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

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and cognate bill both have misleading titles. The main bill, the maintaining address bill, should in fact be called the 'changing address bill'. The Minister for the Public Service and Integrity, in introducing that bill, said in his second reading speech that it would not cause automatic enrolment, and discussion at that stage was, 'We are only going to change addresses; we are not going to go to automatic enrolment.' However, shortly thereafter, we received the second bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill, which in fact should read 'electoral amendment (automatic enrolment) bill', because that is precisely what it does. It takes people off lists which are compiled for another purpose and data matches and decides that, if someone who has a particular address is not on the roll, they will automatically be placed on the roll. This follows in the footsteps of the dying days of the New South Wales parliament and the Victorian parliament, when both thought they would get an electoral advantage from doing this, and the Commonwealth is following for the same reasons.

This is one of a series of bills that have been designed to give Labor and the Greens an electoral advantage. When we were in office we had removed prisoners from eligibility to vote, but the Labor Party changed it so that, unless prisoners had a sentence of more than two years, they would be allowed to vote. This of course disclosed that there are really bad criminals serving two years who are allowed to vote, and perhaps the Labor Party rightly made the conclusion that those sorts of people would vote Labor rather than Liberal and it would give them an electoral advantage.

In all the inquiries of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, when we have asked questions and tried to find any evidence that this would be really beneficial, all we have found is that this has been a proposal of the Labor Party and the Greens, who have been in lock-step. Unfortunately, the AEC has been in lock-step in suggesting it would be an advantage as well.

I think it is important that we look at other people's writings on the nature of electoral law in this country to find a way in which we should progress these matters. Professor Orr in his excellent book The Law of Politics writes: 'The roll is essential to the franchise. Without it the franchise as a mass electorate would be very hard to police. It also serves in practice to limit the franchise.' As Acting Chief Justice Brennan put in Muldowney and the Australian Electoral Commission, the electoral roll is pivotal to the electoral system. He held that the qualifications to vote include enrolment, noting that the term 'elector' is defined to mean someone on the roll and that mandating an administrative hurdle like enrolment created no undue hardship.

The Electoral Act does put an onus and a responsibility onto the individual. Once they become a citizen and are 18 years of age they must enrol. It is compulsory. In fact, last night the Electoral Commission held a function to celebrate 100 years of compulsory enrolment. It also was celebrating 50 years of Indigenous Australians being included on the roll. That indeed is a celebration. I pointed out in my speech last night that I was very proud to be a member of the Liberal Party, the party of which the first Aboriginal Senator, Senator Neville Bonner, was a member, and the party of which the first person of Aboriginal heritage in this House, Mr Ken Wyatt, is also a member. I could point out that the government could have had the opportunity of having a senator of Aboriginal descent, Mr Mundine, who would have been a grace to the Senate, but of course he was overlooked in favour of Mr Carr, the failed former Premier of New South Wales.

In looking at that celebration last night, it was interesting that all the material that was an display was about encouraging people to meet with their obligations to enrol and to change their address when they move, because that is the law. Currently, until this bill is passed, the law is that the responsibility is the obligation of the person who has attained the age of 18 and is a citizen of this country. As Acting Chief Justice Brennan pointed out in his decision, it is not an onerous one. But there are provisions in the act which say that, if you do not enrol or notify the AEC of your changed address, there is a fine, which is applicable; it is strict liability. There are no fines paid because the AEC does not enforce the law in this regard. In fact, when you look at the letters that the AEC write to people whom they believe through their data-checking may not be at that address, the AEC simply say: 'Remember you are eligible. It is the legal requirement to enrol and failure to do so may result in a fine.' Of course, it never does. Under the law it should say, 'You will be subject to being fined' and those fines should be collected—but no. This legislation removes that obligation from the Electoral Commission. Under this legislation, the commissioner is no longer required to fine people once they have been automatically enrolled or had their address changed by the AEC.

If you go to the second reading speech of the Special Minister of State, it is full of statements which are simply not borne out by the facts. He says in his second reading speech:

… there are one and a half million Australian citizens who cannot choose their representatives in parliament.

Well, yes they can. All they have to do is comply with the law and enrol or notify the AEC of any change of address. Their ability to vote is entirely within their hands. They have the interim period between the last election and the one that follows—that entire period. Indeed, under legislation brought in by this government, this includes the period of time from when the writs are issued; it has been lengthened. So people can enrol almost up to the last minute.

The minister says in his speech:

This bill will protect the participation of eligible Australian citizens in the electoral process by establishing a safety net for enrolment and voting.

No, it will not. It will automatically add names to the roll without people's authority or consent. The minister goes on to say:

This amendment will not affect the integrity of the electoral roll …

No, it will not. It will in fact reduce the integrity of the roll. This is where a philosophical divide exists between the coalition, and the Labor Party and the Greens. We say that the first and foremost obligation of the Electoral Commissioner is to uphold the integrity of the roll—that is, to make it as free from error and fraud as can possibly be done. The system that is being introduced will simply add names to the roll, without adequate checking and without the consent of the individual elector. It is the obligation of the elector to do it. The proposed system opens up the roll to fraud and to error. We were very obliged to Dr Clarke from the Privacy Foundation, who came before our committee, for giving us very useful evidence about the way in which data processing is utilised, how it is subject to false positives and false negatives and how it is not to be relied upon as being safe to use at all.

But to go back to the speech of the Special Minister of State, he said:

The bill will ensure the accuracy and completeness of the roll …

No, it will not. It will leave it open to more errors and to the possibility of fraud. During evidence given by Mr Killesteyn, I asked him whether, if a particular set of circumstances were a reality, someone could be struck from the roll improperly. I asked him this question: 'Supposing we had Mrs Bloggs, who in fact had not moved from her address. She is one of those people who have a second house. Her principal place of residence is X but on the list that you have obtained'—that is, Mr Killesteyn—'her address is shown as Y and she is not going to get your letter.' Mr Killesteyn gave evidence that he only writes to the new address and not to the old. 'She is not going to reply to you in 28 days and you are going to change her address. She is going to rock up on election day and be told she is not on the roll because her other address is in a different electorate. She has no right to be on the roll in the different electorate but someone who perhaps knew that it had been changed could rock up in her name and it could be a marginal seat and someone could vote in her name. She would be denied her vote and a fraudulent vote would be counted in a marginal electorate. How are you going to overcome that difficulty?'

Mr Killesteyn replied:

Going back to the original proposition, everything you said about the address change is true. But one would wonder why that individual would have changed the address either with Centrelink, Australia Post or the Roads and Traffic Authority—

The fact of the matter is that, under this legislation, the Electoral Commission is given the absolute right to choose any list they like to data-match, to change addresses and to enrol people who are not presently enrolled. Mr Killesteyn said that he currently uses only the RTA or the equivalent thereof from various states, Australia Post and Centrelink. Centrelink, I think it is sensible to realise, is the collection database of 100 agencies. So there are an enormous number of scrubbed databases already fed into the one that the Electoral Commissioner uses. The question as to why anyone would do that really does not answer the question. Mr Killesteyn said that everything I said was correct, and it can and no doubt will be done at some stage.

But now we go to the evidence about what transpired in New South Wales and Victoria. It is important here to again go to the second reading speech of the minister. It says:

This notice will advise the recipient that they have 28 days to inform the Electoral Commissioner that they do not live at that address or are not entitled to enrolment.

Of course, we have established that the Electoral Commissioner only writes to the new address. That is the one he has gained from the databases. He does not, as he has specifically told us, write to the old address. Very simply, we will have people who can be wrongly enrolled. Further in his speech the minister says:

This is similar to the successful processes currently used in New South Wales and Victoria.

Let us look at the success rate. In New South Wales around 92 per cent of people are on the good old-fashioned roll, the one that is properly compiled by people who actually sign an enrolment form and lodge it with the Electoral Commission. All of that will be going, as a necessity. People can still do it, but it will not be essential to get on the roll. Of the people who were automatically enrolled, only 64 per cent of them voted. Of those on the properly established roll, 92 per cent voted. Of the 64 per cent who voted on the new automatic enrolment, the commissioner now writes to them and says that he has been advised that they have been placed on the roll in either New South Wales or Victoria but that that does not put them on the roll for federal elections and would they please fill out the relevant forms and send them back, or if it is to be an online change of address do it there. Their success rate from that letter is 20 per cent. That is an 80 per cent failure rate. In the minister's words, 'This is similar to the successful processes currently used in New South Wales and Victoria.' If that is a success rate, then we can do without it federally, thank you very much.

We go on to the question of reliable sources. The minister says:

Information from reliable sources is already used by the Australian Electoral Commission to monitor the accuracy of the roll and to remove a person from the roll through objection action.

Under this legislation the objection process goes. So there will be no cleansing of the roll for people who are wrongly placed in that address. There will merely be the affirmative action process of people being put on the roll because of another collection of data on another list not compiled for this purpose and their address changed similarly. The minister says that this is not an automatic process. Yet, when the Electoral Commissioner writes to these people he says that they have been automatically enrolled by, what he calls, successful New South Wales and Victorian processes. Clearly, it is an automatic process.

The minister in charge of the bill further states in his speech:

The existing law provides that where electors have been removed from the electoral roll due to an administrative error or a mistake of fact, their votes can be admitted to further scrutiny after the Electoral Commission has verified the elector's enrolment and voting entitlement.

However, being removed from the roll through objection action does not currently constitute an administrative error or mistake of fact.

Therefore, there is provision for checking and provision for declaratory votes.

The very useful book, which I quoted from before, TheLaw of Politics by Professor Graeme Orr, draws our attention to the important fact that the roll is the final determinant of who is entitled to vote. He says: 'Like other official public registers, such as land registers, a chief feature of electoral rolls is their finality. The purpose of a roll is to be a definitive statement of the entitlement to vote'—leaving aside the potential for provisional declaration votes by those erroneously omitted from the roll—'Thus there is a rule that the roll is conclusive evidence of the entitlement to vote. Reinforcing this is the secondary rule in almost all jurisdictions that a court of disputed returns is not to inquire into the correctness of the roll.'

Again, I come back to this philosophical divide that on this side of the House we say that the integrity of the roll is the first responsibility to be pursued at all costs by the Electoral Commission whereas, on the other side of the House, the government says, 'No, just adding numbers is far more important.' That is a very important philosophical divide. But our contention is backed up by judicial findings. In the case of Perkins and Cusack, the federal Court of Disputed Returns faced a petition claiming that many people were on the roll for the seat of the Eden-Monaro, whose real place of living was outside the electorate. Imagine that! Even though it was alleged that some enrolled electors lived at addresses that lay outside the divisional boundaries, Mr Justice Starke refused to allow any evidence to be tendered that might contradict the face of the roll.

In the case of Re Berrill's Petition in 1975, a three-judge bench of the High Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns rejected the claim on jurisdictional grounds where Mrs Berrill had complained about the state of the electoral roll. The court rejected that claim on jurisdictional grounds, citing the prohibition of going behind the roll. Importantly, Mr Justice Stephen noted that this did not mean that errors in the roll were completely unreviewable. This is a very important finding. Rather, he noted that the prohibition assumes that errors on the roll ought to be put in order before an election rather than risking dislocation of the democratic process through illegal challenges to the roll during the campaign or after it. That is why we say the integrity of the roll has to be foremost and why we reject the proposition that the government puts forward that merely adding names to the list at any cost is the correct way to proceed. This is certainly backed up by that ruling by Mr Justice Stephen, because it is implicit in automatic enrolment and automatic changing of addresses that there will be errors brought into the roll that otherwise would not be there.

I go back to the points that were made by the minister in charge of the bill, the Special Minister of State. He said:

With the trend in declining enrolment participation, it is no longer possible to keep doing the same things in the same way, particularly as superior processes have been successfully implemented in New South Wales and Victoria.

The desperate measures put in place by the New South Wales Labor government and the Victorian Labor government did not save them from being defeated. The fact of the matter is that they introduced into their rolls errors which are the result of the process that this bill will bring in. There are two things to say about some of the technicalities associated with data-matching and the use of rolls created for another purpose. Firstly, on the government's own privacy website, at Privacy.gov.au/law/other/datamatch, it states:

Data-matching involves bringing together data from different sources and comparing it. Much of the data-matching done by agencies subject to the Privacy Act aims to identify people for further action or investigation. … Data-matching poses a particular threat to personal privacy because it involves analysing information about large numbers of people without prior cause for suspicion.

That is very important in the privacy aspects of the roll. There is provision in the current act for people to be exempted from being placed on the roll because they may be fearful of domestic violence or for a number of other reasons. There is provision for that and many people are indeed exempted. But, under this system, as the government itself warns, wearing another hat, there is the problem that people who would rightly be entitled to be not on the roll would be put automatically on the roll. That does not necessarily mean people who have already applied and are off the roll; it also means people who are yet to apply to not be on the roll, who would simply be automatically put on. That would apply particularly to young people, because they have not had the opportunity, prior to their turning 18, to be concerned about this issue.

So, on the one hand, the government warns, through its privacy website, that there are a great deal of problems in using data-matching because, in its words, 'it involves analysing information about large numbers of people without prior cause for suspicion,' and yet, on the other hand, the government brings in a bill which is going to overlook all of that because it thinks that there is a political advantage for it.

We are very obliged to Dr Roger Clarke, from the Privacy Foundation. I am very proud to say that I have worked with that foundation before, when I worked with many others to fight off the Labor Party's Australia Card, which was to be a national identity card and which we were successful in defeating.

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We were indeed.

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

We were on the same side on that one. It was quite remarkable. That was before you got seduced, dare I say.

Dr Clarke said, in his evidence to us:

The point about data matching is that it is extraordinarily error-prone. It is based on, firstly, name; secondly, usually, elements of address and, thirdly, date of birth. Date of birth is commonly unreliable. People fib about their ages. Many people are not very pleased about having to disclose their ages, and that includes males as well as females. Address in this context cannot be used because the whole purpose of the study is to come up with different addresses and therefore you cannot match on it. So you have you got to reduce quality of data matching in this data-matching program compared to all the other data-matching programs that go on in government.

Name is enormously variable in its recording and is routinely 'scrubbed'—that is the term used—in order to try to muck around with the data, modify the data, in order to make it seem right. It is differently scrubbed by every different agency, so we have differential collection for different purposes in different ways with different data-quality measures with different data-scrubbing measures, and then we bundle all this together and match it. The false positives that arise from this are enormous, as indeed are the false negatives, because there are enormous numbers of occasions where matches could in principle be discovered which in fact are not discovered by the algorithms that are used. It is extraordinarily error prone. In circumstances like these you would think enormous care would be taken, enormous justification would have to be provided, proportionality would be taken account of and it would only be done when there are very serious benefits to be gained. Unfortunately that is far from the case.

In other words, Dr Clarke, who is skilled in the e-business industry, has pointed out to us the use of scrubbing, the way in which data is collected and modified to suit the purposes for which it is collected, and such data is now going to be bundled together and used by the Electoral Commissioner to change the electoral roll, the integrity of which is fundamental to running a proper democratic system.

I think we have to conclude, unfortunately, that the government and the Greens, who have been pushing this agenda for a considerable period of time because they feel it gives them an electoral advantage, are going to be able to force this legislation through the parliament. However, it will certainly be looked at should we be successful in being elected to government at the next election. At the last gasp, the failed Victorian and New South Wales governments tried this ploy to enhance their chances of re-election. I suspect the same outcome as befell them will befall the Gillard government and its aspirations to try and gain an electoral advantage from this. I would like to conclude by saying that I suspect the next piece of legislation in this train of manipulation of the electoral process will be to try to introduce the South Australian voting system whereby, if you do not complete your ballot paper, a bureaucrat will take it over for you if there has been a registered ticket. Watch this space. I fear that the evils that can be done to the electoral system are not yet finished.

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

Let me say at the outset that, with that contribution, the member for Mackellar has shown that she will be never known as the guardian of the franchise. The debate we are having today in relation to these two bills, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012, is an argument about enfranchisement and disenfranchisement. The drivel that came from the member for Mackellar would have you believe that there is a conspiracy between the Labor Party and the Greens, in lockstep with the independent Australian Electoral Commission. During the hearings in relation to these two matters and on other occasions—and indeed, I am told, last night at a function held at the Electoral Commission; I had to leave early and so I have heard this second-hand—the member for Mackellar has continually asserted a connection between the Electoral Commission and the government.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Electoral Commission is independent and has shown itself to be independent. On Saturday I will celebrate 22 years in this place, and for most of that time I have been on the commission—yes, it was a Freudian slip. For most of that time, I have been on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. I have seen arguments of the commission with all the political parties. The commission has on numerous occasions put submissions to the committee that the political parties have not accepted. In a number of instances in relation to these bills, a proper reading of the transcripts and submissions over time will show that the commission was ahead of the action when it came to some of these measures, as against the political parties, and was arguing for these measures because they would assist with enfranchisement.

