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

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I present the committee’s report, incorporating a dissenting report and additional comments, entitled 'The 2010 Federal Election—Report on the conduct of the election and related matters', together with the minutes of proceedings. I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

This report continues the tradition of examining and reporting on the conduct of federal elections and relevant legislation which has been carried out by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and its predecessor, the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform, since 1983. The 2010 federal election was the first winter election since 1987, which created some challenges for the Australian Electoral Com­mission in terms of the locations to be serviced due to the increased mobility of electors during this period. The High Court decision in Rowe v Electoral Commissioner reinstating the seven-day close-of-rolls period and the Federal Court's decision in Getup Ltd v Electoral Commissioner regard­ing the use of electronic signatures also impacted to varying degrees on the election and its conduct by the AEC. The Rowe case enfranchised almost 100,000 electors, incl­uding 57,732 new electors who would otherwise have lost their voting franchise. The decision highlighted the need to protect the democratic right of Australians to participate in choosing their representatives, as provided for in the Constitution. This committee has a role to play in assisting to enfranchise eligible Australians. Making enfranchisement a priority does not mean the integrity of the roll is compromised.

The committee has made some 37 recommendations in this report to help protect the enrolment and voting franchise of Australians and to make other changes to improve the conduct of future elections. Overall, the AEC delivered a highly professional and independent service in its conduct of the 2010 federal election. However, there were the regrettable incid­ents in the divisions of Boothby in South Australia and Flynn in Queensland where thousands of votes could not be counted due to polling official error. The committee trusts that these were mistakes which the AEC has learnt from and will act to prevent any such occurrences of in the future.

The level of electoral participation in the 2010 federal election was of particular concern. AEC figures indicate that there were 3.1 million Australians—20 per cent of the eligible population—who collectively: (a) were missing from the roll; (b) were not marked off a certified list and so presumably did not vote; or (c) cast a vote that did not meet the formality requirements for a valid vote under the Commonwealth Electoral Act. This means that a significant proportion of eligible Australians are not exercising their franchise.

Eligible electors have a duty to enrol for federal elections by completing an enrolment form and submitting it to the AEC and to notify the AEC of a change of address. However, it is sensible to recognise the changing nature of how Australians choose to interact with government and business. People increasingly expect to be able to conduct their professional and personal business electronically and efficiently. The paper based form and the postbox are gradually going out of fashion.

AEC enrolment activities are necessary and must continue, but they have not been effective in achieving growth in the Commonwealth electoral roll at the same rate as the growth in eligible electors. To help address this, the committee supports direct enrolment and the update of elector details based on data received from trusted sources. This is not a panacea to the problem of decline in electoral participation but rather another tool for the AEC to utilise when it performs its important roll maintenance function.

Another issue that the committee consid­ered was the situation that arises when some eligible electors who have enrolled and believe they are on the roll turn up to vote and cannot be found on the certified list. This may be due to a polling official error or being removed from the roll as a result of the objection process the AEC is required to undertake. Electors not found to be on the list can cast a provisional vote. At the 2007 and 2010 federal elections, due to the stricter requirements introduced by the then government in 2006, if the elector was subsequently found to be on the electoral roll the elector still had to provide proof of identity on polling day or in the week following for their vote to be admitted to the count. However, those electors who had been removed as part of the AEC objection process on the basis that they were not resident at their enrolled address could not be reinstated if they were in fact still residing at that address.

At elections prior to the 2006 change, after the required checks to ensure the eligible elector was duly enrolled or could be reinstated if they had been removed in error, their vote could be admitted to the count. This meant that roughly 50 per cent of the provisional votes at the elections between 1996 and 2004 were admitted. However, the stricter requirements for proof of identity and the prevention of reinstatements saw the percentage of votes being rejected increase to over 80 per cent. In 2010, 166,148 provisional votes were rejected and only 37,340 were admitted, in contrast to the 2004 federal election prior to the tighter restrictions at which 90,366 provisional votes were rejected and 90,512 were admitted to the count. The government has since legislated to remove the proof of identity requirement that has contributed to increased rejection of provisional votes. The committee feels that the government must go further to address this matter and enable the AEC to reinstate eligible electors to the roll if they were removed in error and consequently have their votes admitted to the count.

