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

When I was rudely interrupted last night, I was saying all of us in this place are united by our pride. That is the point at which I stopped—and obviously that sentence could admit of many possible ways to be completed—but the particular aspect that I wish to point to, in which I say that all of us in this place are united by our pride, is our pride in the fact that Australia is one of the world’s great democracies. We are one of the world’s oldest democracies and we are one of the world’s most successful democracies. Clearly, at the base, at the foundation, of being a successful democracy is to have a voting system of integrity—a system in which the people can have confidence and a system which is beyond reproach in its operation in reflecting the people’s will in selecting their parliamentary representatives.

It follows from that that it is of the first importance to protect the integrity of the voting system by ensuring that persons who claim to be entitled to vote can demonstrate that entitlement and that there is no risk of persons who claim to be entitled to vote but are not in fact entitled to vote being able to lodge a vote and having that vote counted. It is of the first importance that there is no risk that such a scenario can come to pass.

When you consider that it is often the case that there are results in particular divisions determined by very narrow counts, it adds weight to the conclusion that we must be scrupulous in protecting the integrity of the voting system and scrupulous in ensuring that not one person who is not entitled to do so under the law is able to cast a vote. Let me instance just one recent result which demonstrates that proposition. In the seat of Bowman in the 2007 election, if a mere 33 votes had changed direction, the result would have been different—and, I venture to suggest, this parliament would have been a vastly poorer place had the present member for Bowman not been returned, as he happily was, but only very narrowly.

In the ordinary course of events, persons who are on the roll and can demonstrate that—because their name is there in front of the returning officer or AEC officer when they turn up to vote—are permitted to vote with no further formalities required. They have carried out the necessary formalities in the exercise of getting on the roll. But that is not the scenario we are talking about in this legislation. We are talking about people wishing to cast a provisional vote, and a provisional vote, if I may remind the House, is a vote cast in circumstances where an elector’s name cannot be found on the roll or the name has already been marked off the roll. The law as it stands states that, in these exceptional circumstances, there is a requirement that the person who has turned up at the polling booth asserting a right to cast a vote but whose name cannot be found on the roll or whose name is on the roll but is marked off as having already voted—that person is required to provide proof of identity.

As I have already observed in the earlier proportion of these bifurcated remarks, it is not unusual in our society to be asked to produce identification. Frankly, it is slightly surprising to see the confected indignation from the other side of the chamber at the requirement that identification be produced in the circumstances I have just described—circumstances I think we can all agree are exceptional and very much in the minority.

The proposition that I put to the House is, first of all, that it is very important that we protect the integrity of our voting system. That is of the first importance, given the reputation that this nation has as one of the world’s great democracies, a reputation that I am sure all of us in this place are united in our determination to protect. The second proposition I wish to put to the House is that the costs of requiring identification in these circumstances are modest and the benefits are significant. The report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters concludes that some 80 per cent of persons in this category—that is, seeking to cast a provisional vote—were able to provide identification. In other words, the claimed burden of this requirement is nowhere near as great as those on the other side of the chamber would have us believe.

We also heard further confected indignation about the remarkably onerous nature of this obligation—again remembering that it is a relatively small proportion of people who face this obligation because either their name is not on the roll or it is on the roll but when the official goes to cross out the name he or she finds it has already been crossed out. It is not, I would submit, an unusually onerous requirement of people in these circumstances to provide identification. As a requirement in terms of individual responsibility, I suggest it is not an onerous one. The costs of the present arrangement in public policy terms and in terms of the imposition on individuals are modest indeed. The benefits are significant, because they go to preserving the confidence of all Australians in the integrity of our voting system and, in turn, in the integrity of our democracy.

The third point I wish to make—and I do so with some reluctance, but the historical record commands me to make it—is that there are reasons, regrettably, to raise questions about the rationale of those on the other side of the chamber for putting forward this change in the first place. It gives me no pleasure to note that the Labor Party has form in bringing forward changes to the electoral system, the voting system and much of the regulatory apparatus dealing with our democracy which are supposedly motivated by a high-minded concern for the public good but which are in fact substantively driven by a desire to achieve partisan political advantage. You would appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker Thomson, that it gives me absolutely no pleasure to make this point, but unfortunately the historical record is simply impossible to ignore.

We saw some years ago in Queensland the unedifying spectacle of a former state secretary of the Australian Labor Party, then a serving member of the Queensland parliament, appearing before the Shepherdson inquiry. When he appeared, he was asked about the address for which he had enrolled some years before as a younger man, when he was starting out in the pursuit of his political ambitions. He initially attempted to avoid the question, but after taking a break, presumably to receive legal advice, he returned to the box to advise that it was in fact correct that his name appeared on the roll at that address but it was also correct that he had never actually lived at that address. It was apparently an ‘unfortunate administrative error’—such an unfortunate administrative error that the consequence was that he abruptly resigned as a member of the Queensland parliament.

So there is very clear evidence of the Labor Party—including its most senior officials and, indeed, Labor parliamentarians—seeking to play games with the electoral system in this country for partisan political advantage. It gives me no additional pleasure to note with some concern that this gentleman has now been appointed as a senior executive of the National Broadband Network company at a salary of well over $400,000 a year—

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would ask the member for Bradfield to relate his remarks to this bill.

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

his principal qualification apparently being that he was a good mate of the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

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

The member for Bradfield will cease speaking while I make the observation to him that he needs to relate his remarks to the bill before the House, which is a bill concerning provisional voting.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, you are quite right—it is a bill concerning provisional voting. And amongst the policy matters to consider as we assess whether the change which is proposed in this bill is good policy are the implications it will have for the integrity of our voting system, and that necessarily asks us to consider what might be the possible motives of the political party that has brought forward this amendment.

In the state of New South Wales we have also seen the Labor government, after spending years enthusiastically hoovering up donations from certain categories of donors, now banning those donations from tobacco companies, from alcohol companies and from gaming and gambling companies. This is a remarkably late conversion to this new-found standard of virtue, and it could cause any objective observer to ask, ‘How could they be so shameless and transparent?’ Yet this is the party which is putting forward the set of amendments in this bill.

Our voting system is of the highest importance to the integrity of our democracy. The measures which this bill puts forward are not in the public interest. They undermine a well-established and important safeguard, and on this side of the House we say they should be rejected.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in favour of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011. I do so because I fundamentally believe that what this bill will achieve is the correct and moral thing, despite the way that the former speaker was outrageously construing it. It is a fact that in the 2007 federal election over 27,000 votes were rejected at a preliminary scrutiny because of issues over the provision of identity. In 2010, more than 28,000 votes were eliminated—hardly the small number that was suggested by those opposite today. What concerns me about this figure is that, in a later examination of the votes, it was found that the name was in fact on the roll in over 12,000 cases.

I was also shocked to hear that the current state of provisional voting has not always prevailed. In the 2004 election, almost 50 per cent of provisional votes were included in the final count. In the 2007 election, this figure plummeted to 14 per cent. Of the more than 168,000 provisional votes cast, just over 24,000 were counted. Why was this so? Was there a sudden and dramatic increase in potential voter fraud? No, there was not. What actually happened was that the then Howard government decided to change the electoral laws. Perhaps, in a similar fashion to which it was motivated to make changes to laws on the closure of the electoral roll, the Howard government was motivated by the realisation that provisional voters have a tendency not to vote for the coalition. For example, following the 2004 election, the national two-party preferred vote was 53 per cent to 47 per cent in favour of the coalition. This contrasts with the exact opposite which is seen when analysing the two-party preferred breakdown of provisional votes.

Whether or not this was a conscious decision of the previous government to disenfranchise those voters who traditionally did not support them I do not know. What I do know is that, as a result of these changes to both provisional voting and the electoral roll, thousands of Australians who should have been given the chance to choose their government and their representatives were denied their political rights. The kinds of changes that came in 2006 disproportionably affected vulnerable groups—groups we should be encouraging to participate in our electoral system. These include the young, those voting for the first time and people with particular vulnerabilities: the marginalised. While I understand that there is a need to strike a balance between the integrity of the electoral system and the enfranchisement of the people, I do not believe those changes in 2006 were motivated by concerns of integrity, despite what the previous speaker was saying, and nor did they achieve it. It was not a victory for democracy in this country—quite the contrary.

