hundred and fifty-two people came to the booth and were asked to provide further proof of identity and, as you know, people who are rejected at the polling booth on that day for lack of evidence of identity are still allowed to vote providing they come to the AEC office some time in the following seven days and validate their identity. Of the 152 who were asked to return only 38 did. Isn’t that an interesting figure? Only one in four bothered to come back to validate their vote. For this great sacred vote that the member for Banks was thumping his chest about, only a quarter of the people came back to exercise it.

If you look across Australian at the 33,900 people so affected, only one in five people came back. So you really question how many of those were fraudulent votes. How many of those were people who could not identify themselves? Yes, I know some of them would have been lazy. I know that some, having seen the outcome of the election, probably said, ‘I cannot be bothered.’ But a high proportion, I submit to you, did not find the voting thing so sacred that they would go down to the electoral office and validate their identity. So I think the opposition’s position on this is quite defensible.

Another measure that I, as a country person, applaud—and it has support from both sides of the House—is the method of recording postal votes, essentially for country people but for all people. In the past, as you know, you had to have your postal vote date marked essentially by 5 pm or 6 pm on the day before polling, on the Friday, because most post offices do not work on the Saturday. What was happening—and I see the member for O’Connor here and he would be aware of this—was that you would have mail runs out in the middle or at the end of the week and quite often the mail contractor would take letters back for people on stations and outlying communities to the central post office for that area, and on the Monday morning after the weekend the letters would be stamped. If your letter was your ballot paper, your postal vote, and it was date stamped on Monday morning at 9 am or 9.15 am your vote was invalid.

Under this provision, although you will still have to have your postal vote envelope witnessed, the date that you put on that envelope containing that vote will be evidence that you recorded that vote prior to the close of the poll. The fact that someone then witnesses it is likely to make it fairly difficult to manipulate the date. For example, I know that when people come to me and ask me to witness something and then they want me to change the date, I seize up immediately. I hate pre-dating or post-dating anything I witness. In fact, I just do not do it. I think that most people who witness a postal vote would not be a party to any pre-dating stunts. So I think that is a pretty good measure too. It allows a lot of country people whose votes would have been ruled out to have their votes count—and I understand that in the seat of Deputy Speaker Scott, Maranoa, that occurred on quite a regular basis. So I think that is a good measure.

I also support, as does the opposition, a lot of other measures for getting uniform rules for mobile booths which go to nursing homes and the like, and I think that is very important. There used to be some great rorts that went on there. It was not so much in federal elections, I must say, because most poll clerks were quite strict in federal elections about keeping the scrutineers and the political parties back at the door of the room and, if the frail person in bed wanted assistance, then the poll clerk was asked to provide it. I think those are good, sensible measures that stop others saying, ‘Oh, yes, I was around the other day with the how-to-vote card—wouldn’t you like me to vote for you?’ Those sorts of stunts went on and I am pleased that this regulates how that will be conducted in the future. There is also the matter of allowing blind voters to be able to vote in a semiprivate way, and I think that is a good idea.

I will not go into it for the sake of time but I also commend any measure that removes dodgy how-to-vote cards. I think the case of the ALP in the South Australian state election is shameful and I hope that all parties would seek to remove that practice from future federal elections. The electronic management of rolls is, I think, a good move.

There is one other matter that I oppose, and that is that it be mandated that all postal vote applications go directly to the AEC. The previous method of allowing political parties to record those and take them to the AEC never caused any trouble from my office. Every day at 9.30 or 10 am those postal vote applications were taken to the AEC. We took great pride in the way we did it. We have always had a good relationship with the AEC. We have always sent lists of the dead letters to the AEC. (Time expired)

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting to contemplate that, on advice I received from a senator the other day, there are something like 70 bills, some I would imagine of considerable importance, yet to be debated in the Senate over the remaining seven days, counting yesterday, of these sittings. Suddenly the government brings to us, in a process of political convenience, something that interests only members of parliament, depending on their special interest at this late hour, and no doubt they will try to promote this to a point of priority in the Senate in these remaining days when there are serious issues to be considered concerning the government of the country. I could give a significant number of examples.

The first question to be asked in this place is what is this electoral legislation all about? Why, when an election is imminent, would the government be proposing to change the rules by which people vote when there have been no significant complaints registered by the Australian people about those rules? Significant changes were made by the previous government in the interest of gaining more security and propriety in our voting processes. The public are now well aware of them. They know that it is wise to take with them some form of identification. In modern society people would generally never leave home without it so why, now that they know those things, do we want to change the rules again? We can only ask who believes there is an advantage for themselves or who wants to open the door for corrupt practices? I want to deal, as I have in past debates on these matters, with some of the examples that are commonly available.

Above all else we are again hearing the argument, in this case from government members, previously as opposition members, that measures be included in the act which contradict the fundamental principles of the act. Part VIII of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, section 101(6), says:

A person who fails to comply with subsection (1), (4) or (5) is guilty of an offence punishable on conviction by a fine not exceeding 1 penalty unit.

What does section 101(5A) tell us? It states:

… every person who is entitled to have his or her name placed on the Roll for any Subdivision whether by way of enrolment or transfer of enrolment, and whose name is not on the Roll upon the expiration of 21 days from the date upon which the person became so entitled, or at any subsequent date while the person continues to be so entitled, shall be guilty of an offence …

The law which we are proposing to amend today makes it an offence to fail to register to vote once you have turned 18—and of course there is legislation here which takes the matter to high farce, suggesting that it is necessary for young people to commence registering at age 16. Why not make it 10? Why not make it at birth? The reality is that the law, as it prevails, gives those young people the opportunity during their 17th year to comply with the law, yet arguments are promoted here each day that we should be sympathetic to people who break the law in this instance by giving them a special opportunity to correct matters to which they are legally obliged to attend when those circumstances arise—first, when you turn 18 or, second, in the year before you are 18. The House is wasting its time saying it can be during the ages of 16 or 17. As I have said, why not include it in a kid’s first writing lesson? That seems to be how ridiculous the proposal is. I cannot understand why the parliament is wasting its time on this issue.