Another matter of concern to the committee was the high number of informal votes in the 2010 election. The House of Representatives informality rate was 5.55 per cent—729,304 votes. That was an increase of 1.6 per cent, 218,482 votes, in the 2007 federal election. The committee has consid­ered the options presented by participants to reduce the impact of informality. After careful consideration, the committee has recommended the adoption of a savings provision based on that used in South Australia. The committee notes that the system has been used in South Australian House of Assembly elections since 1985 and has saved many votes which would otherwise have been informal. The comm­ittee is particularly attracted to the system because it reinforces compulsory preferential voting, prohibits advocating other than full preferential voting, is transparent in that tickets must be lodged with the Electoral Commission and was designed by electoral administrators and not politicians. The South Australian ticket voting system, if applied to House of Representatives ballot papers, could save a significant portion of informal votes. At the 2010 federal election this could have been as much as 42.12 per cent—namely, 307,156 votes—of the informal vote, assuming that all the relevant candidates had followed the appropriate procedure and lodged tickets with their preferences. Australians expect that particip­ation in the electoral process is accessible, convenient and does not impede their ability to go about their business. At the same time, it is fundamental to ensure accuracy, secrecy and integrity in enrolment, voting and coun­ting processes. These competing demands must be satisfied in such a way that the electoral process remains inclusive while preserving the high levels of integrity necessary to ensure continued trust and acceptance of election results. The comm­ittee has sought to achieve such an outcome with the recommendations made in this report.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow committee members for their contribution to the inquiry and those who participated by making submissions or appearing at the public hearings. I would also like to thank the committee secretariat for their assistance. I commend the report to the House.

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

Madam Deputy Speaker D'Ath, I seek leave to make some comments concerning the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the conduct of the 2010 election.

Leave granted.

In listening to the remarks of the chairman of the committee, you might have thought that the report of the committee had universal support. It did not; it split very much along party lines. I think it is true to say there has not been a more partisan discussion in this committee for many years. Basically the thrust of the discussions surrounded the three changes—and I use the word 'change' as distinct from 'reform' because 'reform' has connotations of good things being done—that would advantage the government and the Greens. It is interesting that their submissions to the committee reflected each other and it was very disappointing that some commentary from the AEC seemed to support the Labor Party position.

There are three things that the Labor Party are very anxious to see introduced, as are the Greens. Firstly, they want to introduce the South Australian ticket-voting system, which would mean that electors who simply place a 1 on the ballot paper would have their vote allocated by a bureaucrat in accordance with a registered ticket and it would be illegal to tell people that is what would happen to their vote. The issue of how we vote is set out in our Constitution. The words in the Consti­tution say that 'The House of Representatives shall be composed of members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth,' and this proposal by the Labor Party is very constitutionally risky. Under the voting system we have for the Senate, where you may vote above the line, you may also place your preferences in every square if you wish. It is very important to note that the reason we changed the system of voting in the Senate was that we were seeing such huge ballot papers with so many people nominating that the margin of error was becoming something that was not considered acceptable. We will never see a House of Representatives ballot paper looking like that. So the so-called justification for the South Australian voting system is one that does not provide any justification at all in this context.

The AEC analysis said that 51 per cent of informal votes at the last election were assumed to be unintentional. The AEC has absolutely no basis to assume that those votes were unintentionally informal. In fact, if you look at the voting patterns in states other than New South Wales and Queen­sland, where it is a valid vote to put a 1 in the box or a cross or a tick, there is confusion between state and federal elections. Indeed, if you wanted to so-called 'save' those informal votes, the evidence is that, if you allowed ticks and crosses and 1s and you moved to an optional preferential system at the federal level, which would still meet with the constitutional requirement to be directly chosen by the people, you would save, in the terms used by the government, more votes than under the highly objectionable South Australian system with its secrecy and manipulation. People would be horrified to think that a bureaucrat could allocate their preferences in a way they did not intend. You may vote informally if you wish.

The second point that the Labor Party was very keen to push is the question of postal votes and postal vote applications. Currently the system, as everybody knows—this was challenged in the High Court and the chal­lenge was thrown out—is that the political parties send out how-to-vote applications and individuals can choose to send those applications back to the political party of their choice, who then take them to the electoral office where they are processed and the electoral office then sends them out. There are some people who choose to send them directly to the DRO, but a huge number of people choose to send them back to the party of their choice. The Greens, despite the fact that they have now received the largest donation ever known in the history of donations—$1.6 million, which they failed to disclose in a timely way—do not at this stage send out their own PVAs. They want to have some electoral advantage by being sent a list that they can simply get on the back of with regard to the Labor Party's PVAs.

Analysis shows that more electors who choose to vote by way of postal ballot vote for the coalition than vote for the Labor Party. This is clearly seen as undesirable by the Labor Party and so, if they cannot attract the votes, they want to change the system. The statistics show that with regard to postal votes only 2.63 per cent of those votes cast were in fact informal as distinct from 5.5 per cent of votes in the overall count, which shows quite simply that the current system works, but because it does not work to the advantage of the Labor Party and the Greens they want to change the system. This is not a good way to be running fair and free elections.