It is a sad truth that in many countries various provisions have been used to disenfranchise voters at elections while still providing for universal suffrage in theory. I note in particular the various Jim Crow laws in the United States that were used so effectively in ensuring that African-Americans were prevented from enrolling and voting in elections. These kinds of laws create obstacle after obstacle that a potential voter must overcome in order to achieve what is a fundamental human right. Article 21.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

I believe it is our responsibility as members of this parliament to ensure that Australia lives up to this article. I believe we must, wherever we can, make such laws as enhance the enfranchisement of the Australian people.

There are a number of legitimate reasons why a voter may have to cast a provisional vote. First is if their name cannot be found on the certified list. Others are if their name is marked as already having voted, if there is some question about identity or if the voter is on the silent elector list. As the law stands, a voter is required to provide proof of identity by the first Friday following the polling day. If it is not provided, the vote is removed from consideration. There are any number of reasons why a voter may not be able to provide appropriate identity—for example, if they do not have a drivers licence or a passport and so have difficulty in supplying appropriate documentation. There is also a stunning contradiction at the heart of the law as it presently stands. This requirement to provide proof of identity applies only to provisional votes and to no other form of declaration vote. That is right: no other method of voting is subject to this rule. This leads to an absurd situation. If the voter had instead decided to lodge an absentee ballot, their vote would in fact have been counted. This contradiction exposes the incoherence of the provision and possibly also the discrimination that I fear lies behind it.

Significantly, the provision disproportionately affects more vulnerable groups compared to others in our society. There are those who for reasons of homelessness, disability or other vulnerability find it difficult to navigate the bureaucratic complexity of modern life. And it is not only the vulnerable who find this difficult; for many, the vicissitudes of life have placed burdens and responsibilities on them that consume all their energy. I have some sympathy for those labouring under the burdens of everyday life. Coming from the background that I do—being the daughter of a mother who single-handedly raised my sisters and me, I can readily understand that having the time to deal with bureaucratic niceties can be a bit of a luxury. For reasons that are sadly familiar, those who are in this situation are often, if not mostly, women. I can therefore understand why some people simply do not have the ability or time to provide the documentation required under the current legislation. This does not mean that they are any less deserving of a vote at our elections—any less entitled to that most fundamental of human rights: enfranchisement.

A number of organisations, including the Australian Electoral Commission, support this legislation. It would indeed be a cause for celebration if those opposite could bring themselves to join in with their support and atone for their imposition of a discriminatory obstacle to the exercise of a political right. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. This legislation will enhance and modernise our electoral system and our democracy, and I commend it to the House.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 and follow the member for Canberra in doing so. I hate to disappoint the member opposite, but we will not be supporting the bill. We think it is a bad bill. We have thought it is a bad bill the couple of times it has been presented to the parliament, and that is because in 2006 the Howard government did the right thing and brought in provisions ensuring the integrity of the electoral roll—and that is ultimately the question that we are debating here. On this side of the House, the understanding is that you need to have an electoral roll that has the utmost integrity and that enfranchises as many people as it can but ensures there is no fraud. That is important because we are very fortunate to have the wonderful democracy that we do in Australia. We have arguably the best democracy in the world. We have free and open elections that are free from questions about corruption and legitimacy and that allow governments even in questionable circumstances like last year’s, where we had the situation of this parliament—a hung parliament. There has been no question put in relation to the legitimacy of the government.

Even in the great democracy of the United States we have seen presidential elections which have dragged on for weeks and months because of questions about their electoral system and their electoral rolls. And it is not just the events surrounding George W. Bush’s election; well back even to the famous John F. Kennedy election in the early sixties there were questions about Lyndon Johnson’s accession to the Senate. We do not suffer from those same problems because we have an electoral roll which is protected from question. It is held above accusations that it has been rorted in some way. The problem with lessening the protections in it is that you raise questions about the validity or integrity of the roll. It is interesting that at the 2010 election, of the provisional voters who voted in that fashion, 80 per cent of them provided evidence of their identity at the polling place on the election day and a following 16 per cent provided evidence of their identification in the required time frame afterwards. So we are talking about a very small percentage who did not meet those requirements. And I do not think the requirements as put by the members opposite are as onerous as they would like us to believe.

We of course need identification for various things in our society: to access government payments, to drive a car or to travel, you need a form of identification—and rightly so. And rightly so we also should for our electoral roll. I think there is a reasonable discussion, which we have had in this place previously, about the requirements for voter identification when enrolling and voting on election day. I think we should do everything we can to ensure the roll is protected in that way. So the bill is based on a premise from the Labor Party that the voters they are supposedly trying to enfranchise are more likely to vote for the Labor Party than they are for the Liberal Party, and that is what this is about. This is not about improving our election system or improving our electoral roll. This is some sort of political view that by opening this up and making it easier you have more opportunity for the Labor Party to get more votes than this side of the House.

This Saturday we have another election in Australia and I do not think there will be too many questions about the integrity of the result. I think it will be pretty clear—in fact, I think some betting agencies have already decided what the result will be, which does seem to be a little early. Again, it goes to the confidence that people have in our electoral system. At a time when we are talking about using the internet more often, the AEC is walking down the path—I think rightly—of looking at the way that people can enrol and keep their details updated. I am sure all members in this place would appreciate that the quicker we get updates the better it is for members of parliament, the better it is for people to have the most recent updates, particularly for young people who move around a bit. The easier we make it for people to keep the AEC updated with their movements the better.

Again, it has to be done in a fashion that does not question the integrity of the roll and does not raise the risk of an election being brought into question at some time. We have very good processes for dealing with questionable elections, but we do not face them very often. We do not face them to the point where a government’s or parliament’s legitimacy is questioned, because of the strength of our electoral system. This is something that we on this side of the House have had a commitment to for a very long time. As I said earlier, in 2006 we decided this was important because it added to the strength of commitment to ensuring the integrity of the roll.

I think members on the other side are ill advised to move down this path. This is a bad decision. It is a bad bill because it undoes good changes to a system which is working very well. We have seen that it is working very well from the field evidence. If we look at the results from provisional voting at the last election we can see it did not cause some great dislocation in people’s ability to cast a provisional vote, as the previous member said. There are circumstances where provisional votes are required, and that should continue. But it should continue with the added protection that is in the system today. Overturning this protection, based on what I think are very questionable motives, is something that we should not support.

On the side of the House, we do not support it. We have had a commitment to this issue and we continue to maintain that commitment. Personally I continue to maintain that commitment because there is no more important thing in our electoral system than the roll and making sure it is protected from questionable voting and questionable tactics. It must be above repudiation in all those ways, ensuring legitimacy for governments and for all of us who are elected to this place. That is why we stand for these protections. We stand for the protections that were put into this system in 2006. There is no great need for change. The Labor Party is taking an ideological position. This is an unfortunate bill and it should be opposed.

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

I rise to support the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 and I do so in the knowledge that this bill is consistent with a principle under which this parliament should be operating when it comes to elections, and that is the principle of enfranchisement, not disenfranchisement. We have had two High Court decisions in recent times that have struck down legislation of the Howard government that went to the very heart of disenfranchising voters.

The first decision was in the Roach case to do with prisoner voting. It was a 4-2 decision of the High Court reinstating the principles as they were before the former government had legislated and in effect disqualified a class of prisoners from the vote. The second decision, and the most recent one to do with this election, was the 4-3 decision of the High Court in the case of Rowe, which was about the seven-day enrolment procedure. Talking about ideology, some of these people were appointed to the High Court by the former government. Justice Crennan could hardly be said to be a radical and she was in the majority of four. The joint judgment in that case of Justices Gummow and Bell went to the seven-day rule, which I think is a principle that we need to listen to. In paragraphs 166 to 167 they said:

In particular, the requirement in Roach that any disqualification be for a substantial reason cannot be answered simply by what may appear to have been legislative purpose. A legislative purpose of preventing such fraud before it is able to occur, where there has not been previous systemic fraud associated with the operation of the seven-day period before the changes made by the 2006 act, does not supply a substantial reason for the practical operation of the 2006 act in disqualifying large numbers of electors. That practical operation goes beyond any advantage in preserving the integrity of the electoral process from a hazard which so far has not materialised to any significant degree.

