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

I appreciate the opportunity to continue my remarks from last night, which were interrupted by the adjournment debate. The comments that I was making last night were related to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and to the general concept of the integrity of the electoral roll. As I said last night, I personally experienced a problem with the integrity of the electoral roll in the seat of Cowan and leading up to the 2010 federal election.

My experience related to a house on Wanneroo Road, a major axial route within Cowan. The address was 64 Wanneroo Road, Marangaroo. This house had come to the attention of my office because a number of locals had complained, about a year out from the election, that it had been occupied by squatters and had been pretty much trashed and was completely unliveable. That had been confirmed to me by a couple of different people—people who were reliable sources.

So it came as quite a surprise to have found during a subsequent check of the electoral roll about a month later, as we moved closer to the election, that two names were suddenly enrolled on the electoral roll at that house. The two names were quite familiar to me because they were, in fact, the main supporters of my Labor opponent at the last election. I was again informed that the standard of the house had not improved. Because it was on the route from my office to my home, I drove past the house every day. Whilst I did see a large amount of electoral advertising put up on the walls—apparently contrary to the City of Wanneroo's by-laws, but let us not let that get in the way of matters of integrity—and that there was occasionally a car parked during the day outside the house, there were never any lights on at night. There was never any activity. It seemed to be the same decrepit house that it had always been, or at least that it had been in the months since it was pretty much destroyed. However—surprise, surprise—there were those two names on the electoral roll and they were known to me. I knew exactly who they were.

That is an interesting case when we look at matters to do with the integrity of the roll and I do know that the government has been lecturing and quite sanctimonious on these matters. My personal experience in 2010 was that a couple of dodgy enrolments had taken place and, with the exception of what were obviously campaign meetings in the month before the election, there was never a light on in that house at night. Yet for six months or so there were people on the electoral roll for that house. I am quite sure they were not on my side; my opponent got a couple of extra votes out of that. I decided I was not going to do anything about it before the election, but after the election I approached the AEC and said, 'Well, there's clearly no-one living there, can you investigate that?' Their officers seemed to agree with me that there was no-one there, but it took another six months or so before they changed their enrolment back to where they actually did live. I found it to be quite an interesting experience, and I guess the government should take heed that there are some problems out there and that there are some other problems with the electoral roll that could be fixed up.

I also said last night that there were two things I wanted to mention with regard to matters in Cowan and the integrity of the electoral roll. Back in 2007, when I was first elected, on the night of the election after the polls had closed I was approached by my booth captain for Blackmore Primary School, which was one of the booths in Girrawheen. I was told by the booth captain that he believed that there was one person who had voted three times. They were never in the same shirt, but a very familiar person seemed to show up on two extra occasions after their first vote. They were never carrying my how-to-vote card, not that that should matter, of course. So I asked the booth captain whether he had reported it to the AEC manager. Apparently he had, but I do not know what happened after that. Without doubt there is electoral fraud going on in this country and there are people doing the wrong thing.

As I said last night, the government are very keen on taking these sorts of positions on election funding with bills exactly like this. But it always seems to be the case that whatever they propose absolutely favours their own interests. With electoral funding, unions are of course never part of those sorts of reforms, but any other form of election funding or support is always part of reforms proposed by the government.

If the government genuinely wanted real electoral reform, they would ask for photo ID from people turning up at polling booths. I think that would be quite a step forward. It does seem strange that, for just about anything you do in this country—whether it is turning up for accommodation or turning up to take possession of a package left for you at Australia Post—you are always required to show photo ID, yet for one of the greatest responsibilities you have as a citizen you do not need to identify yourself. All you need to do is assert your identity. All you need to do is say, 'I am such and such,' and they will find that name and just tick it off. If there were a real interest in electoral reform, making sure everyone is exactly who they are meant to be would be the right thing to do—particularly requiring provisional voters to show photographic ID. I think that would be a reasonable step forward.

I stand with the coalition in opposing this legislation. There are better ways to have electoral reform in this country. We will see how this vote goes, but I stand with my coalition colleagues in opposing these ridiculous bills.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. Our side of parliament is about enfranchising people, not ensuring they remain disenfranchised—as many people have been up until now. So many people turn up to vote on election day, find out they are not on the roll and scratch their heads and wonder why. They may now get a bit of an insight into what has gone on.

These two bills amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to allow the Electoral Commissioner to update the address details of an elector on the electoral roll and automatically enrol new electors based on reliable third party information. These bills are based on recommendations of the inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2010 federal election. That committee tabled a report entitled The 2010 federal election report on the conduct of the election and related matters. In the report, the committee said:

When considering electoral reforms, our priority must be: enfranchisement, not disenfranchisement.

That is a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with. The report continued:

The Committee remains concerned about the long-term effects of the decline in enrolment participation rates, and notes that the decline has continued despite ongoing efforts on the part of the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC, to arrest it using measures currently permitted under the Commonwealth Electoral Act.

Over recent years, the AEC has invested substantial funds in encouraging people to enrol and keep their details up to date. Indeed, in the lead-up to the 2007 election, the AEC spent $36 million on a project to increase enrolments, including $14.9 million on pre-election advertising.

In its submission to the committee's inquiry, the AEC said:

If we have to spend $36 million every election year then that is a significant amount of money over successive elections. But, perhaps more importantly, it does not lead to a permanent or long-lasting improvement in the electoral roll. These gains are quickly dissipated months after the close of rolls as people start to move again and the same challenges

There is an ever-growing number of people in Australia who should be on the electoral roll but are not. The Electoral Commissioner told the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that an estimated 1.2 million eligible electors were not on the electoral roll in mid-2009. By the end of December 2009, that number had risen to approximately 1.39 million. By 30 June 2010, that number had grown to 1.59 million people—people who should be electors but are not.

If you were to average that number across the seats represented here in the House, you would come up with a figure of about 10,000 people per electorate who are not voting in elections—for either side. They have no say. It is not participative democracy if there is a large group in the electorate not having a say. In its submission to the committee's investigation of the 2010 election, the AEC addressed the question of the best way, in their view, to deal with this decline in participation. They said:

Our view is that we now need to go further with our recommendation, suggesting direct update of the electoral roll based on third party information

I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. These bills will introduce automatic address updating based on third-party data from sources such as state driver-licensing bodies.

When people move house, one of the last things on their minds is changing their enrolment address. There are good reasons for that. It is not something that comes around every month or every quarter as do power bills. It is not something that you necessarily think about outside of an election period. This happens with other services as well. Some of the things we all use which are only paid annually or which are only renewed every three or five years, such as a licence perhaps—that sort of updating can simply slip people's minds. They eventually catch up, but in the meantime, especially when it comes to enfranchisement—the right to vote—it can actually impact quite severely and take that right away.

In addition to the challenges of encouraging people to update their address, the AEC actually takes people off the roll without their consent. Information from reliable third-party sources is currently used by the AEC to monitor the accuracy of the roll and to remove people from the roll. Current examples of data used in datamatching are Australia Post redirection advices, Centrelink change of address advices and some state motor transport data on new licences. What that means is that the very data that these bills propose to use to put people on the roll or keep them updated on the roll is currently used to take people off the roll. To those who say there is a lack of integrity in the process, I would say you cannot have it both ways—if there is integrity in the data that is used at the moment to take people off the roll, the integrity in the data should equally be good enough to maintain people on the roll.

The AEC posts out a single monthly mailout to addresses identified by this external data as being addresses of current electors who appear to have moved address without updating their enrolment with the AEC. Last financial year the AEC mailed out over four million letters reminding electors to update their enrolment details. The AEC has advised that response rates were generally between 15 and 20 per cent for the monthly mailouts during periods when there are no major electoral events—when, as I said, the vast majority of the population do not have their minds on what happens in a place like this. Each year approximately two per cent of all electors are removed from the electoral roll by this process. The AEC advised the joint standing committee that the votes of over 200,000 people who had cast pre-poll, absent or provisional votes at the 2010 election were rejected due to those individuals being incorrectly enrolled or not enrolled at all. The Electoral Commission has suggested that 'they are clearly potentially part of the group that have fallen off the roll because, at some stage, they did not respond to an AEC letter' and were removed under this process.

Some of the decline in participation in Australia's elections can also be traced back to a number of people not enrolling for the first time when they turn 18. This is a very longstanding problem, and something that I have direct experience of. I missed out on voting in the 1983 election, having turned 18 only shortly before the election was called. At the first opportunity I had to enrol I went to what I thought was the local AEC office on a Friday afternoon, the last day before enrolments closed. They said to me, 'Sorry, you have turned up at the wrong division—you need to go up the road to the next office'. I had just turned 18 and, like most people of that age in Victoria, I did not have a car, so I can admit here that I missed out on voting in the 1983 election. Subsequently I, like of course many other people in Australia, have continued to exercise my right to vote—a right which is a wonderful thing.

These bills will enable the AEC for the first time to automatically enrol people on the proviso that the Electoral Commissioner is satisfied that the person is entitled to enrol and has lived at an address for at least one month. Under this proposal the AEC would write to the individual that the AEC proposes to enter his or her name and address on the electoral roll, and they will be given 28 days to respond if they do not live at that address or are not entitled to enrol. These bills will allow the AEC to place people on the roll based on external data such as driver licence details, school enrolments, Centrelink information or Australia Post redirections.

This legislation adopts changes that have already been put in place in Victoria and New South Wales. Automatic enrolment was introduced in Victoria and NSW in 2010—slightly different systems but they certainly go along the same path as this legislation. The SmartRoll project, established by the New South Wales Electoral Commission, minimises the need to complete and lodge enrolment forms; electors who have changed their address details and notified a New South Wales agency of that change are automatically enrolled at their new address. It has been estimated that over 500,000 electors change their address each year in New South Wales. SmartRoll will help to ensure that eligible voters retain their right to vote. The Victorian Electoral Commission estimates that there may be up to 180,000 electors in Victoria with out-of-date details. After finding voters that have moved without notifying the VEC, the VEC writes asking them to change their address. The average response rate to this program over the five years to 2009 was only 23.5 per cent and dropping. According to the VEC:

Generally, people are becoming less inclined to respond to written communications.

The intent of these bills is also to ensure that young people get on the roll as soon as they are eligible to vote. Before the introduction of SmartRoll in New South Wales the enrolment of young people, those who have just turned 18, was low. Of the approximately 67,000 17- to 18-year-olds who were registered with the New South Wales Office of the Board of Studies and completed the HSC in 2009, only 50 per cent enrolled to vote. That was even after a letter was sent to students asking them to enrol. It only got through to half of them. This lack of enrolment can lead to many of these potential electors not exercising their right to vote for a considerable time. The Victorian Electoral Commission, upon adopting an automatic system, reported back on its success:

We wrote … telling them that they were on the roll and they had 14 days to let us know if we had got it wrong. We received no correspondence from anyone saying that we got it wrong, due to the safeguards that we had in the process.

The Commonwealth now needs to adopt this legislation because of the impact over time of the New South Wales and Victorian automatic enrolment system working alongside the Commonwealth roll. Since the introduction of SmartRoll in NSW there has been a growing gap between the Commonwealth electoral roll and the New South Wales state roll. As at June 2011 there were around 20,500 additional voters appearing on the New South Wales roll that were absent from the federal electoral roll. Based on the New South Wales Electoral Commission automatically enrolling approximately 10,000 people per month, Antony Green, the well-known political commentator, estimates that there could be a difference of 200,000 people between the Commonwealth and New South Wales state electoral rolls by the time of the 2013 federal election if current provisions remain the same.

As I have said, automatic enrolment is already in place in New South Wales and Victoria, and Queensland is on track to adopt the process after this year's state election. It would appear that if the federal roll does not adopt automatic address change there will be a growing number of people who will be eligible to vote in a state election but excluded from voting federally. The AEC in their submission to the joint parliamentary committee inquiry anticipated that direct enrolment would provide the following benefits: assist eligible persons in meeting their obligation to enrol; build on the direct update model already supported by the Australian government; and balance existing provisions which enable the AEC to remove an eligible elector from the electoral roll where it believes, based on data received from a number of agencies, that an elector is no longer entitled to be enrolled at an address.

On 24 November 2011 the House of Representatives Selection Committee requested the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to inquire into and report on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. Their report on the bill was handed down only recently and the committee recommended that this bill, which is one of two bills in this cognate debate, be passed by the House. In the public hearing held on 8 February 2012, Mr Ed Killesteyn, the Electoral Commissioner of the Australian Electoral Commission, said:

… direct update of elector addresses using reliable third-party information is not only a next logical step in the evolution of electoral roll administrative practices but also consistent with growing expectations of many in the community for seamless use of data across government agencies.

There is a clear trend of declining enrolment participation in Australia. These bills provide the Electoral Commissioner with the ability to use modern processes to protect the participation of eligible Australian citizens in the electoral process. It is therefore a matter of logic that the more people who vote the more accurately parliament will reflect the will of the total electorate. Currently, it is estimated that over one and a half million Australians are not enrolled to vote. As I said, that is an average of 10,000 potential voters for each electorate represented in this House.

These bills will not change the grounds on which a person becomes entitled to enrol or entitled to vote. They will simply enhance the integrity of the Australian electoral roll and help the AEC do its job. I commend these bills to the House.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. I do not support these bills as I believe that they will significantly reduce the integrity of the electoral roll. The integrity of the roll is at the heart of the issue that we are debating today. The integrity of the roll is something that we need and must preserve now and into the future, and we must be very mindful of that with any amendments that are being proposed. We must ensure that wherever possible the integrity of the roll is maintained and that the data contained on that roll is as accurate as it is possible to make it. I do not believe that the proposed bills are the way to go about achieving the integrity of the roll.

We are debating two bills today and I would like to briefly discuss the provisions of each bill. Firstly, there is the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. This bill seeks to amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The amendments provide for the details of an elector to be added to the electoral roll when the commissioner is satisfied that the elector lives at the address. This bill does not propose to directly enrol electors on the roll. However, the other bill being debated today does seek to do this.

This brings me to the second bill being debated, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. This bill does propose to introduce automatic enrolment. Under this bill, amendments are being introduced to provide the Electoral Commissioner with an ability to directly enrol eligible individuals who are not on the electoral roll. This direct enrolment will occur if the commissioner is satisfied that the person has lived at an address for at least one month and the person is not enrolled. This bill also seeks to allow the commissioner to enrol certain persons who have been removed from the electoral roll and to admit their declaration votes.

In Australia, voting is compulsory and it is therefore vitally important to our very democracy that the integrity of the electoral roll is upheld to ensure that we have the most efficient and fair electoral system. I believe the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 as it currently stands is appropriate in respect of enrolments. Section 101 of this act already requires individuals to update their enrolment details within 21 days of residing at their new address for at least one month. A person who fails to comply with this requirement will have to pay a $110 fine as per section 101(6).