The member for Mackellar did not tell you that, in the joint standing committee report tabled in February 2012, on the maintaining address bill, at paragraph 1.4, on page 4, the following appears in relation to the first bill we are debating today, which blows the conspiracy theory out of the water. There is a conspiracy. There is a conspiracy by the member for Mackellar to confuse and dissemble. At paragraph 1.4, the committee report says:

The Bill is described in the Explanatory Memorandum (EM) as implementing recommendation 10 of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ Report on the conduct of the 2007 federal election and matters related thereto. It was a unanimous recommendation. The members of the committee for that report were—

And there is a list of the Labor members and others. The Liberal members were: Scott Morrison MP, Bruce Scott MP, Senator Simon Birmingham and Senator the Hon. Michael Ronaldson. Senator Ronaldson was the shadow minister in charge of the Electoral Act. Mr Morrison is a former state director of the Liberal Party. The point I am making here is that they agreed to the contents of this bill before the House. The change to the recommendation only occurred when the member for Mackellar got onto the committee and, for political advantage, changed the position of the Liberal Party. These reports are based on amendments that were made in some instances by the former government and we now know their effect, which is that they resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of people. The report in relation to automatic enrolment and other matters obviously shows that there has been development in a number of the states, and it is all about enfranchising people from reliable sources.

In my time in this place there is only one area where I have argued for disenfranchisement, and I do not apologise for it. The member for Mackellar would be surprised to learn that my supporter in the recommendation I made arising out of the 2007 election was none other than Alan Jones. The recommendation I made was that those British subjects who have had their vote protected since 1984 should at least have to take out Australian citizenship by 2014 in order to maintain their right to vote in this country, so that citizenship should be a requirement. That is the only time in my time on the electoral committee and I was the only one who signed it, for a particular reason.

It is not unique to Australia. It happens in Britain and it happens in New Zealand, so there is an argument there. But on every other occasion what motivates me is not political. It is not: do these people vote Liberal or Labor? Or is it like the hanging chad instance in Florida? It is to ensure the franchise, protect the franchise and enable it, and not have administrative features that result in disenfranchisement. That is what some of the provisions of the former government have done in relation to prisoners and, in the second case, in relation to the declaration votes, where people might not have responded to correspondence and have had their name taken off the roll. They show up on the day and the proof of identity provisions and a combination of all these matters has resulted in a massive reduction in the reinstatement of people who were otherwise entitled to vote. So paperwork, a bit of slackness or an error resulted in their losing the important right to vote. We should err, with some constraints, on the side of the franchise. That is why the High Court in a number of recent cases basically said, of the former government's legislation in relation to prisoners, 'Bad luck. You got it wrong', and said in relation to the seven-day closing of the rolls, which was brought forward, 'You got it wrong. Fix it up,' because tens and tens of thousands of people were disenfranchised.

What I say to my colleagues who are listening and to those who are following this debate is: actually analyse what the member for Mackellar has said and you will find that most of it is rubbish—paranoid, delusional, conspiratorial theory about the Labor Party and the Greens being worried about a block of votes that votes for them overwhelmingly. That is not my concern. I am actually not frightened of losing, if that is what the people want. I have to say the member for Mackellar has been consistent; I will give her credit for that. But her view is not uniform, even within the Liberal Party, and it is the same on our side of the chamber. A number of the provisions are reinstating because we now have the results of what those changes meant. The proof of identity, which meant tens and tens of thousands, is an example.

What are we, as parliamentarians, to do—make it hard with lots of loops? The Liberal Party is supposed to be the party that gets rid of red tape. We had 11½ years of red tape inserted into the Electoral Act, which has resulted in numerous people being disenfranchised. We have one of the best electoral systems in the world and one of the best electoral commissions in the world. They are truly professional and truly independent. They should not have to put up with the rubbish and garbage that comes out of the member for Mackellar with an inference that they are somehow doing the Labor Party's bidding—far from it. I have some views that certainly differ from the Electoral Commission, but you can respect professionals who have different views. The member for Mackellar seems to be saying, 'Unless you agree with me, your view is not worth pursuing.' I say to the member for Mackellar that the worst thing she can do, or I can do, is pursue political advantage.

The Liberal Party have actually done quite well out of the electoral system. Some want to have optional voting. Compulsory voting was actually introduced by the conservatives in the twenties. Many good electoral features have been introduced by the conservative side of politics, and they have done pretty well at a federal level. Indeed, since Federation conservatives have ruled for 65 or 66 per cent of the time. But what they cannot stand, and what this is about, is a class of people, those whom they regard as a different class of uneducated and uninformed people, having equality and the right to vote at the same level. I have to tell you, a lot of people are confused by the electoral system because they do not have our obsessions. Some of us are obsessed with electoral systems. Why? Because it is a precious right to be able to go along and vote for your representative in your area, whether they be Labor, Liberal, National or Callithumpian. People are fighting overseas to defend democracies or to create democracies so that dictators, totalitarian regimes and tanks are not the basis of a vote.

In my humble opinion, we have one of the best democracies in the world, the best electoral systems in the world and the best commission in the world. Regarding the idea that fraud is rampant in our society, we have had members of the Liberal Party, the former member for McEwen, members in Adelaide, and Chris Gallus as well, elected by a handful of votes, and there has been the opportunity to put up or shut up and show there is electoral fraud. We have provisions in the Electoral Act where, if there is multiple voting that makes a difference, you provide the evidence and if it affects the result you get a fresh ballot. They are all there.

We make the rules and, in my opinion, if there is a problem it is our fault and not the commission's. They have to implement the rules and the law as they are. Do not blame them; blame us. In the time of the Howard government the former commissioner defended a number of matters that the government was pushing forward. That was his role, and we were critical of it in relation to some amendments to the Electoral Act. But an independent Public Service is required to provide the material as an independent Public Service, not to take a partisan position, and it is not right of me to criticise members of the commission if they do not happen to agree with me and are asserting it.

I am disappointed with the member for Mackellar. I know she is passionate. I know she genuinely believes in what she is saying. But there is a saying 'garbage in, garbage out', which is, really, how you can judge a lot of the contribution that has been made in relation to—

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I find that offensive and I would ask the member to withdraw.

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

I withdraw, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Banks.

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

It was not meant to be offensive but, if it is offensive, I withdraw. That is not the nature of what I am trying to say. What I am saying is: have a look at the quality of the material that the member for Mackellar is putting up. I have looked at it. I know she is genuine about it and I do not really question her genuineness. But she is wrong; she is absolutely wrong. If we followed what she said, tens of thousands of people would be disenfranchised. We were not inundated by submission after submission from groups who have an interest in electoral matters saying, 'You're on the wrong path.' This is not the first inquiry we have had in relation to each of these bills, because they arise out of submissions to the inquiries into the 2007 election and the 2010 election. People had an opportunity then to submit to the bills but we did not get many submissions. We struggled to get people and the member for Mackellar was allowed the opportunity to bring along anyone she wanted. If what we were doing was wrong, if what we were doing was crooked, if what we were doing was partisan, this parliament and the committee would have been inundated, before, during and after the event, with criticism.

The Privacy Foundation people again were genuine. I missed the first hearing—I had another commitment—but I was there for the second and I listened respectfully to them. Again, the transcript speaks for itself. It did not convince me that we were going down the wrong path. I believe in my heart of hearts that what we are doing by these two measures is enfranchising. We should pursue them to the end and enact them, because many tens of thousands of eligible people will then have their vote counted; otherwise, they will continue to be disqualified, morally and in every other way wrongly, from having their vote counted to elect their parliament, their representative, their government.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and cognate bill I will attempt to be more sober in my approach than the member for Banks. It is understandable at times that there is a competition about who can be more hairy-chested about being more democratic in this place, and the integrity of the electoral roll is absolutely fundamental to the integrity of our democracy. We do not have huge variations in the number of seats which switch from one party to another when there is a general election. Often an election is decided on a handful of votes in a handful of seats. That places an even greater emphasis on doing what we can to have as accurate an electoral roll as possible. That is why the integrity of the electoral roll is absolutely central to the integrity of our democracy.

I was rather perplexed by some of the comments made by the member for Banks when he spoke of some people in the opposition wanting to disenfranchise people and somehow having different classes of people. What absolute rubbish! What absolute rubbish, invoking some nebulous class war argument that here is the opposition thinking there are classes of people who we should lock out of the voting system. How absolutely absurd. This is obviously just another time filler, because at the moment everyone is equal. Everyone who qualifies as an Australian citizen has gained the privilege of enrolling and of voting in our system. Somehow there is this Orwellian language when we speak of our democracy and elections—it is quite perverse—saying that somehow we are a better democracy if Big Brother decides on people's enrolment and their change of address details; Big Brother is there to look after all these people who are incapable of doing it themselves. That, friends on the other side, is the arrogance and the elitism that is a central part of your argument, because, in our current system, Australians who are eligible to vote have the right and the obligation to enrol.

We have significant problems on this side, and it begins with but goes beyond the fundamental belief that individuals should be active participants in their democracy. We cannot force people to be active or to care. Quite frankly, when they look at the state of the current political system federally, do you wonder why they do not care and that they watch events in this place with utter despair and disappointment?

This legislation removes personal responsibility from an elector to fill out an enrolment form, to fill in their details. At the 2007 election over 20,600 votes were multiple votes. It has been noted, particularly by opposition Senator Scott Ryan, who takes a particular interest in these matters, with great disappointment, which I have to say I share, that the Australian Electoral Commission did not prosecute any cases of fraudulent voting. It disturbs me that there were so many multiple votes, and these sorts of things should be investigated. If we want to say that we have an open and transparent democracy, we need to look at these issues and examine them. Another significant problem is: how can you arm appropriate authorities with the best information to tackle fraud when you remove one of those matters that is examined in determining whether there has been electoral fraud—that is, an elector's signature? When they enrol, they fill in the enrolment form and sign it. Automatic enrolment just does away with that. That disturbs me significantly. And we see how automatic enrolment will occur. We are told that the AEC will use data sources. They will have the sole discretion to use so-called 'reliable and current data', and it is an opt-out system. If you do not object within 28 days, then you are automatically added to the roll. There are significant problems with that. Can someone in the Labor Party please explain why a potential elector is not trusted to fill in their enrolment form but they are trusted with a vote? Why cannot those opposite, who are pursuing this legislation, have the basic respect for potential voters to allow them the privilege to actually enrol to vote and to change their details?

We can see an enormous array of problems when it comes to updating people's enrolment details, for a whole number of reasons, and yet these are utterly brushed aside. When we look at the so-called reliable data that is going to be used, let us look at some government information. I can see the member for Melbourne Ports bursting to have a go. I think you are on next, mate, so just do not get too excited. The fact that one government, which may have been of my persuasion, at some time in the past used data for a particular purpose does not mean that that data was absolutely accurate and infallible. No government data in an aggregate sense would be more accurate than an individual actually choosing to fill in the electoral form, whether to go onto the roll or to change their details.

So what is reliable and current data? We are told that this will be determined by the Australian Electoral Commission themselves, and we have serious concerns about this because there are flaws in data that the government collects. Let us just look at some details. There are 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals; 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a sample match; and, when we look at tax file numbers, there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia at the last census. So there are flaws. There are mistakes with data because it requires data entry. There is human error involved in all of that. So let us not pretend that Big Brother, assembling and amassing a whole lot of information, is superior to that individual Australian who has the privilege of filling out that enrolment form. It just makes absolute nonsense to say that that is the case. The Labor Party goes on to essentially say: 'Well, everything is excusable. There'll be a few mistakes. That's okay because our overriding concern is maximising the franchise.' That is the argument.

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

Democracy! Democracy!

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Democracy!' my friend from Melbourne Ports calls out. As a proud custodian of the culture and philosophy that gave the world democracy, Member for Melbourne Ports, I am a very proud advocate of democracy, but don't we find it somewhat ironic that we have a government saying, 'We want democracy'? What is democracy? If we break it down, it is the will of the people. So we have Big Brother telling the people: 'This is your will. We will enrol you.' How utterly absurd. How counterintuitive. The Labor Party can talk about democracy all they like, whilst they disrespect the intelligence of the Australian people to enrol to vote. If there are issues, we have worked over decades on electoral education, on getting people onto the roll. But this attempt to introduce automatic enrolment and to have automatic changes to people's address details will only increase problems with the integrity of the roll because there are already embedded problems with the correctness of the information in the data with which this automatic enrolment and changes to the enrolment will be undertaken.

It is not actually that difficult and it is not actually that onerous to fill out an enrolment form. It is absolutely absurd to say, 'That is such a high bar.' If you take that to its logical conclusion, then, for so many things that we need to be proactive to fill in forms about, why don't we just dispense with that? Why don't we have Big Brother in every department just making decisions about what we should do? That is the logical conclusion of what the Labor Party are proposing. They expect us, on this very, very important issue of the integrity of the electoral roll, to just have blind faith that the 'reliable and current data source', which has no definition, which will be at the discretion of the commission, will be absolutely flawless. We cannot accept that because we have seen data that is flawed.

They hold up the automatic enrolment in New South Wales, and that has not been without its problems. Only 12 per cent of people who had their details automatically changed in New South Wales—at the state level—then enrolled themselves federally. As a result, electoral commissions at both federal and state level are having extraordinary difficulty in contacting people. This is just one example of the problems you get with automatic enrolment.

We do not believe that government knows best. We do not believe in the nanny state. We believe in upholding and respecting the rights and responsibilities of individual Australian citizens to change their enrolment forms and details. Beyond that, we think there is great scope to water down the integrity of the electoral roll. I do not have a view about the voting intentions of one group of people as opposed to another—we see a very fluid change in the Australian community. What I am concerned about is Big Brother making big mistakes and watering down this great democracy of ours.

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

It is a great pleasure and honour to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address Bill) 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 and to respond to some of the points made by the members for Indi and Mackellar. I particularly want to commend the Special Minister of State for tackling this matter and taking up the decline of enrolment across Australia.

This legislation will mean that, when it comes to elections, more Australians will have a say in who represents them. I will provide some of the extraordinary facts—as opposed to the rhetoric from obscure professors cited by the member for Mackellar—outlined by the Electoral Commission in their report on these changes to the roll. In 2001, there were 0.9 million electors not on the roll; in 2004, there were 1.2 million electors not on the roll; in 2007, there were 1.1 million electors not on the roll; and, in 2010, there were 1.4 million electors not on the roll. At the parallel elections of 2001, there were 12.6 million Australians on the roll; in 2004, there were 13 million on the roll; in 2007, there were 13.6 million on the roll; and, in 2010, there were 14.1 million on the roll. The Australian Electoral Commission estimate that, at the end of 2011, the federal enrolment participation rate was 90.2 per cent. This means that around 1.5 million people who are eligible to vote are not enrolled and consequently cannot vote.

Indeed, at the 2010 federal election, 2½ million Australians did not effectively exercise their vote. Of these, 1.4 million were not enrolled, 729,000 were enrolled but did not show up, 400,000 cast informal ballots and 166,000 provisional voters thought they had cast a valid vote but in fact had their vote excluded. These issues were all handled by other aspects of the government's electoral legislation, but I want to go back to the Electoral Commission's cool, rational, dispassionate explanation of the decline in the percentage of people who are enrolled and of the massive increase in the absolute number of Australians who are not enrolled.

The estimated enrolment participation rate on 31 December 2011 was, as I said, 90.2 per cent of the eligible population. That sits near the bottom end, the Electoral Commission said, of any recently recorded measure of enrolment participation. The problem of non-enrolment extends beyond an asserted disengaged youth issue. Enrolment rates do not reach 90 per cent of voters until voters reach 40 years of age and the AEC's whole-of-population target of 95 per cent enrolment is not met until electors reach their mid-50s or late 50s. Worse than that is the fact that not only is the absolute number of Australians not enrolled increasing but the percentage of the population not enrolled is also increasing. So the Electoral Commission has a very substantial problem, a problem not addressed in the remarks of either the member for Indi or the member for Mackellar.

The member for Indi spoke of a class war and used the Liberals' favourite cliches—'the integrity of the electoral roll' and 'Big Brother'. The integrity of the electoral roll involves more than just cutting people off and making it harder for them to be enrolled; it involves seeing that the Australian electoral roll accurately represents the broad mass of citizens of Australia as best it can. Some of the remarks of the member for Indi would make former Prime Minister John Howard turn in his grave—if he were in it, which thankfully he is not at the moment. But the point is that continuous roll update was used by the previous Howard government to—

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

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker: as much as it pains me to interrupt the member for Melbourne Ports, under standing order 90, 'Reflections on Members', it is inappropriate for him to reflect on the member for Indi and what the former Prime Minister may or may not have thought of her.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think there is any point of order.

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

I was reflecting on the content of what the member for Indi said, not on her or on former Prime Minister Howard. My point was that continuous roll update using existing databases has been used for years. Mr Howard, I seem to remember, won every election from 1996 until 2007—and what were the sinister databases provided by Big Brother? They were the very same databases that are to be used by the Electoral Commission in this proposed enrolment procedure.