So what they then did was reinstate the seven-day provisions. In relation to provisional voting the same is true. The paranoia of those opposite who say, ‘We require proof of identity, we require a drivers licence before we’re going to let you have a vote or we’ll give you seven days to bring it back,’ has disqualified thousands of voters.

What did the Electoral Commission do in their submission to my parliamentary committee, the Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on Electoral Matters? They nailed it. In paragraph 5.5.6 they said:

Of the 28 065 provisional votes rejected on the basis that the elector did not provide EOI, 12 227 of these were cast by electors who were actually enrolled.

Those voters took a provisional vote because their name could not be found on the day and that is the provision they were bound under. They were subsequently found to be on the rolls. But because the clerk did not pick that up on the day, maybe because of a misspelling or a wrong pronunciation—because a lot of this is non-English-speaking background—they were all knocked off the roll. What was the criterion before, which we are reinstating? We are reinstating the old provision that says that you sign when you get a provisional vote, it gets scrutinised, and there are scrutineers present, and if there is doubt as to the signature you get knocked out. Your signature becomes the proof of identity.

Today we heard from the National Party; they made a submission before our committee. Now, the signature provision still applies to declaration votes other than provisional votes; that is the nonsense here. And cop this, Mr Deputy Speaker: this is what they said, on page 5 of their submission, in relation to the signature provision:

The AEC has subsequently advised The Nationals that there were 5,549 PVCs rejected nationally due to signature mismatch.

What I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the member opposite is that there is a proof of identity provision that has always been there. It is the signature. These votes do not go into the ballot box on their own. They go into a packet, which is signed and lodged, and the details are checked. That is all that is required. What we have now is evidence before our committee from the independent Australian Electoral Commission, who, I might add, support what the government is doing on this provision. The party opposite that proclaims it hates red tape is using red tape to knock out legitimate voters. These are not people who do not want to vote; these are people who are showing up and want their vote to count. And in 12,000 cases they were actually on the roll and their votes did not count because of this provision, which really was a knockout provision put in for political purposes because provisional votes supposedly traditionally favour the Labor Party. That is not the way you operate the electoral system. I have always believed in enfranchising.

I am not saying, and the government is not saying, that these votes should go in as a normal, ordinary vote on the day of the election. What happens is that if your name is not on the roll or if there is a misspelling you have a provisional vote and there are certain provisions. Under the old act, which I have with me, section 336 required the elector to sign a paper with his own signature so there could be a signature check where doubts existed. I have scrutineered in more than one election in other divisions along these lines, whereas many opposite and even many on my side have not done it; they have not had that experience. That is why I say that this argument some people are making, that you need a drivers licence to get a video card or other things and so the same should apply to the Electoral Act on election day, is nonsense. We have had a High Court case in relation to the seven days that basically says that if you want to knock out legitimate voters, if you want to assert electoral fraud and if you want to say there is a problem with the system, produce evidence. That is why the High Court reinstated the seven-day rule in terms of the opportunity to enrol or change enrolment from when an election is called.

Of course, the conservatives argue that the seven-day period allowed a massive opportunity for fraud to occur. Another letter that the Electoral Commission sent to us said that they did a survey of eight or nine electorates. We will have it tabled publicly; I am entitled to talk about it in general terms. What it showed was that there were about 33 people surveyed who changed addresses back to their old address within a short period of time after the election. It does happen, but it is not fraud that is occurring. What they discovered was the overwhelming number of the 33 were young people, and they were going to make some further inquiries. We have got a good system. If there is electoral fraud, if those opposite say a particular division has miscarried because there has been a stack on the roll and that was a fraud, then they can challenge that election in the Court of Disputed Returns. But what I find offensive is that the party that says it does not believe in red tape continually puts blockers in to knock out tens of thousands of voters from having their vote counted.

We all condemned the first Bush election and the Florida hanging chad. This is Australia’s hanging chad. It was put in by the Howard government for a particular purpose, and, if anything, the fraud that was being perpetrated on the electorate was the basis upon which that provision was changed by the former government. It has been exposed for what it is—lacking in substance. And safeguards are there so that those provisional votes are properly checked and scrutineers from any particular party can question the identity of the person. It only goes back to whether they were inadvertently taken off the roll, and there are other things that are occurring in that regard. A whole lot of people who get a letter from the Electoral Commission and do not reply or whatever are being taken off the roll. In the old days they were reinstated, but under the former government this notion that you bear the responsibility, you bear the onus, has led to another 90,000 people not getting back on the roll and not getting their vote.

We support an incursion on the no-fly zone in Libya, we support what is happening in Afghanistan, to give people the right to elect their governments, the right to participate. What we have here is provision after provision put in by ideologues who in effect say that there is a presumption of guilt upon you before your vote will count. It is designed to attack the less advantaged in our community: Indigenous people; people who are not literate; the people of non-English-speaking backgrounds in south-west Sydney, where the top 12 electorates of informal votes are—and we will be looking at addressing that in our report. I cannot understand how those opposite can get up here with a straight face and say they want to maintain a provision when there is a submission before the electoral committee that says that this pernicious section resulted in 12,000 people at the last election who were legitimately on the roll not being able to have their vote exercised. That was as a result of polling-official error—not as a result of fraud—and the commission, to their credit, have admitted that and said that that is what this provision does. The commission have consistently said that this provision should not be there.

The next argument will probably be that the AEC are under the control of the government and the Labor Party and they are our mouthpiece. They are not. During the 21 years I have been in this place I have had nothing but the highest regard for the Electoral Commission and their officials. Occasionally they make mistakes.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who doesn’t?

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

But, as my colleague says, who doesn’t? In this instance they gave evidence before the committee. It was not the first time; they did it before the last election, but the nature of the Senate was such that this would not get through.

It is about time that members of this House started to argue for enfranchising people, not disenfranchising them. At the federal level the Liberal-National parties have not done too badly out of compulsory voting and the provisions of the Electoral Act, because they have been in government for more than two-thirds of the time. This is not a situation where they could have argued, as they did in 2006, that it stopped them from getting elected in 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004. No, they were spurious arguments and we now know, as a result of proper investigation, what those amendments mean.

That was why I was surprised by the High Court decisions in Roach and Rowe. The High Court basically put a limit on the parliament’s power to legislate because of the precious nature of the right to vote. The right to limit prisoners and the right to limit people getting on the roll in the seven-day period after an election was called were quite historic decisions by the High Court, but they were right. They were underpinned by enfranchisement, not disenfranchisement, which is what this current provision on provisional voting does.

It is separate to what happens with postal votes and other declaration votes. The signature is used to verify postal votes. As the National Party point out in their submission, for over 5,000 people there was a question over their signature. Signatures are used in the postal vote provision to determine identity. It might be a relative or someone else who has signed but, if there is a doubt, it is out. We do not have to listen to the garbage from the other side that this is going to be doom and gloom for our electoral system. They say there is going to be doom and gloom because they think there is a disadvantage to them because this class of people are not necessarily their supporters.

As I said, my principle has always been—and it has been on the record for 21 years; and I have been on the electoral committee for about 12 or 13 years—for enfranchising. Yes, we have to have safety nets. I support the reinstatement of the signature as the basis for provisional votes. If someone is not on the roll for two elections before the election they wish to vote in, they do not get a vote, so not every one of these votes gets put back into the count—don’t believe that either. Many get excluded for good reasons. I commend the legislation to the House.

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

I am a great friend of the member for Banks, but that was a very florid presentation that was full of emotion and not much logic. He is trying to make us believe that somehow these poor migrant people who struggle with English have been deprived of their democratic rights. In asking for identification, the rules lay down that you bring in your drivers licence, a passport, a birth certificate, a citizenship certificate, a Medicare card for God’s sake and various bank credit cards. If you are fair dinkum, is that an onerous provision for any long-term Australian or migrant? It is not a greatly onerous provision. It is a sensible thing that happens everywhere.