The fundamental issue is that if you are legally obliged to register, if you are legally obliged to advise the Electoral Commission when you change your address, and that occurs frequently, why then is there any need to give people a catch-up opportunity? Arguably, all of those people who turn up in the proposed seven days after the calling of an election should be charged and convicted because it is not a mistake, it is not a delinquency; it is a breach of the law. So why would this parliament be legislating for that purpose? There is no reason other than to so overcrowd the Electoral Commission in the lead-up to an election, when it has enough work to do, that it cannot properly assess whether they are bogus applications or are for real.

Under the existing legislation, that occurs progressively over the electoral cycle. That is what the law decided, probably when the act was first proclaimed in 1918. There has never been a reason to change it and there will be no reason to change it, unless this country moves to voluntary voting, and I do not hear much about that. So we have working legislation that clearly addresses opportunities for corruption—and the government want to go back to the future. There can only be one reason, and that is that they perceive some political advantage, because within their ranks are people, whom I will quote, who are prepared to break the law.

Within a legitimate electoral roll there are people who for various reasons, often religious, do not vote. Also, we have yet to discover how, with printed rolls, without computerisation, we can prevent persons voting at different venues in the same name. That opportunity still exists. In the Labor mantra, it is referred to as ‘Vote early and vote often.’

So what was recorded on 6 November 2000 in the Courier-Mail in Brisbane? It concerned a major scandal in the state government which resulted in the resignation of the then Deputy Premier, Mr Elder, who resigned after being caught out placing other people and himself on a variety of electoral rolls where they were not eligible. This was done to improve their chances of preselection to parliament. A fellow called Kaiser—who has just got a $400,000-a-year job working on the government’s National Broadband Network—had to resign from office because of his involvement in that scam. On 6 November the Courier-Mail reported how a Labor official, a member of the 1987 federal election campaign team, revealed that he and other ALP supporters had cast numerous votes for a particular candidate of the Labor Party. This was quoted in the paper and never challenged; there was no defamation application or anything of that nature. This Labor member recalled:

On polling day in Fisher there were many female names on the rort list, but a lack of women in on the scam. “But we got a young girl of 16 from Young Labor who thought it was quite exciting. She voted 14 times.”

The Deputy Speaker, who is the member for Fisher, might be interested to know about that. She voted 14 times and she was two years too young to vote. What does that say about persons having to produce identification, if only to prove that they are entitled to a provisional vote, when they are not enrolled?

Young people cannot get into an entertainment venue these days without producing identification. I do not see them protesting on the footpath. Numerous airlines with whom I travel insist on me providing identification to justify my electronic booking. And of course we now all have photographic drivers licences. The previous speaker pointed out that you are virtually legally obliged to carry your drivers licence when you drive your motor car—and what percentage of the population walks to a polling booth?

This provision would re-establish the rorting of provisional votes by saying that a signature is good enough identification. Who, in the counting of millions of votes, or even thousands of provisional votes, is going to be the expert who approves the correctness of a signature? Why would you go to that particular process at the time of applying for a provisional vote, when it is simple to produce identification, typically in the form of a drivers licence? If you have just come up from the beach and you have not got it in your pocket, you have two options under the present law. One is to formally apply and return to the relevant authority within seven days to prove that you are the person you claim to be. But there is another option. Polling booths are never very far away from your home, and you typically choose the closest one to go to. So go home and get your drivers licence and come back. There is no law against that. You are not struck out on the grounds that you cannot identify yourself formally when you first walk into the polling booth, if you are a genuine person believing you are on the roll.

What is it all about? I can tell you what it is all about. It has been evidenced time and time again. The provision applied in the seat of McEwen at the last election, and that election was eventually decided in the High Court, so close was the outcome. The debate centred on, I think, 200 provisional votes for which people had applied but then not returned with the appropriate identification. Who were they? They were not lazy people; the votes were dodgy. Eventually they were struck down by the High Court. The High Court could work it out. They struck these applications down because of people’s failure to identify themselves as provided for by the law, and the seat was eventually won by fewer than 20 votes, I think.

It is important that we have integrity in the voting system. It is important that people comply with the law and register immediately they are eligible to vote or transfer their residence presumably to another electorate. It is just patently silly to bring to this House an argument that young people should have two years in which to register prior to them turning 18 when, unfortunately, most of them fail to do so while they are 17. It is not that they are not informed. Politics is now an issue that is taught in schools, and so it should be. Unfortunately, occasionally, I think kids are told how to vote and that, of course, is to be abhorred. That is not the role of teaching. There are many things that we should encourage young people to take an interest in, including their future. It might be that they need to know how much money is being wasted on school buildings that they occupy. That is information that might eventually decide their vote. The next thing we will be told is that they should vote at 16. I think there is still doubt as to whether it was wise to reduce the voting age to 18, but that has happened and it is also now part of the law and I do not contest it.

These are not good measures. Yes, the issue of how-to-vote cards is a scandal. Considering it was the Labor Party who practised it in South Australia, why should a Labor government be asking for further opportunities to run scams by way of provisional voting or by way of enrolment when, in fact, they have demonstrated now that they think it might be a good idea to fix up the how-to-vote cards. What is the fine? It is some thousands of dollars. What is government worth? If you want to buy a couple of seats by redirecting preferences on a how-to-vote card, contrary to the decision of the party who issues the formal card, I am yet to see just how an authorisation is necessarily going to assist. Quite clearly, if it is in large print and at the top of the card, there is some evidence with a ridgy-didge how-to-vote card that a Liberal, Labor or other voter can look at the card and say that it is legitimate. The dodgy one will not necessarily be authorised as it should have been in South Australia by the Labor Party. What if they get Bill Smith to do it? Who is Bill Smith? Can he go before the court and say: ‘I am a strong believer in Family First, but I had a belief that they should not have expressed their preference in the way they did’?