The member for Indi was complaining about the failure of prosecutions which have to be initiated by the police at the recommendation of the Electoral Commission. I have often recounted to the House that between 1999 and 2010 there were six electoral events, including a referendum, and 72 proven cases of electoral fraud. In those six events approximately 72,000,000 votes were cast and there were only 72 proven cases of electoral fraud. The effect of this fraud on individual electorates has not been identified by any of the premier electoral experts—Professor Mackerras, Professor Hughes and Professor Costar.

The issue of the integrity of the electoral roll is a nonsense, and it has been raised to avoid addressing the major issue—the increasing number of Australians who are not enrolled. The number enrolled is down to 90 per cent. That means very large numbers of our fellow Australians are excluded by a process that used to take place of cutting them off the roll. As the member for Mackellar correctly pointed out, only 20 per cent of them responded to letters from the Electoral Commission. We know they can be at new addresses, and that is confirmed by two or three independent databases—whether they be Centrelink or Transport Accident Commission or other databases. This hollows out the electoral roll and makes it less valid. If you indeed value democracy, if you indeed believe the words of the members for Mackellar and Indi about the integrity of the electoral roll, you cannot have more and more people being affected by the unintended consequence of cutting people from the electoral roll, as the Electoral Commission used to do when people did not sign bits of paper. We know the reason young people do not do that is that most of them are on email and they do not respond to hard mail. We see the huge numbers of Australian tourists going overseas. How many people are doing fly-in fly-out all around the country? We can see how mobile modern Australians are. All of these factors contribute to the old snail mail CRU 'cut them off the roll' system, effectively disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Australians over time. This is something that any democratic parliament should have to weigh against a few cases of electoral fraud—as I said, 72 out of 72 million votes cast over a 10-year period.

This legislation is part of an effort to ensure the majority of Australians are enfranchised. Those opposite speak of the integrity of the roll when they oppose changes to our electoral laws. Today I would like to tell them we are doing something to maintain the integrity of the roll—we are ensuring that Australians have a chance to cast a vote at the ballot box. It is not Big Brother telling them how to vote; it is just giving the opportunity to vote to the hundreds of thousands of people who have been kept off the roll by the unintended consequences of a system of continuous roll update that the Electoral Commission had been legislated to undertake. Keeping people off the roll is a wrong attitude. Disenfranchising Australians is a wrong attitude. It is reprehensible that those who are now in charge of the Liberal Party oppose giving more Australians a chance to be involved in the electoral process. I am not surprised—the Liberal Party now opposes us along every step of the way, and this includes opposing changes proposed by the government to the egregious and toxic legislation the Liberals passed in 2006. As the member for Banks correctly pointed out, and as have former members of the Electoral Commission and members of the opposition—Ronaldson, Morrison, Scott et cetera—this process of more and more Australians not participating in the vote, not enrolling, being cut off, was covered in a unanimous committee report and a unanimous recommendation: no conspiracy by the Electoral Commission there.

The Liberal Party and the National Party, which remembers the good old days when 5,000 persons and 100,000 sheep were accepted as part of a rural electorate, now oppose the changes made to repeal early closing of the electoral rolls. They oppose changes to amend provisional voting laws. In my electorate, and it would be the same in everyone's electorate, you would have 1,800 people apply for a provisional vote—they had changed their address at the last minute but they lived within the electorate and they were able to provide an electricity bill or some other identification. Increasingly, because of the Liberals' 2006 changes, more and more people were cut off between 2007 and 2010. In my electorate—it is typical of what happened across Australia—of the 1,800 people who applied, only 370 got their vote. Some shocking things have happened recently. I cited the electoral experts before—Professors Mackerras, Hughes and Costar—and they agreed that the existing laws were partisan and unfair and bad for our democracy. No-one can say, having gone to the last election with these issues in front of us, that we do not have a mandate for this measure. We have a compulsory voting system in Australia and it is disturbing to me, as it should be to every Australian, that, with a democracy like ours and compulsory voting, 2½ million Australians at the last election did not exercise a vote. It is the responsibility of this parliament to look at the fact that 1.5 million of the 15.5 million people who should have been on the electoral roll at the last election were not. The integrity that the members for Mackellar and Indi spoke about so passionately is not a matter of excluding as many Australians as you can—it is a matter of seeing that the electoral roll is current, accurate and, yes, has integrity as a result of including as many Australians as possible.

My colleague the member for Banks, who is the Chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, neglected to point out one other political factor. Not only do we have the Electoral Commission, the government, others in the House and independent electoral experts supporting this legislation, but we also have the governments of New South Wales and Victoria supporting it. Excuse me, but as far as I understand it they are both of the conservative hue. Mr O'Farrell is the Premier of the New South Wales and Mr Baillieu is the Premier of Victoria. Neither of those two gentlemen or their governments seem to share the prejudices of the members for Mackellar and Indi. They do not seek to overturn the attempts to enfranchise as many Australians as possible—or, in their cases, as many Victorians or New South Welshman as possible. They are quite happy with these changes—changes accepted with the more rational support of people like Morrison, Ronaldson and Scott, who were on this committee previously.

Over time, the changes will see more Australians on the electoral roll. That will ensure its integrity. If there is any attempt to enrol people unfairly or illegally, this should be looked at by the Electoral Commission and by the Australia Federal Police. As I have said on previous occasions, attempts to look at this kind of behaviour have been minimal at best. In fact, most of the 72 cases were of people in northern New South Wales who were trying to get drivers licences in Queensland and had nothing to do with trying to rort electoral procedures. These are very great amendments and a great progress towards democracy of which this government can be very proud.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the cognate Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. I take on board the previous speaker's comments with reference to the declining number of people not on the roll. From memory, the number was 2.9 million people not on the roll and, of those, 400,000 people cast their votes in an invalid format. Listening to the trend regarding Australians choosing whether or not to be on the roll, as a parliament we need to look at ourselves and do some soul-searching when it comes to asking why people are not motivated to be enrolled and participate in the direction of our nation.

I suggest that there is an increasing number of people who do not trust either side of government. I hear this often on polling days in Queensland. I will be joining state candidates and incumbents in Queensland this Saturday and I know I will get the standard line from a select number who roll up to polling booths and say, 'I don't trust any of you @#$%&* and I wish I could park my vote informally.' I suggest that maybe our behaviour in the House is one way we could address the concerns people have about the integrity of the parliament. I suggest a little more honesty and sincerity.

We do not have to go too far back before the last election when it comes to electoral matters to see that we had a potential Prime Minister looking down the barrel and saying one thing and then directly after being elected doing another. It comes down to the integrity of government. When you are watching which way the data is skewing there could be some collegial evidence to support why people are choosing not to vote.

We have supported nearly 78 per cent of the bills that have come before this House. That is a staggering number given the lines that the government throw out about us—that we oppose everything, that we say no, no, no. The data I received from the library in the last term—

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

You're opposing this.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I am opposing this one. You have that right. The point I am making is that we do not oppose everything. I do not suggest that the introduction of this legislation is going to change the trajectory of the figures. The coalition support the concept of less government, less intervention and the freedom for people to make a choice. Get your hands out of the pockets of business and let them have a crack.

These bills amend the Electoral Act to allow the Australian Electoral Commission to directly enrol new electors on the electoral roll when the Electoral Commissioner is satisfied that an individual is living at a particular address for a period of one month and is eligible to be on the roll, and gives the AEC authority to change the address of electors when it believes they have changed their residential address. The coalition oppose this legislation because we believe it will significantly diminish the integrity of the electoral roll. Let us have a look at some background to this legislation.

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted an inquiry into the 2010 federal election and reported in July 2011. One of the recommendations of the Labor and Greens committee members was to introduce automatic enrolment. This is a process by which an individual can be placed directly on the roll without ever filling out a form and, more to the point, without their knowledge. I suggest that that is where we should not be heading. This process would enable the AEC to use information from other government sources to make a determination about who should be on the roll. There are a couple of issues here. Firstly, it is highly likely that this process will diminish the integrity of the roll—and I will talk more about that—and, secondly, it will remove the responsibility on electors to update or maintain their enrolment details when they change addresses. Currently, the honour of living in a democratic society where we have the freedom of a vote comes with some responsibility and that responsibility as an Australian is to keep the Electoral Commission informed of your whereabouts. Forms for that to happen are readily available throughout the community.

As we on this side of the House are fond of saying, we are big believers in individual responsibility. The nature of our compulsory voting system in Australia is unique among Western democracies; nevertheless, it has resulted in some of the highest voter turnout statistics in the world, which can only be a good thing. In the US for example, voter turnout frequently struggles to creep over the 50 per cent mark. At the last federal election in New Zealand, where the vote is not compulsory, turnout was about 73 per cent and, at the last British election, barely 65 per cent of voters turned out. In Australia, that figure is consistently over 90 per cent. One vote, one value—a new voter turning 18 carries exactly the same weight and the same value as the people the government scorns, such as the likes of Gina Rinehart or Clive Palmer. That is the great thing about our democracy.

The Australian population is engaged in a political process. As such, the coalition believes it is reasonable to expect that each Australian should take responsibility for enrolling to vote, maintaining their enrolment details, casting a vote when an election is called and fully extending preferences to candidates contesting elections for the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, the Labor Party and their rainbow coalition partners, the Greens, are still furiously insisting that the above requirements are simply too difficult for Australians and therefore government intervention is required to ensure that people carry out their democratic obligations.

Personally, I feel that this sort of condescending paternalism is unbecoming of the government of a politically literate and engaged country. As we often say, the coalition believes in individual responsibilities. We believe that the voter should be in charge of enrolling to vote and maintaining their own details. They do not need the government to do it on their behalf. Again, we believe in less government and, as testament to that, we are on the record as saying that when in government we will reduce the size of the Public Service. That is why every second bit of legislation the government brings to this place involves unnecessary meddling in people's lives. Why does every policy come bundled with a year's supply of cotton wool and a subheading which reads, 'We don't believe you can be trusted to do the right thing so we're going to do it for you'?

As I mentioned a moment ago, one of the big concerns the coalition has with this legislation is that it will corrupt the integrity of the electoral roll because of electors being put on the roll without their knowledge. This in turn will lead to a number of potential irregularities in the electoral process. This bill gives the AEC the discretion to determine what sort of data sources are appropriate for determining an individual's eligibility to be on the roll. We believe this goes far beyond the purview of the AEC and that it should be up to the individual elector to supply details about their enrolment. Furthermore, there is reason to be extremely concerned about the reliability of the data sources used to determine eligibility to vote. As coalition members on the joint standing committee in their dissenting report noted:

The reliance on external data sources that have been collated and that are utilised for other purposes does not make it fit for them to use in informing the electoral roll.

As outlined in the previous report on these proposals, a 1999 report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration titled Numbers on the run: a review of the management of tax file numbers found that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than there were people in Australia. How can that be? How can there be 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia? It also found that there were 185,000 potential duplicated tax records for individuals and that 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in sample matches.

That is where this legislation potentially takes the roll. That is where this legislation will end up. I know it is not the intent of any like-minded government to jeopardise this document of integrity. Similarly, not too long ago an Australian National Audit Office report found that half-a-million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who were deceased. But, suddenly, it all makes sense. Suddenly we can see why Labor is so keen to implement this legislation. Those of us with long memories might recall that approximately 10 years ago, hot on the heels of the Shepherdson inquiry, the committee on electoral matters conducted an inquiry at which it was revealed that members of the Australian Labor Party, particularly in Queensland, had been systematically rorting the electoral roll for their own advantage. During its hearings, committee members heard not only of long-dead people miraculously coming back to life and casting a vote but also one bizarre incident of a cat voting. Is that what we have come to?

This is the response from the Labor Party to the fact that those who are living are so unlikely to vote Labor; it looks for ways to start enrolling the dead. I remember being part of a football tour to Blackwater. I caught up with the local candidate a couple of weeks after a state election in Queensland. He made the point to me that he thought things were travelling all right on the ground, but he was absolutely devastated when he did not get over the line as a candidate. Later, when he made investigations, every single vacant block of land in that township had people linked to the electoral roll. Obviously, the electoral roll in that process was fictitious.

All I can say is that if we are about to start using government data to automatically enrol people, it would need to be an awful lot more reliable than the data that I have just mentioned. There is incredible evidence that automatic enrolment does not work anyway. Both New South Wales and Victoria recently introduced automatic enrolments ahead of their state elections. As the ABC's highly respected election analyst Antony Green noted in an article on 16 July 2011, only 64 per cent of those people automatically enrolled for the first time during the 2011 New South Wales election actually turned out to vote. Such a high non-participation rate suggests that information used to put new electors on the roll is unreliable and could result in electors being issued with a fine for not voting when they should not really have been on the roll in the first place.

Again, I make the point that I have come into the House as part of a coalition team and collectively we have supported 70 per cent of the bills that have gone through this place. Of the bills that we have not supported, we have had real concerns about them. I join with my coalition partners in raising suitable concern about the integrity of this bill and the unintended consequences that will be a by-product of the legislation. There are so many potential issues with this legislation that it is hard to know when to stop. Suffice to say, the coalition will not be supporting this bill.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise to speak to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and cognate bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. The words 'protecting elector participation' are very good and appropriate words. Let me repeat them, to declare clearly the intention of these bills: protecting elector participation. This is at the core of our democratic Australian society. It is also at the core of the legislation that this Labor government has been bringing before the House to enable as many people as possible to benefit from participation in our economy, in the same way that this legislation seeks to enable as many people as possible to benefit from participation in our democracy.

Stories from places around the world where democracy is not quite as stable and developed as it is here in this country reveal to us that the desire of people to vote is such a powerful thing, such an important thing, that people actually give their lives for this opportunity. We could perhaps do a much better job, through civic education and citizenship education in our schools, to help young people, who we fund as citizens through our taxes, to more deeply understand their rights and responsibilities in participating in voting and setting the direction of the nation.

I would like to put on the record again what this legislation actually does. It amends the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 to provide for direct enrolment and the reinstatement to the electoral roll of certain persons casting declaration votes. The bill will implement the government's legislative response to recommendations 1 and 24 of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in its report entitled The 2010 federal election: report on the conduct of the election and related matters. I commend the chair of that committee, the member for Banks, and his colleagues for the work of the committee—and also the member for Melbourne Ports—and for their continuing and passionate advocacy for this particular cause. They are certainly true believers in freedom and will always support Australians in their capacity to exercise their franchise.

This bill deals with a number of elements. One of them is direct enrolment. The proposed bill will amend the electoral act to allow the Electoral Commissioner to use accurate and timely information received from a reliable source—not just anywhere; it is not a note from your mother—to enrol an eligible person without the person submitting a claim for enrolment. Direct enrolment will assist in meeting the urgent need to arrest the decline in enrolment rates across Australia by ensuring the federal electoral roll is as current and accurate as possible. Direct enrolment without having to submit a claim-for-enrolment form is particularly important for those Australians for whom schooling might not have been the most positive experience and whose literacy efforts might not have been 100 per cent successful. Because people might not be able to read, because they might not be able to write or because they might be limited in their capacity to participate in the form filling that is part of our modern society does not make them any less valuable as a citizen of this country and should not impinge on their capacity to participate in voting. The whole notion of agency and the capacity to participate is one that we take very seriously and it is important that we make it as easy as possible for any Australian who wishes to vote and exercise their rights and responsibilities in this democracy to participate.

This bill also deals with the problem of reinstatement to the electoral roll. The amendments will provide that, where a declaration voter who is entitled to vote has been omitted from the electoral roll and the omission was due to an error or mistake of fact, then his or her votes may progress to further scrutiny in certain circumstances. This is very important to make sure that people who find that there is a problem very close to the date of a poll still have the capacity to participate and that their vote is part of setting the direction of this country. The bill will also amend the electoral act to provide that the Electoral Commissioner may enrol a person who meets certain criteria. Reinstatement to the electoral rolls and the admission of votes to scrutiny will assist in ensuring that the votes of otherwise eligible electors are counted.

Sadly, as many of those who have spoken before me have indicated, there is a decline in enrolment rates across Australia, and I am sure members here would agree with me that we must ensure that as many votes as possible are counted at the next federal election. That is not controversial at all, but it is certainly the right thing to do. I know there are some on the other side of the chamber who represent rural and regional areas. This legislation will raise enrolment rates in rural and remote areas. The bill will amend the electoral act and the referendum act to allow the Electoral Commissioner to place a person on the electoral roll at a particular address if the Electoral Commissioner is satisfied that the person is entitled to enrolment, has lived at an address for at least one month and is not enrolled. As a result of this legislation, the commissioner will have the capacity to make sure that that enrolment goes ahead and that the vote is able to be counted.