An inquiry into the 2010 federal election was recently conducted by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, with numerous electoral matters inquired into and subsequently reported on. The Labor and Greens committee members recommended that eligible electors be put directly on the electoral roll through the introduction of automatic enrolment. Automatic enrolment will mean that individual electors may be put straight onto the roll without an enrolment form ever being filled out by them. Instead, automatic enrolment will occur based on information from other government sources. This is the central provision being introduced that I have several concerns about.

My concerns are threefold: firstly, that the individual responsibility of electors to update their own enrolment details, such as changing their address, will be diluted; secondly, that the accuracy of the information to be relied upon for automatic enrolment is compromised; and, thirdly, that automatic enrolments will erode the integrity of the roll.

In relation to individual responsibility, electors must currently update their own details and the onus is on them to ensure that they do so. However, I am concerned about proposed changes which will permit personal address details of individuals to be changed by the government, on the individual's behalf, without their knowledge or consent. The Australian Electoral Commission's website talks about the importance of the right to vote and actually states:

The right to vote is one of the privileges of living in a democracy—you get a say in who runs your country.

I could not agree more with this point.

In their dissenting report on the conduct of the 2010 election, the coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters noted that Australian citizens have four duties in relation to their enrolment:

The Gillard government does not have faith in the Australian people to maintain these responsibilities. It should not be seeking to dilute these duties. These are not obligations that are too onerous for Australian citizens and electors. If individuals are told they do not have to take proactive steps to ensure that their electoral details are correct, then they will just presume that their engagement with government agencies will guarantee the accuracy of their electoral details. This is a direct dilution of an elector's responsibility to compulsorily enrol.

The other concern I have with regard to automatic enrolment relates to the accuracy of the information relied upon to make entries on the roll. An inquiry into automatic enrolment in New South Wales made reference to this issue, stating:

One of the concerns about receiving data from trusted agencies for the purpose of automatic enrolment or automatic update of electors is that any address data sourced from these agencies was not gathered for the purpose of collecting electorate information.

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2012 will allow the Australian Electoral Commission to change elector address details by determining what are 'reliable and current data sources'.

The coalition has concerns about this provision. It does not take into account the fact that the address provided by some electors to particular government agencies is merely a point of contact rather than their actual place of residence. Under this provision, however, this point of contact address may be applied to the electoral roll. Furthermore, if data is being relied upon from state and territory governments, there is an additional risk of error as the accuracy cannot be verified by the Commonwealth. As I mentioned previously, the only way to ensure this information is accurate and to maintain the electoral roll's integrity is to continue to give the responsibility of updating these details to the individual and not to a third party.

The final concern I would like to discuss today is in relation to the impact automatic enrolment will have on the integrity of the electoral roll. I believe this is also closely linked with the issue of individual responsibility of electors, which I have already discussed. The basis of my concern is straightforward: if an individual updates their electoral details, details which they know are accurate and appropriate to them, then the accuracy and therefore the integrity of the roll will be ensured. However, if this responsibility is taken away and given to the Australian Electoral Commission, there is a much higher chance that an error will occur, particularly if this change of address is made without the knowledge of the elector. We must remember also that there are many people who have multiple places of residence and, if their enrolled address is changed without their knowledge, there is clearly a high likelihood that an error will occur and they will be automatically enrolled at an address that is not their principal place of residence.

In their dissenting report on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill, my coalition colleagues highlighted three groups of people who will be impacted by this legislation, to the detriment of the integrity of the roll: firstly, those who have more than one place of residence; secondly, electors who move temporarily; and, thirdly, those people whose place of employment is a residential address or who, for whatever reason, receive mail at a different address. The best way to ensure the integrity of the electoral roll is to maintain the not-so-onerous responsibility on the elector to update their details, not to transfer this responsibility to a third party who could make errors.

Automatic enrolment already occurs in New South Wales and Victoria and has been tested at their recent state elections. Because there are several variations between the federal and state legislation, numerous electors in New South Wales and Victoria are enrolled for state elections but not for federal elections. This means that these electors are sent an enrolment form by the AEC when their details are changed or added to the relevant state electoral roll. Following the New South Wales state election last year, it was found that only 64.3 per cent of those electors who were automatically enrolled for the first time turned out to vote.

Based on the New South Wales experience, the high non-participation rate indicates that the information used to put new electors on the roll is unreliable. This also means that, because incorrect address details have been used on the electoral roll, some electors will be issued with a fine for not voting when it was in fact their information that was incorrect in the first place. Does this sound like a ringing endorsement for automatic enrolment? It certainly does not and I do not support it.

Individual responsibility is a tenet of our great liberal democratic system in Australia and efforts should not be made to dilute this. Electors can and currently do update their enrolment details themselves—these are not onerous requirements. These bills, however, will introduce a system of automatic enrolment which forces government into the lives of people to change their enrolment details, at times without their knowledge.

I therefore oppose these bills on the three premises I have outlined: firstly, the dilution of individual responsibility; secondly, the problems with ensuring the accuracy of information which is being relied upon to change an elector's details without their knowledge; and, thirdly, the overall impact on the integrity of the electoral roll. Let us not have government intrude into the lives of Australians and let us have confidence that the current responsibilities placed on electors to update their own electoral details are not too onerous. I oppose these bills.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate of Fraser has one of the highest number of enrolled voters in Australia. As a result, we send out hundreds of enrolment forms to potential new electors and it is my pleasure to be able to send out every month hundreds of letters to people who have joined the rolls. It is a genuine delight to welcome somebody onto the electoral rolls.

In Australia we have had compulsory voting since 1924. We have recognised that with the many rights of citizenship there are responsibilities as well. One of those responsibilities is that an elector is required to vote every three years or so in federal elections and every four years or so in state or territory elections. It is a right of all Australians and it is a great privilege, I believe. As other speakers have noted in this debate, there are many countries in the world in which people fight and die for this very right.

High voter participation matters, because we know that in countries where voter turnout is low the voter turnout is unrepresentative. In the United States and the United Kingdom, where about half of the electorate votes, you end up with those who vote not being a representative slice of the electorate. They are too often more affluent, older and better educated. As a result, governments are elected that do not truly represent the demographics of the entire electorate.

When we on this side of the House look at the issue of the electoral roll, we look at it through the lens of Labor values of equity and fairness and our belief that all should participate in the electoral process. But so often we have seen those on the other side of the House approach the issue of enrolment through a partisan lens. In a contribution last night in this debate the member for Moreton referred to the point at which the Howard government closed the electoral rolls, in 2007, attempting to deny tens of thousands of people their say in that election, as one of the more shameful moments in the Australian democracy. That attempt to shut down the electoral rolls is something that this country should never see again.

Why did they do so? We know why. Study after study, including some of my own work, has shown that younger voters are less likely to support the coalition parties. Making a purely political judgment, those on the coalition benches have decided that they should do what they can to deny a say in the electoral process to younger voters.

It is also the case that people who were born overseas are less likely to vote for the coalition. I am sure that those opposite know this as well as I do or any researcher in this space does. That is why they, during the Howard government era, under-resourced efforts to ensure that new migrants join the electoral roll. They have also under-resourced efforts to ensure that young people maintain their electoral enrolment.

We on this side of the House do not believe that elections should be won or lost depending on who you manage to get onto the electoral roll. We believe that all Australians should be on the electoral roll and that election results should turn on the views of all Australians. So we are not prepared to sit back and let an estimated 1.5 million voters stay off the electoral roll.

We are seeing a widening gap between the number of eligible voters and the number who are on the roll. The Australian Electoral Commission has estimated that since 2001 there has been an increase of over half a million electors who are not on the electoral roll. They estimate that, by 2013, 1½ million eligible voters will not be on the roll and will not be able to cast their votes. That is an average of 10,000 people per electorate—10,000 people who do not get to have their say in choosing the direction our nation should take. They do not get to participate in the choice that we will face at the next election between an optimistic, nation-building government—one that is prepared to tackle the big challenges, to make the investments that lay the prosperity for Australia's future—and a constantly carping and negative opposition. They will not get to make that choice. I think it is a pity for any Australian not to get to make that choice.

The reforms in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 have been described as some of the most significant since the very introduction of compulsory voting in 1924. Yet the opposition do not support the bill. As a result, they will keep people off the electoral roll. It is almost as though they believe only the right Australians should be able to vote in elections. Those were the words of the Leader of the Opposition when asked about school retention. Last November he said:

It is all very well keeping kids at school past year 10, but they have got to be the right kids …

The opposition's opposition to this bill reflects the same philosophy. It is all very well having people on the electoral roll, but they have to be the right sort of voters. For those opposite the right sort of voters are not younger voters or overseas born voters, because they know that those voters are particularly unlikely to support the coalition parties. The Leader of the Opposition should explain which voters do not deserve to be on the electoral roll—which voters should not be participating in our electoral process. The Labor Party is founded on democratic principles. It was the progressive parties that saw the introduction of the universal franchise, first getting rid of the property qualifications, then extending the franchise to women and then extending the franchise to Indigenous Australians. All these expansions of the franchise have occurred thanks to the progressive side of politics—and each has been fought by the conservative side of politics. You can go all the way back to the Eureka Stockade movement to find those in the progressive movements in this country encouraging the expansion of the franchise against the conservative moneyed interests who wanted the franchise as restricted as possible.

Labor believes that casting a vote is a basic expression of democratic participation. We want all Australians who are eligible to vote to do so, particularly young people, who are becoming increasingly disengaged from politics. We want them to be engaged in the democratic process. I took the opportunity to look at the share of Australians in the last half-century who have cast a valid vote—the share of Australians who have turned up to the electoral polling place and not voted informally—and that share has been declining. There is a greatly concerning downward trend in the share of Australians, even conditional on being on the roll, who are actively participating in the democratic process. I think that is a pity, and it is something we need to reverse.

As a result of this bill the Electoral Commissioner will be able to directly update an elector's enrolled address following receipt from reliable and current data sources from outside the AEC. That will be particularly important in my own electorate of Fraser, which has a high level of mobility—many Australian moving here to study at one of the great universities in the ACT or to work in the fine Commonwealth Public Service. This bill will enable them to maintain their democratic rights to vote and participate by making sure that their record on the electoral roll remains accurate. At the moment eligible electors are being removed from the roll despite the AEC having accurate information of their current address. That is having a detrimental effect on enrolment rates, and we want to change that.

Under this bill an elector will be notified of the intention to enrol them at a new residential address. They will be given an opportunity to object to the change, and people who are not on the roll will still need to enrol in accordance with the current requirements of the Electoral Act. In response, there has been some scaremongering, and I think this scaremongering has been put to bed most nicely by the member for Melbourne Ports, who has noted that between 1999 and 2010 there were six electoral events, including a referendum, and 72 proven cases of electoral fraud. Within those six events, approximately 72 million votes were cast. As the member for Melbourne Ports points out, this is a fraud rate of one in one million. This is not a problem that should cause us to hold back 1½ million Australians from the electoral roll.

I am proud of the fact that my own electorate of Fraser has a lower informal voting rate than the national average, but I am concerned by the fact that that informal voting rate has risen—from 2,679 voters in 2007 to 5,171 voters in 2010. I do not want to represent an electorate in which everyone has not had their say. I want that informal voting rate to be as low as possible. I want Australians to be participating in the democratic process.

In Disconnected I encourage civic engagement, contacting politicians and participating in the political process. In recent elections we have seen one out of 10 Australians failing to participate in the electoral process, even those who are on the roll—either failing to show up to the polling booth or spoiling the ballot paper. That is emblematic of a wider disengagement across other aspects of civic participation. In Australia it is a democratic right and responsibility to cast a vote and have your voice counted in the choice of government.

The next election will be a critical election for our nation's future. It will be one in which the Australian people have a clear choice between the economic management that saw us through the global financial crisis and an approach to economic management that says, 'When downturns hit, governments should cut back and cause Australia to slide into recession.' We have an opposition with a $70 billion black hole—$70 billion of undisclosed cuts—and whose first priority will be to cut taxes on the most carbon-polluting goods, to cut taxes for the big miners and to reinstate a private health insurance rebate for millionaires and billionaires but who, when asked about an issue like a national disability insurance scheme, say, 'Well, we don't know if we can do that straightaway; that's not a priority for us.' The opposition, if elected, would cut 12,000 Public Service jobs, and they have said that the axe would swing hardest on the ACT. The member for North Sydney talks about making 12,000 Canberra public servants redundant. When the issue arose, we heard the member for Kooyong interject, 'And that's just for starters.'

We are proud of our record. We are proud to go to the Australian people. We want to go to the next election with the biggest rolls possible—with as many Australians as possible on the rolls and eligible to participate. Ours is not a philosophy that the franchise should be restricted—that it should be kept to only the right sort of people. We want those 1½ million eligible Australians to be able to cast their vote at the next election, because we believe in the fundamental values of equality, democracy and fairness. I commend this bill to the House.

Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was listening to the comments of the member for Fraser with great interest and was very surprised to hear him cast aspersions on us on this side of the House, saying that we do not want to encourage people to participate in the democratic right of voting, which is an absolutely outrageous claim. He was talking about welcoming 100 people to his electorate every month. I also have a high turnover on my electoral roll and I really care about making sure that the roll has integrity. At the moment my roll does not have integrity. So I am disappointed that the member for Fraser would cast such aspersions on this side of the House.

The bills before the House are the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. The first bill seeks to provide a mechanism whereby the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC, can automatically update details relevant to an elector in terms of residential address, based upon information obtained from sources other than direct advice to the AEC by that elector. The second bill is designed to expand the implications of the first by allowing the AEC to enrol new voters directly to the electoral roll where the Electoral Commissioner has been satisfied the person is eligible to be on the roll and has been residing at an address for a period of one month. Quoting directly from the explanatory memorandum, the bills will:

The amendments afforded by both bills move the AEC toward an automatic enrolment capability whereby the AEC can automatically update when an elector changes address or becomes eligible to be on the roll.

I hold grave concerns about the current quality of the electoral roll, particularly within my own electorate, as I have already mentioned. Only within the last month I was in contact with the AEC directly in respect to inconsistencies in the roll for my electorate, specifically the omission and removal of persons from the roll. In several cases, this related to electors who were removed from the roll without a change of address or change of electoral details in any way, shape or form. In this instance the AEC investigated and advised my office of the outcome, that being that some of the processes they had in place had inadvertently removed a number of eligible electors, without justification, from the electoral role. It just so happens that those people that contacted my office that were removed from the roll were actual conservative voters. There is a bit of a concern there.