Let me just say something in closing about preferences. In a multiple vacancy there has never been a credible preferential system. How can preferences that go upwards in a single vacancy go downwards in a multiple vacancy? In Western Australia they have reverted in local government—from whence I came to this place after 16 years, and I saw about 10 different attempts to put a credible preferential system into multiple vacancies—to first past the post and if there are four vacancies the voter ticks four squares. Think of that happening in the Senate. Suddenly senators would be, as the Constitution provides, responsible for their states. The current above-the-line system has handed the entire processes of the Senate to political parties. I think that is to the detriment of the meaning of the Senate in the Constitution. The reason each and every state got the same number of senators was to give them some protection in that house. I have used up my time and, of course, I oppose these measures with the exception of a couple of minor adjustments. (Time expired)

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

I rise to lend support to some of the electoral bills in front of us and to not lend my support to others. In brief, the coalition welcomes the decision of the government to not proceed with its original electoral reform amendment close of rolls and other matters bill. There was a tradition held to by the previous government that controversial and non-controversial amendments were not put in the same bill. This government clearly does not follow that. It is pleasing to see, albeit under some duress, that the government has admitted the original error of its way and has now separated that original bill into four to allow controversial and non-controversial issues to be discussed and debated at length.

Moving to the first of the four bills, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, I think it is axiomatic to say that we will be opposing this bill. The closing of the rolls seven days after the issuing of a writ is a significant issue—a major threat to the integrity of the electoral roll. The previous coalition government moved to protect the integrity of the roll and moved to prevent any fraudulent enrolments. It did this by reducing the period between when an election is called and when the rolls are closed. 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 for people re-enrolling gives the AEC an extra seven days to verify these new enrolments and an extra four days to verify changes of address. So closing the roll at 8 pm on the day the writs for the election are issued gives the AEC extra time to ensure the integrity of the rolls. At a time when the AEC is processing an enormous number, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of enrolments, these changes have greatly assisted the AEC.

Under the old scheme, which Labor wants to take us back to, more than 520,000 changes to enrolment or new enrolments were submitted to the AEC in that seven-day period between the issuing of writs and the close of rolls for the 2004 federal election. Clearly Australians are a mobile people, and that is tremendous—a nation where people are free to come and go—but for the AEC to process that enormous number presents challenges. Official AEC figures also show that, under the coalition’s regime, the number of people missing the close-of-rolls deadline in 2007 was 100,370 compared with 168,394 in 2004. In short, what the coalition put in place is 40 per cent more effective than what Labor is proposing in this bill.

The question has to be asked: why is Labor doing this? Under the previous regime, only 100,000 people missed the close of rolls compared with 2004 when it was 168,000 people. Where is the reform here? It is striking that this appears much like the Building the Education Revolution, Fuelwatch, GroceryWatch, the big new tax on mining and the failed pink batts program. There is no reform. This is simply going back to the past. We believe that the existing arrangements ensure that the electoral roll contains significant integrity and a high degree of accuracy. We are concerned that the extra time period allows for a return to a system which permits fraud to occur. We also believe that a return to the previous system will discourage people from making or maintaining their enrolment during the year. They will have the opportunity to delay such action until an election is called. The bottom line is that this change, historically, will see more people missing out on their vote.

Let me move to the requirement for the production of identification by provisional voters. Again, this is longstanding policy and practice. The intent was to prevent fraudulent voting by people impersonating other people on the voting roll. We did that by requiring people claiming a provisional vote to produce an ID—to actually show who they are. If I had my way, I would require all Australians to turn up with ID at the polling booth. We require ID to take out a video. Why do we not require ID to vote—something that changes and directs the course of the nation? We are quite rightly opposed to any weakening of the proof-of-identity requirements for provisional voting. We do this on the ground that requiring identification is a deterrent to people seeking to engage in multiple voting. According to the AEC, 75 per cent of provisional voters actually showed evidence of identity when voting. Any proposal to weaken these rules, any moves to strip away the requirement to show identification, should be opposed. Indeed, the government should have moved to require identification from all Australians voting at a polling booth. All Australians have such identification. You cannot drive a car without it; you cannot get a Medicare card without it; you cannot get a tax file number without it; you cannot get a passport without it. There are so many things you cannot do. You cannot open a bank account unless you can prove who you are. Why should we allow a voting system in which people are not able to prove who they are? Accordingly, as Labor seeks to water down these provisions, it cannot be supported.

I now turn to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010. This bill can be supported. Currently, prepoll votes are not classed as ordinary votes. There is a requirement for them to go through administrative checking in the week following the polling day. This clearly creates a significant and unnecessary administrative burden for the AEC. Seeking to class prepoll votes as ordinary votes will see them being counted on the night, leading to an earlier and more accurate result. This certainly makes a significant degree of sense. For the processing of enrolments, there is an administrative amendment which allows the AEC to transfer workloads within their organisation. This again makes a lot of sense.

We support the change to electronic updating of voter records. Australians are doing more and more online. It is simple, it is easy and it is convenient for Australians to do. Allowing people who are already on the roll to maintain their records on the roll electronically without a whole heap of bureaucracy and paperwork seems to make a great deal of sense to me. If I can do my banking online and if I can trade shares online, surely I can update my electoral details online. The bill also contains a provision for single party nomination per seat, which makes an enormous amount of sense. I cannot see any reason why a political party would want to run multiple candidates in a single seat. The only reason you would do that would be as a tactical move to try and generate an informal vote. We support the idea of one candidate per political party per seat.

Let us move on to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010, which I will refer to as the ‘how-to-vote card bill’. Clearly we will be supporting this, but we will be making a range of minor amendments when the bill moves to the Senate. It is instructive to pause and ask ourselves the question: how did a how-to-vote card bill come before the House? It would appear that it came about because of a deliberate scam by the Labor Party in the 2010 South Australian state election. That, I think, is a statement of fact. The South Australian Labor Party handed out how-to-vote cards which appeared to favour Family First. Indeed, the ALP handed out cards which purported to be official Family First how-to-vote cards but the preference order favoured the Labor Party. The card said ‘Vote 1 Family First’ because Labor knew full well that they did not have the numbers to win the seat, but the No. 2 preference went to Labor. I am led to believe that Labor operatives even came from interstate, wearing bogus T-shirts that indicated that they were Family First booth workers, to hand out the bogus how-to-vote cards.