This process will take place following the receipt and analysis of reliable and current data from sources external to the Australian Electoral Commission that indicates that a person is an eligible Australian citizen and actually lives at the particular address. An electricity bill, for example, would provide a reliable source. The bill does not amend the qualifications for enrolment. It is very important that this goes on the record. The bill requires the Electoral Commissioner to inform a person that the Electoral Commissioner is proposing to place them on the electoral roll at that address and provide the person with 28 days in which to object to the proposed enrolment. The decision to enrol a person or not enrol a person is ultimately able to be reviewed. That would be undertaken by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The bill will also allow the admission to scrutiny, in specified circumstances, of the declaration votes made by people who had been enrolled but were removed from the roll due to an error. The bill will return the law to the pre-2006 position so that, if a person has been removed from the roll by objection action on the mistaken belief that they were not living at the enrolled address, this will constitute a 'mistake of fact'.

Sadly, there are no prizes for guessing which party was actually responsible for this attempted mass disenfranchisement of the Australian people between 2006 and 2007. Some of it was revealed in the language choice of the member for Wright who was just speaking before—the 'honour of voting' I swear I heard him say. I suppose you might think about it as an honour, but in fact it is a right and a responsibility. That is quite a different frame to put around what a vote is. As I and many others have noted in this place, the result of this incredibly disappointing period of our history was a period of gross disenfranchisement by the most mercenary government of this country; it happened under the Howard government. It saw more than 100,000 people miss out on the close of rolls at the deadline of the 2007 election.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members opposite might find that quite humorous. My response is that that is an absolute disgrace. If it were to happen in another country where we were looking to support free and fair elections, we would be reporting that as inappropriate behaviour. I find it hard to stand here in this legislative chamber—

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

Then sit down.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and think that that piece of legislation was actually put forward. While I have the opportunity to stand here and speak for ordinary Australians who have the right to speak, I will certainly take every moment of that time, despite the discouragement of those opposite who tried to shut down voters then, just as they would like to shut down my speaking right now.

Amongst those who missed out in 2007 were more than 4,000 18 year-olds who would have been voting for the first time. I have actually met a few of these 18-year-olds. I have spent a lot of my time working with young adults, and I know that there are moments when there is an opportunity for engagement. As a teacher you see them and you know that there is a teachable moment in it. And one of the most important things that can happen for an Australian citizen is to engage in voting at the very first opportunity. Through that act, young adults participate fully and come to an understanding of the power of their vote, collectively with others, to set the course of this nation, to contribute in a real and tangible way to a democracy. There is the whole process of going to a polling booth, taking one or a number of indications of how you might cast your vote, going through the process of having your name marked off, looking at the pages and pages of names of citizens there beside yours, taking those appropriately signed papers and going into a booth to cast your ballot in private. Yet, having desired to have that experience, as was their right at age 18, that experience was rudely ripped away from these young people as they were about to enter into that contract with our nation.

It is appalling that that actually happened and it indicates incredible cynicism and incredible negativity. It reveals the very significant difference between the Labor Party on this side of the House and the Liberal-Nationals on the other side, who still hold on to some notion, disconnected from our modern reality, that there are some people who should have rights, some people who should have a big voice, and that some people who have a lot of money can buy more place in our public debate than others. While those opposite support that, they oppose the participation of ordinary young Australians.

Those opposite also seem to engage in putting up arguments about the integrity of the roll. But I think it is important to put on the record how dangerous that fear-mongering is. When I looked back at some remarks I made last year in a previous contribution on an electoral legislative amendment, the facts showed that there were 71 proven cases of electoral fraud over a whole decade, which amounts to one in a million of the votes cast. Those opposite enacted a legislative amendment that saw the disenfranchising of half-a-million voters to catch 71 fraudulent voters over a period of 10 years. I would say that that is like cutting off your head to fix a broken fingernail. There is no sense of proportionality there whatsoever.

But I will return to what the bill does. It provides the Electoral Commissioner with the discretion to enrol, in specified circumstances, those people casting declaration votes who had been enrolled but were removed from the roll due to an error by an officer or a mistake of fact. The bill will also stop the divergence and inconsistency that is occurring between state and Commonwealth electoral rolls in the largest jurisdictions of New South Wales and Victoria. That is a significant improvement that the bill will bring.

Most importantly, the bill will enable the Australian Electoral Commission to deliver a more accurate electoral roll, because the Electoral Commissioner will be permitted to use accurate and timely information from reliable sources to maintain the current address of already enrolled electors. This bill will ensure that an elector will be notified of the Electoral Commissioner's intention to enrol him or her at a new residential address and be given the opportunity to object to the change. The bill will not provide the capacity to directly enrol new electors. People who are not on the roll will still need to enrol, in accordance with the current requirements of the Electoral Act. Perhaps that is the part where the Australian populace, and particularly those who lead in our communities—community leaders who are involved in politics at all levels of government, community leaders who are involved in schools, and community leaders who are involved in great institutions that help us stay alive, such as surf life saving clubs, and in Lions and Rotary clubs—can take part in actively supporting a citizenry to understand the full responsibility and capacity of engaging in casting a vote.

I commend the important changes that are embedded in these bills to enhance our democracy, and I commend the bills to the House.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the cognate bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. I am pleased to speak on these bills because I have always been very concerned about maintaining the integrity of the electoral roll. One of the great features of the Australian electoral system and our system generally is that we were able to maintain the integrity of our electoral roll to the best of our ability for many years without the technology that we have today, but we certainly knew where people lived, we knew who they were and we were able to track them when they moved.

The dissenting report by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the maintaining address bill said:

… this legislation has been designed by Labor and the Greens solely for their own electoral advantage.

It went on to say:

The Coalition believes that the Bill will lead to a weakening of the integrity of the Electoral Roll, a significant decrease in privacy for individual electors and will remove virtually all responsibility for individual electors to take care of their own enrolment.

That is really at the nub of the bills. It has gone from the individual looking after their own status on the electoral roll to allowing the Australian Electoral Commission to take over that responsibility. Everything else between that goes to the discussion that we are about to have. There have been a whole lot of reasons given as to why you would shift the onus from the individual to the Australian Electoral Commission, but, at the end of the day, what was the matter with the individual getting themselves on the roll, maintaining themselves on the roll, notifying when they shifted and notifying when they were not on the roll? It really takes away the individual's responsibility in this area, and I think that is a quite disappointing aspect of what is happening with these bills.

For many years there have been concerns about the agenda for watering down the integrity of the electoral roll. We also have integrity issues involving border protection—those who come here not through the proper channels but by boat. We think that maintaining the integrity of our borders is very important. The government changed those rules so that border protection has been watered down. With these bills, integrity is again being questioned.

As a person in a marginal seat, I have always been very interested in the integrity of the roll. One of the things that has happened since I came to this place in 1996, and came back again, is that I did my best to assist the AEC in maintaining the integrity of the roll in terms of those people going on and those coming off. That is one of the reasons I sign every letter to new electors personally. Not one has been electronically generated. When somebody is getting on the electoral roll I think it is quite rude for a member of parliament to send an electronic signature on a letter that says: 'Welcome to my electorate for the following reasons.' It is not only about that, but signing those letters allows me to find out a whole lot of interesting things: multiple people at addresses or an interesting drift towards new parts of my electorate, like Piara Waters. That is an interesting area, because people have to get themselves on the electoral roll.

Part of what the bills are saying is that the AEC will use a whole lot of government agencies to track people, such as the tax office or Centrelink. One of the ways to help them track who is new in an area is by the number of bins given out by the local government authority. I suppose that is one way of doing it, but it is not very scientific.

In terms of electoral integrity, we know that the Labor Party has form in this area. Dare I refer the House to the book The frauding of votes? by Dr Amy McGrath, which is introduced by Bob Bottom who, as we know, was a very good crime fighter. There have been a whole lot of books written, such as this, about fraudulent electoral practices.

You can look at some interesting anecdotes. The Labor Party have done it to themselves. Many years ago there was the great story about Paul Keating and Laurie Brereton heading off into the night with a box of electoral votes on the back of his motorbike to run them away so that they could not be counted, to skew their own electoral result. It is all in history. How the Labor Party like to manipulate their elections is folklore.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is part of Australian folklore, as I said, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The honourable member will address the bills.

And I am. I am just giving an illustration of how—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The honourable member will resume his seat. The honourable member will address the bills and deal with the matters before the House. The honourable member for Canning.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a sensitive issue—we know—and I am dealing with it as sensitively as I can.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The honourable member will address the bills and not reflect on the chair.

When I talk about the responsibility for individual electors, there is the incentive for eligible voters to update their address details when they move. For example, if they fail to address this in 21 days they can be fined $110. That is part of the rules. That is an incentive to do so. We believe that the bills are a mere ploy by the Australian Labor Party and the Greens to improve their own electoral chances at the expense of the integrity of the roll. This was in part of the dissenting report, which is part of the deliberations that have been taking place in this parliament.

I give the example of the marginal seat of Canning. When I first won the seat of Canning in 2001, I won by about 526 votes. When there are 46 polling booths you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that I could have lost if something like 12 people—15 people at the most—at each polling booth had either voted twice or manipulated their vote.

We know that the electoral roll on the day is not electronically connected to all the polling booths. Somebody gets a pencil out and rules a line in a particular book. That is fine when they collate them all after election day and find out that somebody has voted early and often—you know, a Labor Party mantra: vote early and vote often. The fact is that when you actually line them up it is too late because the votes have been taken and collated. The scrutineers have no ability to do anything about this because there is no corroboration with the other 46 polling booths—as is the case in my electorate—to check whether somebody has voted more than once.

Another issue—and I have done a fair bit of doorknocking in my time—is that people put themselves down at some very interesting addresses. I noted with interest when I was doorknocking over the years that around Falcon in my electorate there are a lot of empty beach houses, yet it was brought to my attention by some of the residents there that people were receiving electoral enrolment information at houses that had not been occupied for years. I am sure that the only body that would have the ability to control a whole lot of those sorts of votes would be something like a union that has a huge database and that can say, 'Look, you need to put yourselves down at that address because if you can get a couple of hundred people in that area that will help us with our votes.'

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

Lots of union officials own houses at Falcon!

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They not only have houses but they probably have a lot of good friends. They might be workers in some of the drive-in drive-out areas in and around my electorate. That is how you warehouse votes in areas like that to dilute the high conservative vote. That is my suspicion when neighbours say to me, 'No-one has been living here for years but they have been getting electoral enrolment information.'

Further to that, when the AEC officers came into my office the other day—and I am sure the member for Brand will enjoy this—I handed them some letters from people who had written 'Return to sender. This is a vacant block,' on the envelope. People had been registered at that address for the purposes of enrolment.

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

Report it to the commission.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did. I handed them to the officers when they came to visit my office. That is the sort of thing that causes people to question the integrity of the electoral roll.

The other area is caravan parks. There is a very transient population in caravan parks and it is difficult to track them and make sure that they stay on the roll in the area they have previously designated. It is the same with homes with tenancies and with fly-in fly-out workers. The member for Brand has the highest number of fly-in fly-out workers in a metropolitan electorate in Western Australia. I have the second highest number in my electorate. They are very mobile and very transient. Tracking them is very interesting. I note that the AEC is trying to do something about dealing with them at the airports. This has been a little bit difficult to deal with over the years. They are having to find new ways of either getting the people on the roll or, when they need to vote in the various state or federal elections, getting them to vote in time. As you know, those workers can have two or three weeks on and one week off. They might miss the opportunity to vote. I had people from mines ringing me and saying, 'I'm on a mine and I haven't voted. I don't know how I'm going to vote because I don't get back until after Saturday. Can you tell me what I can do. They do not have a polling booth at the mine.'

It is all interesting stuff. What I am saying in relation to this bill is that giving the onus to the Australian Electoral Commissioner to make a judgment, based on a range of factors where he believes somebody should be entitled to vote, is drawing a very long bow and it is rather risky. For those who want to rort the system this is a precarious position in a marginal seat. Over the years there has been plenty of evidence to that effect from inquiries that have delved into the rorting of these systems.

We do not want to be a Zimbabwe or somewhere where you have to dip your finger into a bottle of indelible ink to check that you have not voted twice. We have been to those countries and we know that we are better than that. We need to ensure that the maintenance of the electoral roll stands up to scrutiny. We do not want to see the support diluted by taking away resources such as electoral officers from our electorates.

Return mail is another example. We used to be able to send bulk return mail to the AEC for checking. You will recall that the member for Hinkler said in this place that, if he had not kept the return mail in one particular election some years ago and checked it against those wanting to do provisional votes, he would have lost his seat. He was able to provide that database to the scrutineers and to the Electoral Commission during the count and have those votes set aside until they were checked.

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

You still can.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are not able to return the return mail now, Member for Brand, because they do not accept it any longer.

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

Yes, they do.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My Electoral Commission office told me recently that they do not want any of my return mail because they are doing it themselves.

In their endeavours to reduce spending, the Australian Electoral Commission are undertaking very few habitation surveys. That is a real worry. In new areas and new housing estates, like mine, they need to get out there and undertake habitation surveys in areas of growth or areas where there is quite a transient population due to certain demographics. I ask, through this mechanism, that that be looked at further, because that is another way you can maintain the integrity of the electoral roll.

We will not be supporting this bill because we do not think it does the right thing in terms of maintaining integrity. I would like to see it beefed up rather than watered down.

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

2012 is the Year of Enrolment. I find it absolutely breathtaking that the member for Canning chose, in his contribution to this debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and cognate Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012, to celebrate the Year of Enrolment by seriously proposing that we disenfranchise the poor people who live in caravan parks and the people who fly in and fly out for their work. That is what he is seriously proposing. He stood up just a moment ago and objected to the electoral and referendum amendment bills on the basis that they would provide a vote for people who reside in caravan parks or people whose occupations are as fly-in fly-out workers. What a way to celebrate the Year of Enrolment!

2012 marks two significant federal electoral events: the centenary of compulsory enrolment and the 50th anniversary of the Indigenous right to vote. Since the scheme of compulsory enrolment commenced in 1912 it has served this country very well. It marks one of the differences between the political system of this country and that of our friend and ally the United States of America, which does not have a system of compulsory enrolment and compulsory voting.

Since 18 June 1962 all Aboriginal people have been entitled to enrol and to vote at federal elections and referenda. From that date, Aboriginal people were able to take up the franchise alongside eligible British subjects, aged 21 years or more. In 1973, as we know, the voting age dropped from 21 to 18 years of age. In 2001 an Australian National Audit Office investigation found that the electoral roll was around 95 per cent complete. That is not good enough—but it is not a bad result when you compare it with international standings.

I regret that since 2001 the situation with regard to electoral enrolment has deteriorated—so much so that the Australian Electoral Commission now estimates that only 90 per cent of eligible Australian citizens are enrolled to vote. That means that around 1½ million Australian citizens do not exercise their electoral franchise to choose their representatives in parliament and in others. It also means that 1½ million Australians do not have a say in referenda proposals to amend Australia's Constitution.

This situation calls for action. I commend the actions of the Special Minister of State, the member for Brand—who is in the chamber at the moment—for taking that action and bringing these bills before the House. We must do what we can to ensure that those missing 1½ million Australians are included on the electoral roll and are able to exercise one of the most important rights and responsibilities of their citizenship: the right to vote.

As part of its celebration of the Year of Enrolment, the Australian Electoral Commission is conducting a campaign to enrol those 1.5 million eligible Australians who are not on the Commonwealth roll, which is good news. It is a worthy endeavour, and I wish them well in reaching their target. Australia has a proud history of ensuring access to the franchise for federal, state and local government elections. That is why, together with the Year of Enrolment campaign by the AEC, the legislation before the House today is so very important. As members of parliament we share the aims of the enrolment project—or at least we on this side of the House do. We each have our part to play. As members of parliament we each work daily to engage with our constituents to help them engage with the work that we do in this place in their name. It is in Australia's national interest that in each electorate we have an active constituency that engages in the democratic process and that can make an informed decision at election time, in its best interests.

It is important that we ensure that electoral legislation does not create unreasonable barriers for those who qualify for enrolment and voting and who, rightfully, expect to be able to exercise their franchise at elections and referenda. Unfortunately, between elections some constituents can drop off the electoral roll. Between elections the AEC works hard to maintain the integrity of the electoral roll and to ensure that those who are eligible to vote are correctly enrolled. The AEC utilises a number of strategies—strategies the member for Canning was just complaining about—aimed at providing electors and potential electors with opportunities to enrol or update electoral enrolment details. For example, enrolment forms are widely available from AEC offices and the AEC website and from the Post Office, Centrelink offices and the like. The AEC also uses approaches to facilitate the updating of the electoral roll, including visits to residences, mail-outs to residences, mail reviews—in which the AEC writes to residents and to addresses seeking updated electoral roll information—advertising designed to raise awareness of the need to update enrolment details, and attendance and provision of information at citizenship ceremonies.