This hiccup in the system I understand has now been fixed. But what concerns me most about this seemingly minor procedural error is how it could happen in the first place. How can a system based on a premise that details can only be changed following formal advice from the elector remove people from the roll? If this can happen now with a system reliant on elector contact, what are the checks and balances to be in place when the system no longer relies upon an elector as the best source of information? The explanatory memorandum, as I have been stated, notes 'analysis of reliable and current data sources'. My question remains: what are the checks and balances? By whom and how is this analysis of data determined to be reliable? Integrity of the electoral roll is an absolute must. At no time should the opportunity exist, or be allowed to develop, where corruption of the data contained within the roll occurs or can occur, nor should the situation be allowed to develop where the individual person can shirk their responsibility in terms of maintaining accurate records for the AEC. It is not optional to vote in local, state and federal elections; it is mandatory. The ramifications in terms of electoral validity, should there be doubt in the integrity of the electoral roll or corruption of data, are broad and erode the very foundations upon which our voting system sits.

Similarly, the legislation has been designed by Labor and the Greens solely for electoral advantage. In preparing this speech I noted the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters released a report in July 2011 relating to an inquiry into the 2010 federal election. The Labor and Greens members on that committee prepared recommendations, one of which was the introduction of automatic enrolment—a situation whereby an individual elector will have their details entered directly onto the electoral roll without the need for them even to contact the AEC. This, in the view of the coalition, has privacy implications on top of the concerns relating to data integrity. I can think of many a situation whereby an elector may have an address other than their specific home address in order to address some set of circumstances in their life, be it personal or otherwise. Government has yet to mandate that a person can only have one address. What of the people who are employed in fly-in fly-out occupations where they have multiple addresses? What of people who own multiple properties? What of people who are forced to move temporarily due to circumstance—for example, bushfires, floods and cyclones? Certainly this is the case within my own electorate. I can cite further examples of why people may have alternative addresses. But the issue is not the address; the issue with these bills is once again a government seeking to again denigrate the personal responsibility expected of individual Australians when it comes to managing their own privacy and their obligations in terms of correct and accurate electoral details for the AEC and ultimately the electoral roll.

As I have demonstrated, there are factors at play which cause me great concern. To add further substance, all we need to do is look at the New South Wales and Victoria examples. Both Labor governments prior to the last state elections introduced automatic enrolment, a tactic designed to advantage both Labor and the Greens. Unfortunately, a number of the electors were enrolled for only the state election and not for the federal election, due to differences in state and federal legislation. Additionally, when an elector has been added to the roll or has had their details changed, they are sent an enrolment form by the AEC. Antony Green noted in an article on 16 July 2007 that only 64.3 per cent of the first-time voters who were automatically enrolled prior to the New South Wales state election actually turned out to vote. The low turnout suggests that the information used to put those electors on the roll may have been unreliable. To take this example a step further, if the lower rate of turnout was a result of those electors being unaware that they were on the roll, how could they be fined for not voting if the AEC chose to follow that path?

The coalition remains concerned with the potential for electoral fraud. At present the process of being added to the roll or changing one's details is evidenced by an AEC document signed by the elector. This singular event in any formal legal proceeding for fraudulent voting activity provides a sound basis for the determination of elector knowledge. With the implementation of an automated system utilising data sources external to the AEC determined by the AEC to be reliant and current, it is my assertion that this in fact dissolves elector responsibility and makes the process of investigating and prosecuting electoral fraud substantially more difficult. We on this side of the House have voiced our disappointment with the AEC's attitude to the questioning of prosecuting cases of fraudulent voting. Despite there being over 20,000 multiple voters at the 2007 election, not one has been prosecuted.

If I thought for one moment that the initiatives being proposed by these bills were without risk to the integrity and ongoing confidence of the electoral roll, ensured the integrity of the roll and were measures designed to ensure equality in the roll I would consider supporting these bills. However, clearly these bills ring alarm bells and prompt more questions than answers. Any measure to divest individual electors of their responsibilities in terms of accuracy in AEC and electoral roll details is not warranted, nor do I believe it is the role of the AEC to make a determination as to what resources are reliable and accurate. The view of the coalition echoes this point. The AEC is not equipped, nor should it be empowered, to make determinations as to what is reliable and accurate in external data sources. In addition, I have been unable to determine whether a suitable risk assessment has been undertaken on the roll or if in fact a document risk analysis reviewing the potential impact of the measures being introduced by these bills has been conducted.

To add further food for thought, how accurate are the sources of data being considered? Are they actually fit for purpose? An audit report by the ANAO, 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.

Such inconsistency in Commonwealth data is clearly not acceptable or legitimate for the AEC to update the electoral roll. How accurate and trusted are other Commonwealth data sources? It is the assertion of the coalition that any external data sources which the AEC may draw on to update electoral roll details are potential risks to the integrity of the roll. Without integrity, the roll becomes a tainted record, one that potentially has the capacity to damage public trust in the roll and the electoral process.

In conclusion, the amendments proposed by these bills before the House in essence provide the mechanisms for the AEC to automatically update elector details and to automatically enrol new electors. The New South Wales and Victorian state Labor governments introduced such measures prior to recent elections in both states not as a value-added initiative to the electoral roll or to boost integrity in the roll but for electoral advantage for Labor and the Greens. We talk about responsibility and empowering people, yet the measures sought through these bills would diminish the responsibility of the elector to maintain accurate records in terms of their address and electoral compliance. As I have stated, the integrity of the electoral roll must be maintained. Opening the way for the AEC to source data from external resources without the proper risk assessments and without definitive knowledge of the accuracy of those records can lead to only one result—that is, a loss of integrity. Without integrity, the very electoral system which the electoral roll underpins will became tainted, resulting in a loss of public faith and credibility and in the potential for illegal electoral activities, including the instance of electoral fraud.

So, no, Mr Deputy Speaker, I cannot support these bills. Without 100 per cent compliance to integrity and without value of data, the only way to ensure the electoral roll remains true is the continuation of current practices. That includes the responsibility of individual electors to maintain accurate details for the roll and the prosecution of those who fail to enrol or who seek to manipulate the roll for some advantage.

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

I am pleased to contribute to the debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. These bills amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act. They arise from the inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the conduct of the 2007 federal election. The first bill is said to implement the government's response to recommendation 10 of that report and the second to recommendations 1 and 24. I need hardly add that these recommendations were not supported by the coalition members on the committee. The key provisions in the set of bills before us today will do two principal things: firstly, they will allow the Electoral Commissioner to directly update an elector's enrolled address following the receipt and analysis of what is determined by the AEC to be reliable and current data, from sources outside those already maintained by the AEC, which indicates that an elector has moved residential address; and, secondly, they will grant the AEC the capacity to directly and automatically enrol new electors.

What is the framework in which the coalition analyses the policy measures proposed in the bills which are put before the House for its consideration this morning? The coalition approaches these bills as it does every piece of legislation brought forward by the Rudd and Gillard governments on electoral matters and the electoral roll—in a spirit of intelligent scepticism. Naturally, we wish to believe the best of this government and all who comprise it, but as that great conservative statesman Ronald Reagan so well articulated, a good principle by which to live your life is 'trust, but verify'. As we apply this principle to the motives which may lie behind the Rudd and Gillard governments bringing forward this package of changes to the law as it governs the integrity of the electoral roll, we think it is important to look at the historical matrix and ask ourselves the question: does the Australian Labor Party have form when it comes to rorting the electoral roll?

The answer to that question is very plainly on the historical record. The Australian Labor Party does have form when it comes to rorting the electoral roll. I am sure you are familiar, Mr Deputy Speaker Leigh, with the Shepherdson inquiry, which looked into matters of electoral roll integrity in the state of Queensland, and I am sure you would be familiar with the episode in which a member of the Queensland parliament and former state secretary of the Queensland ALP was asked, under cross-examination, about an address he was listed as living at which had appeared on the roll some years before. He was asked whether he had actually lived at that address. After being forced to admit that he had never lived at that address, he retired to consider his position. Very shortly after, the parliamentary career of Mike Kaiser came to an end. I note parenthetically that, happily, his very good friend the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy put him into a $400,000-a-year job as the head of government relations at NBN Co. An onerous job, you might think—managing relations with the government when the company is 100 per cent owned by the government—but far be it from me to ask whether the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy had carefully turned his mind to the question of whether the government was getting value for money.

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Is this relevant to the legislation? Also, the assertion about the appointment of Mike Kaiser to NBN Co. is incorrect. That was not a decision of the minister.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I return to the conceptual and philosophical framework in which the coalition analyses whether the changes to the legislation regarding administration of the electoral roll put forward by the Rudd and Gillard governments have merit and whether they ought to be supported. I am making the point to assure the House of the careful historical context within which we consider this question. We approach the question of the merits of this legislation in a spirit of intelligent scepticism. Having applied that analysis to this legislation, we are reluctantly forced to conclude that we are not satisfied of the bona fides of the government in bringing forward this legislation. We are not satisfied that their motives are pure and beyond reproach.

Let me make three points in the brief time I have available to me. Firstly, on this side of the House we consider that it is entirely appropriate that electors should bear responsibility for taking the necessary action to change their own address on the electoral roll. Secondly, we note with concern that the bills before the House fail to implement important safety mechanisms which were recommended in the joint standing committee's report. Thirdly, and consequently, the package of measures contained in these two bills threatens the integrity of the electoral roll and nothing could be more serious when it comes to the continuing operation of the tremendously successful Australian parliamentary democracy in which we all take justified pride. We must be tremendously sceptical of changes—no matter how high-minded the stated motives for those changes—which, on analysis, present the real and present danger of undermining the confidence of the citizens of this country in the democratic process and which are so important to the maintenance of this tremendously successful parliamentary democracy in Australia.

Let me turn, firstly, to the question of personal responsibility. As you would be aware, under the law today citizens have an obligation to enrol to vote and to accurately maintain their enrolment at their permanent place of residence. We do not think that these requirements are unreasonable and we fundamentally object to the measures in this bill, which would remove that responsibility from an individual. We think it is poor policy and objectionable in principle. We also take the view that the positive action required of a citizen to notify of his or her change of address is not unduly onerous. We think it is a perfectly reasonable responsibility to expect a citizen of our democracy to exercise. In addition, I note that the Australian Electoral Commission regularly conducts information campaigns to encourage Australians both to enrol and to maintain the currency and accuracy of their enrolment. I have myself participated at forums in local high schools in my electorate where the Australian Electoral Commission has been informing 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds about the importance of getting on the roll.

The second point I wish to make is on the grave failure in this bill to implement vital protections recommended in the joint standing committee's report. In its report the committee was careful to recommend a number of very important preconditions to the notion that the AEC should be able to obtain data from external sources to update the roll. The first precondition was that the elector should provide their proactive and specific consent to opt in for the data to be used to update the roll, and the second was that there must be surety that the proof of identity processes used by the respective government agencies have sufficient integrity. What is proposed in this bill is that a data source which has not previously had anything to do with the electoral roll or the integrity of the electoral roll is now to be drawn on for the purpose of automatically updating somebody's enrolment. Yet we have had no satisfaction provided to us by the Rudd-Gillard government as they bring forward this legislation as to the methods which will be used to ensure the integrity of the data in that external data source which is now to be used for the purpose of upgrading the electoral roll. That is a vital protection which one would expect as a bare minimum before a change of this magnitude were proposed; extraordinarily, there has been no satisfaction provided to the coalition side of this House as to the adequacy of those protective mechanisms.

That brings me to the third point that I want to address, which is the vital need to protect the integrity of the electoral roll and the loss of integrity to the roll which will inevitably result from these ill-conceived changes contained in the bill before the House. When you think about the matter, a very important safeguard of the integrity of the roll is that the citizen is required to take a proactive step to update the commission as to a change in his or her address. Amongst other things, that means that there is a paper trail which can be followed to verify any particular entry in the roll, because there must be a form signed by the relevant citizen or there must be alternative high-quality data sources that are based upon processes of proven existing integrity and which can be resorted to in order to verify the quality of the information in the roll.

The measure proposed before the House today does not build in those safeguards. Therefore, it represents a fundamental undermining of the processes which exist for a very good reason, which is to safeguard the integrity of the roll, which in turn is vital to underpinning public confidence in our parliamentary democracy. If confidence in the integrity of the roll is lost, if a suspicion emerges that there are large numbers of entries on the roll which do not accurately reflect the existence and the true address of those individuals, that will greatly undermine confidence and, in turn, will undermine the quality of our parliamentary democracy.

In this regard, I note that in the minister's second reading speech and in the explanatory memorandum we are told that the Australian Electoral Commission will rely on data sources that are 'reliable' and 'current'. Those words appear nowhere in the bill. The bill does not explicitly require that the data sources used by the AEC are 'reliable' or 'current'. The only requirement is for the commissioner in his or her absolute discretion to be satisfied that the elector lives at another address.

This is a highly dangerous degree of discretion to give to the commissioner, and the danger inherent in that is reinforced by the fact that on all the evidence available about large-scale databases managed by the Commonwealth government, there are very large numbers of false positives. There are very large numbers of entries in those databases which do not correspond on a one-to-one basis with real, living people. As other speakers from this side have done, I refer the House to a 1999 report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration which found that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people. Similarly, an audit report found that 'up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records are probably for people who are deceased'.

I cannot comment as to whether any of those people appear in Labor Party branch records. I have a strong suspicion that they do, based upon the evidence of the Shepherdson inquiry and other indicators that we have seen of a lack of commitment on a day-to-day basis by the Labor Party to the integrity of the roll and indeed based upon the conduct of individuals, including Labor parliamentarians, to actively rort the roll. It is because of that grubby and shameful record that we look at this set of provisions with a degree of intelligent scepticism. There is a high burden of proof which ought be discharged if these fundamental changes are to be made, and that burden of proof has not been discharged. These changes are a threat to our democracy and we strongly oppose them.

Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the many things that is internationally recognised and respected about our great nation is the strength and fairness of our democracy. While we do not pretend that our system of democracy is without flaws, we know that as Australians we have every opportunity to contribute to the national debate about the issues that impact us and the issues that are important to us. In fact, many would say that my very presence in this place, my election to the House of Representatives, is illustrative of the fact that anyone with the passion and the desire to make a difference in their local community can actually do so. In this country, age, race and gender are not characteristics that exclude individuals from having a voice that is heard. Every single adult Australian citizen has a voice, and they have the opportunity to use it. They have the opportunity to simply stand up and put themselves forward to participate in the national debate and to be part of democracy in action. It is the very fact that people can have a say, even if it is to disagree with the majority, that adds strength to our voting system.

Democracy is a concept that is thousands of years old and has taken many forms over the ages, but it is a concept which is empowered by our voting system, a voting system that gives every citizen—every man and woman over the age of 18—the opportunity to vote for their representative in local, state and federal elections. One voice equals one vote, and the majority vote rules. In a practical sense, it is a system which enables us at the federal level to have a say about who we want to represent us on the issues that affect our daily lives and will determine the future direction of our country. And it is this system that we are here to debate today as we speak to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the cognate Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Electoral Participation) Bill 2012.