What I find deeply concerning is that this tactic is apparently not a one-off. It would appear to be a deliberate scam by the Labor Party, which they have used before in both New South Wales and Queensland. We see this when we look at the infamous cases of Webster v Deahm (1993) and Carroll v Electoral Commission of Queensland (1998). So I am pleased that, after 17 years of this perpetual fraud by the Labor Party, they have admitted that it is morally wrong and are now seeking to correct their moribund ways. This bill would require that all parties place the name of the authoriser and that of the party prominently at the top of the how-to-vote cards or face a fine. My only concern is that the fine is $1,100.

After 17 years of corrupt practice by Labor in this area, one has to ask: how did they come up with $1,100 as the fine? Did they think: ‘We’ve been doing this for 17 years’—how many seats they have won this way we do not know—‘we have to do something’? The corrupt practices of the Labor Party in the South Australian election were so in-your-face that something would have to be seen to be done. Perhaps Labor thought, ‘We’ll put in place what is ostensibly a good measure but if that measure is flouted we’ll make the punishment $1,100.’ A quick whip around of the ALP caucus could raise that. This amount of money does not create a disincentive. Why not $50,000? Why not $100,000? Why not half a million dollars to truly prevent the Labor Party from moving down this moribund path once again. The key point in the legislation is the authorisation so that voters can clearly see who is handing out the how-to-vote card. We support that principle. Also, I think it is important to say that the Liberal-National coalition has not engaged in this activity. The Liberal-National coalition has been the victim of such activity by the Labor Party. We support their belated attempts to legislate against their own rorting. However, I put on record my deep concern that $1,100 will not be a disincentive to the Labor Party.

I now turn to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010. This bill contains a series of uncontroversial minor amendments arising out of the unanimous recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters or JSCEM inquiry into the 2007 federal election. The bill is fine in the main. However, there are a range of issues that will be addressed in the Senate. One of these issues concerns the sixth measure in the bill, which has both controversial and non-controversial aspects to it. A non-controversial aspect is the removal of the need for a witness to a postal vote, thereby allowing single people to more easily lodge a postal vote. However, there are a number of controversial aspects to this measure. It is deeply concerning what the Labor Party has done with this bill—that is, the controversial aspects of it were not considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Electorate Matters. Labor simply snuck them in without going through the due process that is the longstanding practice of the parliament. One measure is that all postal vote applications should be returned directly to the AEC and a prohibition should be put on any extra materials such as postal vote application forms.

The question has to be asked why the issue of postal vote applications was not raised in the Joint Standing Committee on Electorate Matters review into the 2007 federal election, because there did not seem to be a problem with it. The committee in its report did not address it. So why are Labor seeking to change it? The great maxim of ‘if it isn’t broken don’t try and fix it’ holds true here. Labor are trying to make changes in the area of postal vote applications where there is no issue at all. If we dig a bit deeper—and I might risk being called a cynic here—we find that the coalition parties do far better with postal vote applications. Could it possibly be that Labor are simply looking to reduce the prospect of a higher vote for the coalition through postal votes by saying that postal votes must be sent back to the AEC and no extra material is to be attached to it? Would they be so brazen as to do that? Would Labor be so underhanded as to do that? I think one only has to look at the 17 years of Labor fraud and morally moribund activity regarding how-to-vote cards to answer that question with a very resounding ‘yes’. We will be strongly opposing this move because it makes no sense. It is punitive without solving a problem. It does not seek to address an issue; it seeks to address Labor’s political fortunes.

The seventh measure in the bill relates to modernising the provisions for homeless voters. In principle this measure is supported by the coalition. It is certainly supported by the members of JSCEM. However, this is the second area in which Labor is seeking change. The coalition has identified concerns about item 9, which seeks to repeal section 96(9) of the act, which states:

… 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 which flows from Labor’s change here is that there is no practical provision to ever remove an itinerant elector from a roll. It is hardly worth mentioning that you cannot do a habitation review—that is, where does someone live?—on someone who is homeless. Unless the itinerant elector is very good at ensuring their enrolment details are up to date, the only way to determine whether they have left the electorate or indeed passed away is by the fact that they did not show up to vote. This proposed amendment from Labor would appear to be an invitation to abuse the integrity of the electoral roll. Once a person is on the roll as an itinerant elector, they will never leave the roll for that particular division, irrespective of their true place of residence. The opportunity to organise a campaign of fraudulent voting is obvious to all because the bona fides of any potential person on that roll could never be checked. I think all Australians would agree that repealing section 96(9) would therefore be a grievious error. It would be bad policy. It would fundamentally weaken the integrity of the electoral roll. It is something we should move against and we will certainly move amendments in the Senate in that regard.

In conclusion, I am pleased that the government has moved away from their original bill and has now broken the legislation into four areas. Some areas of these four bills are worthwhile and will enjoy the coalition’s support. Other areas will receive amendments in the Senate. The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010 cannot be supported in any form.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to speak today on 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, regarding changes to the Electoral Act. I, like all members, enjoy the opportunity in my electorate of Cowan in Western Australia to speak to young people in the high schools and primary schools about the importance of our great democracy. I think we have a claim to say that this is the greatest country in the world. We definitely want to keep it that way. That is why the Electoral Act is such an important element of our great democracy. Among the young people in this country, particularly those in Cowan, I see many who are keen to be part of that process once they turn 18. I have been to many schools where young people have told me, ‘I’m still 17 but I have already done my provisional enrolment.’ I welcome that.