I pause to make the observation that the member for Canning said that this is critical work, although at times he criticised some of the work done. I would submit that this critical work is going to be made all the more difficult if those on the other side of the House have their way. We know their plan at present is to slash 12,000 Public Service jobs—to push 12,000 public servants from their jobs—and we can only anticipate that a good number of those public servants would be from the Australian Electoral Commission. We also know that 12,000 public servants is only the tip of the iceberg. If those opposite are to fill their $70 billion black hole it will take a lot more than 12,000 public servants. Agencies like the Australian Electoral Commission will be in the firing line. Jobs in the Australian Electoral Commission will be at risk, and the capacity to fulfil those important approaches to ensuring and maintaining the integrity of the electoral roll will be at risk. The AEC will not be able to do the things it has routinely been able to do to maintain the integrity of the Commonwealth electoral roll.

So what is this legislation? What is Labor's approach to dealing with these issues? We have two bills before the House. The first bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2012, amends the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984. This bill, in line with other legislation brought before this place by the Special Minister of State, implements the recommendations made by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and its report into the 2007 federal election. In examining the electoral issues arising from this election and in its report, this committee has done important work for our electoral franchise. The main focus of the committee's work was to look at whether changes made to enrolment and voting provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act by the previous Howard government had the effect of enabling or restricting the franchise and, if the changes were found to be restrictive, whether those restrictions were in any way offset by the achievement of greater electoral integrity in the lead-up to and at the 2007 election. That is to say, in shorthand, were the changes that were brought into place by the previous Howard government restrictive? Did they deny people their right to exercise their vote in a Commonwealth election?

As we know, preceding the 2007 election were a number of legislative changes that significantly altered the processes for applying to be on the electoral roll, updating enrolment details and voting. At the 2007 election, election enrolment saw an increase of just 1,466 electors over the close-of-roll enrolment figures. History has told that some of these changes have subsequently been chucked out by the High Court of Australia and the legislation was returned to its pre-amendment condition. But this legislation furthers the work. The bills before the House further the job that needs to be done to ensure people are not denied their right to vote.

The joint standing committee report found this to be an extremely low increase compared to the high of 97,425 electors added to the roll in 1998 and the previous low of 35,671 electors added in 1993. I will not use the word 'rort' but you can see that the changes put in place by the former Howard government had the effect, in the 2007 election, of denying somewhere between 34,000 and 95,000 Australians their right to vote. On that basis alone these bills should enjoy the support of every member of this House.

The committee report found the significant decline from 2004 to 2007 to be the product of the legislative changes that were made between 2004 and 2007, when those on the other side had control of the House. The bill before the House can be seen in one sense as remedial legislation, restoring to those affected Australians the right to vote at the next election.

The second measure, the maintaining addresses bill, will allow the Australian Electoral Commissioner to directly update an elector's enrolled address following receipt and analysis of reliable and current data sources from outside the AEC that indicate an elector has moved residential address. The bill will implement the intent of the government response to recommendation 10 of the report from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the JSCEM report, on the conduct of the 2007 election. The bill will assist in meeting the urgent need to arrest the decline in enrolment rates across Australia by ensuring that the federal electoral roll is as current and accurate as possible.

The second bill, the protecting elector participation bill, will amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act to provide for direct enrolment and reinstatement to the electoral roll of certain persons casting declaration votes. This protecting elector participation bill implements the government's legislative response to recommendations 1 and 24 of the JSCEM report on the 2010 federal election. The proposed bill will amend the Electoral Act to allow the Electoral Commissioner to use accurate and timely information, received from reliable sources, to enrol an eligible person without the person submitting a claim for enrolment. Direct enrolment will assist in meeting the urgent need to arrest the decline in enrolment rates across Australia. It is a measure that is in place in many state jurisdictions of Australia and works very well.

The amendments will provide that, where a declaration voter who is entitled to vote has been omitted from the electoral roll, and the omission was due to an error or mistake of fact, his or her vote may progress to further scrutiny in certain circumstances. The bill will also amend the Electoral Act to provide that the Electoral Commissioner may enrol a person who meets certain criteria. Reinstatement to the electoral roll and the admission of votes to scrutiny will assist in ensuring that the votes of otherwise eligible electors are counted.

Amendments in both these bills are needed as soon as practicable to ensure that the measures are implemented to deliver an accurate electoral roll before the next federal election. Australia has a tradition of inclusive entitlement to the voting franchise; it is what distinguishes us from many other countries around the world. It is why we have a healthy and robust democracy. It is something that all Australians should be very proud of. This inclusive franchise has been a feature of federal elections throughout our history as a nation. The bill before the House today strengthens that franchise. For these reasons and all the reasons adumbrated by those on this side of the House, I commend the legislation.

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

I rise to address the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. I oppose both bills. They are designed to tilt the electoral system in Australia in the Labor-Greens direction.

Why is that? It is because they enrol the uninformed. We know the best chance Labor has of scaring up votes is by appealing to the uninformed, because if they knew what a Labor Party government was like they would never vote for them. The member for Throsby, who has just left the chamber, justifies these bills by quoting the findings of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. This was, of course, a Labor-Greens based committee. Both bills devalue the integrity of the electoral roll.

Australia has generally enjoyed a reasonably clean electoral system. It is the norm. I often say that the reason it is relatively clean in Australia is that we just expect this to be the natural course of events. We are not naturally cheaters—but you do not need many. Not everyone is as pure as the driven snow, which is why we should have robust systems.

I am particularly concerned about these bills' ability to identify identity integrity. I am wary of the electronic world when it comes to security. Just type the word 'hacking' into a search engine on your computer and you will bring up hundreds of examples of individuals having hacked into computers such as NASA's and the US Senate's, not to mention the actions of WikiLeaks. We are advised by our banking institutions that we should change our passwords every three months at least. These bills represent great opportunities for those wishing to corrupt the system, promote mayhem and undermine the system by suggesting electronically that people live in places that they do not. It is a very dangerous area, because these bills will place people on the electoral roll without their knowledge. Individual electors will be put directly onto the electoral roll without ever filling out even an electoral form.

The bills empower the Australian Electoral Commission to update the rolls from 'reliable and current data'. It does not say what the objective measurement for reliable and current data will be. It is a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. If the AEC decide on a particular day that a certain list looks good to them that is what they can use. It raises many questions, including questions about where people live, because people do not actually have to respond to their compulsory enrolment. What about people who have two addresses—a primary address and a secondary address? They may well elect to receive their electricity, phone, gas and rates notices directly at the secondary address—the address they do not live at. It is quite conceivable that some reliable and current database may well pick this up as their place of residence and the AEC will send them a letter welcoming them into the new electorate. What if people are overseas for an extended period and have a mail forwarding address—maybe their relatives' address—in a different electorate?

Would a reliable and current database be the tax files database? I am indebted to the member for Mackellar, who raised in the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters the fact that in 1999 there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people. I hope they do not use the database that sees mail still being sent to my father, who died three years ago—it comes pretty regularly. Would that be a reliable and current database? The Australian National Audit Office found that up to half-a-million Medicare enrolments were probably for people who are dead. I would think that, at this stage, the electoral roll itself is the database in Australia with the most integrity. Anything we choose other than that will be of lesser value.

Under the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill, the Australian Electoral Commission will write to you at your new address. If you do not answer you will be enrolled at that address. That seems illogical. Surely, once they write to you, you should have to respond and say: 'Yes, it's me. I'm here. I'm hearing what you say. I've been put on the electoral roll.' But, no; if you do not answer, you will be enrolled.

The second bill is innocuously subtitled 'Protecting Elector Participation'. It should be called 'Undermining Electoral Integrity'. There is no way in the world that this protects elector participation; it mandates automatic enrolment. In New South Wales, where there is already automatic enrolment, Antony Green of the ABC raised the fact that, of those automatically enrolled for the first time for the 2011 New South Wales election, only 63.4 per cent voted. Did the other 37 per cent even know they were on the roll? Did they have any idea at all? This probably came as a complete surprise to them. If that 37 per cent did not know they were on the electoral roll, there is a possibility for someone else to exercise their right to vote. Remember, you do not know that you are on the roll. Imagine, for instance, that your electricity supplier sent you a bill at the end of the month but you did not respond to it. Would they then consider it settled? Would they say: 'You didn't respond to the bill? Don't worry about that mate. We'll fix it up for you. Just forget about it'? In fact, the way electricity prices are rising, it might be a good thing for the government to institute!

It is preposterous that we would automatically enrol someone without their knowledge and leave them on the roll, possibly still without their knowledge, for other people to move into that space. How long will it be before someone inevitably leaks the list of those who have been enrolled but have not responded? An electronic list of that style would be of great value to people who wish to distort the system. Someone who does not know they are on the roll is obviously the person to vote in place of, particularly because when we roll up at a polling booth on election day we are not asked to prove our identity—although that would be a true reform of the electoral system. That kind of electronic list, of people who have been enrolled against their will or without their knowledge and who have never responded, would be a green light to those who choose to cheat the system.

The passage of these bills will mean the immediate death of the traditional enrolment method. I heard just before I rose to my feet the member for Throsby going through the many things the Electoral Commission does now to educate voters, to encourage voters to enrol and to engage with them. What would be the point of any of those things if they were going to be automatically enrolled? Why would schools, for instance, spend any of their time trying to educate children about their future responsibilities? I know this happens now within my own electorate. Schools will, in fact, help the kids fill out their electoral forms and give them a lesson about the Australian political system. There will be a distinct disincentive for them to waste their time on these matters, so the very small amount of engagement that we have with young people now, in trying to bring them up to speed and engage them with the system, is likely to be obliterated virtually overnight. Why would the Electoral Commission encourage anybody to enrol to vote in the traditional manner if in fact it is all going to be done electronically, without their knowledge and superquick overnight?

These bills are a terrible move. They will open up the opportunity to bring Australia's electoral system into disrepute. I understand why the government are putting the bills forward. It is because they think that this is going to be a free kick for them. That is the worst reason to bring these bills into the House, and I oppose them.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in strong support of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. Here in Australia we enjoy a healthy democracy. It has endured, stable and strong, since Federation without civil war or major crisis—Remembrance Day 1975 aside. In fact, Australia is one of the longest standing democracies in the world. When Australian citizens head to the polls, as Queenslanders will do this weekend, they do so without fear, and governments are elected peacefully without a shot being fired. There may be a few tears, but it is a peaceful process. To paraphrase Malcolm X, in Australia it is always the ballot, not the bullet. Australia's democracy is free from the allegations of fraud and intimidation that mar elections in developing democracies.

The integrity of our election process is crucial for our democracy. That is why I was so disgusted with the former Liberal-National coalition government's efforts to manipulate our electoral process. The 41st Parliament oversaw a shameful moment in the history of our democracy. By closing the electoral roll to new enrolments on the same day as the issuing of the writ, former Prime Minister Howard ensured that thousands of pesky young people did not get an opportunity to vote in the 2007 election.

It is the Australian Electoral Commission that is responsible for running elections in this country. Part of that job involves maintaining the current electoral roll. Today there are more than 14 million Australians on the Commonwealth electoral roll. As we well know, the electoral act states that enrolling and voting are compulsory for every Australian citizen over 18 years of age. Compulsory electoral enrolment and compulsory voting makes our democracy strong. Anyone thinking we should adopt optional voting need only to look at voter turnout in so-called democracies—for example, the United States. In fact, in the 2000 election that saw George W. Bush become president there was a 51 per cent voter turnout. You might remember that George W. Bush only just scraped in. It was a very closely fought election. Barely over a quarter of eligible Americans voted for the President of the United States.

Optional voting is not the way to go. In Australia, we want everyone to have a say—the motivated, the not-so-motivated, the disillusioned and everyone in between. If they do not want to have a say, I can give them a long list of countries to move to where they will not have to worry about their voice being heard on election day.

The AEC are required to ensure that every elector knows about our electoral laws and adheres to these laws. Electors are required to, firstly, enrol and, secondly, keep their enrolment details current. But, as we know, whether you are moving across town, across a suburb or changing states, moving house can be a very stressful experience. After dealing with real estate agents, lawyers, banks and removal companies, redirecting mail and possibly starting a new job, with a new school for the kids, and changing the phone, electricity and utilities et cetera, often the last thing on many Australians' minds after they have moved house is notifying the Electoral Commission about their change of address.

Currently, the AEC are able to use information from reliable sources to monitor the accuracy of the roll, but they do not have the power to change or update an elector's details. They are, however, able to remove someone from the roll. The result of this anomaly is that eligible voters are being removed from the roll, resulting in dropping enrolments across the country. We need to be doing whatever we can to ensure that there is greater participation in our wonderful democracy. That is why the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 amends the Electoral and Referendum Act to allow the AEC to update an elector's enrolled address when it becomes apparent from other reliable data that the elector has moved residential addresses. The bill requires that an elector be notified about the AEC's intention to enrol them at a new residential address. They will also be given an opportunity to object to the change. This common-sense bill will ensure that there is a more accurate roll, using information that is already available to the AEC. It will not, however, enable the AEC to enrol people not already on the electoral roll, which is the subject of the related bill before the House.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 is another measure on the part of the Gillard government to improve the accuracy of the electoral roll. The AEC go to a lot of effort to encourage young people to enrol to vote. For example, before the 2010 election they were part of a youth enrolment program called 'Count me in!' with the United Nations Youth Association and the Australian Youth Forum. They hit the streets to enrol as many young people as possible over one weekend. The AEC also run many other campaigns, including 'enrol to vote' week in schools, aimed at making sure all young people are ready to vote when they turn 18; university campus O week activities, to encourage university students to enrol to vote; and youth enrolment campaign Rock Enrol with Triple J, which I know is your favourite radio station, Deputy Speaker!

Despite these efforts, there are still too many young people who miss out on voting because they are unable to enrol before the rolls close before an election. I understand that there are still at least 1.5 million eligible voters not on the rolls, and at least a third of these are aged between 18 and 25. That is about another 15 or 16 MPs who are not here in this chamber. This bill will allow the AEC to place a person on the electoral roll at a particular address if the Electoral Commissioner is satisfied that: (1) the person is entitled to be enrolled—that is, they are an Australian citizen over 18 years old; (2) they have lived at the address at least one month; and (3) they are not currently enrolled.

For the first time people will be enrolled without submitting an enrolment form. Direct enrolment will directly turn around declining enrolment rates across Australia and make the federal electoral roll as current and as a accurate as possible. New South Wales and Victoria already have a system of direct enrolment and therefore we are seeing a growing inconsistency between the state and federal rolls, something which cannot continue. This bill will bring greater consistency between these state and federal electoral rolls.

I can understand why in years gone by there was a reluctance to embrace direct enrolment. In the days of paper records, pencils and horses and carriages, ensuring the integrity of records might have been a bit more difficult. But today a number of government departments operate accurate databases that the Electoral Commission uses to verify the integrity of the rolls. We are not talking about information that falls off the back of a truck. This is reliable information that is currently obtained from road traffic authorities, Centrelink, Australia Post and other such respectable institutions.

It was not that long ago that women were not allowed to vote. Even a little closer to my time, it was Indigenous Australians. When I was born, Murrays in Queensland could not participate in the electoral process—and I am not that old, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you know. The idea that anyone could be excluded from the electoral process is downright repulsive to every decent-minded Australia. As a parliament, we should do whatever is necessary to ensure the integrity of our electoral process. Certainly, the Gillard Labor government believes that all eligible people should be given the opportunity to vote, but the opposition, in voicing their opposition to this bill, have strayed dangerously close to the land of the hypocrite on this issue. You cannot on the one hand say that you stand for transparent and free elections and on the other hand put in place roadblocks that stop eligible people from participating in the electoral process. What is there to be scared of?

This Labor government wants to ensure that all Australians who are eligible to vote are on the roll and able to do so. The integrity of our strong democracy requires no less. The quick passing of this bill will ensure that these reforms are in place before a 2013 federal election, and I hope still for bipartisan support from those opposite. I strongly commend the bill to the House.

Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 seek to amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984. The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 seeks to allow the Electoral Commission to directly update an elector's enrolled address following the receipt of analysis of reliable and current data sources from outside the Australian Electoral Commission that indicate an elector has moved residential address. What this bill fails to do is set controls on what is a reliable current data source outside of the Australian Electoral Commission. This bill hands over the burden of responsibility for updating a person's electoral address from the voter to the Electoral Commissioner, with no controls, no checks and balances and no parameters as to where the Electoral Commissioner can source the information. To me that is very, very disturbing. This bill will bypass many of this government's own fundamental privacy principles and add yet another element of Big Brother to this government's already overregulating and overreaching scope of authority.

The second bill that this government has put forward, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012, is yet another attempt by this government to take our nation down the very, very slippery slope of automatic enrolment. Automatic enrolment has been the brainchild of the Greens for over a decade. The travesty of this bill is that it represents a key component of their Orwellian nightmare for this nation and our prestigious democratic record. Australia has long been a shining example of democracy to the world. While we may only be a young country, we have been fortunate that until recently we had a good national leadership, a booming economy and a healthy democratic system of government. Indeed, we were envied across the globe. But these two bills represent a paradigm shift in the way our system of democracy operates at its most fundamental level.