These bills propose fundamental changes to the powers of the Australian Electoral Commission under the Commonwealth Electoral Act and consequently serious changes to our voting system, changes that I have serious reservations about. The electoral roll is one of the key tools that enables democracy and facilitates our voting system. It is a key tool that ensures that our elections are fair and unbiased and it prevents electoral corruption. The accuracy of this tool is vital. Australia relies on it to ensure that no-one has more than one vote and no-one misses out on their chance to vote. But the key changes outlined in this legislation have the ability to compromise, rather than strengthen, our democracy by threatening the accuracy of the electoral roll. This legislation effectively takes away the responsibility and authority from voters and instead hands them to the Australian Electoral Commission.

Let us make it very clear what this debate is about. This is not a debate about the need to improve the quality and the consistency of the electoral roll. While there is no denying that more can be done to further increase the accuracy of the electoral roll, the debate that we are having in this place is not about the need to do so. No, what this is about is the means by which these bills seek to achieve greater accuracy. Today the debate is about the vague and nondescript powers that these bills provide the Australian Electoral Commission with. It is about the lack of accountability that there will be for the Australian Electoral Commission in determining who should and should not be on the roll and where they should be enrolled. It is about the lack of external scrutiny of the processes and information that the AEC will use when making a decision about what details are current and what details are outdated.

These bills bring us to a point of automatic electoral enrolment. We know that the Labor and Greens members who were on the recent Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2010 federal election even went so far as to recommend that automatic enrolment be instigated, so it is no wonder that this Labor government is putting forward legislation that seeks to achieve this. These bills will allow individuals to be put on the electoral roll without their knowledge or their input. These bills also provide for individuals' addresses to be automatically updated by the Australian Electoral Commission without their knowledge.

We members of the Liberal Party have always believed in individual responsibility. We believe that every single person is responsible for their own actions. We also believe that it is not an overwhelming responsibility for citizens to be responsible for their own enrolment, to take the simple steps of completing a form to enrol to vote and submitting another form to update their enrolment address. But these bills ultimately undermine the responsibilities of Australian citizens and they detract from societal civic accountability.

I am concerned that this devalues the privilege that we share, as Australian citizens, to have a voice and a vote. We cannot afford to take this privilege for granted, and it should be highly respected. The last thing that we, as policymakers and leaders, should be encouraging is for citizens to lose respect for mechanisms that ensure equitable and stable democracy in our country—that is, an electoral roll that is managed by the citizens themselves, with the responsibility for updating it in their hands. By removing the responsibility for people to update their details on the electoral roll, we are breeding complacency and disengaging our constituency. This is a dangerous path to travel and one that we on this side of the House believe should be avoided.

Not only is personal responsibility a key factor in this issue; the irregularities that will potentially arise on the electoral roll as a result of automatic enrolment and updating of details are a serious concern. These bills will provide the Australian Electoral Commission with the discretion to determine what data they utilise to inform their decisions, and the combination of data sources that the Australian Electoral Commission would use to identify voters and update their details cannot be relied upon to provide accurate details. This measure makes the assumption that other data sources will be up to date and accurate, but this assumption is misguided. Not only this, but it assumes that the AEC will be able to make value judgments about which information is legitimate without any requirement on the AEC's part to justify their choices. An individual alone should be advising, firsthand, about their current details. As in so many other areas of life, when you are dealing with only half the information and half the picture, there is a large margin for human error. The opportunity for irregularity is simply too high, and it is a risk that we, for the sake of our democracy, cannot afford to take.

Not only this, but with inaccuracy comes the opportunity for abuse. With individuals being unaware of their enrolment, the opportunity for someone with malicious intent to manipulate and abuse this, effectively taking away a person's opportunity for a voice, is a real threat, a threat that I do not want to see any opportunity or any advantage given to.

There is tangible proof that systems of automatic enrolment are fraught with errors and actually decrease engagement and accuracy. Last year this system was employed for the New South Wales state election. The results speak for themselves: 35.7 per cent of people who had been automatically enrolled did not turn up to vote. It is clear that while individuals may be enrolled, there is no guarantee that their details are correct—such a high non-participation rate demonstrates this.

In my electorate of Longman, more people rent than have a mortgage. Clearly they will be changing their addresses on a reasonably frequent basis, and it is simply not possible that second-hand information obtained by the Australian Electoral Commission will be able to accurately keep up with these changes. It is up to us in this place to be doing more to encourage those young people to get enrolled on the electoral roll and to encourage all citizens to keep their electoral enrolment up to date. Education is the key, and engaging with our constituents and our communities is vital. It is through continued effort on these fronts that we will see people take their personal responsibilities seriously and understand how they go about undertaking their responsibilities.

Only through enrolment details that are advised by the individuals themselves can we maintain an accurate electoral enrolment roll and, consequently, a voting system that gives every adult citizen the chance to have an equal vote. I am aware that for the most part, and particularly for young people, a lack of knowledge is a barrier to getting on the electoral roll. Many young people are unaware of their responsibility to enrol as soon as they turn 18 and believe that they can do it before the next election. Others are confused about how this process takes place and mistakenly believe that as long as they are enrolled before polling day they will be able to vote. The key here is not automation, but education. Only a concerted educational push that engages voters, rather than disengages and distances them, can resolve this issue.

In Australia we are afforded many privileges and opportunities to contribute to the future of our country. The views and ideas of all of our citizens are valued, respected and encouraged. Our voting system is prized as an example of democracy in action. We are beholden as policymakers to uphold and strengthen this voting system, not to undermine it. These bills, and the changes they intend to make to the Electoral Act, will indeed undermine our voting system. They will remove the responsibilities of individuals, and will instead grant additional powers to the Australian Electoral Commission, making the waters of electoral enrolment murky and vague and breeding irregularities that have the potential to be manipulated. This is not what we want to see happen to our voting system, and this is why I oppose these bills.

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

It is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the member for Longman and his outstanding contribution to this debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Refendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. I congratulate him on it. As a young person in this parliament—the youngest ever elected to federal parliament—he knows that the Labor Party's false and misleading campaign that these bills are about ensuring more young people are enrolled to vote is more about the Labor Party seeking electoral benefit rather than any detailed evidence to the contrary. It really sums up why these bills are so hideous and should be opposed by this House and by the Senate. These are bad bills and they should be opposed absolutely.

We have said this time and time again, and I note the work of the member for Mackellar, the shadow spokesperson for this, and in particular Senator Scott Ryan, who has done outstanding work exposing the flaws in this legislation brought again before this parliament. The Labor Party, and their coalition partner the Greens, see this legislation as a way to obtain some sort of electoral benefit by reducing the integrity of the electoral roll, which is one of the most important and fundamental elements of our democracy.

We have seen this with state Labor governments in New South Wales and Victoria. The member for Casey, a Victorian, knows about this and saw it in operation. It should be noted that no matter how much they fiddle with the electoral laws, nothing will save a bad Labor government from facing the appropriate treatment by the electors. Might I add, that nothing will save Anna Bligh's government this weekend, and nor should it, when the electorate gets to speak about its performance.

This is purely and simply about weakening the integrity of the roll, significantly decreasing privacy for individual electors and removing virtually all individual responsibility for electors to take care of their own enrolment. I am enjoying very much Karl Rove's book, and I enjoyed particularly the section where he recounted details of the 2000 US election, which is a very famous election where the result in Florida became absolutely vital to the result of that election. The Democrats in the United States took significant and sustained legal action questioning the integrity of the voting system. They did that because—and much as I admire the United States for their democratic principles and their commitment to freedom and their world leadership in that matter—the integrity of their electoral roll is not one of their high points. What that led to was—in this election for the presidency, the greatest prize in US politics, the leader of the free world—a month of uncertainty as the Democratic party and its candidate, Al Gore, questioned the result in Florida, which was extremely close. They took it through all the court systems that they possibly could, and the matter was not resolved until late December 2000, a month or so after the initial election had actually taken place.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with the Democrats doing that; it was completely within the US law and their system. However, it showed that when you reduce the integrity of your roll, you open it up to genuine question. This bill does that. This bill hands unelected bureaucrats the power to remove electors or change the enrolment of electors on a whim, using data sources which they describe as reliable. This is this parliament handing over to a bunch of bureaucrats the opportunity for them to change an individual's electoral information. We should be very careful if we take this step because this goes very much to the integrity of our roll. Each of us in this place relies very much on knowing that when we go into an election campaign that, in large part, the electoral roll reflects our communities, reflects who lives there and so forth. Sadly, there are always people who do not take responsibility for themselves and do not inform the Electoral Commission of their movements. There are people who forget and there can be other circumstances where people do not immediately inform the Electoral Commission, but they get time. It is not as if people are unaware of their obligations—they get told. If people are not aware of their obligations, we should certainly be educating them better.

But what we should not be doing is taking out of their hands the responsibility to ensure their personal information on the electoral roll is up to date. It is their responsibility to do that so they can participate in deciding who will govern their country, who will govern their state and who will sit on their council. This bill will reduce the ability of people to look after that responsibility themselves. It hands to unelected bureaucrats—people who are not responsible to this parliament and not responsible to the electorate—the ability to play around, within their own guidelines, with people's electoral information.

As the member for Longman pointed out, this legislation raises all sorts of questions about people with temporary addresses or residences. As we know, there are increasing numbers of people working in fly-in fly-out industries—in the mining industry, in particular—in places like Queensland. Even in my home state, with the developments at Olympic Dam, we are seeing increasing numbers of fly-in fly-out workers. Some of these workers take the opportunity to spend their weekends back at home in Adelaide and its surrounds, flying to mine sites across the state—even across the country—to earn their money during the week. In fact, the husband of one of my staff is an engineer at a goldmine. He flies in and flies out each week. The question arises: if the Electoral Commission decides, for whatever reason, that he is no longer a permanent resident at his home address—that he is now a permanent resident at the mine site—should it change his electorate?

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He would not be able to vote you out.

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

The minister is right—he would not be able to. And Mayo, as you know, is a tight marginal seat.

Mr Crean interjecting—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

What he does with his vote is his decision. We are not like the Labor Party—we do not force people to follow the ticket. We do not ask for ballots to be shown. We just let people get on and make their own decisions based on the policies put before the electorate. I am very happy for the people of Mayo to make their judgments based on what I do and put to them before the next election. I think the minister at the table knows that. I think he is just being a little frivolous, which is disappointing because he is not a minister I ever thought would be frivolous in this place.

But this legislation is not frivolous. These bills are very serious. They are a very serious attack on the fundamentals of our democracy and on the integrity of the electoral roll and they are designed purely for the political benefit of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens, their coalition partner. They see the opportunity to drag in votes which they think are rightfully theirs. They base their judgment on data which suggests that people who are not enrolled would be more likely to vote for the Labor Party or, at worst, the Australian Greens, from whom the Labor Party know they will get the preferences in the end.

So they are creating law to make it easier for bureaucrats to make decisions about electoral enrolment rather than ensuring that electors make those decisions. We should oppose this. These are bad bills and this is a bad direction for our country to go in. We have a tremendously successful electoral system. We are very lucky that our elections are largely free of corruption. There have been very few examples of serious matters being taken to the Court of Disputed Returns. That is something we should be very proud of. Generally we know that the winner announced on election night—there are exceptions of course and the last federal election was one of those—will indeed turn out to be the winner. In fact, following the 2007 election, I remember an American friend commenting to me that he was always taken aback at how simply a change of government occurs in Australia—how people accept the result, the verdict of the electorate, and move on. The new government come in and make their decisions—sadly, this one has made some very bad decisions and we are suffering from that now—and we accept the fact of democracy and that we put our fate in the hands of the voters. But we do so on the basis that we completely trust the integrity of the electoral roll.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Let me tell you, Member for Moreton, that I will trust the voters of Queensland this Saturday. I reckon they will get it right, as Bob Hawke once said.

We need to guard against moves which will weaken the integrity of the electoral roll, especially moves based on spurious reasons which, at their heart, are more about political benefit for one side or another. That is why these bills should be opposed. They should be opposed by this House and, if they get to the next house, they should be opposed there as well.

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

I join with the other speakers from this side of the House in opposing the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. In following the member for Mayo, I highlight the point he made at the very beginning of his speech—that in our country we have a compulsory voting system and a compulsory enrolment system. As a corollary of that, it is the responsibility of individual citizens to be on the electoral roll from age 18 and to turn up to a polling booth on election day—or, as is increasingly the case, to a pre-poll centre in the days leading up to election day—and, at the very least, have their name crossed off the roll. It is a feature of Australian democracy and it has been for a number of decades. It is the law of the land that all eligible Australians must vote. That is not the law in a lot of other democracies, but it is here in Australia. What goes with it is that you must be on the electoral roll. It is your responsibility to be on the electoral roll when you are eligible and, when you change address, to ensure that the roll is updated.

As the member for Mayo and all of the speakers on this side of the House have outlined, these bills seek to damage the integrity of the roll through an automatic update and automatic enrolment process. On the one hand, this parliament is saying to every citizen, before these bills come into law, that under the existing law you must be on the electoral roll if you are eligible and you must vote, even if that means getting your name crossed off on election day and destroying your ballot paper. You must exercise your choice. On the other hand, the parliament is saying: 'If you do not enrol we will automatically enrol you. If you do not keep your address details up to date on the electoral roll, they will be automatically updated—through some data source that the House is simply assured will be accurate.'

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

Like your drivers licence.

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

Of course how that will work in practice is, as so many members on this side of the House have indicated, very open to question. I say to the member for Moreton that this is a serious debate. I know it is customary to interject, but we are not at two o'clock yet—it is not question time. I am glad the member for Moreton is still with us, since we are talking about elections. He was on the verge of calling a by-election. These are bad laws. They are laws which Labor think, in their heart of hearts, will favour them. They think that if they can enrol people who do not want to enrol, if they can update addresses of those who have not updated them—in other words, if they can take action on behalf of that small percentage of Australians who do not want to vote—that may somehow give them electoral advantage. These are bad bills and we are opposing them here and in the other place. As our shadow minister the member for Mackellar pointed out just yesterday, these bills will compromise the integrity of the Australian electoral roll. We hope they do not pass; we suspect they will. If they do, they should not become part of the fabric of our electoral system, which has served our country so well.