As I recall, the member for O’Connor said earlier, in referring to the Electoral Act, that it is the law for someone to enrol within 21 days of becoming eligible. They should enrol then and if they do not, that constitutes an offence. The obligation on citizens of this country to enrol from the age of 18 is important. I really do wonder what is the story behind this weakening of the laws. Basically the government wants to say to the Australian people: ‘You don’t have to enrol. You don’t have to comply with the law which says that you have to enrol within 21 days of becoming eligible. In fact, we will make it even easier to not comply with the law by saying that you have until seven days after the calling of the election to enrol.’ It is rather an odd situation that we have a law but we do not want to follow that law. I wonder whether the government should change that law as well so that it is no longer an offence to not enrol within 21 days of becoming eligible to enrol, but rather that it should be an offence if you have not enrolled within seven days after the calling of the election. There is an inconsistency there. Others have passed comment on exactly why it is the case that the government seems so keen to disregard one law and let this seven-day business come into being.

As others have said, there is a great history in this country of fraud and rorting of the electoral system. I would not suppose to say that it was hugely widespread, but there is a consistency about the side that is so often involved with these matters. A case in Queensland has been referred to previously where a 16-year-old member of Young Labor was very pleased that she had voted 14 times in an election.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Ramsey interjecting

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no doubt at all, as the member for Grey says, that with voting 14 times how wrong can you be? What a classic disregard for the great democracy of this country that someone should find as a source of some pride defrauding the Australian system, taking advantage of our democracy. I really wonder what ethics are being taught in some places in this country. That one side could promote that as something of some value casts great aspersions upon those involved with that person and upon that person. Maybe it is more the case that someone of that age was badly misled by those she trusted so that she thought this reprehensible behaviour was appropriate. The reality is that that will never be the case. It is certainly never the way we on this side approach it.

Some may say that those behind that sort of fraud—former members Elder and Kaiser—are from the past and such events no longer occur. But I would contend that the reality is, when a government feels under pressure and a sense of desperation that they might be on the receiving end of the people’s will, they will go to any means to take advantage of and rort the system. We only need to look back to the South Australian election. I am sure the member for Gray will also speak on this matter as well—bogus how-to-vote cards and even T-shirts. I think ‘Put Your Family First’ was the slogan used to attempt to deceive the voters in South Australia. I guess it is another great tradition of democracy in this country that one side will use all means to try to deceive the people and create electoral success out of that.

It is certainly sad that we have such examples in this modern age in 2010. As has been said in the past, where there is such deceit, fraud and trickery, it is almost like risk management when it is only a fine of $1,100 to do that. No wonder the Labor Party in South Australia did it. They must have managed that risk and decided maybe $1,100 was worth it to try and win seats. I feel sorry for the people of South Australia to have, unfortunately, a government returned which thinks it an appropriate use of the system to deceive the people for electoral advantage. It is a sad state of affairs and, in that case, I do not think the South Australian people got the government they deserved.

I would also like to speak about provisional voting. This is a cause for concern, given the track record in some parts of this country by one side of politics. We should be particularly concerned about those that turn up on election day and claim a vote. I am particularly fond, however, of the change made before the last election where someone who comes to a polling booth to seek a provisional vote is required to identify themselves. I think that is an appropriate thing. I have spoken to some people who have recently received citizenship and enrolled to vote. They put their drivers licence number on the form. In a very clear way they are required to prove their identity. Why shouldn’t that be the case when someone turns up to ask for a provisional vote? Why shouldn’t that be the case when they are not on the electoral roll but they seek a vote? They should be required to do the same as everyone else who is actually enrolled as a voter has done. The fact that someone should have to prove their identity at the time of casting their vote or of applying for their provisional vote or by the Friday following the election seems like an appropriate thing to do.

Sadly there has been a history of people who are not who they claim to be defrauding the system and claiming votes. One of the senators has put forward an amendment that there could even be a comparison of signatures to prove the identity of the person claiming the vote. What worries me is that, within courts of law, experts are required to identify handwriting to prove that a particular person wrote a particular document. Handwriting experts have to see pages and pages of writing to try to identify whether the person who is meant to have done the handwriting was actually the one who did it. Yet we are asking the Australian Electoral Commission officials to look at some signatures and decide whether it is exactly the same person. It seems a little bizarre. You could not call that a particularly reliable process if they do not have the skills, the background or the examples necessary to be able to say with absolute certainty that those signatures were from the same person. That is a point of concern. With regard to provisional voting on election day, I have said that I have some concerns. In the last election within the electorate of Cowan there were only some 300 provisional votes, but I think it is necessary for someone who claims a vote to meet the same identity requirements as someone who has appropriately enrolled on the electoral roll.

At the 2004 election, some of the people who worked on my polling booth in the suburb of Girraween within Cowan told me that they could have sworn that the same person had shown up about four times at the Blackmore Primary School in different shirts and seemed to go in and vote. Maybe it was because they had family members who chose not to vote on the day or they knew that other people were not going to vote on the day. But it is a cause for concern when you have these sorts of stories floating around. Couple that with the provisional voting issues, and I personally become in favour of everyone who turns up to a polling booth identifying themselves. I know that administratively that would be difficult and would slow the process down, but there have been cases where there would have been useful.

I will move on. I do not wish to take up too much more time of the House today on this matter. I have looked through the provisions within these bills. From the perspective of the coalition, we are pleased with certain aspects of the bills. But there are other aspects, some of which I have covered in general, that we have some concerns about. There will be amendments moved and other action taken regarding some of those matters.

I will conclude where I began by saying that Australia is a great democracy. The overwhelming majority of people respect that democracy. They enrol to vote and they give some careful consideration to how they are going to vote. They are part of the process. There have sadly been some occasions in this country’s history when certain elements—and I have described some today—have seen rorting the system as something to be proud of or a duty to their party. As I said, in Queensland and South Australia that has happened very recently. That is a sad state of affairs. I look upon the weakening of the Electoral Act that is provided for in some elements of these bills as a cause for great concern. We should be suspicious—and we on this side have the right to be suspicious—about the motives of those who seek to weaken the laws, given that they have been behind so many of these problems in the past. I thank the House.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to address the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll Voting and Other Measures) Bill 2010, and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010. Some of these electoral reforms are good—undoubtedly. Some are bad. I will go first to those that I think offer to improve the Electoral Act.