If you want to open an account at the bank, you have to rack up 90 points, which is all tied up with your identification and your past business. If you want to travel by air, you have to be able to show one of those items to get on the plane. No longstanding Australian or migrant argues with that. If you want to undertake hire-purchase or credit arrangements, it is required. Young people wanting to go in a nightclub have to have some form of identification. Even video stores, the most fundamental of all things, require you to have some form of identification. But for the most important thing we probably do every three years—voting for the government of our country—we want to water it down a bit. I do not think that is good enough.

What is provisional voting when you boil it down to the essentials? If you have been left off the roll unfairly or unjustly or by some form of bureaucratic error, you can claim a vote. That is essentially what it is. When you rock up to the polling booth on election day and find your name is not on the roll and say, ‘There is no reason for me not being on the roll. I have been in my house for many years. I have been unwittingly removed from the roll,’ if you present some form of identification away you can go.

This Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 proposes to remove all of that identity stuff and replace it purely with a signature. I do not know about that. I am putting my hand up and declaring a degree of self-interest because for many years I had the toughest seat in Australia and I watched everything in the way of voting. The one thing that stood out to me as not being as well regulated as the rest of the electoral system was provisional voting. I will give you a few examples of that shortly.

The member for Banks made a big song and dance about how many people had been excluded from their democratic right. I question that. Let us look at the figures across Australia as provided by the AEC—and it is good that the minister is at the table; I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong. Eighty per cent of people did provide identification on election day at the polling booths, with another 16 per cent providing it by the following Friday. So 96 per cent of all people who applied for a provisional vote had no trouble in coming up with the goods. The four per cent that for whatever reason missed out—it might have been just bone laziness; it might have been that they were in bed with the flu; it might have been that they had gone off to a job somewhere, who knows what—in my electorate was less than the informal voting rate. So it is hardly a disenfranchisement of a large section of the Australian population.

Fiddling with the rolls and the processes around the rolls is really a direct attack on the fundamentals of democracy, though you can dress it up any way you like. I am not having a crack at my political opponents, the government, in this. I have a lot of respect for the members in the House at present including the Special Minister of State, who is at the table, and my good colleague from western Sydney. I have great respect for them. But, hey, listen fellas, in your party, even over recent years, there have been some wicked examples of fiddling with the rolls.

In the Queensland parliament, you have had to tip members out of the parliament. Not just members but senior cabinet ministers were tipped out of the parliament for prostituting the rolls in one form or another. In fact, one party official in Townsville went to jail over it. It is not a very savoury record. The new member for Brisbane, then member for Petrie, told me of the time where, after one of the elections, she went out and checked some of the addresses from which votes had been claimed in her electorate and found they were vacant blocks of land. So there are people out there who use the processes around the electoral rolls to rort the system. I think anything you put in place that makes it harder for that to happen is an enhancement of democracy. It is not a denial of basic democracy if 96 per cent of people did not have any trouble providing identification. More to the point, it was a deterrent to those who would sneak in, claim a vote, sneak out and say: ‘We’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of pulling this off. They’re not going to check them all that thoroughly.’

The Special Minister of State, in his second reading speech, said there was no reason that provisional votes should be treated any differently from other forms of postal and absentee voting. I query that on the ground that with the other ones, especially the pre-polls and the absentees, voters are marked against the roll whereas with provisional voting the poll officer has to accept the voter’s word that they have been left off the roll. There was a great case in Bundaberg where someone walked up to one of the polling booths and, let us say, used the name of ‘John Smith of Brown Street’. As luck would have it, the person standing behind him was the real John Smith of Brown Street, who said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, mate; that’s my name.’ That was a million to one chance but it actually happened that somebody using his name was the person in front of him in the polling booth. So it goes on; make no mistake about that. As I have said, 96 per cent did not seem to have any trouble with it.

I would like to take you to my electorate. Mine has been, as I said, a pretty tough electorate over the years. It is not so bad at present. In one election I was down to 69 votes, 64 on recount. I know what a close election is like, so I take a particular interest in postals, pre-polls, absentees, provisionals and the like. It used to amaze me that I would poll somewhere between 55 per cent and 60 per cent for pre-poll, absentees and so on but, when it came to the provisionals, suddenly the vote dropped down to about 33 to 37 per cent. Why would that be? If these people, as the minister at the table says, are of similar character, why is it that three of those subgroups voted decidedly one way and the fourth group, over which the scrutiny at that time was probably less rigorous, voted another way?

I have got some figures here. In 2004 the figures for absentee, postal and pre-poll votes were 55 per cent, 62 per cent and 56 per cent. When we go to 2001, the figures for absentee, postal and pre-poll votes were 51 per cent, 54 per cent and 54 per cent, but suddenly provisionals were 37 per cent. That was for two-party preferred; when you took them down to the raw votes it was ALP 46 per cent, coalition 26 per cent. It was totally out of character with the rest of the voting in the election and in the other sectional voting. In 1998 the figures for absentee, postal and pre-poll votes were 50.6 per cent, 53.5 per cent and 52.8 per cent but—oh surprise!—provisional votes were 38 per cent for two-party preferred. Take them down again to the raw voting and it was ALP 47 per cent, coalition 27 per cent. Why did the result of 60-40 all of a sudden go 66-33 the other way? You would just have to say that there was something rather suspicious about it.

I am sure people would proffer all sorts of different reasons for that, but this is the interesting thing: when the new rule was brought in in 2007—in other words, the rorters were put on notice that they were going to be asked to identify themselves at the polling booth—that made a profound difference. More so in 2010 than in 2007, because in 2007 the ones who had been doing this over the years were probably were not quite ready for it. Again, suddenly, where I would poll in that 55 to 60 per cent of most of the sectional votes my vote came up from the low 30s—two-party preferred—to 44. That is extraordinary. Why did that just suddenly happen in the 2007 election when it had not happened in the previous four or five elections?

When you come to 2010, where this new system was well entrenched, my vote went not just to 44 but up to 47. It was getting up towards where all the other sectional votes were. I will be very interested to see, if the House and the Senate approve this bill, whether that vote slips back again. If it does, I think that is a fair indication that there has been some rorting going on.

I repeat: it is not an onerous burden to identify yourself, and it takes place now—as I outlined before—in many walks of life. You would not put on a tantrum at an airport and say, ‘I don’t want to show you my drivers licence.’ You show them the drivers licence, you get your ticket and you get on board. But suddenly this most important thing—the thing that we all cherish on both sides of the House, the role of democracy—is watered down. ‘Yes,’ we say, ‘We will do it by way of signature.’ I suppose that will be better than having no provision at all, but when my scrutineers went in to scrutinise the prepolls I used to get them to take a list of returned mail addresses. The number of votes that were claimed—we do not know what their votes were—before the envelope was opened that were from addresses from which we had had mail returned regularly was interesting. There was a bit of a suspicion in my mind that there was some undercurrent of rorting in those provisional votes.

I would prefer to see the system that was brought in towards the end of the Howard government retained. The government’s plan may work, but not to the same extent. (Time expired)

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an interesting debate that we are engaged in here today, because it really does lay bare the lie at the heart of the name of the party which those opposite purport to represent. It is a truly interesting debate when the party of liberty stands here and seeks to defend rorts which would deny citizens their votes. The party of liberty seeks to remove the rights of citizens.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Seriously, impugning the rights of a political party in the House is clearly not appropriate under the standing orders.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The shadow minister was not here for the earlier debate. I can assure him that members on my left made exactly the same allegation, but of a different political party.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek to make the point, plain and simple, that if those opposite who represent the party of liberty had the courage of their convictions then they would vote in favour of these proposed amendments to the electoral laws in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011. They would vote in favour of it because a party of liberty which truly stood for the principle that the people should choose those who represent them in this august body would want to extend the franchise and ensure that everybody has the right to exercise their citizenship rights as Australians to cast a vote in their electorate for their representatives in this place.

Of course, those opposite have form on this matter. Prior to the last election they had so distorted the electoral rolls as to ensure that many hundreds of thousands of Australians could not even enrol to vote because of the early cut-off of the electoral rolls on the day that the election was called. This rort—and it was a rort—has been overturned by the High Court, and for the first time in four years we saw at the 21 August 2010 election over 100,000 mostly young people enjoy their right to vote in a way that the High Court found was true and proper.