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on two bills this government is introducing to amend the Electoral Act, allowing the Australian Electoral Commission to automatically update the details of an elector when they change their residential address, based on information obtained from other sources, as well as when an Australian turns 18—again, based on records obtained from other sources. According to the explanatory memorandum, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill will:

… allow the Electoral Commissioner to directly update an elector's enrolled address following the receipt and analysis of reliable and current data sources from outside the Australian Electoral Commission that indicate an elector has moved residential address;

What will those reliable and current data sources be? Will they indeed be reliable or current? Enrolling to vote is a wonderful privilege afforded to all Australians. We have one of the best electoral systems in the world and one of the fairest. Walking into a polling booth on an election day certainly conjures a tremendous feeling of pride for many Australians. With the current state of affairs, many Australians wish they were exercising their vote sooner rather than later. There will be an opportunity to change this nation for the better at the next election—something that residents in my electorate speak to me about on a daily basis. Residents in Macquarie are concerned about many issues, and they are particularly concerned when they have arisen because this government has failed to consult with the electorate on important issues—like the carbon tax, the mining tax, cutting the private health insurance rebate for Australians it deems too wealthy to be given a break, and the list goes on. With this legislation the government has again failed to consult with the people it will impact on, meaning that it is again dictating to the Australian public what it wants for Australia.

What will this legislation achieve? We already have a system of compulsory voting. Socially we have come leaps and bounds since Federation, with every single Australian citizen being given the right to vote. It will achieve more votes for the very group of people that Australians are unhappy with: Labor and the Greens. That is all this government is concerned with—gaining votes the only way it knows how, by deciding who is and who is not on the roll based on information that may or may not be reliable or accurate. What about people's personal responsibility? I think everyday Australians know when they need to change their details. They are very capable of deciding when to fill out a form or when to contact the Electoral Commission and make the recommended changes.

Clearly, this government does not concern itself with personal responsibility. It imposes responsibility on people without so much as giving them the choice or the chance to correct what may or may not happen on the electoral roll with regard to their capacity to vote. The government purports that its proposed amendments to the bills will restore the integrity of the electoral roll. These amendments will do just the opposite. These amendments will mean that many Australians may not be aware that they are registered to vote or that they are no longer registered to vote.

I note in the 2010 dissenting report from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that the committee outlined the duty of each Australian citizen when it came to voting, and I would like to highlight them now. Firstly, it is the duty of each Australian citizen to enrol to vote. Secondly, it is also the duty of each Australian citizen to maintain their enrolment at their permanent place of residence. Thirdly, Australian citizens have a duty to cast a vote when an election is called. Lastly, and most relevant to this House and the reason we are able to stand here and debate these poorly constructed amendment bills, Australian citizens have a duty to fully extend preferences to all candidates contesting election for the House of Representatives in their electorate. These duties are the cornerstone of our democratic system of parliament and governance. If we strip away these duties and responsibilities from everyday Australian citizens, we expose our system of parliamentary democracy to fraud and irregularities. These amendments contravene the very idea that is basis on which our democracy resides and, if this legislation is passed, it will be a very dark day for democracy and for this nation.

The coalition takes issue with the amendments proposed by the government for several reasons. The first is something that I have already alluded to, and that is a reduction in the integrity of the electoral roll. If electors are to have their details updated automatically and without their knowledge, it will lead to a high number of potential irregularities. It so often happens that mail is returned to my office because of incorrect details on the electoral roll. Flaws already exist in the system. I understand that a database of millions of people will not be without some flaws; I accept that. But what I do not accept is this government providing a platform for potential additional flaws to our system to take place, not to mention the potential for fraud that could result from automatic enrolment. This would not achieve anything except to give a greater power and a vague power to the Electoral Commission and allow this government to capitalise on those flaws.

It is all too often the case that we see legislation that gives the government broad and vague powers and that plays to the Greens rushed through this House. It seems that this government is far too concerned with a track record of introducing as much legislation as it possibly can before Australians exercise the little power and choice they have left to vote it out at the next election.

This brings me to the second matter that the coalition takes issue with regarding the government's amendment bills, and that is that the AEC is empowered with the discretion to determine what are current and reliable data sources. That a broad scope for discretion is inserted into legislation is not an uncommon practice by this government. In fact, with most of the government's bills, when they are debated in this House, I and many of my colleagues on this side of the House have on a number of occasions taken issue with the vague and broad discretionary powers given to departments, to ministers and to the government. The broad discretionary powers given to this government is the reason that so many Australians are placing importance on their vote at the next election. They are unhappy about being dictated to and dealing with uncertainty.

The third issue is that these amendments undermine the confidence that this government has in its own citizens. Governments should exist for the people, not in spite of the people. It seems this is the unfortunate position that the government has forced Australians into. The coalition is not in support of these changes. They are broad, they are vague and they provide the unfortunate opportunity for the system to be abused and for people to potentially front up to a polling booth to find that their name has been removed from the poll without them knowing it or that they are listed at an address where they are not residing. In view of these challenges, I do not support the bills.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, 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 the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 seeks to amend the Electoral Act to allow the Australian Electoral Commission, AEC, to directly enrol new electors on the electoral roll when the Electoral Commissioner is satisfied that an individual has been living at a particular address for one month and is eligible to be on the electoral roll. This bill follows on from the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011, which will give the AEC the authority to change the address of electors when it believes they have changed their residential address. As with the previous bill, the coalition opposes this legislation because it will greatly reduce the integrity of the electoral roll.

In 2011, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted an inquiry into the 2010 federal election. One of the recommendations from the Labor and the Greens committee members was to introduce automatic enrolment. This is a process by which an individual elector is put directly onto the electoral roll—without them ever having filled out an enrolment form—based on information from other government sources. The coalition opposes this recommendation as it will greatly reduce the integrity of the electoral roll and will mean a number of electors are put on the roll without their knowledge. The bill seeks to implement this recommendation. We, on this side of the House, are not only concerned about the impact that this will have on the integrity of the roll; we also firmly believe that the responsibility to get on the roll and to protect the right to vote lies entirely with the individual.

Clearly, the right to vote is one of the great things about our democracy. At every election, we ensure that the elected representatives of our councils and state and federal governments are held to account. It is the right of every Australian citizen over the age of 18 to cast a vote. One of the things I love about Australia is that voting is compulsory—you can only whinge about the results of an election if you have had your say. But that vote comes with a responsibility to register and maintain your right with the AEC. It is a precious gift given to you by the country, and all the country asks in return is that you keep us up to date with where you live.

But what is a reliable source of information? We note that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia at the last census. We also note that there were 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals; 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a simple match. In Townsville we have a highly transient population. We have the Army, the Airforce, the Navy—ADF. We are a university city. We are fly-in fly-out specialists. We have a great number of renters. You only have to drive the streets of Townsville every weekend and see the number of utes piled high with furniture to see how many people are changing address. It is up to the individual to make sure that their bills get changed across and that their voting records are changed across.

We saw this government send cheques in the first version of the stimulus package to dead people, people living overseas and the like. Is this a reliable source? If the government cannot get it right when they are sending out free money, what hope has the Electoral Commission got of maintaining the roll without the actual person taking the responsibility to vote seriously?

I heard a member opposite state that the AEC spent $36 million on advertising in the lead-up to the 2007 election, and that the AEC stated that this cost would have to be ongoing election after election. So, I am not so sure that this measure will be a cost-saving measure. My question to the AEC is: how much will it cost them to maintain this roll using the new methods? What is the quantum of paying a huge number of public servants to act on tip-offs as to people's whereabouts? Will they be buying the membership lists from Video Ezy and cross-correlating the information? Will they be standing on street corners in trench coats, under a street lamp—lit cigarette dangling from the bottom lip—saying: 'Psst. Who lives in that house and have they lived there for more than a month?' Where will this end? Will we end up with a system where votes will be taken by electoral officials travelling from house to house saying, 'Pick a name, any name,' and moving on to the shops to finish their election while having a pie and a coke?

No, the right to vote is precious and it should be treated as such. The individual must take that right seriously and when they do shift house, they should remember to update their address details with the AEC, just like they do with their bank and their insurance. It is a simple process and the work involved to keep your enrolment up to date is not onerous.

We heard the member for Mayo earlier talk about the great democracy that is Australia, and that the winner of the election is normally the winner that is called on election night. The only disputed one I have heard of was the disputed election in the 1998 Mundingburra election, which caused a by-election, which of course led to the seat of Mundingburra going to the Liberal-National Party coalition and toppling a government, when Frank Tanti beat Tony Mooney. That led to the Shepherdson inquiry, which led to a whole heap of electoral roll rorting by some local branch members of the ALP in Townsville. So, if we are looking for reliable information, there is probably not a good place to start.

The coalition is also concerned about the difficulties experienced in New South Wales state elections. Both New South Wales and Victoria have introduced automatic enrolment at their recent state elections, which means a number of electors in these states are only enrolled for state and not for federal elections. This is due to the differences in state and federal legislation. What happens here is that, when an elector has their details changed or added to the state electoral roll in New South Wales and Victoria, they are sent an enrolment form by the AEC.

The ABC's election analyst Antony Green wrote in an article on 16 July 2011 that only 64.3 per cent of those people automatically enrolled for the first time during the 2011 New South Wales state election actually turned out to vote; so 35.7 per cent did not turn out to vote or were enrolled incorrectly. Surely this would suggest that some of the information used to put new electors on the roll is unreliable. Surely, the low turnout and nonparticipation could be blamed in no small part to the poor information installed in the first place. As with everything, if you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.

My niece lived with us in Townsville for a couple of years. When she moved to Townsville from Brisbane, this 19-year-old had the sense, all on her own, to change her enrolment details with the AEC. She even told me she voted for me at the last election—but we had been arguing that week so I cannot be totally sure. She has since moved back to Brisbane and, hey presto, she has updated her address details on the electoral roll all by herself. She will be voting this weekend in Brisbane to make sure that Campbell Newman gets in up there. The three electorates of Townsville, Thuringowa and Mundingburra will also have new LNP members after this weekend.

Every month I send out letters of welcome to people who have enrolled in the federal seat of Herbert. All these people have done the right thing and completed the form to change their details. Many of my electorate's schools get the seniors of each year to pre-enrol when they are leaving school to make sure they have their right to cast a vote. In the ADF when they turn up to their new post, they have the AEC forms there ready for them. People are organised. It is not that hard to maintain your roll with the AEC.

No amount of legislation will cover every consequence. No amount of legislation will make up for personal responsibility. The right to vote is a right which carries but one tiny piece of responsibility—that is, to maintain your address with the AEC.

This government can go on and on about the amount of red tape we are going to put into this, the amount of things we are going to have to do, but if someone does not want to do it, they will not do it. It is a right to vote. It is something you should follow through with. It is something very precious that has been bestowed upon the people of Australia by this government. I think it is not too hard to understand that this can be done and I therefore do not support these bills.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There have already been many excellent contributions this morning on these bills before the House, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. I congratulate the member for Herbert on his contribution and those who have spoken before me in this place highlighting the great value we must place on our democracy. We should never take for granted the opportunity to vote and choose who represents us in this place.

This debate goes to the core of what it means to play an active role in this great democracy we have in Australia. Like many members I get the opportunity to speak to school groups on a regular basis. When I talk to them I often raise what I consider are core values in our community: respect and responsibility. I tell the students it is important they respect others and they should respect themselves and the skills and abilities they have within themselves. It is important they try to achieve their best and make a contribution to our great nation. When I mention responsibilities I encourage them, once they turn 18, to make sure they enrol to vote. I often refer to it. I say, 'One of the responsibilities you have as an Australian citizen is making sure that once you turn 18 you enrol to vote and have your say in the future of this great nation.'

I welcome the school group that has just walked in here today and encourage them, right now, that when they get to the age of 18 they enrol to vote and come into the polling booths, when the time presents for them, and make a choice of who will represent them in their electorates. It is an important thing. It is a responsibility we should never take for granted.

The member for Herbert was correct when he said that the right to vote is precious. He, like me, writes to new members of his electorate, when they change their enrolment details, and introduces himself. It is not very hard for people when they move to our electorates to change their roll status, to make sure they keep it up to date. I do not believe it too onerous to place that responsibility on our citizens, but it is something this bill seeks to change.

I know it is not fashionable to be standing up in parliament or standing up in school classrooms and talking about responsibilities. We have seen a progression over many years, at state and federal level, of a nanny state approach by this government and the Greens parliamentary team. I am concerned that these bills before the House send a message from the Labor Party and the Greens that they do not trust Australian people with this core responsibility of making sure that their electoral roll details are up to date. It is a bizarre judgment to be making upon our community—that you cannot be trusted with the most basic responsibility of making sure you are enrolled to vote, that your details are updated when you move and that you exercise your rights at an election.

I refer to the dissenting reports which were submitted by coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. I congratulate the coalition members of that committee: the member for Mackellar who is a fierce champion of issues relating to electoral integrity, the member for Fairfax, Senator Ryan and Senator Birmingham for their contributions to the dissenting report. The key issue they raised in this reportwas the integrity of the roll.

I am sure that even the most casual observer would understand that the integrity of the roll is very important. The importance of it is very clear to the most casual observer. The recent election is a great example of that. There was not a clear majority; there were many seats won on a wafer-thin margin. That has always been the case. In fact, the member for Hinkler was telling me just the other day that in the seven elections he has contested four of them have been won by a margin of less than 500 votes. They are very close results. No wonder the member for Hinkler is turning grey in this place. It is important in those very close results that the people in that electorate, and the broader Australian community, have confidence in the integrity of the roll. If they are to accept the result of these very close-run contests they must have confidence in the integrity of the roll. These are the key concerns that the coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters raised in their dissenting report.

Their concerns were that the legislation will severely damage the integrity of the electoral roll by adding new electors, who may not be entitled to vote, without their knowledge and potentially without their consent should the elector not receive the Australian Electoral Commission's notice of enrolment. The concerns about integrity in the report go on to state: 'When the responsibility for enrolling and updating individual elector details is taken from the individual and given to the AEC', as this bill will do, 'the potential for errors to occur is significant. It also opens up the roll to fraud.' The Labor and Greens members of JSCEM as well as the Australian Electoral Commission seem to consistently downplay this issue of the integrity of the electoral roll. It was the member for Mackellar who made this very clear and highlighted the critical importance, from a legal point of view, of the electoral roll being reliable and accurate at all times.

This leads me to concern about the sources of information that are proposed for updating the roll under the government's approach in the legislation as it is presented to the House. As the dissenting report indicates, the AEC has said in its submission to the inquiry that it will use Centrelink and state government records from the Roads and Traffic Authority. As previously stated, information from Australia Post will not be used. The use of these agencies is not legislated but they are merely stated as sources the AEC considers reliable, without providing any evidence to establish the reliability of this information. The dissenting report states that in reality the AEC could use any data source it sees fit, including records from the tax office or Medicare. The coalition has previously highlighted in its dissenting reports to the JSCEM inquiries into the 2010 federal election and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 the extraordinary risk of using those agencies, given the high number of duplicate records.