The acceptance of signatures on postal votes will be met with a considerable amount of pleasure in parts of my electorate—the more remote areas. We have seen in the past, because of the mail system, people receiving their postal voting papers quite late in the process. It might be a week before they get their mail delivered and then it is another week before they turn it around. In one case from the last federal election, I was aware that a vote was posted in the local town on the Thursday evening, but the mail did not go out until the next Tuesday. Australia Post will not postmark mail until the day that it is dispatched from the post office. So that vote became null and void. To accept the signature on the postal vote is a good move forward—for a fairly small section of the community, it must be said, but their votes should be recognised. They are certainly trying to participate in a correct way in the political system.

The attempts in these amendments to address the South Australian election fraud that went on at the last state election are welcome. I know that you, Deputy Speaker Georganas, would be quite well informed on this issue. It was in fact the lowest form of blatant cheating that we have seen in an electoral process for some time in Australia. It is worth noting in the House just what happened on that day. The ALP and members of the ALP actively sought to mislead the public. Election day, 20 March this year, was a beautiful day. I spent all of it in Whyalla, working on various booths to support my local candidate. It was a day that the Family First Party will well remember, for it was a day on which they were about to be deceived in a number of seats within Adelaide—not in the country, it must be said.

ALP supporters wore t-shirts that I will describe. In small letters at the top of their t-shirts they had ‘Put Your’. Then in large letters they had ‘Family First’ in the same blue colours of the Family First support team. What were these people dressed up in these blue t-shirts with the slogan ‘Put Your Family First’ across the front doing? They were handing out how-to-vote cards. Once again, it was the same deal. At the top of the card, in small letters, there was the line ‘Put Your’. Then there was ‘Family First’ in very large letters. These how-to-vote cards expressly directed preferences to the ALP, in total contrast to the correct Family First cards, which actually directed preferences to the Liberal Party. It was a hijacking of votes. In fact, some Family First members rolled up to the booths and saw the workers there working and figured that they were not needed as someone else was doing it—someone that they did not know, but as they were out handing out the Family First material, the real members went home.

Where did these misleading cards come from? They were authorised by M Brown of 141 Gillies Street Adelaide, the address of the headquarters of the Australian Labor Party’s South Australian branch. There was no mention of the Labor Party on the ticket. It did exactly what the designers wanted it to do: it made people think that it was from Family First to steal those second preferences. Respected Flinders University political scientist, Professor Dean Jaensch, described this cheating ‘as the worst example of its kind I have seen in a 40-year career’.

And it was no isolated incident; it was run in four seats. Leon Bignell, subsequently elected in the marginal seat of Mawson, defended his own partner, Sandra De Poi, who handed out the how-to-vote cards in that electorate. Incidentally, De Poi is the Director of WorkCover Corporation and a director of HomeStart. In Hartley, now state cabinet minister Grace Portolesi was not beyond plumbing the ethical depths by employing the same tactics. Tony Piccolo, a once trusted and respected mayor of Gawler, did it too in his northern suburbs seat of Light. All were successful in their respective marginal seats. Lindsay Simmons had a go too in Morialta, but in this case the desperate act went unrewarded when Liberal candidate John Gardner was successful. What a sorry story. It is a Labor Party performance that would have raised an eyebrow even in New South Wales, where we see a new Labor minister resign most weeks. To be fair, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas—and I know you will know these people well—both Chloe Fox in Bright and Tom Kenyon in Newland refused to participate in this great deception, and I say: well done. But we are in a sorry state when we are reduced to congratulating someone for being honest.

South Australian voters were deceived in an election that was largely about trust by a political party that apparently has no moral qualms about duping its way into government. There was a newspaper outrage. For three weeks the Advertiser was full of letters from people totally outraged by this blatant fraud and vowing never to vote for the Australian Labor Party again. I am afraid they will have to wait four more years before they get to pass judgment, but I am sure that if an election were held now the Labor Party would lose in a landslide. The anger is palpable. All I can say to those people, those disappointed people who feel as though their vote was stolen from them, is: have a long memory and remember these actions when you next go to the ballot box.

So the proposals to address this behaviour in the federal arena are to be welcomed—but, seriously, a $1,100 fine? That would be quite a bit of money for an Independent running a $5,000 campaign. For the Australian Labor Party, who will probably have $30 million to spend in the coming election, it is not even insurance money. It was Graham Richardson who said, ‘Whatever it takes.’ If it takes a $1,100 fine, I have no great confidence that will be a sufficient deterrent.

I support the measures in the bill to allow postal votes to be counted as long as the signature date is to be accepted, and I have already spoken about that.

So much for the good in this group of bills. Unfortunately, as I said, it is not all good. The plan to keep the rolls open for another week after the calling of the election is not good process. We are all aware that the Electoral Commission is already overloaded trying to process the number of changes on the electoral roll in any given month, let alone trying to handle the rush that will come with the calling of the election as all those people realise they are not registered in the right electorate or not on the roll at all.

Only a fool would say there is not electoral fraud in Australia. In fact, there was another report from the recent South Australian election, of a family that voted 159 times. The electoral process is for honest people. It works largely just because it works—because people have faith in its integrity and do not cultivate the idea of trying to distort and defraud the process. That is not to say we can accept that all people are honest; unfortunately, there are some who will defraud the system.

The proposed change to the roll closure gives the Electoral Commission a very short time frame in which to get the roll in order, and I do not think there is any real possibility of their being able to properly process the late rush of enrolments that will come in the first week after the calling of the election. You would be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I am, that if you report dead mail to the Electoral Commission it takes months to go through the system; it takes much longer to check than a week.