In this great nation voting is a right, but it is also an obligation enforced by the law. The right to have your voice heard and the right to have your vote counted is a sacred thing. It should not be taken lightly and it should not be handed out frivolously. People in nations less fortunate than ours have died trying to exercise this right. Voting in our nation comes with rights, obligations, responsibilities and duties. These obligations are not onerous. They do not require a citizen to jump through legislative hoops. A person need only fill in a form and provide identification in order to enrol to vote. Once enrolled, an elector can update their details by fax, mail or in person. In fact, an elector can even update their details online; it is not too hard to do. If a person can jump on the internet and update their drivers licence online, why can't we trust them to do the same thing through the AEC?

The Special Minister of State in his second reading speech for the maintaining address bill asserted:

The bill will assist in meeting the urgent need to arrest the decline in enrolment rates across Australia by ensuring the federal electoral roll is as current and accurate as possible.

However, in spite of the minister believing this to be an urgent need, he did not make a single mention in either the speech or the explanatory memorandum of any evidence of the scale of these inaccuracies. I submit that in Australia we have a far more urgent need to crack down on multiple voting and voter fraud than to directly update voters' addresses without the voters' knowledge or consent. You have only got to look at the last federal election—I am standing here next to the federal member for Hume—to know what the Labor Party's policy is: it is vote early and vote often. If that was not enough of an assault on the integrity of the roll, now they want to add electors to the electoral roll without their knowledge or their consent. These two bills create the possibility of a person being enrolled without their knowledge at an address where they may or may not reside. There are a couple of examples in my electorate, with the urban renewal programs in our public housing areas, the One Minto Project or the Airds renewal program or Rosemeadow and Claymore. People are put into temporary accommodation in hotels and motels out of their electorate. The member for Grey mentioned people being informed voters. These people have lived most of their lives in my electorate. If they are moved out of the electorate for temporary accommodation and live outside the electorate for one month, they might find themselves on a roll in a different electorate, when they do not want to even participate in the election of that candidate. These informed people want to vote for the person they know who is doing the right thing by their community, and, all of a sudden, because we are going through this urban renewal process and they have been shifted out of their area, they will be put on a roll without their knowledge and asked to vote for somebody else. Some great thought must have gone into this legislation! Who is the Einstein who came up with this one?

What about people with domestic violence issues? You might have a couple who have a domestic violence issue and one takes out an AVO, with part of the condition of the AVO being that the other person must live in another electorate. They might have to live there for four, five, six, nine, 12 or 18 months or longer to resolve their dispute with their spouse, and all of a sudden they will find themselves on an electoral roll somewhere else. Once again, it is a case of an informed voter being taken out of their electorate through secondary advice given to the Australian Electoral Commission, who will put them on another roll without their knowledge. Absolutely incredible—how good is this legislation! There are people on the other side of the House saying, 'We're proud of this legislation'! Not enough thought has gone into this legislation.

There are going to be other circumstances where people will be out of their area temporarily, put on a different electoral roll without their knowledge and asked to vote for someone they do not even know, because they have lived most of their life in another electorate. I am talking about informed voters who know their candidates and want to make a decision that will change things in their electorate, but they will be asked to vote in another electorate where they do not know what is going on.

Mr Schultz interjecting—

Absolutely. Anything to hold their seats. You are right, member for Hume. They then could be sent a fine for not voting, which they may not receive and, as a result, they could have their drivers licence cancelled, because this government wants to allow the Electoral Commissioner free rule over additions and amendments to the electoral roll, with no restrictions and no requirements for identifying or regulating information sources. I just keep looking back. How good is this legislation! There has been a lot of thought put into this! I hope that those of us in this chamber today respect and uphold the values of democracy when voting on this bill. Put some thought into it, guys!

We must stop this insidious campaign launched by the faceless men of the ALP, who are attempting to compromise the integrity of the electoral roll for their own selfish purposes. Just last month we saw the damage that the same faceless men in the Australian Labor Party have done not only to the parliamentary wing of the ALP but to what is left of the grassroots movements of their party. These bills represent the same phenomenon in our nation. They give the AEC the power and authority to add electors to the roll without their knowledge or consent. These bills allow the Electoral Commission to access private information and records from secondary sources to update the residential addresses of electors. This is not and should not be the function of the AEC. Not only will people have their addresses updated without their knowledge, but it may result in electors being incorrectly enrolled or even removed from the electoral roll entirely, denying them the chance to vote in an election. There will be many circumstances like this brought forward, I can tell you, by disgruntled voters who cannot vote for the candidate that they love. This will be further exacerbated by the government's second bill, which will use information and data from unspecified secondary sources to determine if a person has been living at that address for at least a month and is eligible to be on the roll. A month is not a long time. It is an incredibly short period of time. This legislation is very, very poor.

Antony Green exposed the fundamental flaw of automatic enrolment in his July 2011 article analysing the dismal failure of automatic enrolment in the most recent New South Wales state election. We all know about Antony Green, don't we? He is a great expert, on top of his game. While the New South Wales Labor Party had hoped that the automatic enrolments would be their saving grace at the ballot box, only 64.3 per cent of the electors that were automatically enrolled actually turned up to vote—64.3 per cent! This incredibly high non-participation rate demonstrates the point that a massive number of those people automatically enrolled to vote were completely disenfranchised by the electoral system or, alternatively, those people were not actually entitled to vote in the first place or were not living at the address where they had been automatically enrolled. So there are systematic failures already.

The notion of directly updating a person's details on the electoral roll or enrolling them to vote without their knowledge or consent will lead to a high number of potential irregularities. Further to this point, the bill is lacking in consistency and detail. It gives the AEC complete discretion to determine what it believes are reliable and current data sources to obtain information about elector addresses. This goes far beyond the scope of authority traditionally bestowed upon the AEC. Imagine some of the information they might get from the courts or the local police about people who have been locked up and charged and part of their bail conditions is that they have got to go and live in another electorate—away from their local member, all their family and their house. This is incredible legislation! It's brilliant!

While on this point, I refer to the submission by the Australian Privacy Foundation to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in February 2012. The Australian Privacy Foundation makes two very valid arguments relating to the collection and use of secondary sources of information. The first argument is that this bill seeks to undermine the fundamental privacy principle that personal information collected by a government body or agency should only be used for the purpose for which it was collected. If the government body or agency intends to use this information for a secondary purpose, then consent of the person from whom it was collected should be given. They have got to legally give consent. I tell you, this legislation is fantastic! Of course, there will be exceptions for special circumstances where the public interest outweighs individual privacy. Does the public interest outweigh individual privacy? I do not think so. The minister's supposedly urgent need to arrest the decline in enrolment rates across Australia does not weigh up against any public interest test. I have got to meet the person who put this legislation together. It is absolutely brilliant! Perhaps he is trying to weigh it up against his own party's self-interest! That might be the key to it all—his own party's self-interest.

Second, and equally important, is the reality that data and information collected by any government agency is collected for a specific purpose and in a very different context to the Australian electoral roll. The coalition members on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters noted in July 2011 in their dissenting report:

The reliance on external data sources that have been collated and that are utilised for other purposes does not make them fit for use in forming the electoral roll.

It had to be the coalition—a bit of thought has gone into it. Of course, it is a dissenting report. To demonstrate this point, we need to look no further than our own government agencies' records. Let us look at a bit of history here. Let us look at the data. Let us have a think about it. It is one month. Do not rush into things. Have a chat about it. Talk it through. You will get a bipartisan approach on good policy in this chamber.

For instance, the Australian National Audit Office Audit Report No. 24 2004-05: Integrity of Medicare enrolment data stated:

ANAO found that up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who are deceased.

Further to that point, the Review of the ANAO Report No. 37 1989-99 on the Management of Tax File Numbers, found that at the time of the last census—namely, 1996—there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia. Who is going to get that data? Is it going to be the Labor Party, with the old vote early, vote often policy? Are they going to know who all these deceased people are or who has all these tax file numbers? Are they going to run around and vote at so many booths it is not going to be funny? We know who is putting this legislation together. It is a beauty. It is vote early, vote often and try to vote Labor if you can.

The data included 185,000 potential duplicate tax file numbers of individuals, and a sample match showed that 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased. Who picks up on that? We know who picks up on that. The AEC's reliance on secondary data sources, as stipulated by this bill, is very concerning. However, what is of even greater concern to me is that this bill gives the Australian Electoral Commissioner the discretion to determine what reliable and current data sources he should use to derive information regarding elector addresses and voter eligibility.

That is a huge responsibility. It is unbelievable. There has been no real train of thought behind any of this. It has been rushed through at a hundred miles an hour: 'Let's get as many votes as we can while the opportunity exists. The crossbenchers will probably support it so let's get this legislation right through because it helps us.' As a former police officer for over 25 years, I have a keen understanding of the challenges posed by relying on secondary sources of information to make an informed and accurate assessment. A lot of people go out of their way to supply secondary sources of information that are not correct. They do not want to be found. They will be on a couple of electoral rolls; it is absolutely brilliant!

My point is that secondary sources, any secondary source, are of variable quality. Even secondary sources that one would think would be up-to-date and accurate, such as Medicare, Centrelink or the department of immigration, collect their information for different purposes and in widely different contexts than that of maintaining an electoral roll. That is the crux of the matter. A document as important to our democratic process as the electoral roll should only ever be updated, amended or added to based on primary information, not secondary information. You actually have to know where they really do live. This is astonishing. Secondary information to create an electoral roll. This is great stuff! You should be proud of it! It should be primary information collected for the sole purpose of updating or amending the roll itself. Anything less constitutes a profound lack of respect for democracy in this great nation.

We have heard a range of arguments from the other side of the House about how voters find it too difficult to update their addresses on the electoral roll. Mr Deputy Speaker, I ask you this: regardless of whether the government thinks that people are too lazy to update their own address or apply to be included on the electoral roll, why do they believe that the government should take this responsibility themselves? In Australia, our traditional personal responsibility has resulted in a nation of concerned, sympathetic and proactive citizens. Australia's democratic system is unique in the world and, simply put, we should not be messing with it if it is not broken—and it is not broken.

Democracy is alive and well in this nation, much to the chagrin of the faceless men of the ALP. Voters have been updating their electoral addresses and applying to be placed onto the electoral roll for decades past, and they will do so for decades to come. We as a parliament must stop this insidious encroachment of the Big Brother style of government that is so beloved by this Prime Minister and this government. (Time expired)

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To say that that was an interesting contribution to this debate is an understatement. That part of it that I could actually understand was an interesting contribution to the debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and cognate bill. I was very surprised to hear that the member for Macarthur had been a police officer in a previous life. When he is talking of domestic violence and the placing of people in different electorates, surely he knows that somebody who is a victim of domestic violence would probably suppress their address and that it would not be available to other people.

He was all over the place, and I am really pleased to hear that, for once, members on the other side of this parliament are interested in letting people in public housing have a vote. Under the Howard government, absolutely everything that could be done was done to prevent people who were in public housing, who were homeless or who moved around from having a vote. Absolutely every possible action was taken, and here we have the member for Macarthur being the great advocate for democracy! I suspect that he actually does not know how to spell the word. Here he is, being the great advocate for democracy, arguing in favour of making sure that people know who they are voting for, that maybe they had been living somewhere else for 12 months but they still want to vote for their original member. It is not on.

This legislation is not something that has been rushed through the parliament. It has been examined by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and is implementing recommendations of the joint standing committee. There were public hearings on the recommendations by the joint standing committee, and those recommendations were drawn up after considerable thought, consultation and discussion. This government does not ignore the recommendations of parliamentary committees. If I remember correctly, when I was on the committee on health and ageing and the Howard government was in power, we brought down the Blame Game report, but they did not respond to it. Unlike the Howard government, we actually picked it up and ran with it as policy because we could see that it was a good report. So this government looks at the recommendations of standing committees. We looked at the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and we decided that we should implement the recommendations. On this side of the House we believe in giving everybody the opportunity to vote and on that side of the House they believe in giving their friends the right to vote. They believe in making it as difficult as possible for the people who are the most disadvantaged to have the right to vote.

This legislation lines up the Commonwealth and the states so that their legislation is similar. It removes confusion and it gives people the maximum opportunity to vote. In Canada, if a person turns up to vote on election day and they are not on the roll they are allowed to vote; they do not have to enrol. In Canada, they believe in doing everything they possibly can to ensure that a person can cast a vote. Those on the other side of this parliament believe in doing everything in their power to stop people from having the right to vote. I see the member for Mitchell trying to google the Canadian system. Believe me, he should have a talk to the ambassador. The ambassador was the person who shared that information with me when he visited me in my office. He was talking about elections and he was quite mystified by the fact that it is so difficult for people to be enabled to vote in Australia.

Before the last election I had constituents coming into my office who had moved into my electorate and wanted to cast a vote. They had been taken off the roll of the electorate in which they lived previously and had sought to be enrolled within the Shortland electorate. When it came time to cast their vote, they found out that they could not vote. It is beholden upon us as a parliament to maximise the number of people who are able to vote. It is beholden upon us as members of parliament to do everything in our power to increase people's ability to vote and to broaden the democratic process. It should not be about placing barriers to voting before people; it should be about ensuring that every person has the ability to have a say.

The member for Macarthur talked about 'vote early, vote often'. It seems that he has written the handbook on it, doesn't it, Mr Deputy Speaker Thomson? He seems to be quite across the process of how to distort the electoral system. It seems to me that he is following the doctrine of the Howard government, which was all about distorting the electoral system and creating a system that advantaged them electorally, whereas we on this side of the parliament are about ensuring that every person has the right to vote.

This bill will really assist in meeting the urgent need to assist people to get onto the roll. It is quite difficult, and people become quite confused about how to update their enrolment. Constituents in my electorate find the process very difficult. Particularly if they are a little older, they find it quite hard to navigate the system. Members on the other side of this parliament should stop their woolly arguments, and their pretence that they actually support democracy and support encouraging people to enrol to vote, and be upfront with the Australian people. That is what I am asking those on the other side to do: be honest and tell them that you want people to enrol to vote only if they are going to vote for you. I see the member for Mitchell nodding in agreement with me. He is very much along that line. He believes that only people who are going to vote for the Liberal Party and the Nationals should be allowed to be on the electoral roll and that everyone else should have barriers put in place that make it difficult for them to enrol to vote, which subsequently makes it difficult for them to cast a valid vote on election day.

I strongly support the legislation we have before us tonight. I encourage members opposite to look at the real issues that are involved here and to make sure that people who would like to vote have the right to vote, even if they are not going to vote for them. I always ensure that every constituent in my electorate who wishes to enrol or who would like to vote has the ability to enrol to vote, even when I know that they are not going to vote for me. I encourage the member for Macarthur—who, I discovered, used to be a police officer—to look at this a little bit more closely. I thought he would have a greater understanding of domestic violence and of issues surrounding bail conditions. I would encourage him to be just a little nicer and to look at things in a kinder way—not to be a nasty little chappie but to look at things from the perspective of making sure that people have the right to vote.

It is about democracy. It is about ensuring that people actually can vote if they choose to vote. I strongly support the legislation.

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

As I continue to say in this place, it is my particular curse in life to be doomed to follow the member for Shortland in debates. Let's be nice—and that might be the slogan for the legislation we are considering today, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the cognate bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. We could say to the 3.2 million tax file numbers, the 185,000 duplicates, 'You're not just a number,' except that they are just a number and they do not represent real human beings.

The member for Shortland made an extraordinary contribution, which I endorse in all its glory. In particular, it gave some reinforcement to my thinking—that is, if you were an architect of this legislation, what would be your intention? As a proponent of moving to voluntary voting one day in Australia's future, I would have to say that you would really be an architect of voluntary voting because these two bills undermine the integrity of the electoral roll.

Having listened to the member for Shortland, I am concerned that perhaps she is an advocate of voluntary voting because the Canadian system, which she referred to in eloquent and withering destruction of the member for Macarthur, is in fact a voluntary system. She says if an elector turns up to vote on election day in Canada and is not on the roll, they get to vote. That is because it is a voluntary system and completely different from ours. The entire point she was making goes to reinforce in my mind that this is a secret plot by the Special Minister of State to move us to voluntary voting. 'Bring it on,' is what I say.

The legislation before us does enormous damage to what has been a well-run system in Australia with a roll of high integrity. While there have been individual concerns and individual cases in elections and electorates over many years, generally we have seen high voter turnouts, high rates of integrity and good quality investigation and follow-up of problems. It is very disturbing to think that the New South Wales data referred to by many coalition members shows that up to 37 per cent of people do not turn out to vote. That is a real concern, which has so far not been addressed by the government. When we go from 95 per cent in Australia to a system where one-third or more, potentially 40 per cent of the people enrolling, are not turning out to vote, essentially we are turning to a voluntary system.

Having come back from Japan recently, I know that voluntary voting there works very well, with a 60 per cent turnout. If the government are suggesting 60 per cent is acceptable, that 37 per cent not turning out is acceptable, they are advocating a total change in our voting system.