The coalition has great concern that individuals not entitled to vote may be added to the roll because of this bill. They go to the core of our issues in relation to the integrity of the roll. For all the reasons I previously mentioned it is clear that the first responsibility of the AEC is to uphold the integrity of the roll. But there is a concern with the direction we are seeing, through this bill, that the AEC is tending to focus now on maximising the number of people on the roll. It is a point that was raised during the inquiry process by Dr Roger Clarke of the Australian Privacy Foundation. In his submission he said:

I believe part of the problem is that the presumption is that there is a desire to maximise the number of people on the rolls. I do not believe that is an appropriate objective. The notion of the vote is a right—it is an entitlement—and turning it into an obligation, which is what that entails, I just do not believe is appropriate in a democratic process. The intention should be to maximise people's opportunity to enrol and to vote, and this goes well beyond that.

It is not much to expect eligible Australians to actually enrol to vote when they turn 18 and then make sure that their details are kept up to date. That is a responsibility that best rests with the individual and not with the state. During this debate we have heard a lot of discussion about what could be the motive of the government in relation to this issue: why is the government seeking to move in this direction? The government's view seems to be: 'Simply trust us. We know what is right for you. You can trust us to do the right thing.' The member for Bradfield in his contribution highlighted that those on this side of the House have every reason to question that motive—and I am not going to go through the long history he outlined—but, when it comes to manipulating the roll for political advantage, the Australian people simply have no reason to trust a government which is saying: trust us. I think there is an enormous trust deficit between the current government and the Australian people. You only need to refer to the famous quote from our current Prime Minister that 'there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead' to understand that fundamental breach of trust.

The coalition has concerns, first of all, with the motives of the Labor Party and the Greens in relation to these bills before the House, but there are also concerns that it will make it more difficult to investigate and prosecute cases of alleged fraudulent voting. In the dissenting report it was highlighted by the coalition members that they had some level of disappointment about the failure of the AEC to prosecute any cases of fraudulent voting stemming from the 2007 legislation despite there being over 20,000 cases of multiple votes at that election.

I would like to refer to Senator Scott Ryan's contribution in the dissenting report in which he raised a valid point about how this legislation would make it harder for the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute cases of fraudulent voting. When electors are put on the roll automatically, potentially, without their knowledge or consent, there will no longer be a signature available for the returning officer to compare it to, if an elector is making a declaration vote. Senator Ryan said:

If there are cases of potential electoral fraud, that is one less piece of evidence the commission will have in its armoury.

You currently have a form that you can compare signatures to if, for example, people are using declaration votes and have to sign the envelope. That will not be available under these provisions.

I think these are legitimate and well-founded concerns on this side of the House about the motives of the bill put before us today and the need for these bills in the first place. I believe they are unnecessary. I think they are intrusive and have the potential to undermine the integrity of the electoral roll. As I have stated earlier, I believe it is a nanny state provision that should be resisted in this place.

I think this is more about Labor and the Greens seeking to achieve some form of political advantage than actual genuine electoral reform that will boost confidence in our democracy. I believe it will have the reverse impact: it will erode confidence in the integrity of the roll. My greatest concern is that the key elements of these bills have the capacity to weaken rather than strengthen the integrity of the electoral roll. I join my colleagues in the coalition in opposing these bills.

The bottom line is: it simply should not be up to the AEC to determine when a person has moved; it is up to the individual to notify the AEC, as is their duty as an Australian citizen. I do not believe that is too much of an onerous responsibility to place on the Australian people. Being an Australian citizen bestows great rights upon a person, and we all benefit from those rights that, sadly, too many Australians have fought and died for in conflicts in the history of our great nation. It also places some important responsibilities on our citizens. Our citizens are expected to uphold the laws of the land, to make a contribution in whatever way they can to our great nation. But, surely, one of these responsibilities which remains and can remain into the future is to enrol to vote and maintain the accuracy of your own address and to exercise that right and that responsibility at election time. I have great faith and every confidence and trust in the Australian people that they can exercise that responsibility into the future. I am worried this government does not believe they have that capacity.

This government seems to think so little of the Australian people that they do not believe they can be trusted with even that most basic responsibility. They are taking away that responsibility, which I believe sets a very negative precedent. The level of government influence in our lives is already quite extraordinary. We are subject to a ridiculous array of restrictions on our activities under nanny state laws and regulations that send the message that people simply cannot be trusted to accept responsibility for their own actions. We in this place need to push back at every opportunity when more of these nanny state intrusive regulations are placed before us. As I have said, this is a bad move. It is unjustified and it should not be supported in this House or any other place.

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

I rise to support the previous speaker. In a nutshell, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 seeks to give electoral advantage to the ALP by bringing into question the integrity of our electoral roll. It is a shameful political act which goes to the heart of our democracy. The integrity of our roll is a cornerstone to the integrity of our voting system and to the integrity which brings every member to this place, and this bill brings this into question. The sad, sad fact is that it does this for base political purposes.

There has been no significant evidence put forward to show that this will have any other broader benefit other than trying to bring people onto the roll who, as previous members of the other side have said, are more than likely to vote for them.

Why should it be opposed? In the 2007 and 2010 election we had serious questions raised about the integrity of the role and, in particular, about people voting more than once. I know this from having been involved in the 2007 election campaign for the seat of McEwen. The vote was incredibly close. It had to be counted, recounted and ultimately ended up in the courts before we got a final decision on who would win the seat. During that process, examples came forward which showed some of the rorting that had taken place. In particular, there was an example of a priest from a country town who was written to by the AEC asking him why he had voted three times in the electorate McEwen. He wrote back to the AEC and said that in fact he had not voted three times within the electorate of McEwen because he had been interstate on election day and had voted interstate. Someone had walked into three different polling booths in that electorate and used his name to vote three times. So rorting does take place. We should be looking to strengthen the processes so that we do not see a continuation of that behaviour. Instead, sadly, what we are seeing with this bill is that process being weakened further.

We have seen why this will occur. Now it is possible for people to be placed on the roll without, at a minimum, having their signature on a piece of paper. There is a deafening silence and a dearth of action taken in instances of the roll being exploited. One of the requirements that we could have that could protect the integrity of the roll—a signature—is now being weakened. That will lead, sadly, to more rorting rather than less. I think it is beholden on all of us here to say enough is enough. We have to strengthen the system that we have; we do not need to weaken it.

This legislation also raises privacy concerns. We are in many ways becoming the world's greatest nanny state. This legislation takes away the responsibility of an individual to participate in the democratic process. Because we do have compulsory voting at federal elections, this legislation puts more requirements on individuals to enrol and does so with complete disregard for their privacy. It would be interesting to see, if the bill went to the Privacy Commissioner, what the commissioner's views would be on whether this process will actually benefit the privacy of individual citizens or whether it is another step in eroding it.

The government is putting forward another regulation, basically forcing people onto the electoral roll. This is not something that we should do lightly, because many people take their individual privacy extremely seriously. They do not want to see their privacy diminished because a government, for their own base political purposes, wants to put forward a bill which gives the AEC powers to put people on the roll when they might be already on the roll but it is unknown to the AEC or when there might be other compelling reasons that they have chosen not to do so. The privacy aspects of automatic enrolment are something which definitely need to be taken into consideration.

I now turn to the dissenting report of the Hon. Bronwyn Bishop, the Hon. Alex Somlyay, Senator Scott Ryan and Senator Simon Birmingham. I would ask all members of the House, before they vote on this bill, to read this dissenting report. I think in many ways the opening paragraph sums it up. It states:

Coalition Members and Senators strongly disagree with the Labor and Green members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 (i.e. automatic enrolment) be passed by the Parliament. The Coalition has long opposed moves by the Labor Party and the Greens to introduce automatic enrolment and notes that this Bill is being introduced solely to improve the electoral prospects of both Labor and the Greens. This follows similar moves by the former Labor Governments in NSW and Victoria prior to their last state elections.

Sadly, summed up in one: it is being done for base political reasons. We are starting to see a systemic desire by Labor and the Greens to do this, not only federally but at the state level as well. The dissenting report goes on to say:

This legislation will severely damage the integrity of the Electoral Roll by adding new electors who may not be entitled to vote without their knowledge and potentially without their consent, should the elector not receive the Australian Electoral Commission’s notice of enrolment.

An excellent report that in a nutshell sums up the basis of why we, on this side, are opposing this legislation.

The report then goes on to outline the main reasons for dissenting. I have touched on some of these, but it is worth highlighting the issues in this excellent report. The integrity of the electoral roll is the first issue raised:

It is imperative that the Roll which is used to elect our Parliamentarians is accurate and reliable, particularly in the wake of the 2010 Federal Election where no political party won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and results in a number of individual electorates came down to only a few hundred votes.

As I have pointed out, I saw this firsthand in the 2007 election in the seat of McEwen, and I fully endorse this dissenting report for making that point, because it is entirely accurate and extremely worrying. Privacy concerns are also raised:

Coalition Members and Senators also note the risks relating to the privacy of individual electors raised during this inquiry and the previous inquiry into the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011. Dr Roger Clarke from the Australian Privacy Foundation told the JSCEM Roundtable hearing on 29 February 2012 that he was particularly concerned about the lack of consultation about the Bill, was not aware of any privacy assessments taking place and believed that the outcome of the inquiry appeared to be predetermined

Here we have someone from outside the political process sadly being able to sum up these concerns in a nutshell by saying that this inquiry and this legislation appeared to be predetermined. In many ways that says it all.

The dissenting report also goes into the issue of fraudulent voting. There is already some dismay at how fraudulent voting is dealt with by the AEC. There has been a worry that no prosecutions are occurring. It seems to be a practice that you receive no more than a slap on the wrist. Yet the fundamental basis of our democracy is the fact that we have one valid vote, and that is all that we should have. The dangers associated with fraudulent voting have been brilliantly summed up in this dissenting report.

The report also goes into issues regarding New South Wales, and we know the steps that the former New South Wales Labor government would go to. There is no doubt that these issues have been adequately addressed in the dissenting report as well. The report concludes:

Coalition Members and Senators realise that this Bill is being introduced by Labor and the Greens solely to increase their electoral advantage, despite the severe risk it contains to the integrity of the Electoral Roll and significant concerns about individual privacy.

It is a sad reflection on the other side that we are in here debating this legislation today. It shows that they will stop at nothing and that they are prepared to jeopardise the integrity of our electoral roll for their own base purposes. At some stage, those on the other side are going to have to understand that ultimately what they need to deliver for the Australian people is good policy—policy that is in their interest and in the national interest—rather than spending the whole time cooking the books to give themselves an electoral advantage. (Time expired)

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise for the second time in less than 12 months to defend the integrity of our electoral roll in what is the greatest democracy on earth. I find this is one of the most important roles that we should have here as representatives of our parliament. That is why I feel compelled to stand up and speak against the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012, which we are debating today.

I have said before in this House that all Australians have rights and freedoms which they can rightfully expect to have unhindered access to. These include the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion and the freedom of movement, with the right to shelter, food, health care and, of course, most important, the democratic right to vote for your elected representatives. These are rights that must be steadfastly defended at all times, and sometimes they even must be defended at the point of a gun.

Once again we find ourselves in this House debating proposed legislation that is ill thought out and misguided, for in our society for every single right we have there is also a corresponding obligation. We must balance those rights. We must balance the right to vote with ensuring the integrity of our electoral system and protecting it from the risk of fraud, as this is the only way we can protect our democracy. The Electoral Act provides both a right and an obligation to all citizens and, as I have said before, for every right in our society there is an equal, corresponding obligation. Section 101 of the electoral act currently provides that there is an obligation upon all citizens who are entitled to have his or her name placed on the electoral roll to do so within 21 days, but unfortunately these bills will take away that obligation.

There are a few specific reasons why these bills should be opposed. The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2012 will allow the Australian Electoral Commission to automatically update details of an elector when they change their residential address based on information obtained from other sources. According to the explanatory memorandum, this bill will allow the Electoral Commissioner to directly update an elector's enrolled address following the receipt and analysis of reliable and current data sources from outside the Australian Electoral Commission which indicate an elector has moved addresses. It simply seeks by default to introduce automatic enrolment and take away the obligation citizens have to update their address on the electoral roll.

There are five specific problems that this will cause and five reasons why we should be voting against this bill. The first is that the bill will greatly reduce the integrity of the electoral roll, with electors having their details updated without their knowledge, potentially leading to a higher number of irregularities. Secondly, this bill gives the AEC the discretion to determine what reliable and current data sources are. Could this be a credit card from one of the major department stores? No-one knows. This is not defined in the bill. There are many sources from which the Electoral Commission can obtain information, none of which you can be sure is correct.

Thirdly, the coalition believes in personal responsibility and if electors treat their democracy with the respect it deserves, they should be in charge of enrolling and maintaining their address details so that when they change their address they do not sit back and let the government do it on their behalf. This is all about individual responsibility. Fourthly, this bill is a step towards automatic enrolment. Those who have turned 18 and become citizens should have enough respect for our democracy, our history and our traditions to know that it is their obligation. If they wish to participate in our democracy, they have to take the simple step of enrolling. Fifthly, the coalition is particularly concerned about the reliability of other data sources. As 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.

That is exactly correct and is why the bill should be opposed. The dissenting report goes on:

As outlined in the p revious report into these proposals, 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 of Tax File Numbers found that:

There were 3.2 million more Tax File Numbers than people in Australia at the last census.

Given this fact, how can we rely on this data to maintain the integrity of our electoral roll? Secondly:

There were 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals; 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a sample match.

Similarly, an ANAO Audit Report (No.24 2004–05 Integrity of Medicare Enrolment Data) stated that ‘ANAO found that up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who are deceased’.

This dissenting report shows exactly why we cannot rely on the so-called 'other sources' for the Electoral Commission to take their records from. It must be the obligation of the individual citizen.

The second bill is the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. Again I would like to give full reasons why this House must oppose this bill. Firstly, this bill will corrupt the integrity of the electoral roll, with electors potentially being put on the electoral roll again without their knowledge. It must be the obligation of every citizen to take that step, to fill out the AEC enrolment form to put their name on the electoral roll. That shows they are taking responsibility, and not taking that responsibility shows disrespect for our democracy. Unless people are prepared to do take those steps, people should not be allowed to vote.

Secondly, as with the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2012, this bill gives the AEC the discretion to determine what reliable and current data sources are. Again, there are so many data sources in our society today and we simply do not know the integrity of those data sources, but this bill will allow the AEC to use data sources to put names on the electoral roll, completely corrupting our electoral roll and therefore undermining the very principles of our democracy.

Thirdly, the coalition believes in personal responsibility, that electors should be in charge of enrolling and maintaining their addresses on the electoral roll. When details change, it should be up to the individual citizen to show respect for our democracy and make the changes on the electoral roll rather than leaving it for the government to do it. We see so many bills go through this House. We see a reduction of individual responsibility where roles for which citizens should be responsible are handed over to the government. This unfortunately is another of those bills and yet another reason why it should be opposed. Fourthly, the coalition is particularly concerned about the reliability of these other data sources. As the coalition members on the Joint Standing Committee On Electoral Matters emphasised in the same dissenting report, there are 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia, and there are 185,000 duplicate tax records for individuals.