The proposal that ID need not be presented for declaration votes is just absurd. It leaves voting open to easy, organised and non-traceable fraud. It is a green light for those who would defraud the system. After all, you cannot go into any institution like a bank, or even enrol your kids in school or apply for a drivers licence—or apply for anything—without proving who on earth you are. Why would we allow people to just walk in off the street and say, ‘I’m Joe Bloggs,’ as many times as they like without ever having to produce evidence of who they are? Our voting should be taken much more seriously than that. Our commitment to democracy should be taken much more seriously. So we should oppose the roll extension at all costs. No fair-minded citizen would say less.

I am a trusting man. I take what most people tell me at face value. I believe most people conduct their business in good faith. But some behaviour that has been reported to me from recent elections really does test that faith. You would be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, that my electorate has a large remote area and we have a number of mobile polling booths. Interference with how-to-vote material and standover tactics have been reported to me. It lessens my faith in human nature and it certainly lessens my faith in the political process.

That is why we need to make sure that at every opportunity, without being overly invasive of the Australian public, we provide a structure that is credible and cannot be distorted or rorted. The reprehensible behaviour of the Australian Labor Party in the last South Australian election is but the most recent and glaring example, and that party should be ashamed of its performance. Even though the South Australian Electoral Commissioner has said the acts were not illegal, they should be illegal and those responsible should at least be held to account within their own party.

So, as I said at the beginning, there are some good things and some bad things in this brace of amendments, and I will cast my vote accordingly on each section.

David Hawker (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking to these bills, 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 would like to join with colleagues from the coalition in pointing out what seems to be some remarkable anomalies in the proposals. I think we should be very strongly opposing some of the measures proposed by the government.

I looked with amusement at some of the speeches made by members of the ALP on this matter. Their sanctimonious claims about not disenfranchising people sound so hollow when one knows the reality of it all. If you listen to the claims you would have to question why they even want to propose these changes. Nonetheless, we know from bitter experience that the simple fact is that when it comes to trying to practise fraud there are some—and I do not say all, but some—members of the ALP who are very accomplished at doing this. They worked out long ago how to ‘rig the ballot’, as it is put, whether it be at the local union elections or more recently when we saw what they did in the general election. Colleagues have given examples of individuals who have confessed that they have voted not more than once but in many cases many times more than once. They almost wear it as a badge of pride that as an ALP stalwart part of the job is to go out and ‘vote early and vote often’—the old saying that has been around for a long time, attributed to a former ALP member.

We can look at some of the evidence about what has happened that has caused major disruptions. I think of the Nunawading election for the upper house in Victoria some years ago. The then state secretary of the ALP was caught out rigging how-to-vote cards. As a consequence, there was a re-election. The whole ballot had to be re-held.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was not the reason; it was a tie.

David Hawker (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There was a tied vote but there was also the fact that there had been some funny business going on.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was the tied vote that caused the re-election.

David Hawker (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Funny business went on as well. There is no doubt that there are many other examples where this has occurred. It is little wonder that we see the ALP again trying to weaken the integrity of our electoral rolls knowing full well that they can get some political advantage out of it. There is no doubt that at all times most Australians would believe very strongly that we have to try to maintain a high degree of accuracy and integrity on our electoral rolls.

Looking closely at the close of roll changes proposed by the government, there is no doubt that this is a significant threat to the integrity of the roll. The previous arrangements that we had from the coalition government were designed specifically to protect the integrity of the roll. We had the close of the roll at 8 pm on the day that the writs for the election were issued. That was usually three or four days after the election was called. There was still an opportunity for those who had not enrolled to make sure they were enrolled in time to vote at the upcoming election. If we move to these extra seven days, there is no doubt that there will be a lot of extra enrolments. Equally, the Australian Electoral Commission officers are already frantically getting ready for the election and there is no way they can verify the enrolments by going through them all to check the addresses and that they are valid enrolments. In my view this is quite deliberately being proposed to allow this additional fraud to occur. As everyone would know, if people are aware that they do not have to enrol until after the election is called then of course it will discourage some from bothering to do it when they should have done it probably months beforehand. When people are aware that unless they get enrolled before the election the chances are they may not have that opportunity afterwards, then they will not only take that opportunity but more importantly the Electoral Commission can validate that enrolment so that we know that the integrity of the roll has been protected.

Under the old scheme, which Labor wants us to return to, more than half a million changes to enrolments or new enrolments were submitted to the Australian Electoral Commission in the seven-day period before the close of the rolls in the 2004 federal election. Furthermore, official AEC figures show that under the coalition’s rules, that is, when people had to enrol by 8 pm on the day of the writs, the number of people missing at the close of the rolls at that deadline in 2007 was just over 100,000 compared with 168,000 in 2004. In other words, because people knew they had to get enrolled beforehand we saw 40 per cent more effectiveness in getting people to enrol in time to be able to vote. It is also very important that we encourage people to enrol earlier so that they can be validated.

The second point I would like to come to is the production of identity for provisional voters. This is quite extraordinary. The previous government had a longstanding policy to try to prevent fraudulent voting by people impersonating other voters by requiring people to produce evidence of their true identity and their enrolled address either on polling day or in the week after polling day. That discouraged fraudulent voting by making sure that people were in fact who they claimed to be. Clearly, any weakening of the proof of identity measure is going to open up the opportunities for not only fraud but also multiple voting. As I mentioned earlier, we have people who have confessed that not only have they cast more than one vote but in fact they have cast many more than one vote.

Interestingly, with having to show proof of identity, the Australian Electoral Commission estimated that 75 per cent of provisional voters showed evidence of identity when they were actually voting. Of the nearly 34,000 provisional voters who failed to provide this identification on polling day, only one in five subsequently provided their proof of identity by the cut-off date—that is, the close of business on the Friday following the election. So it would seem open to reasonable assumption that quite a few of those 34,000 voters were not in fact the people they claimed they were. As has been pointed out by others, there are many opportunities for impersonating a voter. One of the most obvious ways is to look through the death notices in the lead-up to the election. The Australian Electoral Commission is far too busy in the pre-election period to check all those death notices and to cleanse the roll accordingly. So there is great scope for fraud.