Moving along, I want to endorse the member for Macarthur's contribution and the dissenting reports put forward by the member for Mackellar, Senators Scott Ryan and Simon Birmingham, and the member for Fairfax. These are really high-quality dissenting reports which outline specifically why these two bills are going to be a retrograde step for the quality of the electoral roll and the electoral system in Australia today. In particular I would draw the House's attention to the integrity of the electoral roll section in the dissenting report on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. In that dissenting report there is a fascinating exchange between the member for Mackellar and Mr Killesteyn of the AEC about the process the AEC would undertake under the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill.

That dissenting report shows on pages 22 and 23 that, in writing backwards and forwards, the onus on an individual is completely and utterly removed, not just to enrol or prove where they live, not just to prove who they are, but even to respond to the Electoral Commission. People do not even have to respond to the Electoral Commissioner. In fact, not responding gets you a new address. It is completely and utterly counterintuitive. It is against the entire system on which our electoral set-up has been framed, which relies on the individual maintaining their own address. The frightening thing coming out of this exchange is that only 20 per cent of people currently respond to the Australian Electoral Commissioner. So 80 per cent of people do nothing, do not respond. They are obviously, as the member for Shortland so eloquently put it, having some confusion about their electoral roll details. The 80 per cent who are currently written to by the AEC are going to be given a new electoral roll address without their knowledge, without their consent and presumably with a high rate of error. Once again, this is a counterintuitive process, but at least it is consistent with the way government has been approached by the Gillard-Rudd government since coming to office—turning gold into lead, the counter-Midas touch.

Moving to the detail of this legislation and looking through the dissenting reports, members will find further concerning developments, including what is considered to be a reliable and current data source being open to interpretation. I do not believe, and I agree with the opposition's position, that this should be within the purview of the Australian Electoral Commission, and there are good reasons for that to be the case. There must be independent, legislated standards. I do not believe we want to add power to this agency to interpret what is a standard. It should be defined by this parliament. While I am not ascribing any ill motive to the Australian Electoral Commission, the power to deem data sources trusted, and to deem some not trusted, will leave future potential loopholes for things to be done incorrectly. When designing legislation, this is the kind of thing that you need to tighten. It is the kind of thing the government ought to look at and say, 'Oh dear, we forgot about that.' To say, 'What is deemed a reliable source? We will let a body outside this parliament determine that,' I do not believe is a good way to approach the consistency and integrity of the electoral roll, and I endorse the comments of the coalition members who put this dissenting report together. Moving along: this continues to tie into other matters such as privacy concerns. If the AEC determines that certain sources are trusted and accesses that information, as the member for Macarthur said, what are the privacy concerns with that? If that information is supplied for a particular purpose under the law, it is not to be used for any other purpose under current legal frameworks, so the questions start to come into play about what information is being used for what purposes. Privacy still ranks as a very serious concern in an age of data collection, in an age of cybersafety and other concerns to do with online presence, and I think it is a valid concern in relation to this legislation that people should be able to provide information, including tax file information and other information, without compromising their electoral roll address. As we know, if you do not respond, you are re-enrolled at a new address without your consent or knowledge, and 80 per cent of people, the Australian Electoral Commissioner advises us, fall into this category.

We have heard quite an extraordinary set of arguments in relation to this, which really lead one to think there is no real motivation for legislation such as these two bills except for electoral advantage. The member for Shortland discussed disadvantaged people being on the electoral roll. I just do not think that the purpose of these two bills is to enrol masses of disadvantaged people who are not on the electoral roll—except, as one of my colleagues pointed out, perhaps dead people or people who have existential challenges, because that is what will happen if the provisions of these bills are enacted by this parliament. We are going to have a massive increase in non-existent people being enrolled on the electoral roll, leading to higher nonturnout, higher opportunity for voter fraud, and an electoral roll where—if we look at the stats in New South Wales—almost 40 per cent of those in the new enrolled data do not turn out on election day.

It is of great concern, and I think that these sets of arguments, whether they be about disadvantaged people or arguments that we are trying to just enrol our friends, were quite a difficult pattern to understand. It does lead one to think that, as the electoral situation federally gets much tighter, we are seeing more and more bills from the government in relation to amending the electoral roll and the Commonwealth Electoral Act, seeking to enrol so many people.

There were of course, as we know and have heard so many times, up to 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia at the last census, so why would we possibly go there? That is from the ANAO report. There are 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals. Sixty per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a sample match. These are serious statistics. So, when a government is saying that automatic enrolment will apply to these categories of people and statistics, you have to ask yourself the question: what is the government doing with this legislation? There has not been any coherent explanation as to why.

Other electoral bills that we have seen in this House in the past few years have ensured that prisoners with custodial sentences will have the right to vote. The franchise being extended to people who exist and also the people here who clearly—according to the ANAO audit report, the tax office and other agencies—just do not exist or are duplicates is a very problematic question. I think the opposition is right to say, 'Let's not have tampering with the electoral roll which weakens the integrity of the roll.' This government has accused the Howard government of doing that, but the Howard government simply set up a firm set of deadlines for individuals to meet their obligations and responsibilities.

This government talks frequently about the responsibility of voters to vote but not the responsibility of voters to enrol themselves to vote. So you take the responsibility that you have to vote, that you should vote and that it is a good thing but not that it is a good thing for you to maintain your right to vote—or that responsibility will be taken from you by this nanny-state government, which of course will enrol millions of tax file numbers and duplicate records and all sorts of people who do not really exist. It is a great concern.

It is, of course, the duty of each Australian citizen to enrol to vote in a compulsory system, to accurately maintain their roll and their residence and to cast a vote—and of course to ensure that they extend their preferences. That is the current legislation. That is the current system that we have.

I do not believe this is too onerous for individuals. I do not accept the member for Shortland's dark construct of Australian society that there are masses of confused people in her electorate. I find this entirely ridiculous. I do not accept that there are masses of confused people in the electorate of Shortland who do not know how to put themselves on the electoral roll, who do not know how to maintain their own address and who do not know their responsibilities about voting. In fact, I would suggest that every electoral statistic since Federation and since the seat of Shortland was created would suggest that the vast, vast, vast majority of people understand that obligation, have met their obligation and are quite capable of meeting their responsibility. As to this contention that there is massive confusion over the electorate of Shortland, I think the member for Shortland should step outside her electorate office more often. She would find that the world is not such a confused place beyond the doors of her own electorate office.

While there has been some humour in the last few presentations, this is actually quite a serious issue. I think the matters that we are considering here today—giving an agency like the Electoral Commission the power to deem their own trusted sources of reliable data; automatic enrolment of people regardless of whether they exist or not; and the other tampering that we see in the so-called 'protecting elector participation' and so-called 'maintaining address' bills, following the Orwellian approach of this government of naming bills for the almost exact opposite of what they represent—are serious and they are going to lead to a detrimental effect on the integrity of the electoral roll.

As an advocate of voluntary voting in Australia's future, I would say that I believe that these two bills, if passed today, will actually help us along that path towards voluntary voting because our system will be degraded. I think people will see, when they start seeing the integrity of the electoral roll degrading, that we would be better off having a system where people vote voluntarily and enrol themselves voluntarily.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening also to make a contribution on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012, but I will be focusing my remarks on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. The coalition will be opposing this bill. The Labor Party unfortunately have form when it comes to amending electoral legislation and they have shown a disturbing tendency to rush in with a lot of legislation and sort out the problems later on. This bill raises a number of concerns. At the moment we are facing a state election in Queensland, where the Bligh government have introduced stringent caps on the amounts individuals can donate to political parties. They have, however, included a provision to allow certain third party organisations to spend up to $500,000 each on party campaigns. It will surprise no-one that the definition of 'third party organisations' just happens to include union bodies. So every union organisation can spend up to $500,000 on Labor campaigns whilst at the same time there is a restriction on the amounts that individuals and companies can donate—up to $2,000 per campaign and up to $5,000 to a party head office. This situation will hopefully be rectified on Saturday when a 20-year-old Labor government gets consigned to the scrapheap of political history.

But the specific bills we are debating tonight would allow the Australian Electoral Commissioner to update the electoral roll using data and information from other sources. Apparently, according to the explanatory memorandum, the commissioner will be able to directly update an elector's enrolled address following the receipt and analysis of 'reliable and current data sources'—whatever those are—from outside the Electoral Commission. As the Australian Privacy Foundation noted, this effectively changes our system from opt in to opt out. The coalition believes it is important to ensure Australian citizens maintain responsibility for their own enrolment.

I will come to the effect of these changes and why they will be detrimental to the electoral system. But I would like to make some comment on the basis for these changes. The government states, in the explanatory notes to the maintaining address bill:

The Bill will assist in meeting the urgent need to arrest the decline in enrolment rates across Australia by ensuring the federal electoral roll is as current and accurate as possible.

Firstly, I will address the decline in enrolment rates and then, secondly, the assertion that this will ensure the roll is as current and accurate as possible.

The Australian Electoral Commission claims that there are approximately 1.4 million Australians who are not on the electoral roll and that the participation rate is declining. This is based, as I understand it, on a simple theoretical calculation. The AEC believes the provisions in this legislation will help the AEC increase the participation rate.

However, it is clearly much more complex than this. An online article from the Age on 30 July 2010 said:

Aaron Martin, lecturer at the Australian National University's School of Politics and International Studies, said the reason was largely demographic - young people aren't interested in federal elections.

"Young people are not as interested in electoral politics, and this a trend found in other countries among young people," Mr Martin told The Age.

"Of the 1.4 million were eligible to enrol, the AEC said one-third of those people were aged 18 to 24, and 70 per cent of them were aged 18 to 39."

"The 18 to 39 group area also the most socially mobile. When they move house they could also drop off the roll."

Further, Mr Martin said issues like population growth, mining taxes and border protection simply may not excite young people.

This is an interesting observation suggesting that the real reason for declining enrolment rates lies with demographic issues. As Professor Martin says, this is reflected in the experience of many other countries, including countries in Europe.

I am supportive of efforts by the AEC to increase enrolment amongst young people through the provision of information. I must applaud them for the targeted campaigns they have run in the past to ensure that young people enrol.

We do not, however, support using external information to change the roll on behalf of people. The coalition believes this will lead to inaccuracy in the electoral roll and that it may compromise the integrity of the electoral process. Here is an exchange from a hearings of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters:

Mrs BRONWYN BISHOP: I want to go back to the process. Supposing you have decided, because of your checking with your material, that Mrs Bloggs has actually moved from her previous address. Under this legislation, you would write to the new address and say, 'We have changed you', because you are satisfied that she has moved.

Mr Killesteyn: We would not say that we have changed it; we would write to the individual and say, 'We have information which leads us to believe that you are at this address. You have 28 days to advise us whether that is not the case.' If there were no response, then we would change the address at that point.

There are many perfectly legitimate reasons why a person might provide different agencies with different addresses. I visited a friend of mine recently who runs a general store in a country town. She also runs the Australia Post franchise where, she tells me, some people have up to three PO boxes.

Another example is university students. In my inner city electorate of Brisbane, there are many students who live in temporary accommodation while they are studying. Their home or primary address might actually be outside of Brisbane. So the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, the ATO and the AEC will have one address. But it is quite common for Centrelink and Australia Post to have a different address. According to this legislation, the commissioner would send them a letter saying, 'We think you have moved.' If the letter is not responded to within 28 days, confirming or denying that they have moved, their address will automatically be changed on the roll without them even knowing. This is one practical example of how this legislation will lead to the electoral roll being inaccurate. Some seats are very marginal—and I certainly know about that! Sometimes members might be elected to this place with margins of only 10 or 20 votes. So this is a serious issue. It is a serious issue about the integrity of the electoral process.

This legislation will also seriously affect people who move temporarily whilst changing their primary address. As I stated before, young people are a lot more mobile than young people were, say, 20 years ago. There are also people who own more than one home or who have multiple addresses. Here is another example where different government agencies might have different addresses, or more than one address, for the same person. As pointed out in the coalition's joint standing committee dissenting report, the ATO has confirmed that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than there were people at the last census. I am quite familiar with this, because several years back A House Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration prepared an in-depth report into the ATO and tax file numbers. I think most of us were quite astonished that there were more tax file numbers than people in Australia, and that is the case here. So using this information as a primary source of data is filled with misconceptions. Clearly it is neither accurate nor appropriate to draw from information given by private individuals to government agencies.

The Australian Privacy Foundation also expressed very strong concerns about this bill in their submission to the joint standing committee. I refer to one quote in particular, where they say:

We submit that the existing basis of enrolment, only on the basis of a positive action by an eligible voter, should not be abandoned lightly. It is consistent with fundamental privacy principles, which favour use of personal information only for the purpose for which it is collected, with exceptions being strictly limited, and a preference for consent for any secondary use.

The other very concerning aspect of this bill is that the sources of data that the commissioner can draw from are not subject to government regulation and therefore parliamentary disallowance, so the commissioner has sole discretion on which sources of data he or she believes are accurate. Surely it is far better for electoral enrolment to be a proactive step on behalf of an individual, and we should do everything to encourage individuals to be proactive—as opposed to someone being enrolled at an address they have given to Centrelink and losing or missing the notification in the mail, therefore being wrongly enrolled.

This is another flawed bill from this incompetent government and it should not be supported by the parliament.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is nothing more fundamental to democracy than elections. And there is nothing more important to proper, honest and fair elections than the integrity of the electoral rolls. It is accurate to say that the integrity of our electoral rolls is the very rock upon which our electoral system stands. It is for that reason that I rise to speak today on the two electoral and referendum amendment bills—the maintaining address and the protecting elector participation bills.

The coalition opposes both changes proposed by this Labor-Greens government. We oppose these changes as a matter of principle. We strongly believe in maintaining fundamental principles and long-held conventions of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Our very system of democracy depends upon the principle of ensuring that all citizens are entitled to vote and to choose their member of parliament. It is as simple as that. As soon as we begin to fiddle with the mechanisms that underpin the security of our electoral rolls we put that principle at risk and in so doing we undermine public confidence in our electoral system. Today's bills do put that principle at risk under the false underlying premise that increasing the number of people on the rolls is a desirable objective.

If you look at the titles of the bills, you can see the very euphemistic and Orwellian way in which they have been named. The bills are not about maintaining an address but about changing it—without an individual's knowledge. The bills are not about protecting elector participation but about allowing automatic enrolment of voters without their knowledge and without their consent. At the most fundamental level, all these bills do is subvert the privacy of voters and the integrity of the electoral roll simply to increase the aggregate number of people on the roll, no matter whether they are entitled to be there or not.

The bills today are the ultimate outcome of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters review of Australia's electoral laws following the 2010 election. In July 2011, the first report was tabled by the committee and it contained two recommendations which appear today in the form of these two bills. The protecting elector participation bill will allow automatic enrolment of Australians on the electoral roll—after the Australian Electoral Commission are satisfied that an elector has been enrolled at a particular address for one month and is, to their knowledge, eligible to be on the roll. The maintaining address bill subsequently gives the AEC the authority to change an elector's address where they see fit. These changes will reduce the integrity of the electoral roll at every step of the way, and the coalition is resolved to see that these changes are opposed and defeated.

In the original 2010 Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report following the 2010 election, Labor and the Greens recommended that the data sources used by the AEC should fall under the purview of the parliament. For some strange reason, they have now decided that the AEC should have sole discretion for what they consider to be a 'reliable source', which opens up the commission to a raft of problems. The coalition has time and time again reiterated to this government the huge risk involved with a move to give all control to the AEC without any further oversight by the parliament. This is especially relevant given that the use of any particular agency will not be legislated through these bills; nor have we received any kind of final confirmation from the AEC about what types of organisations it will use to derive its data.

Of course, there is no specific legislative requirement for the AEC to check that a voter is over 18 or indeed even an Australian citizen—yet another oversight by the government. In its submission, the AEC mentioned that data from Centrelink, road and traffic authorities at the state government level and Australia Post might be used. The AEC told the inquiry that the AEC considers these organisations to be reliable, although it neglected to inform the inquiry about why it considered them to be reliable.

With so many of the bills that the Gillard Labor government introduces into the House the devil is in the detail. Today, the devil is in the lack of detail. At this stage we have three sources—first, Centrelink, a Commonwealth agency; second, motor registries at the state and territory level; and, third, Australia Post, a federal government business enterprise. If the government are proposing a specific overlap or the sharing of information between these very disparate types of organisations, they should at least explicitly come out and say so. Would there be an explicit direction by Australia Post to share information with the AEC? Will the AEC be calling up Centrelink and using up their resources to find out someone's address, or at least the address according to a public servant? If they are proposing an impost on the privacy of Australian citizens, they should explicitly come out and say so. It is worth pointing out at this stage that not all Australians receive Centrelink, not all Australians have a licence and, indeed, in this day and age, not all Australians even receive mail. In any case, people are just as lax in updating their address on drivers licences with Australia Post and Centrelink.