Fifthly, and the main reason we should be opposing these bills, is it gets back to the importance of our democracy. It gets back to making sure that individual citizens respect our democracy and that they realise that it is something that has been fought for and passed down to them by previous generations—by their forefathers. It is not something that is just handed to them on a platter. It is not to be taken for granted. If these bills are passed, that is what they will do. It will take away the obligation of the citizen to take those formal steps to enrol which have been set out and followed throughout the history of our democracy. These are bad bills. I hope that, even if there are not a few government members that would stand up and oppose it and stand up for our democracy, we will at least see some of the crossbenchers realise how bad these bills are and that they should be opposed. The cornerstone of our democracy is to protect the integrity of our electoral roll. These bills will weaken our electoral roll. They will weaken its integrity and they will weaken our democracy. That is why they should be opposed.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, 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 Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. The first bill will empower the Australian Electoral Commission to modify the address of electors when it believes the elector has moved address. The second bill will empower the AEC to add individuals to the electoral roll when it is satisfied they are 18 years old, living at a particular address and entitled to vote—that is, automatic enrolment. These are bad bills. That is why the coalition opposes them both.

At the heart of this legislation is a move by the Labor Party and the Greens to gain electoral advantage. The same tactic was adopted by the Labor Party in both Victoria and New South Wales, where they sought to gain electoral advantage by introducing automatic enrolment before the last state elections in each of those states. These automatic enrolments were failures. They should not be repeated at the federal level. In effect, these failures have corrupted the integrity and the reliability of the electoral roll.

There could not be many more important subjects than the future integrity of the one document which is relied upon to form the federal government—to elect the legislators that shape the future of our country. This is what is at stake: the heart of our democracy. These matters have been the subject of considerable discussion by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which reported in July last year. The dissenting report—and I want to pay particular tribute to my colleagues Bronwyn Bishop, Alex Somlyay, Senator Scott Ryan and Simon Birmingham—is very instructive. Let me say what a great job our special shadow minister for state, the member for Mackellar, has done, assisted by her Senate colleagues and by Alex Somlyay, in shining a light on the weakness in this dangerous legislation. The dissenting report found that, were we to proceed to automatic entitlement, the legislation would severely damage the integrity of the electoral roll. It would have extensive privacy implications and it would undermine the fundamental notion that people need to take responsibility for ensuring that they are correctly recorded on the electoral roll.

In terms of the integrity of the electoral roll, automatic enrolment opens up the real possibility of both error and fraud, As Professor Graeme Orr in his book The Law of Politics has written, the integrity of the role is paramount. He wrote: 'Like other official public registers, such as land registers, a chief feature of the electoral rolls is their finality. The purpose of a roll is to be a definitive statement of the entitlement to vote, leaving aside the provisional provisions, thus there 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.'

The problem here is that the AEC has sole discretion, and the data that the AEC would seek to rely on is not clearly defined. In fact, in their submission to the committee on the second bill, the Australian Electoral Commission said:

… the AEC would receive data from a third party data source, conduct a data matching process including a check of the eligibility of individuals to enrol, notify eligible individuals and, after a period of 28 days, make additions to the electoral roll and inform electors of the AEC’s action.

What data is deemed reliable? What restrictions are there on the type of data that could be used? What is the standard of proof that is applied in these matters? The AEC will make use of Centrelink, state government roads and traffic authority information, and even materials from Australia Post. They will, no doubt, even go to the Tax Office and other sources of sensitive information.

Use of this material raises real concerns. Previous parliamentary reports have found that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia at the last census; there were 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals; and 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in the sample match. The Australian National Audit Office has also separately found that 'up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who were deceased'. The problem here is that the AEC is just trying to expand the role and the size of the roll for the sake of expanding it. In the process, they are undermining its integrity and increasing the margin for error.

Dr Roger Clarke of the Australian Privacy Foundation said:

I believe part of the problem is … that there is a desire to maximise the number of people on the rolls. I do not believe that is an appropriate objective. … The intention should be to maximise people's opportunity to enrol and to vote, and this goes well beyond that.

Indeed, in regard to the privacy implications of the legislation before us, Dr Clarke of the Australian Privacy Foundation has also raised real issues about publishing people's details on the electoral roll without their knowledge or approval and, importantly, without their having the opportunity to register as a silent elector. This is a particular concern for people who have been victims of domestic violence or who would like their addresses suppressed for a range of safety issues. At a hearing in February this year Dr Clarke said of this legislation:

We are not aware of any risk assessment having been performed. We were not aware of any privacy impact assessment having been performed.

This is really inexplicable, and it reeks of political advantage and political opportunism on the part of the Labor Party and their co-conspirators in this legislation, the Greens.

I have mentioned the experience in New South Wales and Victoria. What is instructive about the experience in New South Wales is that the people who had the automatic enrolment did not turn out in the numbers expected. In fact, only 64.3 per cent of these first-time new enrolments turned out to vote. Compare this to the overall turnout of 92.3 per cent for the 2011 New South Wales state election. This raises serious issues about the integrity of this automatic enrolment process and about the potential for fraud.

In conclusion, these are bad bills. These bills are motivated by an opportunistic desire for political advantage. There has not been proper and rigorous assessment. In fact, we have heard from experts, from parliament committees and elsewhere about the dangers involved. These bills, and the subsequent changes, will compromise the integrity of the Australian Electoral Act. They will raise significant privacy issues that will affect all Australians. What is more, they will undermine the personal responsibility that is incumbent on individuals in Australia when they reach voting age to take the opportunity to vote in Australia for their political representatives. There are not many more important subjects than this. I implore all the Independents, who will not have the same political motivations as those opposite, to take this opportunity to vote against this legislation and ensure that the integrity of the Australian electoral roll is maintained.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, 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 Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 out of a great concern for the implications that these two bills will have for Australian democracy. Australia is one of the world's oldest democracies. We have been a democracy since our inception. At the very heart of our democracy lies the fact that each Australian citizen has the franchise; the ability to put themselves on the electoral roll so that they can vote for their representative in this place and in the Australian Senate.

Under existing legislation it is very clear who is currently able to put themselves on the Australian electoral roll: anybody who is over 18 years of age and who is an Australian citizen, a British subject and or on the Commonwealth electoral roll as at 25 January 1984. This is pretty clear. More than this, in advance of somebody turning 18, at the age of 16, a citizen of this country who meets the criteria can in advance put themselves down on the electoral roll so that when they reach their 18th birthday they will automatically become entitled to vote, should an election be called. These two bills, however, seek to undermine the way people are put onto the Australian electoral roll. It is, according to this government, a necessary evil. They say that so many people are disenfranchised under the existing system. They say that many young people, in particular, are disenfranchised because they do not have time to put themselves on the electoral roll. But of course any basic examination of these facts demonstrates the paucity of the government's argument and invites anybody who understands this issue to ask themselves the question: what is the real motivation for this government in seeking to make a change to how citizens are put onto the electoral roll? Already, under the existing rolls—and I quote from the AEC website:

The electoral roll is continuously updated, however, following the issue of the 'writ' for an election, which sets the election timetable, the roll for the election is closed. The roll for the election closes at 8pm local time on the third working day after the writ is issued and cannot be updated after that date.

So it is very clear that when an election is announced—when the writs are issued—people most certainly do have the ability to put themselves on the electoral roll. Whether they be young or old, they themselves can go to the AEC and put themselves on the electoral roll so that they may vote in that election for their representative.

Instead, the government is seeking to automatically put a number of people onto the electoral roll. It is seeking to do this through data matching. Without anyone's consent or permission, this government would put people onto the electoral roll or make changes to an entry for an existing person on the electoral roll as to where they are entitled to vote. This would be the result of the Australian Electoral Commission, in and of itself, determining how that person is to appear on the electoral roll.

This concerns us greatly, because it should be for the individual themselves to go through all the proper and correct processes to put themself on the electoral roll. Only in this way can we be assured of the integrity of the electoral role, that there are proper checks and balances—that people are in fact entitled to be on the electoral roll and are enrolling in the correct place and not seeking to skew the electoral roll in any way. This government would rather see the Australian Electoral Commission make a determination as to who should be on the roll and how they should be on it. This concerns us because the Australian Electoral Commission will be forced to rely upon information that is provided to it by third parties that it determines are of sufficient quality to be allowed to make that determination, yet there are no criteria on which this is based.

I would like to refer to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. My colleagues Bronwyn Bishop, Senator Scott Ryan, Alex Somlyay and Senator Simon Birmingham wrote such a stellar report pointing out a number of the flaws with this legislation. Bronwyn Bishop spoke with the AEC and asked a very pertinent question about the process that went to the issue of the integrity of the roll:

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 replied:

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.

That is a great concern. You could have a situation in which somebody has provided their address details to one of these third-party organisations or government agencies and the AEC decides to write to a new address, which could in fact be a holiday home that is frequented only on occasion. As a result of this, someone's electoral enrolment could be radically changed. The enfranchisement of that person to vote for the individual or representative in the electorate in which they live would in fact be changed, and there are no adequate checks and balances in order to deal with this. I think this is a very critical point, and it goes to just how flawed this legislation actually is.

When you look at it even more closely you can see that there are some significant flaws in the way in which the Australian Electoral Commission will go about supposedly matching up data. They are going to rely, as I said before, on third-party sources. I quote again from the dissenting report, which refers to another dissenting report:

In their dissenting report in July 2011 to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ investigation into the 2010 Federal Election, Coalition members of JSCEM noted the risks of using external data sources such as the ATO, Medicare or other Government agencies to update elector details:

It then quoted from that 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. As outlined in the previous report into these proposals, 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 of Tax File Numbers, found that:

There were 3.2 million more Tax File Numbers than people in Australia at the last census;

There were 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individuals; 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a sample match.

Similarly, an ANAO Audit Report (No.24 2004–05 Integrity of Medicare Enrolment Data)stated that ‘ANAO found that up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who are deceased’

So there is no level of comfort here that the records that are supposed to be data matched are in fact accurate themselves. Yet this is the information that the Australian Electoral Commission will rely on in order to change the electoral roll. We think this goes to the very heart of the integrity of the electoral roll and it is incredibly flawed and dangerous for our democracy.

Moreover, the third-party sources are going to be entirely at the discretion of the Electoral Commissioner and can be changed at any time. This also concerns us because, while the ATO have supposedly been ruled out, now this could in fact change and it is of the initiative of the Electoral Commissioner to determine what may or may not be appropriate. There are no guarantees. So much is unknown. Again, as can be seen from my previous statement about previous reports, this is clearly a government agenda to change the electoral roll. You have to ask yourself the question why—why are they seeking to do this? The only response you can give to that question is that the government believes it can seek an electoral advantage by changing the electoral roll, which is why it has been so committed to try and achieve this.

But there are other significant concerns. Privacy, of course, is one of them. Dr Roger Clarke from the Australian Privacy Foundation gave very strong evidence to the JSCEM, stating that there were concerns regarding the matching of data, particularly in light of the fact that there may be a number of people who do not wish that data to find its way onto the electoral roll. We hear of many awful instances of domestic violence, of stalking, whether that be cyberstalking or physically stalking a victim. We know that there are a number of people for a variety of reasons who would not wish to appear on the electoral roll, for reasons of safety and the safety of their family. Yet under these changes put forward by the government we would see circumstances where these people are automatically placed onto the electoral roll without any consent, without any checking, which could pose a grave risk to them. This concerns us, and again there is no sufficient response from the government to give us any comfort that they have considered these most serious issues.

There should be an incredibly high burden of proof. There should be some incredible harm that is occurring for the government to make such serious changes to the electoral roll. Yet we do not hear any such evidence from the government—far from it. In fact, the evidence that has been heard by the committee, not only in the most recent inquiry but in the inquiries before it, has been that we do have a strong electoral roll now. It works well and it balances many competing interests, and it is the best way to ensure the enfranchisement of citizens of this country. The potential for fraud and the potential for error are very significant if these changes are made. I have mentioned privacy breaches. We do not support these bills. (Time expired)

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the cognate debate of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. Just as we have seen on several occasions in this place, these bills may have harmless-sounding names but they represent a dangerous step in our nation's democracy. As a result I speak in strong opposition to these bills before the House today.

In brief, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 will give the Australian Electoral Commission the ability to change the address of electors when the AEC believes that the elector has moved addresses. The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 will give the Australian Electoral Commission the ability to add individuals to the electoral roll when they believe they are 18 years of age, living at a particular address and entitled to vote. This is known as automatic enrolment.

These bills do not carry the civic responsibility that the government spin doctors may try to attach to them. They are plainly and simply an attempt by the Labor Party-Greens alliance to gain an electoral advantage. This legislation will severely damage the integrity of our nation's electoral roll, where a centralised and unelected government funded bureaucracy can add new electors and change the enrolled address of new electors without the individual's knowledge and potentially without their consent. We are a nation that embraces the idea of individual responsibility. It is an elector's individual responsibility to enrol to vote and to inform the Australian Electoral Commission if they change address. It is also an elector's responsibility to vote at an election. These are pretty simple responsibilities and they should not become yet more victims of state intervention. This point has been made time and again by my colleagues since the formation of the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2007 election.

My colleagues have also noted the extensive implications for issues of privacy that this legislation raises. Dr Roger Clarke of the Australia Privacy Foundation provided the joint standing committee with some valuable insights regarding the individual privacy concerns that this legislation raises. He was particularly concerned about the lack of consultation about the legislation, and he said that he was not aware of any privacy assessments taking place and that the outcome of the inquiry appeared to have been predetermined. He said:

We are not aware of any risk assessment having been performed. We were not aware of any privacy impact assessment having been performed. We were not aware of consultation processed which the Electoral Commissioner has just referred to. We are not aware of the APF or any of the civil liberties organisations being involved in any of those. We have checked back through our records and confined our evidence of that in our own records.

…   …   …

Finally, the outcome of the inquiry does appear to be predetermined. The inquiries being held by the same committee came forward with a related proposal, and when we sought further time to address this matter we were told that, 'The committee was merely focusing on the adequacy of the bill in achieving its policy objectives.' This sounds rather less than substantive consideration of the matter.

It must be of very real concern to all individuals if their personal details are published on the Commonwealth electoral roll without their knowledge and without them being given the opportunity to register as a silent elector. This would cause alarm in particular for people who are victims of domestic violence, for people involved in custody disputes and for people who, for any other reason, wish their name to be suppressed. These bills pose some genuine dangers to people who are most at risk in our society, and their needs and protection should far supersede the stated motivations of these bills.