This move by Labor to take away the proof of identity requirement opens up serious opportunities for fraud. One can assume that the government would only consider this worthwhile if it saw an electoral advantage in it. For that reason, it ought to be exposed that the government is trying to take an opportunity through fraudulent voting to gain an electoral advantage. That reflects very badly on the Australian Labor Party. Clearly, the coalition will be opposing this as, indeed, we will be opposing the other provision to extend the time for people to enrol.

At the current time, prepoll votes are treated as declaration votes and have to go through administrative checking. In the week following polling day there is obviously a lot of work and checking votes is a necessary administrative burden. The government seeks to treat these votes as ordinary votes. There will be a benefit in prepoll votes being counted on the night of the poll, which will give a more accurate result rather than having to wait.

The spreading of the processing of enrolments to other divisions is an administrative amendment which makes sense if there happens to be a very heavy AEC workload. One provision allows the AEC to spread the workload to neighbouring divisions. So, clearly, there is a good argument to say that should be supported. The coalition also supports the change of allowing individuals already on the roll to maintain their own records electronically as it can effectively cut out the double or triple handling of enrolment forms.

I have had examples in my electorate of blind or vision impaired people who claim they have been disenfranchised because of their vision impairment. Prior to the 2007 election, the coalition moved to give blind and vision impaired people the opportunity—for the first time in their lives for many of them—to cast a secret ballot. Labor discontinued this on the basis 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 it will be an interim arrangement ahead of further consultations which will be held with various community organisations.

Turning to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (How-to-Vote Cards and Other Measures) Bill 2010, we have heard a problem arose in the 2010 South Australian election. Clearly, the South Australian Labor Party ran a scam. They had members handing out how-to-vote cards which appeared to be the official Family First how-to-vote cards. People were handing out the cards wearing a big T-shirt or jacket saying ‘Put your family first’. South Australians were quite rightly outraged when they discovered subsequently that this had been an ALP scam to try and force supporters of Family First to direct their preferences to the ALP second when Family First itself had directed them elsewhere. It shows again the tenor of what is behind some of the proposals in this bill that the Australian Labor Party sees this as an opportunity to gain an electoral advantage but not through what one might call legitimate means or honourable means. It is through totally dishonourable means of encouraging people to undertake fraudulent measures to get extra votes to advantage one side against the other.

This was not a one-off. It has been used in New South Wales and it has been used in Queensland. There were the infamous cases of Webster v Deahm in 1993 and Carroll v Electoral Commission of Queensland in 1998 which exposed this. In one way it is encouraging to see that after 17 years Labor is now admitting that the decisions in those cases were morally wrong, but there is always a catch. The bill would require people to put on top of the card, in prominent size, the name of the party and authoriser of how-to-vote cards or face a fine of $1,100. As others have already remarked, $1,100 for some people would not seem too high a price to pay to try and gain an electoral advantage. When one looks at the amount of money that, say, the trade union movement put into the last election—we are not talking the odd thousand dollars but millions and millions of dollars—a few fines of $1,100 would not seem to add much to the cost of their support for the Australian Labor Party.

So, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, I have grave fears that rather than discouraging this type of activity this will only allow it to continue for the more unscrupulous who will do anything to try to gain an electoral advantage. Clearly, this is something that is going to have very limited effect in terms of bringing some sort of control over people who go around pushing false how-to-vote cards.

On the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2010, the move towards a digital system of records management is certainly a good one. The move to change the evidence of identity rules for enrolments, removing the mandatory need for a witness to attest to the identity of a person and reducing the acceptable identity documentation to a smaller field of items, makes sense. We support the third measure allowing provisional enrolment at the age of 16, as opposed to the current age of 17. I think that all members are keen to encourage young people to become aware of the importance of their responsibility to enrol and to vote and if it means that we will get them keen to start their provisional enrolment a bit earlier there is no problem in that. Given that we have a three-year electoral cycle, for some people enrolling at the age of 16 will mean of course that by the time the election is called they will be eligible to vote. So again, I think this will not only encourage people to get involved but it will also spread the workload for the Australian Electoral Commission in terms of enrolling people, and so it certainly has some benefits.

The next measure, moving towards a more digital system of electoral roll management, distribution and use on polling day, clearly allows for a more flexible production of ballot papers and, with appropriate security, we would support that measure too. The standardising of mobile polling booth practices is a sensible outcome and we certainly support it. The sixth measure has two parts to it, one controversial and the other noncontroversial. The noncontroversial aspect includes the need for a witness in a request for a postal vote and allowing the signature date, as opposed to the postmark date, on the postal vote to be accepted. This makes it easier for single people to request a postal vote. The second point goes a long way to addressing the legitimate concerns that postal voters in rural areas have had particularly in some places where there are not everyday postal services.

However, there are two additional controversial aspects to this postal vote application. One is that postal vote applications could only be returned directly to the Australian Electoral Commission, and the other would be a prohibition on the attachment of extra material on a postal vote application form. There is no valid reason for the introduction of these measures and it is pretty obvious that the government will try and gain an advantage by doing this.

The other point concerns the provision for homeless voters. Clearly, this does create a few problems in terms of how someone can be enrolled who has no permanent address. But if you wish to do a habitation review of course you still run into the same problem. But having said that, the proposed amendment is an open invitation to abuse the integrity of the electoral roll because, once a person gets on the roll as an itinerant in a particular division, they will never leave the roll for that particular division irrespective of their true place of residence.

There are a couple of other measures but I will conclude where I started. It is still blatantly obvious that the reasons the government are bringing in these measures are because they do see an opportunity to gain an advantage at the next election and, sadly, the way they see of getting that advantage is to reduce the integrity of the roll to encourage the opportunities for fraudulent voting. For that reason, those parts of the bill that will move that way will be strongly opposed by the coalition.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be now put.

Question put.