This goes to the heart of how and why the AEC consider these sources to be a reliable source of information for someone's electoral or residential address, and the coalition are not satisfied that this has been adequately explained. It is true, however, that all eligible Australians have a civic duty and responsibility to ensure that they enrol to vote and have legal obligations under the Electoral Act as to how and when they inform the AEC of a change of details. The coalition do not believe that these responsibilities are too onerous for individual electors. What we do not want is this responsibility being taken out of the hands of the individual and handed to a government department, which is what these bills do.

It is very concerning to me that these bills will essentially extend how the government can check up on its citizens. We are not talking about voluntarily giving your details over to the AEC or signing a form indicating the veracity of such information. Indeed, we are not talking about a signature at all. These bills will allow some bureaucrat sitting in the offices of the AEC to put your name on the electoral roll without your knowledge and, more importantly, without your consent.

At present, voters have the option at any time to inform the AEC that they wish to be considered silent voters, such that their address is not listed on the publicly available roll. For victims of domestic violence, those involved in custody disputes or for any other important reason, these bills would allow such people to be put on the publicly available electoral roll without their consent. This is a severe abuse of an individual's privacy, an issue that has been completely ignored by Labor Party and the Greens. For this reason alone, the House must reject these bills. As the coalition's dissenting report notes, voters should at the very least have the option to apply for silent elector status before being added to the electoral roll.

Moreover, the coalition are very concerned that the AEC could, under these pieces of legislation, use any data source it wants which could also include records from the Australian Taxation Office or Medicare. Although the commissioner informed the inquiry on 8 February 2012 that it is not proposing to use tax records, there are no provisions in this bill that would restrict the AEC from changing its mind. Under these bills as they stand, we could even have a horde of diligent public servants sifting through Facebook to ascertain the addresses of Australian citizens.

Regarding possible information from the Australian tax office, there was a very extensive and thorough review in an ANAO report on the management of tax file numbers that was considered by a House Standing Committee on Economics, Financial and Public Administration in 1999. The House discovered that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia compared to the most recent census; that there were 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals; and, very alarmingly, that 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a sample match.

Regarding Medicare, a 2005 ANAO report Integrity of Medicare enrolment data discovered:

… that up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who are deceased.

Anyone interested in the integrity of the electoral roll should be very, very concerned about the amendments being debated today. I have discussed the principles involved, but there are also very concerning issues relating to the practicality of using external data to change someone's electoral details.

The coalition believe in personal responsibility, the responsibility of electors in Australia to update the AEC of a change of address. Sometimes voters are very diligent in letting the AEC know of a change. Sometimes, however, this does not occur. I acknowledge that, but I also acknowledge that there are many legitimate reasons that there might be a delay. When someone moves to a different place of residence, there are many organisations that need to be contacted immediately and some that, to be frank, do not really need to know. If you want to receive your bank statements in the mail, you tell your bank. If you want to continue to use your Medicare card, changing your address is not necessarily a high priority. Similarly, if a loved one dies, letting the Australian Electoral Commission know is most certainly not high on the to-do list.

The government would have you believe that people's tardiness in updating the AEC is justification for giving the AEC the power to update someone's roll details without their knowledge. There are also a whole host of reasons that someone may have more than one address. Many people have more than one place of residence. Some use a place of employment as a mailing address, while others might use a post office box. In my electorate, there are many thousands of students living at the colleges at the University of Queensland, while their residences may well be hundreds of kilometres away. Therefore, giving the AEC the power to decide what is and what is not someone's electoral address increases the potential for ambiguities and irregularities of the electoral roll, ultimately reducing its integrity.

Nor has the AEC come up with a way to rectify such ambiguities. Under current arrangements, only 20 per cent of electors respond to letters from the AEC, and I am not confident that somehow this figure will magically change in the future. As mentioned by the member for Brisbane, I point to the following exchange between the member for Mackellar and the Electoral Commissioner, Mr Ed Killesteyn, on 8 February 2012, in which the commission was asked what would happen after the AEC was confident someone had indeed moved, to which the commissioner responded:

… we would write to the individual and say, 'We have information which leads us to believe that you are at this address. You have 28 days to advise us whether that is not the case'. If there were no response, then we could change the address at that point.

Such a course of action would be comical if it did not so grievously attack the integrity of the electoral roll. They will write you a letter and if it is not your genuine address, of course you will not be able to respond, but then your inability to respond means you are put at the wrong electoral address.

At the end of the day, it is inconceivable that the government cannot be alert to the real issues raised by these amendments. It leaves the electoral system at risk because a question of how the AEC should assess a source as reliable is ignored by this legislation. Our concerns are born of a genuine belief that something so fundamental as the integrity of our electoral system must be protected by legislation that reflects that importance, legislation that secures that integrity by spelling out in the clearest terms how it is to be protected and legislation that acknowledges that a flawed protection of our electoral rolls must inevitably lead to the wrong candidates being elected. It is as stark as that. This is a government driven by gross arrogance or gross stupidity. It pays lip service to democracy. It has lost touch with honesty in its actions and it has once again let all Australians down.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 and a related bill. This bill seeks to amend the Electoral Act to allow the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC, to directly enrol new electors on the electoral roll when the Electoral Commissioner is satisfied that an individual is living at a particular address for one month and is eligible to be on the roll.

If this bill is passed, we are risking the integrity of the electoral roll. We are risking the people of Australia's right to vote in the electorate they genuinely live in. We are taking away the responsibility of constituents. We are not empowering people with the right to vote. In fact, we are saying, 'We do not trust you to notify authorities of your permanent address'—no reflection on you, Madam Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou. If an elector is enrolled without their knowledge there is a significant chance for an error to occur. Under automatic enrolment, there is the potential for electors who are not Australian citizens, for electors who are under 18 and for electors who use different names to be enrolled without their knowledge, damaging the integrity and reliability of the roll.

This absurd bill is all about trust and treachery. The Labor government is asking the Australian public to trust them with the enrolment details, yet this treacherous government has proven to the people of Australia that they cannot be trusted. This government cannot be trusted on their word. Who will ever forget those infamous words, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'—words spouted by the current Prime Minister in her first official act of deceit just days before the last election.

Not only can this government not be trusted on their word, they cannot be trusted with the Australian taxpayers' money. Why? It still irks the public of Australia that around $40 million was wasted a few years ago when 16,000 dead people and 27,000 people living overseas were given a bonus of $900 each. According to the taxation—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have a point of order on direct relevance, Madam Deputy Speaker. This has absolutely nothing to do with this bill in line with what we have been hearing earlier.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for McEwen will take his seat. I am listening to the member for Durack. I would advise the member for Durack to return to the bill, as I am sure he will very shortly.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

According to the Australian Taxation Office website, to be eligible for a tax bonus payment—and the point is the relationship of this faux pas to the upcoming faux pas—you must have lodged a 2007-08 income tax return by 30 June 2009, your 2007-08 taxable income did not exceed $100,000 and you were an Australian resident for tax purposes during the 2007-08 financial year. Those are perfectly reasonable criteria. It is stated on the same website that one of the eligibility criteria for the Australian resident for tax purposes is having been in Australia for more than half of the financial year, unless your usual home is overseas and you do not intend to live in Australia. I wonder how the 27,000 people living overseas spent the money designed to boost the local Australian economy.

This government is asking us to trust them with their technology and our address. We cannot trust with them with their word. We cannot trust them with our money. To date, we have a failed border protection system, including a $1.7 billion blowout, up to $8 billion wasted in their Building the Education Revolution and $2.5 billion in their pink batts program. We have a $1.4 billion blowout in the laptops in schools program—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, again I point to direct relevance. This is about the Electoral Act, not a speech by the member for Durack to spout his lines.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Durack would assist the chair if he stayed with the bill at hand.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure that is the case. The member of the government is offended by the things I am mentioning but they all tie directly into this next move by this government of failures in relation to changing the Electoral Act. I will move on in that regard. We have a $1.4 billion blowout in the laptops in schools program and they have delivered only just over half the number of computers. The solar homes program included an $850 million blowout and then the program was cancelled. We have a broadband network costing about $50 billion with no business plan. The waste continues today with set-top boxes estimated to cost $350 a home, but Senator Conroy now admits—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to do this again but it has been over six minutes now and we have not heard a bit about the bill. I ask that you ask the speaker to get back to the bill and direct relevance to it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Durack has the call and he will stay with the bill.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Senator Conroy now admits that the boxes could cost up to $1,528 each in rural areas. Gerry Harvey says he can do it for $168. What more evidence do I need to cite to prove that this government should not be put in charge of the asylum. It is the duty of each Australian citizen to enrol to vote—that is a given—to accurately maintain their enrolment at their permanent place of residence, to cast a vote when an election is called, and to fully extend preferences to all candidates contesting an election of the House of Representatives. Surely we as adult Australian citizens can be trusted to do this. Compulsory enrolment for federal elections was introduced in 1912, and I fail to understand why this government is hell-bent on reinventing the wheel in this matter.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you may ask how the integrity of the electoral roll is at risk if the AEC is managed by a three-person Australian Electoral Commission made up of a chairperson, who must be an active or retired judge of the Federal Court of Australia, the Electoral Commissioner, and a non-judicial member. I am in no way passing judgment on the reliability of individuals. I am in fact passing judgment on a government that has proven they cannot be trusted with anything, much less trusted to pass on accurate data.

This bill gives the AEC the discretion to determine what 'reliable and current' data sources are. According to the Australian Electoral Commission's website, the AEC has seven core business functions. These are to manage the Commonwealth electoral roll; conduct elections and referendums, including industrial and fee-for-service elections and protected action ballots; educate and inform the community about electoral rights and responsibilities; provide research, advice and assistance on electoral matters to the parliament, other government agencies and recognised bodies; provide assistance in overseas elections and referendums in support of wider government initiatives; administer election funding, financial disclosure and party registration requirements; and support electoral redistributions. Surely deciding what is reliable and current data to determine where someone lives is far beyond the purview of the AEC. This bill does not give a specific definition of what the Electoral Commission may regard as a 'reliable and current data source' from which to change elector details. What is considered a 'reliable and current data source' is open to interpretation.

I believe there are significant risks to the integrity of the electoral roll by using external data sources such as the ATO, Medicare or other government agencies to update elector details. In fact the Australian National Audit Office report No. 24 of 2004-05, Performance audit: integrity of Medicare enrolment data, stated that the Australian National Audit Office 'found that up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who are deceased'. I wonder if I ought to be challenged on that with respect to straying from the bill, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure you will agree that it simply supports my argument that this government has no track record that demonstrates their ability to get anything right, let alone taking over the electoral roll.

A 1999 report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration, Numbers on the run: review of the ANAO report No.37 1998-99 on the management oftax file numbers, found that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia at the last census that had been undertaken, that there were 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals and that 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a sample match.

This government has ruined the reputation and standing of the office of Prime Minister, it has ruined the reputation of Speaker of the House, it has ruined our international reputation as a country with low sovereign risk and now it seeks to ruin the reputation of the AEC. We, the people of Australia, must be concerned that, should this bill pass, we are again being manipulated by the Gillard government. To maintain their tenuous hold on power they removed the Speaker of the House to their backbench and cajoled a member of the Liberal coalition to take up that position. This deceitful manoeuvring took a voting member away from the opposition, added a voting member to the government, allowing the Prime Minister to renege on her agreement with Mr Andrew Wilkie, the member for Denison, to curtail poker machine activity.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Durack is straying in relevance. This would be about the fourth time that the chair has asked the member for Durack to be relevant to the bill.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I shall continue to be so. There have been suggestions that Fair Work Australia has again been reticent in assisting authorities investigating Craig Thomson, the federal member for Dobell—

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. I would ask that you draw the honourable member's attention to the actual subject matter of this legislation—and to keep him to it, if it is possible.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The chair has, on a number of occasions, drawn the honourable member's attention to the relevance of the bill. This will probably be the fifth time that the chair asks the honourable member for Durack to stick to the bill. The member for Durack will wind up, with relevance.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am talking about this bill and I am proving my point that this bill has no right of passage in this House because the track record of the government introducing it has no credibility whatsoever. I add to the evidence of that lack of credibility in my speech, and I insist on doing so. Without the member for Dobell's position the Gillard government does not have a majority in the House of Representatives and therefore cannot continue—

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member seems to be having a great deal of difficulty in hearing you, Madam Deputy Speaker. You have now drawn his attention to the subject matter of this legislation on several occasions. It would seem to me that this amounts to a dissent from the chair, and I would ask that you again draw the honourable member's attention to the subject matter of the bill.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will draw the honourable member for Durack's attention to relevance on the bill. I would ask the member for Durack to wind up fairly quickly or I will sit him down.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very happy to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am most impressed, however, by the tenacity of government members in the House tonight—irrelevant, but tenacious nevertheless. The government have a proven track record of being unreliable. They have a track record full of bright ideas, yet when it comes to the implementation of these ideas—such as changing the electoral act to allow enrolment on the basis of address, determined by other government departments—they invariably fail through lack of process. We cannot and should not and must not let this Labor government destroy the integrity of the electoral roll for whatever underlying, perhaps even underhanded, reasoning they espouse. I suggest this bill should never be supported.

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

I welcome the opportunity to speak tonight on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. And it is also good to follow the two previous coalition speakers—such fine speakers. In particular, the member for Durack made a number of very relevant and insightful points.

When looking at these bills, I was struck by a sense of deja vu. They are typical of what we have come to expect from this government across a whole range of portfolio areas. Whether it is to do with funding campaigns or allowing people to vote in prisons, it always seems to be the case that this government pursues its view of democracy, which also happens to correspond with its political ambitions and political advantage. Before I go too much further in looking at some of these matters, I want to say that I stand with the coalition against these bills. I stand by the view that the Australian people are intelligent and that the Australian people know their responsibilities. The government tends to think the worst of people. It tends to think that Australians are not very intelligent. Indeed, so many of the policies that this government has brought to bear against the Australian people are typical of the view that the Australian people are not very smart. But I and people on this side know that the Australian people are smart and that they can see through the certain type of dust that this government throws at them.

I also think that the Australian people should have their personal responsibility verified. The Australian people know that they have to play some part in the process, that they need to take active steps to enforce their own franchise and to take up the vote themselves. It does seem rather odd in this instance but, as usual, the government sees its own importance at the centre of so much of the life in this country. The government thinks it knows better than the person on the street. I think such a view of the Australian people will bear on the government at the next election, which I hope will take place as soon as possible. It is a view that will certainly bear on the Queensland government on Saturday.

I do welcome the opportunity to speak on these bills. I would like to start with the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. This bill will give the AEC the ability to change the address of an elector when it believes the elector has moved address. This raises significant concerns for us because it will allow the AEC to automatically update the details of an elector, based on information obtained from other sources, when an elector changes their residential address. This will simply make it easier for the system to be rorted. Not only can electors unknowingly have their details updated but also it is far beyond the control and concern of the AEC to determine what are reliable and current data sources. As other speakers have spoken about at length, there have been untold problems with the integrity of certain information—tax file numbers and other records. There are going to be these sorts of problems in the future and, whilst these problems might not be of interest to the government, they are certainly of interest to us.

As I said before, this nanny-style legislation is typical of not just this Labor government but all Labor governments. The coalition believes that it is the duty of each Australian citizen to enrol to vote, to accurately maintain the enrolment of their permanent place of residence, to cast a vote and to fully extend preferences to all candidates contesting election for the House of Representatives. However, in typical fashion, Labor is trying to manage the duties of Australian citizens with a 'we know what's best for you' attitude. But, clearly, as shown in so many ways in the last four years, the government does not know what is best for the Australian people.

I find it incomprehensible that this Labor government cannot see that this bill will corrupt the integrity of the electoral roll. Taking away the responsibility for maintaining correct address details from Australian electors will significantly increase the potential for errors on the electoral roll. While the Labor government may argue that the percentage of errors will be minor, a handful of incorrect enrolments could be enough to win or lose a highly marginal seat. Given the hung parliament situation we are currently operating in, I thought Labor would be doing anything it could to reduce the risk of it losing a seat due to administrative errors by the AEC. Although the changes in this bill can be easily viewed as nothing but a ploy by the Labor Party and the Greens to improve their electoral chances at the expense of the integrity of the electoral roll, we all know what lengths these parties already go to in order to gain an extra vote.

I will take this very brief opportunity before the adjournment debate begins to make a comment about a couple of things that took place in the last couple of elections. I will start with the most recent one. At the 2010 election, I had personal experience concerning the integrity of the electoral roll as taken up by my major opponent. There is an address in Cowan, 64 Wanneroo Road, Marangaroo, which is the address of basically the only house in Marangaroo. The house is on the major axial route of Wanneroo Road. I was aware of this house because it had been reported to me as being derelict. It had been trashed by the former tenant probably over a year before the 2010 election. I was made aware of this house due to complaints from local residents and I was of the view—and I had it verified on several occasions between then and the 2010 election—that this house was absolutely derelict and that no-one could live in it. I was surprised to then find that two people were on the electoral roll for that address, which I found very odd because there had never been lights on at night and there had never been any signs of actual presence in the building. However, what did occur was that basically at the time—

Debate interrupted.