This reform which has been brought to the House by the Special Minister of State for the Public Service and Integrity is a continuation of our intent to ensure that we correct many of the wrongs that have been visited upon our electoral system by those opposite, and it should enjoy the support of all members of this House. For a country which was founded in relatively modern times, and as a nation of convicts, Australia has nevertheless had a proud history of democracy, and has played its part in exporting democracy to the countries of our region.

We are rightly proud of the conduct of our elections, which are done with integrity and a level of scrutiny and transparency that puts even the closest of election results to the test. Indeed there are some of us who even enjoy and look forward to the festive atmosphere of polling day, with the community out together enjoying a sausage sizzle, the sharing of our democratic values and the real contest of ideas that surrounds an election.

In Australia, we do not change governments frequently, but, when we do change governments, it is without the mayhem or bloodshed that accompanies the change of regimes or governments in many other countries. That is something that we on all sides of the House are rightly proud of. When you hear that the recently deposed President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, was in power for 30 years, you really do know that something is not working in the democratic system of that country.

Our system of compulsory voting means that everyone gets a say. It is a system that continually needs refining and sometimes we need to wind back the egregious limitations that are placed on that system by representatives of those opposite. It is a system which enables everyone to cast their vote and it is a system that is the envy of the world. These are all good features of Australia’s voting system. Even on a bitterly cold winter’s day, as was the case in August last year, we are able to get out with the customary enthusiasm and cast our vote in favour of the representatives of our choice.

The bill before the House today will remove the requirement for provisional voters to show proof of identity within a week of voting to allow their vote to be counted. These so-called provisional votes are declaration type votes cast at a polling place on polling day. There are four main reasons a person will be asked to cast to a provisional vote. The first is where a person’s name cannot be found on the electoral roll by the polling official; the second is where a mark appears on the certified list, which indicates that the person has already voted; the third is where the polling official doubts the person’s true identity; and the fourth is where the person is a silent elector and their address does not appear on the publicly available edition of the roll.

The Australian Electoral Commission has stated that over 200,000 provisional votes were cast in the 2010 election. Of these, 28,065 provisional votes were rejected because the voter did not provide evidence of identity by the first Friday following the polling day. Importantly, further examination by the AEC of these 28,000 votes found that in over 12,000 instances—nearly half of these instances—the name of the voter was found on the certified electoral roll. So here was a person who was fully entitled to cast a vote but because, for one reason or another—their busy life or many other reasons—they were unable to subsequently provide proper proof of their identity to the AEC their vote was not counted.

These are the people that the member for Hinkler recently chose to blithely disregard as rorters. I prefer to call them ‘citizens’ in my electorate, but he chooses to call them rorters. He really did bell the cat—and this goes to the heart of the opposition’s objection to these provisions—when he said that the real reason that he did not want to vote in favour of these proposals is that he thought the people who would cast a provisional vote in accordance with these proposed amendments would not vote for him; and this was coming from a representative of the party of liberty, the party of free speech, the party of democratic rights. The member for Hinkler could not have stated his case more clearly. The reason that he does not support these amendments is that he fears that the people who will use them will not vote for him. The over 12,000 people in the 2010 election who were precluded because of the Howard government rorts will be able to eligibly cast a vote in an election and have their vote counted—have their democratic say counted. The member for Hinkler and many others on the other side of the House choose to call these people rorters. We call them citizens and eligible enrolled voters. They will once again be enfranchised by this provision.

Indeed, it was a similar story in the 2007 federal election, where there were 167,500 provisional votes and 27,000 votes that were rejected at preliminary scrutiny because an elector did not provide proof of identity. This is a situation that was created by the coalition—and it is a sad state of affairs. It means a significant number of people turned up at polling booths on polling days in both 2007 and 2010, keen to have their say and cast their ballot, found that they were not on the electoral roll and then cast a declaration vote only to have it rejected because of unnecessary red tape and an onerous process.

Those opposite choose to laugh, but the reason that it is unfair is that these voters would have had their vote counted if they had instead stayed home and voted absentee. If they had cast a postal vote, a pre-poll declaration vote—their vote would have counted, with no need for proof of identity. There is simply no reason that otherwise valid provisional votes should be treated differently to other forms of declaration votes. The real reason—which was made crystal clear by the member for Hinkler—that they do not require proof of identity for pre-poll postal votes is that those opposite believe that the majority of those people are going to vote for the opposition. Those opposite fear that if we redress this rort, this discriminatory treatment of declaration votes on polling days, those people will not vote for them. That is a shameful exposition of your political philosophy. The party of liberty is the party of electoral rorts.

It is interesting to look back at how this disenfranchisement affected the outcome of the 2007 federal election. Some interesting research by Mr Peter Brent from the Australian National University contained in his paper on provisional voting rejections in the 2007 election claims that the ‘missing provisional votes’ might have affected the outcomes in two electorates, McEwen and Bowman, and added ‘0.1 per cent to Labor’s national vote’ in that election and probably would have turned the election the other way in those two electorates—two of Australia’s most marginal electorates.

There is no high principle here. The only principle that is in evidence here is that those opposite are afraid that people will not vote for them. They are afraid of this because, quite clearly, they do not have confidence in their ideas, so they are attempting to rort the system. They do not have confidence in their own ideas or in their own capacity to get out there and campaign.

As we know, it is a relatively uncommon outcome of our electoral system for one political party to hold the balance of power in both houses of parliament. It occurred in 2005 and that was the first time it had happened since 1981. We know that the first thing the Howard government did when it was presented with a blank cheque from the electorate was to get to work on an ambitious rewriting of Australian industrial relations laws—the odious Work Choices laws. Fortunately, the machinations of democracy saw off both those laws and the government that introduced them in 2007. But that was not the only piece of legislation that the Howard government rammed through the parliament during those unfortunate years. The Howard government’s agenda was driven by the coalition’s conservative ideology as it sought to gain political and electoral advantage over its opponents on this side of the House.

It is well known to many in this place that in December 2005 the coalition introduced the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill. Like so much of the Orwellian doublespeak that characterised the Howard government’s term in office, it had nothing to do with electoral integrity and everything to do with rorting the electoral system. This bill had absolutely nothing to do with electoral integrity. The measures in the bill included raising the threshold for anonymous political donations to $10,000, which eroded an important transparency measure. It closed the electoral rolls early, as I have already stated; it disenfranchised some votes by prisoners; it made it harder to enrol to vote; and it disenfranchised provisional voters. It was all done for political advantage. It was all done for partisan politics. It was empty of ideology except the ideology which drives those opposite to cling to power at all costs. They junk their co-called liberal ideology in favour of an anti-liberal proposition to disenfranchise voters. We in this House have the opportunity today to fix this historical anomaly to ensure that those who truly do believe in liberty, in democratic values and in the right to vote will be able to exercise their right to vote—as is every Australian’s birthright. I call upon the House to support the bill.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me no joy to be speaking on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 today, because all this bill will do is affect the integrity of our voting system. The honourable member who just spoke mentioned the 2007 election and the seat of McEwen. I had some experiences with the voting and the vote counting in the seat of McEwen. There were multiple votes cast in that election and there was nothing that the AEC could do about it. I will give one example which I think illustrates why we have to be so careful to maintain the integrity of our electoral system. There was a parish priest who received a note from the AEC inquiring as to why he had voted three times in the electorate of McEwen. It turned out that someone had voted under his name in New South Wales and then twice within the electorate of McEwen at different polling booths. There was nothing that the AEC could do about it, apart from giving him a ‘Please explain’. When he explained that he had voted only once and had voted within the local community where he works, that was the end of the story, and those other two votes were counted.

The interesting thing about the McEwen electorate during the election of 2007 was that there were multiple cases of people casting more than one ballot, and it was the first time that the union movement en masse had been up to scrutineer and to also hand out how-to-vote cards at polling booths in that electorate. During the Work Choices campaign they bussed union officials into the electorate so that they could hand out how-to-vote cards and do the scrutineering. And—surprise, surprise!—we also saw an increase in multiple voting.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is drawing a long bow.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not a long bow. If you look at the historical facts you will see that that is what occurred. First the coalition candidate was declared the winner, then the Labor Party candidate was declared the winner, and eventually the coalition was. It was that close, and that multiple voting could easily have been the thing that decided who won that seat. It goes to the heart of why we need to protect the integrity of our electoral roll, and the changes in this legislation will do nothing to do that.