The process of automatic enrolment will put into question the integrity of the electoral roll. There are few documents which we have greater dependence on for their integrity to ensure an effective and representative democracy. When a centralised system has authority over an individual's listing on the electoral roll, we are opening our system up to error and the possibility of fraud. As we have seen in times past, the Labor Party are capable of very creative strategies when faced with a campaign to hold onto power. Allowing automatic enrolment is opening a Pandora's Box that may commence with good intentions but can quickly become corrupted. A procedure where the Australian Electoral Commission relies on notification received in reply to their correspondence is a very dangerous way to manage an electoral roll. The chief electoral commissioner of New South Wales has admitted that the response rate is about 20 per cent. This means that on average 80 per cent of people whom the AEC writes to to inform of a change to their enrolment will not confirm their receipt or understanding of this change. Progressively, the integrity of the electoral roll will become diminished as a result of these bills.

In the coalition's dissenting report on these bills, the shadow minister quoted Professor Graeme Orr's book The Law of Politics. I repeat the words of the shadow minister:

… Mr Orr writes: '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 provisional provisions—'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.

In his chapter 'Enrolment and the Roll', Professor Orr also cites 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 Eden-Monaro whose real place of living was outside the electorate. Even though it was alleged that some enrolled electors lived at addresses that lay outside the divisional boundaries, Justice Starke refused to allow any evidence to be tendered that might contradict the face of the roll.'

One of the curious aspects to this bill, which should raise many an eyebrow around the nation, is that it is even more extreme than the recommendation made by Labor and the Greens in the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2010 federal election. In this inquiry, Labor and Greens members recommended that the sources of data used by the Australian Electoral Commission to automatically enrol electors should be subject to disallowance by parliament, yet these bills provide sole discretion to the Australian Electoral Commission. To quote from this report:

The Committee recommends that, wherever appropriate, the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 should be amended to allow the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) to directly enrol eligible electors on the basis of data or information provided by an elector or electors to an agency approved by the AEC, as an agency which performs adequate proof of identity checks, where that information is subsequently provided by that agency to the AEC for the purposes of updating the electoral roll. Approval of such agencies by the AEC should be made by disallowable instrument.

Whilst I have a lot of faith in the Electoral Commission and respect for the impartiality of the work that they do, it sets a very dangerous standard for an unknown future when an unelected bureaucracy has this kind of power. The Electoral Commission has confirmed that under these bills they will list any individual on the electoral roll if they believe the individual is eligible after consulting various data sources. These bills do not specify what data sources are required or will be considered reliable, nor are there any restrictions placed on which data sources the AEC can use to enrol an elector. There is no provision in these bills to specify the standard of proof the Electoral Commission needs to enrol an elector. These judgements and decisions fall far outside the scope and jurisdiction of the Australian Electoral Commission. The first obligation of the Electoral Commission is to maintain and improve the integrity of the electoral roll. Instead, these bills will focus their attention on maximising the number of people on the electoral roll at the expense of that obligation.

Dr Roger Clarke of the Australian Privacy Foundation told the committee on 29 February 2012 that the intention of the AEC should be to maximise the opportunity for people to enrol, not to do it on their behalf. He said:

I believe part of the problem is that the presumption is that there is a desire to maximise the number of people on the rolls. I do not believe that is an appropriate objective. The notion of the vote is a right—it is an entitlement—and turning it into an obligation, which is what that entails, I just do not believe is appropriate in a democratic process. The intention should be to maximise people's opportunity to enrol and to vote, and this goes well beyond that.

In the dissenting report, my colleagues made clear our concern about the risk of duplicate records as data is sourced from organisations as varied as the ATO, Medicare, roads authorities and Centrelink. The report stated:

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.

A previous report found:

Similarly, an ANAO audit report stated:

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

There are also serious concerns that, as a result of these bills, individuals not entitled to vote will be enrolled. There is no requirement in these bills for the Electoral Commission to check whether a person is over 18 years of age or an Australian citizen before they are added to the electoral roll.

For these reasons, many constituents may well ask why these bills are being introduced into this House. The answer is clearly that the Labor-Greens alliance has determined that it will be the recipient of an electoral advantage. Any move that threatens the integrity of our electoral roll and therefore tarnishes our democracy should be rejected by this parliament. The responsibility of enrolment should remain with the individual Australian citizen and not be given to a centralised government bureaucracy.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012 questions the integrity of the electoral roll. Surely this goes to the essence, the very core, of what we are about here in this parliament and who we represent. This bill could potentially result in electors being put on the electoral roll without their knowledge. The number of irregularities this could lead to boggles the mind. This bill, as with the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011, gives the Australian Electoral Commission the discretion to decide what are 'reliable and current data sources' from which information about electoral addresses is able to be obtained.

This is way beyond the capability of the Australian Electoral Commission, as sound an organisation as it is. The onus and responsibility ought to be on individual electors to supply accurate details about their enrolment and to update those details when they move or when their situation changes. The coalition is a big believer in personal responsibility. People need to take responsibility for their own actions. We should not be taking control out of the electors' hands. We should not be taking their responsibility to choose to enrol away. This bill will reduce the responsibility of people to ensure that they are looking after themselves.

It raises questions about temporary residents and people in fly-in fly-out or drive-in drive-out situations. I am a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia, inquiring at present into fly-in fly-out and drive-in drive-out arrangements and the working practices of people in regional Australia. We have heard evidence from people in mining and other communities in regional Australia. It was very interesting to go to Moranbah in Queensland recently to hear about the difficulties that people in fly-in fly-out or drive-in drive-out work arrangements have with enrolling and with voting. Some of them think the onus is on the mining company to provide that sort of information; others think it is their own responsibility. There are all sorts of difficulties around what happens when voting is held—or when the government wishes to conduct its census, which occurs on a Tuesday night. If we cannot get it right for those people, how can we expect this bill to get it right if it is enacted?

Labor and the Greens are hoping that with these bills they will gain more votes, and the member for Bennelong made that point in his speech just a few moments ago. That is the core of these bills: Labor and the Greens, who are running Labor, are hoping that they will get more votes. At present, we have a tremendously successful electoral system, but it still has its flaws. Prior to when I ran for parliament in the August 2010 election, we sent out direct mail to people who we thought were at their right addresses in the electorate of Riverina, and it cost quite a lot of money. But, prior to and after the election, boxes upon boxes of mail came back which had been incorrectly addressed, and I am still getting them. Now and again, I still get one or two of these letters back in the mail with 'incorrect address'.

Where do you think we got the information on these supposed voters in the Riverina? It came from the Australian Electoral Commission, so their records are not always entirely accurate. Certainly they do a great job. We all in this House recognise the wonderful but difficult role they have, but with modern technology that role sometimes becomes even more onerous. Whilst they try to do the job as accurately as they can, the role does have its flaws and irregularities. If these bills become law, they will create even more hassles. I hate to think of the number of boxes of wrongly addressed mail I will receive when I next run for parliament if these bills are passed. Last time, I actually had an Australia Post truck roll up in my front driveway to hand them back to me. There were five or six boxes, which I took to the Australian Electoral Commission in Narrandera, which is in the heart of the Riverina. They were able to follow them up to see why they were incorrectly addressed, to cross-reference them with the records of addresses that those voters had given to the Australian Electoral Commission but which obviously had not been updated.

These bills seek to damage the integrity of the electoral roll, as I said. It is the law that you should be on the roll if you are eligible and over the age of 18. The member for Mackellar pointed out that these bills will compromise the integrity of the Australian electoral roll. As with all matters procedural that the member for Mackellar raises in this House, she is correct once again. We hope they will not pass but we suspect that they will. Information will be updated from sources such as Centrelink and the maritime and roads authority. Coalition members and senators strongly disagree with Labor and Greens members on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012—that is, automatic enrolment—be passed by this parliament.

The coalition has for a long time opposed moves by the Labor Party and the Greens, to whom they are beholden, to introduce automatic enrolment and notes that these bills are being introduced solely to improve the electoral prospects of both Labor and the Greens—I hope from experience of this parliament that Labor actually puts the Greens last on their voting tickets at the next election, and I hope every member of parliament does the same; I know I did in the Riverina in the 2010 election—following similar moves by former Labor governments in New South Wales and Victoria prior to their last state elections. It is interesting to note that both of those New South Wales and Victorian governments were indeed Labor and that now both sit very much where they belong, on the opposition benches.

The coalition also notes the extensive privacy implications that this legislation raises which, unfortunately, have been ignored by both the Labor Party and the Greens. The coalition has very real and genuine concerns about electors having their details published on the electoral roll without their knowledge and without the opportunity to apply for silent elector status. Can you just imagine the confusion that will surround the voting process when people who do not even know that they are on the roll all of a sudden start getting fines in the mail after an election or when voting material is sent to the wrong places if this bill goes through? That is exactly what will happen.

The coalition has great concerns that individuals not entitled to vote may be added to the roll because of this bill. None of us in this place should want that. Coalition members and senators are extremely disappointed with the Australian Electoral Commission's attitude to fraudulent voting and have consistently noted the AEC's failure to prosecute any cases of fraudulent voting, despite there having been more than 20,633 multiple votes at the 2007 election.

Mr Lyons interjecting—

I can hear the member for Bass interjecting there. I am not quite sure what he said but I am sure that he, like all of us in this place, would be concerned about fraudulent voting. I did say that the AEC do a marvellous job, and they do. It is a very difficult and onerous job, particularly in these days of technology, to make sure that the electoral roll is as good as it can be, but these bills are not providing that. I am sure that the member for Bass would not want people fraudulently voting. I am sure that people in Bass would not be fraudulently voting but, unfortunately, they are in other areas of Australia because there were 20,633 multiple votes at the 2007 election. Goodness knows how many there were at the 2010 election.

At present, an elector must fill out an enrolment form to be added to the electoral roll, and that is the way it should be. However, if they are automatically enrolled, there will be no specific record that refers to how they were enrolled, why they were enrolled or, indeed, who was enrolled in the first place. On 29 February 2012, Senator Scott Ryan raised a valid point about how this legislation will make it more difficult for the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute cases of fraudulent voting. When electors are put on the roll automatically, potentially without their knowledge or consent, there will no longer be a signature available for the returning officer to compare when an elector is making a declaration vote. That is just a disgrace. If you go into a shop and you use your credit card for a purchase of $10 or more, a trifling amount, you have to have your signature on the back of your credit card verified to make sure that you can take that purchase, but, if these bills come into place, people whose signature will not be able to be verified will be on the electoral roll and they will not even know they are on the electoral roll. How will they know next time that they ought to be voting for the National Party or indeed—as the member for Dawson joins me—the Liberal National Party in Queensland? It just beggars belief.

Senator Ryan noted that this will be one less piece of evidence that the Director of Public Prosecutions will have available if they are attempting to prosecute a case of fraudulent voting. It is interesting to note Senator Ryan's comments there:

We currently have a signature on a form with an enrolment. We have had a number of discussions in this committee and the Senate committee the AEC comes before in estimates about the difficulty proving certain electoral offences and the burden of evidence required for the DPP to take action. I am concerned that, if we move to what I am going to continue to call automatic enrolment—simply because I think it is automatic in the sense that it does not require action from an elector—we are going to lack that signature from a voter. That worried me. If there are cases of potential electoral fraud, that is one less piece of evidence the commission will have in its armoury.

You currently have a form that you can compare signatures to if, for example, people are using declaration votes and have to sign the envelope. That will not be available under these provisions.

That is a damning indictment of these bills, and truer words could not be said.

The previous New South Wales Labor government, under Premier Kristina Keneally, introduced automatic enrolment prior to the March 2011 state election, and the result was that a large number of electors automatically added to that state's electoral roll failed to turn up—that is right; they failed to turn up—to vote at the 2011 election. I wonder why that is? I wonder why those people failed to turn up? I will tell you why they failed to turn up: because they did not know they had to. They did not know that they were on the electoral roll. They could have turned up and they could have even given the coalition more votes than we received, and we could have had more members in parliament, and we could have jettisoned Labor further to where they belonged in that particular election, because we had had 16 years of the worst state Labor government that New South Wales had ever had to endure. You could say it was 16 years of hard Labor!

Back to the bills in question: coalition members and senators realise that these bills are being introduced by Labor and the Greens solely to increase their electoral advantage—shame on them—despite the severe risk they pose to the integrity of the electoral roll and the significant concerns about individual privacy. We hear so often from those opposite about privacy issues and how it is important to have privacy absolutely paramount in today's society. Indeed, we do need to have some of those privacy issues at the forefront of any legislation that we bring before this House.

As such, coalition members and senators believe that this legislation should be rejected by the lower house, and hopefully it will not even make it to the Senate, in order for the responsibility of enrolling to remain with individual Australian citizens and not be given to the bureaucracy. We have enough bureaucracy. We have enough red tape being foisted on us by this Labor government. We do not need any more. When the coalition were in office, we had to remove prisoners from eligibility to vote, but the Labor Party changed that too. As I say, we should reject these bills out of hand, and I commend to the House that we do that.

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

Before I call the member for Aston, I remind people about putting things on desks—so it is better on chairs.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is a truly great democracy. We are indeed one of the great democracies of the world, the longest continuous democracy on the planet despite our relatively short history as a nation. We have never had a coup. We have never had a revolution. When we have elections at the state and federal level they are abided by. People go and cast their vote peacefully, generally without interruption. The ballot is cast, the votes are counted and the decision is made, and people adhere to that decision.

In fact, I often pose a question to members of school communities when I am speaking in their civics and citizenship classes. I ask: 'What normally happens after we have had an election and the government has lost the election? What normally happens the next day?' They look at me and scratch their heads and wonder what I am talking about, but of course the answer is that the next day after a government has lost an election, just like the Howard government did in 2007 when they lost to Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party, you go into your office and you pack up your office quietly. You go to your files and you shred some of your files, you tidy it up and you leave very peacefully. And you hand over the keys to what had previously been the opposition. That is what happens. It is a remarkable thing about democracies that this occurs. You do not need the police to come in. You do not need the military to come in to assess that or ask one party to leave and to hand the keys over to another party. No, it is all peacefully done, and enormous power is transferred from one group of people to another on the basis of an election.

The reason that that can occur is that we have integrity in the voting system. Both sides of this House and the Australian public know there is integrity in the voting system because we know that there is a system whereby people have to enrol to vote and that there is integrity in that process and we know that there is integrity in the process where the roll is marked off, where the votes are counted and where there is scrutineering all through the process.

I am deeply worried about the bills before us, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012, because I think they will damage this integrity. That is my primary concern in relation to this legislation, because this legislation enables the Australian Electoral Commission to use a variety of sources of information—which are unspecified to date—to update the electoral roll, whereas presently the system is that an individual must go and enrol to vote and must go and update that enrolment record if he or she has changed their circumstances, such as by changing address.

We on this side of the House are concerned that the system which is proposed here by the government and is outlined in this legislation will lead to a number of negative consequences.

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

It being 1.45 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.