The third way in which the Labor Party and the Greens want to change the system is that they want to reduce the integrity of the roll. Let me remind the House that, presently, you are required by law to register to get on the roll. Having got on the roll, if you should change your address it is your obligation to advise the Electoral Commi­ssion so that that change of address can be recorded. Those are your obligations under the law. Through our system of compulsory voting, we already oblige people to turn up, get their name marked off, take the ballot paper and then mark the paper as they will—they can vote informally if they wish. Some people choose to put expressions of their objection to being forced to vote; other people write comments about what they think about candidates. In other words: they are busy showing what their will is, but the—

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

The member's time—sorry, that was my mistake, having just taken the chair. My apologies, member for Mackellar, please continue.

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

Thank you. I am making the very strong point that, under our system of compulsory voting, you are obliged to turn up, get your name marked off, get the ballot paper and mark it. Nothing compels you to vote formally if you do not wish to, and you may express your point of view as a free person in a free system.

But the Labor Party and the Greens want to see what is called automatic enrolment. That means taking names from lists compiled for reasons other than inclusion on the electoral roll and simply adding those names to the roll. The names are not checked; they are simply added. That, of course, was one of the last-ditch desperate stands introduced by the appalling Labor government in New South Wales, which of course was flogged mercilessly at the polls, to try and garner a few extra votes. They may well have done that, but it certainly was not enough to counter the anger of the people.

It is on those three issues that this whole report is really based. The coalition has put a lot of its objections in the body of the report, so that people reading the report do not think that, in any way, manner or means, this was a unanimous recommendation or conclusion of the whole committee. It divided on party political lines. The opposition members not­ed in our dissenting report that we oppose 19 of the recommendations—the ones that relate to the three issues that I have just raised—but we do not oppose 17 of them. In addit­ion, we make 10 other recommendations which we believe would be helpful for the way in which people cast their vote. The AEC was very keen to lessen the amount of time people could have to apply for postal votes—they are keen to lessen the time people have, when overseas, to get themselves a vote. We do not find that acceptable. We see no reason why voters should have their time limits shortened. Indeed, we had evidence from the CPSU, the Community and Public Sector Union, which said that in fact the Australian Electoral Commission is less efficient today than it was 21 years ago, in 1990, when it was able to process more changes to the electoral roll than it is currently.

I think there is a very big point to be made that the Electoral Commission, rather than making recommendations to lighten its workload, should in fact work more efficiently. For that reason, we have made some very specific recommendations. We have recommended that it should concentrate on continuing to check the accuracy of the roll, by canvassing and advertising to make people aware of their obligations to enrol properly initially and advise when they change address. There should not be this idea that you can not follow the law and have bureaucrats within the AEC simply allocate your vote, saying, 'This vote is going to be formal and allowed into the count. Even though you didn't comply with the law, we deem it not to be too bad, so you can have it in the count.' If we have compulsory voting and registration provisions there has to be some obligation for the voter to value that vote and comply with their obligations to register and make sure their address on the roll is correct. The Labor Party obviously thinks that people who are less likely to comply with the law are more likely to vote for them. Perhaps that is the case, I do not know, but I do not see it as a reason to change the law.

We also note that there has never been a proper follow-up of multiple voting. There were in excess of some 20,000 incidents of multiple voting. The AEC has admitted in evidence that it does not have the power to adequately investigate and prepare briefs for prosecution for the DPP. We have made a recommendation, which the AEC would seem to be inclined to accept, that we should establish a dedicated fraud unit within the AEC to investigate multiple voting. When the margins in so many seats are small, the fact that there are 20,000-plus incidents of multiple voting should raise alarm bells for anybody. The AEC says there has never been a prosecution. We are told by research from the Library that in fact only three prosecutions have taken place. That is an unsatisfactory event and one for which the AEC should have those additional powers.

We also believe very firmly that the AEC should concentrate on its core business, the integrity of the roll, which means the accuracy of the roll. Offering that lazy system of automatic enrolment, where the integrity of the roll is put at risk, is not the way for it to proceed. We are always keen to see information from the AEC, but I am very concerned when I see that the AEC's recommendations are so much in lockstep with those of the Labor Party and the Greens.

In looking at this report, know that this is a very political report. The report split on party lines—the government had a majority. But if you look at the attendance record, and I will finish on this point, you will wonder just how keen they are, particularly the Greens, to see proper assessment of an election at all. Private meetings and public hearings were held, and an analysis of the minutes that are tabled with this report will show that the coalition attended more meetings than either the government or the Greens. Senator Brown of the Greens turned up for three out of 14 private meetings and two out of nine public hearings. In other words, his attendance record was 22 per cent—a bit more than his vote, but not much. The Labor Party members attended an average of 65 per cent of meetings and the coalition members attended 79 per cent of meetings. So although we were in the minority of people who had the right to vote on this report, we attended in a better fashion than either Labor or the Greens.

This is an important report. The division between the Labor Party, the Greens and the Liberal and National parties, who form a well-known coalition, has to be read in that light. There are grave concerns about the manner in which the Labor Party want to forge these changes to the way we vote to give themselves an electoral advantage.

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

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

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

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.