We are heading for a system whereby anyone will be able to turn up and vote and be able to vote on multiple occasions. We are not moving to protect the integrity of the electoral roll. In fact, we are looking to weaken it and, by weakening it, we will harm our democratic processes here in Australia. People will begin to wonder whether we truly do have a democratic system when it is possible for people to be able to vote on more than one occasion.

The honourable member who spoke previously talked about the 200,000 provisional votes which were cast at the last election: 28,000 of those were rejected under the changes introduced by the coalition in 2006, and 12,000 of those would have been eligible. What about the other 16,000? What was the situation with those votes? They were not found to be legitimate voters on the roll. Those 16,000 votes remain a mystery. How can we have a system whereby we allow people to cast their votes provisionally and not ask them to provide some identification? They do not have to do it on polling day. This change was a reasonable change; it just required them to provide some proof of who they are within seven days, to make sure there was not fraud and to protect the integrity of our system.

If you cannot provide identification in seven days, then you are not taking your vote seriously—the importance of that vote, the importance of our democratic system and the importance of providing integrity within that system. Sadly, in Third World countries, we see continual rorting of the democratic system and we have all seen what that leads to and the types of governments that we get from that. That is not what we want to see here in Australia. We want people to know that when they cast their vote every other citizen is casting their vote in exactly the same way. We want people to be confident that there are not some citizens voting maybe one, two or three times when others are doing the right thing. We need to have some safeguards, because, unfortunately, if you do not have the safeguards in the system, people will rort it. We as the coalition in 2006 did not make an onerous requirement. All we said was that people needed to provide some identification within seven days.

It is important to note that, at the 2010 general election, 80 per cent of provisional voters provided evidence of their identity at the polling place on election day and another 16 per cent provided evidence of their identification in the required time frame, the following Friday. So only four per cent of voters did not provide identification. We need to ask the question: why? Was it because they were frightened that it would be found out that they had voted earlier? If that is the case then surely we should keep this requirement within our electoral system. When people cast their votes in polling booths on polling day, we continually get attempts to rort the system. Sadly, some attempts to rort the system are bound to work. Why shouldn’t there be, especially when it comes to provisional voting, some measure to make sure that the person casting the vote is casting a legitimate vote?

We need to remind people what provisional voters are. These are the people who turn up and their name is not on the roll or there is a query on the roll about their identification. Why shouldn’t we be able to ask them a simple thing before we allow their vote to count: ‘Prove to us who you are. There is a query about who you are; therefore, we need you to do this.’ We do not do it to people who turn up on polling day or to people who cast a postal vote or to people who do a pre-poll vote. We only do it to these provisional voters. The reason we do it is that there is already some unease about whether this person has the right to cast that vote. So there is nothing wrong with asking them to provide some identification within seven days.

Our voting system is integral to our whole democratic system. We have seen, sadly, in other places—for instance in Florida—the unease and doubt caused by voting systems which were seen to be potentially able to be manipulated. We have seen what that can lead to and the distrust and general outrage from the community that a proper system is not in place. We do not want to see that occur here in Australia.

In the seat of McEwen in 2007, in an extremely close vote, we saw that there was the potential for rorting in our system. We have to make sure that we take steps to stop that from happening. We do not want it to lead to the situation where we disenfranchise people. This is not about disenfranchising people. This is about requiring people—if there is uncertainty and unease about whether they are qualified to vote—to prove that they are qualified to vote. This is not disenfranchising people; this is protecting the very integrity of our democratic system.

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

What evidence?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What evidence? The evidence the honourable member missed earlier on was just one example—but we saw numerous—of a parish priest being asked to explain why he had voted three times in the 2007 election in the seat of McEwen.

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

Was he charged?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, he was not charged because he was able to demonstrate that he had only voted once, but the other two votes where people used his name to cast their ballot remained legitimate votes. They were not withdrawn because no-one knew who or what those ballots were or where the voters were. Two votes were counted, and no-one knows who cast them.

By making this amendment, we are saying: if you want to potentially rort the system, do it by turning up and casting a provisional vote, because no-one is going to check your identification as to whether you are legitimately able to cast that vote or not. This is not the type of electoral system that we need here in this country. People have confidence in our electoral system. The integrity of our electoral system is seen as world class; yet, this is an area that has been identified as having some risk of fraudulent behaviour. The government is saying, ‘We’re going to open it up and make it easier for fraud to take place. We’re not going to put in one little small requirement that you need to show identification after seven days.’ What this government needs to say is, ‘There seems to be some risk here of fraudulent behaviour.’ Instead it is going to make that risk greater and put that system at further risk of losing its world-class reputation.

Sadly, the fact that this change is coming from the Gillard government should make the Australian people very worried. Everything that the government do turns into a mess and the fact that they are meddling in our voting system, which is seen to be world class, sends shivers up my spine. Are we going to see a pink batts fiasco? Are we going to see a BER fiasco? Look at the record of the government: everything they touch turns into disaster. I am worried that we are going to see another disaster with this change to something that is absolutely vital to the very fabric of Australian society—our democratic processes.

These changes were brought about in 2006 because they were required to protect the integrity of our voting system The only reason the government want to change these laws is that they know that any rorting that will take place is more likely to benefit them than anyone else. This change is a sham.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate, and I will start by acknowledging the number of people in the public gallery joining us here today—witnesses to, in effect, the democratic process in operation right now. It is also worth pointing out that this debate on the billthat is being discussed is about enhancing people’s participation in the democratic process in this country.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 looks at repealing the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity as a precondition to their votes being included in an election. As has been reflected upon earlier in the debate, there are four main reasons that a person wants to cast a provisional vote: firstly, their name cannot be found on a certified list; secondly, a mark already appears on the certified list, which indicates a person has voted; thirdly, the polling official doubts the person’s identity; and, finally, the voter is a silent elector.

The Electoral Act and the referendum act currently require a person casting a provisional vote to provide evidence of identity by the first Friday following polling day, and if the voter cannot provide evidence of identity by the deadline the vote does not progress to preliminary scrutiny and is not counted. This requirement—again, this has been commented upon in the course of this debate—was put in place by the previous government in 2006. Mind you, a lot of those opposite had been elected to office in 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004, but they decided in 2006 that this was such a significant issue that they needed to deal with it. This resulted in a situation where provisional votes were dealt with in a way inconsistent with the treatment of other types of declaration votes—namely, absentee votes, postal votes and pre-poll votes.

At the 2010 election, over 28,000 votes were rejected because the voter did not provide evidence of identity by the deadline. It is worth noting that about 14 million people in the 2010 election cast a vote, of which 28,000 were rejected under the system put in place in 2006 by the former government. Again, it is important to note: the requirement for a provisional voter to provide evidence of identity leads to an inconsistency in the treatment of different types of declaration votes. I want to emphasise the point and support the comment made by the member for Banks, where he indicated that the changes being put forward by the government are supported by the Australian Electoral Commission. The AEC are the independent authority that we all support in their ability to oversee and operate the democratic process during elections. They do that not just during federal elections but in other elections where they are called upon by third parties—namely in union ballots, I make the point—to ensure the integrity of the process.

On that word ‘integrity’: my ears always prick up when the opposition use that code word. They talk vigorously about the need to defend the integrity of the roll. Rather, I think it reflects paranoia about the processes, probably championing conspiracy theorists and their fascination with this issue of votes being counted or being excluded. We will often hear cited Dr Amy McGrath, who from time to time has made it her life’s work to deal with the issue of why some votes have been counted and others excluded. Again, I think it is important that the AEC is scrupulous in its defence of process. Frankly, the use of and overreliance on this word ‘integrity’ in relation to the roll is code for those opposite advancing mechanisms to prevent people from casting a vote and finding ways to exclude them from the roll—particularly young people, as has been evidenced in the past in terms of the conditions for ratifying their enrolment ahead of an election—including, as we have seen before, differentiating between declaration votes and putting forward these onerous issues in relation to identity.

We need to be vigilant about hurdles that prevent participation and, as the member for Melbourne Ports observed in this place last night, our challenge is to find a way to get the 2.5 million people who did not cast a vote in the 2010 election to vote. Fourteen million people did; 2.5 million did not. That is a serious issue. Obviously, there are a whole host of reasons why people might not participate in the voting process, and we can canvass them. It may be, in some part, a reflection of disillusionment in the democratic process that makes people opt not to cast a vote. But there are other reasons as well, and I would certainly advance the idea that we have placed before them hurdles that make the process more difficult. From my perspective, removing the ID hurdles is an important measure.

In the electorate that I have the great honour of representing, Chifley, the proportion of people who have drivers licences is amongst the lowest in Western Sydney, and there is a reason for that: the state government has changed the way you get a drivers licence. Bear in mind that those opposite have said: ‘What’s the problem? If you just present a drivers licence then your identity has been verified.’ I would dispute that. To come back to the point, in New South Wales learners—unlike many of us in here who obtained our licences in years past—have to undertake 100 hours of driving to obtain a drivers licence. Again, some would say, ‘It’s not that big a deal.’ But, in fact, if there is no-one in the house who has a drivers licence and/or the learner is from a low-income family—and in the electorate I represent there are a great deal of people from low-income families—there is no-one at home who can participate with them in the driving requirements that are mandatory for getting a licence. Their only alternative is to pay for driving lessons to obtain their licence, and that in itself is a problem because they will not have the funds for it. So they are the hurdles to getting your drivers licence in New South Wales. While those opposite are advancing the idea, ‘Merely present your drivers licence; that’s okay,’ the fact is that drivers licence requirements such as those in New South Wales present a big problem for us.

I return to the fact that we need to find a mechanism to get the 2.5 million people who did not cast a vote in the last election to vote. Australia does have complex systems of voting. There are the optional preferential differences between federal and state elections. For example, in the New South Wales election, you have optional preferencing; in the federal election, you are required to fill every box with a number. As an aside, I would say that our system is way better than the US system, where there are enormous complexities and differences between the states in the way that people cast their votes, and that does disenfranchise people. At this point, I am also mindful of comments made by former Prime Minister Whitlam, where he recommended—and I do not want to cause a collective heart attack in the chamber; wait for it—that federal, state and local government elections all be held on exactly the same day—

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Anthony Smith interjecting

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It certainly caught my attention, Member for Casey! When Mr Whitlam made that point, he was looking at the US system, where people vote on the one day. Some of the reasons he made that point and the reason I make this point now is that there is an issue of voter education—that is, holding those elections all at the same time gives people the opportunity to be informed about and to better understand the processes in place, and what they need to do to cast a valid vote. From my perspective, the AEC needs to increase its focus on education.

As the member for Banks said today, the top 12 electorates in the country—many of them with high levels of informal voting—are located in Western Sydney, and the diversity within those seats is worth considering. There are different literacy rates. There are people for whom English is a second language. There are people who have come to Australia from backgrounds where democracy is not necessarily as strong a proposition as it is here. They may not know that, under a compulsory voting system, you need to undertake certain things to be able to obtain a vote. These are serious issues.

I do not think that advertising alone in the lead-up to a federal election is good enough—that is, using mass advertising mechanisms to educate people on how to cast a vote. While I understand it is considered an efficient way to get a message out, I think other ideas need to be considered to ensure that people understand the voting system and, thereby, that they cast valid votes.

One idea I would put forward for consideration by the AEC is that they identify seats where informal voting is high and where demographic triggers would warrant escalated education processes. By that I mean that the AEC conduct face-to-face briefings with people in those electorates to ensure that they do understand the democratic process—that is, the way that they can cast valid votes. That type of work could be done by divisional officers. I understand that, as always, budgets and the level of support provided to the AEC for this function will be a worthy point of consideration, but I think that AEC officials conducting face-to-face briefings with large groups of community members to better explain the democratic process would be enormously valuable. I note the presence of the Special Minister of State in the chamber, and I would hope that this would be something that could be considered for future election campaigns as a measure to improve voter education.

We also need to maintain close scrutiny of proposals to improve enrolment. I note that last night in the chamber the member for Mackellar made some points about this. I quote from Hansard, where the member for Mackellar said:

I am concerned, for instance, with the proposition that has been put forward that for future federal elections we might go the way of, say, the New South Wales Labor government, which has changed enrolment provisions to encompass automatic enrolment whereby people’s details will merely be taken from other agencies such as the Road Transport Authority, school rolls or whatever they decide can be dealt with.

The member for Mackellar, judging by the way she referenced it in debate, believes that this issue is a problem. But, in actual fact, the number of databases that exist within government provide an easier mechanism to enrol people to vote. Given that the identity requirements—the provisions that are put in place to validate a person’s identity through drivers licences or other forms of identification—sit in multiple databases, there is already an avenue for us to verify the person’s bona fides, their address et cetera and to improve enrolment processes. I think this is something that is worthy of consideration in improving people’s engagement in the process.

I note that those opposite often refer to the fact that it is easier to vote than it is to get a video card. There is a good reason for that—there are fewer video stores these days, because that mode of technology and people’s reliance on DVDs and videos is fast disappearing. There is also a commercial imperative for video store operators to put in place—

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s a killer point!

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a demon debating point!

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you guys advance it as some reason as to why—

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it’s true.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you refer to video cards, and you are referring to an outmoded form of technology and the fact that there is a commercial imperative to establish the bona fides of people seeking membership. Whatever can be done to harness existing technology and modern processes to improve the ability of people to participate and to tackle the challenge of 2.5 million people who are not casting a vote needs to continue, and I would certainly urge the government to consider this in the years ahead.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking briefly on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011, the shadow special minister of state and other colleagues from this side of the House in defending the reforms that were put in place back in 2007. We are hearing the Labor Party state in the House today their long held view—a view which would lead to our electoral roll being left open to abuse. It is as simple as that. At present, if a voter attends polling booths on election day, and they not on the electoral roll and seek to cast a provisional vote, they are asked by virtue of the fact that their enrolment criteria and enrolment details are nonexistent or unclear to provide simple evidence of identity—the sort of evidence of identity that Australian citizens are asked for every day in the modern economy.

It was interesting how the previous speaker from the other side danced around that point with great awkwardness in his contribution. We are talking about electors who are not on the electoral roll or whose details are unclear turning up at polling booths and simply being asked to provide evidence of identity. If they are unable to provide that simple evidence of their identity at that time—and I say to the member opposite, who must have ignored the evidence or been oblivious to it, that we know from the statistics that that is absolutely not the case in the majority of instances—they have until the next Friday to provide it.

I am very familiar with these reforms. They were a recommendation of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which I chaired back in 2004 and 2005, and they were then embodied in the legislative reform introduced by the government at that time. We have heard a lot of rhetoric from those opposite about the right to vote. We all cherish the right to vote. But with rights come responsibilities. For every voter whose details, for whatever reason, are out of date or who is not on the electoral roll and must cast a provisional vote, which by its very nature and definition is provisional and requires further checking, to be asked to provide stipulated identification—namely, a drivers licence—is not too onerous. The member opposite would have you believe that this will be news to his electors and that a drivers licence is a new thing, but we know that most people have a drivers licence, and we know from the statistics that, as the shadow minister pointed out, most had no problem providing it on the spot.

But of course the legislation as it exists at the moment makes provision for those without a licence. The absurd and incompetent notion from the member opposite that those without a licence would have to go and acquire a driver licence to vote is an unfortunate reflection on his lack of capacity to look at the detail of the act as it stands today. For those without a licence it is very clear they can provide alternative forms of identification if not on the spot then at some point within the next five working days. What those opposite are saying here in this House is that it is a fundamental belief of those in the Labor Party and those in the government that if someone casts a provisional vote, which by its very nature has an uncertainty about it at the time, it is too much to ask for some identification on the spot and too much to ask that voter to provide that simple information sometime in the next five days—information that should be asked for on a daily basis.

This reform was introduced in 2006. It has operated at two elections. The shadow minister made very clear that the statistics tell the story: the vast majority of electors in that situation had no problem providing the identification on the spot. Those who could not provide it on the spot had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to provide that information. In a democracy, with the right to vote comes responsibility. It is very interesting: back in 2005, when the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters reported on this and many other issues, the dissenting report from those opposite was quite long. It will not surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, that the dissenting report dissented with most parts of the committee’s deliberations to improve the integrity of the electoral system. I know my friend and colleague Shadow Minister Hartsuyker would have thought that, given the vehemence of the debate he has witnessed from those on the other side, there would be a long, comprehensive, analytical, absolutely academic piece from those opposite about why this reform introduced in 2006 should not go ahead. When you look at their dissenting report and cut through the volume of those opposite such as the member for Banks and the member for Melbourne Ports, who return on these issues with the regularity of Thunderbirds episodes on a Saturday morning, you see that their big, compelling point was that, when they had considered it, there had not been any evidence provided that there had actually been fraud.

It was not that they were worried about fraud or the integrity of the electoral roll; it was that there had not been any evidence presented. I quote from the report: ‘No evidence was presented to the inquiry of fraud in the casting of declaration votes.’ This is very like saying, if you are working in a bank, ‘We’ve left the bank vault open, but nothing has happened up until now.’

This reform introduced in 2006 was a sensible reform. The Australian public, I believe, would find it a very straightforward reform. As a member representing a seat in Victoria I can say I have had no feedback from a provisional voter finding the provisions unnecessary or intrusive. They would be understood by Australians as something to protect the integrity of the roll. Those honestly voting and casting provisional votes would want to know and would understand that there are integrity provisions in place. The arguments we have heard from those opposite, particularly from the previous speaker, whom I have had more time to listen to, really demonstrate the hollowness of their opposition to this measure. It is a measure that does them no service at all.

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

Looking through the Special Minister of State’s second reading speech, the best explanation for the proposals in this bill appears to be that the current arrangement for there to be evidence of identity provided with respect to provisional voting is inconsistent with the rules that currently relate to other forms of declaration voting such as postal voting and absent voting. So what the minister is proposing, I gather, is that there should be consistency by removing the need for electors to provide evidence of identity with respect to provisional voting. I do believe that there is a sense of logic in wanting to have the same rules apply to provisional voting as to other forms of declaration voting, but I make the submission to this House that a better way of doing that would be to require evidence of identity to be provided by basically everyone seeking to cast a vote pursuant to declaration voting. I think that would enhance the integrity of the electoral system and overcome the minister’s reason for introducing the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011.

It is important that the electoral system of Australia has as much integrity as possible, and all honourable members would claim that they support an electoral system with integrity which would ensure that, following an election, the result as declared is in fact the result voted for by the Australian people. However, our side—that is, the Liberal-National team—takes a very strong view that we ought to continually upgrade the integrity of the electoral system. The government, while supporting in principle that idea, does through their Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 seek to undermine the integrity of the electoral system. The minister may not have heard what I said a moment ago, but now that he is back at the table I will repeat that the reason for this bill appears to be the lack of consistency in treatment of different sorts of declaration voting. Minister, the best way to bring that consistency in would be to require all declaration voters to provide evidence of identity.

Let us face it, anyone can go to an electoral office, a prepoll centre or a polling booth on or before polling day—whenever those offices are open—and claim to be a voter. I think that when we make an improvement with requirements that can be met by the overwhelming majority of voters, there seems to be little reason to take this step, if this bill were to become law, which makes the integrity of the electoral system less sound. I am advised that at the 2010 general election 80 per cent of provisional voters provided evidence of their identity at the polling place on election day—the honourable member for Casey indicated that most voters have a drivers licence—and another 16 per cent provided evidence of identification in the required time frame—that is, by the following Friday.

It is my submission that the government has not sufficiently convinced the parliament that the proposal contained in this bill is worthy of support. There are a number of situations where people are able to obtain a provisional vote. One might be where the person’s name is not on the electoral roll. Other situations could be where the person’s name has been marked off or where the polling official on the day has concerns about the identity of the would-be voter. We know that currently the provisional vote is not counted until the elector’s identity can be confirmed and a careful check made of the circumstances.

Failure to provide the identification presently means that the vote is not counted and the integrity of the electoral process is not endangered by including dodgy votes in the count. It is a sensible and strict system that is really a commonsense system. It is a system that was introduced by the former government in 2006. It has proven, during the two elections when it has operated, to be solid and sensible. It simply does not require changing. As I mentioned a moment ago, 96 per cent of those who cast provisional votes at the August 2010 federal election did provide identification either on the day or by the following Friday. That gives people plenty of time to dust off some form of identification and to front up to prove that the person actually exists and that he or she is not simply a nom de plume.

The Liberal-National opposition opposes the retrograde measures of this bill. I think it is a pity that the minister, for whom I have the highest personal regard, is introducing legislation which seeks to undermine the integrity of the electoral system. The bill introduces loopholes that can compromise the integrity of our electoral system and I think it is important that the government reconsider this matter. The amendments which were made by the former government in 2006 were positive. They have not received any opposition from the community. There does not seem to be any compelling reason to water down the integrity of the electoral system by removing the need for provisional voters to prove that they exist. I suggest that, instead, the minister should require other declaration voters to provide identity. While he is at it, it would not be a bad idea if before casting a vote on polling day everyone should produce evidence that he or she exists as well. We really ought to have a situation where people prove that they exist before they are able to cast a vote. That should apply to declaration voters of all sorts, including provisional voters. It should also, in my view, apply to people seeking to cast an ordinary vote on polling day. Regrettably, I must join my colleagues in opposing this retrograde legislation which has been introduced to the parliament by the minister and the government.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service and Integrity) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank all the members who have spoken on this bill. In particular, I thank the member for Fisher for his observations, which are interesting in many ways. The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 will repeal the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity as a precondition to their votes being included in the count for an election.

Provisional votes are a type of declaration vote cast at a polling place on polling day. There are four main reasons that a person will be asked to cast a provisional vote. First, the person’s name cannot be found on the certified list; second, a mark appears on the certified list which indicates the person has already voted; third, the polling official doubts the person’s identity; and, finally, the voter is a silent elector. When a provisional vote is cast, ballot papers are placed in an envelope and written on the outside of the envelope are the voter’s details, including name, address, date of birth and signature. This allows the Australian Electoral Commission to examine the eligibility of the voter before including the vote in the count. This is known as the preliminary scrutiny. The Electoral Act and the referendum act currently require a person casting a provisional vote to provide evidence of identity by the first Friday following polling day. If a voter does not provide evidence of identity by this deadline the vote does not progress to the preliminary scrutiny and is not counted.

This requirement was put in place by the previous government in 2006. It resulted in a situation where provisional votes were dealt with in a way that was inconsistent with the treatment of other kinds of declaration votes—namely, absent, postal and pre-poll votes. By repealing the requirement for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity, all declaration votes will be treated equally. The bill replaces the requirement to provide evidence of identity with a test which has been used in previous elections. The test provides for the divisional returning officer to compare the signature on the provisional vote envelope with the signature of the elector on previously lodged enrolment records if there is any doubt as to the bona fides of the elector.

This amendment is supported by the Electoral Commission which, in its submission to the inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2010 federal election and matters related thereto, recommended that the requirement for production of evidence of identity by provisional voters should be repealed. The Electoral Commission supports the measure in this bill for two substantive reasons. First, the Electoral Commission believes that the details provided on the outside of the envelope including the voter’s name, address, date of birth and a signature allow the Electoral Commission to examine the voter’s eligibility to have the vote included without the requirement for additional evidence of identity.

Second, at the most recent general election over 28,000 provisional votes were rejected because the voter did not provide evidence of identity by the deadline. Out of the 28,000 rejected votes the Electoral Commission found that over 12,000 were instances where the name of the voter was subsequently found on the certified list, so they were eligible voters. Whatever the grounds were for issuing the provisional vote, the result is that otherwise eligible votes were being excluded from the preliminary scrutiny. So in effect, the 2006 amendments were simply unworkable. What we do by this amendment is restore the custom and practice in dealing with provisional votes through this bill. I would like to thank all members who have contributed to the debate on this bill and I commend the bill to the House.

Question put:

That the motion (Mr Gray’s) be agreed to.