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

This legislation purports to implement recommendations 3 and 11 of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its report, A time for change: yes/no? of 2009. An expert panel was established to look at the question of change for local government recognition, and the final report came down in 2011. We are now looking at the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2013, merely 124 sleeps away from the proposed date of the referendum and indeed the election.

If you look back through the history of referenda in this country, you will find that very few have been held concurrently with an election—for the simple reason that, when you are dealing with the Constitution, it is felt that it is important that it be an issue in its own right and should not be confused, or confusing, for the electors as they vote on election day. Indeed, there should be a proper timeline to prepare for it, as the Electoral Commission stated in its own submission to the enquiry. They said that if it were truncated there were all sort of risks about the information not being given properly to Australian voters.

Recommendation 3 said that the yes/no pamphlet, which is an important part of any referendum, should be posted and received by every elector. The yes/no pamphlet has the yes case and the no case being put so that every elector can make their decision on proper information. It is required by the existing 1984 act, which, of course, was introduced by the Hawke government.

The coalition opposed this recommendation. The Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs said that the pamphlet should be sent to every household, not to every elector. I think it is important to point out that in this current government, throughout this term, the government and the Special Minister of State has introduced several pieces of legislation that remove the term 'elector' and replace it with 'person'. This seems to be the next step in the government's desire to remove 'elector' from all relevant legislation. From this side of the House, we believe that the 'elector' and constant reference to the 'elector' is pivotal in maintaining a proper sense of voting, be it at elections or on referendums.

I will be moving in the consideration in detail stage two amendments, one of which will be to remove the provisions of this bill contained in the schedule which indeed remove the need for the yes/no pamphlet to be posted, and I accentuate 'posted', to each elector. The bill substitutes the phrase, 'sent to each address'.

We are also concerned that the bill—again getting rid of the term 'posting' and substituting 'sending'—will allow the Electoral Commissioner to send information to an address that he considers appropriate. It is a strong belief of the coalition that the Electoral Commissioner should not be assessing what is, or is not, an appropriate address—particularly an email address, which, in his second reading speech, the minister stated was contemplated. Rather, the AEC should be concerned to meet the provisions of the existing act and focus on maintaining the integrity of the role.

It is interesting to note that there is no official register of emails for electors. There is no data here in the census that shows how many people have email. If you look at the American experience, they have on average about 1.6 email addresses each. Moving away from the effectiveness of the pamphlet being posted to each elector, I and the coalition think it is a fundamental and important part of ensuring a referendum to change our Constitution, the fundamental document which allows Australia to be governed for the peace, welfare and good government of the people. We are concerned about the provision that is contained in the schedule that they should be permitted to send the pamphlet by email simply does not stack up in this current environment. It may in the future. I do not know that. But I do know right now that it does not.

We have vigorously opposed automatic enrolment and the use of government departments to provide the AEC with information to be used to automatically enrol people to the electoral roll. The coalition sees this as a further request by the AEC for information on electors above and beyond what has already been provided. Email addresses are a phenomenon of the last 10 years and were not highly used or relevant in the last referendum held in 1999. Currently there are no statistics collected on the number of electors who have email addresses but the census does reveal that 19.6 per cent of dwellings do not have internet access, let alone a preferred email address. In Australia, as I said, there is no data that shows how many people have an email address. Indications from the Parliamentary Library are that the figure in Australia of people having email addresses is likely to be higher than in America. People only have one fixed electoral address but they can have many email addresses.

The second amendment that I will be moving when we come to consideration in detail deals with that section of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 which is section 11(4). This amending bill seeks to suspend the operation of section 11(4) for the period up until the end of election day. It is important to point out that this provision was placed in the legislation to curtail unnecessary expenditure—to put a cap on. It specifically says:

The Commonwealth shall not expend money in respect of the presentation of the argument in favour of, or the argument against, a proposed law except in relation to the preparation, printing and posting, in accordance with this section;

(aa) the preparation, by or on behalf of the Electoral Commission, of translations into other languages of material contained in those pamphlets;

(ab) the preparation, by or on behalf of the Electoral Commission, of presentations of material contained in those pamphlets in forms suitable for the visually impaired;

(ac) the distribution or publication, by or on behalf of the Electoral Commission, of those pamphlets, translations or presentations (including publication of the internet);

(b) the provision of the Electoral Commission of other information relating to, or relating to the effect of, the proposed law; or

(c) the salaries and allowances of members of the Parliament, of members of the staff of members of the Parliament or of persons who are appointed or engaged under the Public Service Act 1999.

Specifically, if that clause were to be suspended from operation, as this bill wishes it to do, it would leave it open to the government to spend as much money as it liked promoting one case or the other. The Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs report of 2009 did recommend to ensure that spending is directed to referendum education and to equal promotion of the yes/no arguments. There is no provision in this enabling machinery legislation that requires any money spent by the government to be spent equally on the yes case and the no case which was clearly in the minds of the people who made the recommendation in the committee itself.

Further, the Spigelman report—which is the shorthand expression for the expert panel on constitutional recognition of local government—has pointed out that there is a need to ensure that the case for the proposed constitutional change is not left solely to politicians and the local government representative. It goes on to talk about, if it wishes to have it passed, having other people in the community who are convinced of the need for this to occur. Bear in mind we have 124 sleeps left until what Alan Jones likes to call 'clean-up Australia Day', the election day, and we are also to have this referendum on that day—obviously aimed to try and confuse the issue, I suspect. We are looking at the government wanting to have complete freedom to have a media campaign of one sort or another, probably in accordance with the existing regulations for advertising but it would be unfettered by this provision in the machinery legislation.

It is also interesting to note that the Spigelman report found that, having commissioned research to be done about the support for a proposed referendum which has only just been announced, that fewer than 30 per cent of voters can be said to feel a sufficiently strong commitment at this time to the idea of recognising local government to provide high confidence they would support it at a referendum. So as we are at this late stage, where every indicator, including that of the AEC itself, is saying that a truncated period in which to prepare all of the information for a referendum would expose the referendum to risk of insufficient information being made available, I think it is eminently reasonable that we do not suspend that provision which puts a cap on the amount of money that can be spent because in this particular circumstance, where we have a budget coming in tonight that is going to show I think Labor's 20th deficit in a row and show that we are in a fiscally constrained period, it is economically irresponsible to be spending money outside of the provisions already contained in the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act to ensure that information is properly sent out to the electors of Australia to make up their minds one way or another.

In concluding my remarks in this second reading debate, we will be moving two amendments in the consideration in detail stage. The first relates to the need to continue to send—that is, post—the yes/no case to every elector and the second amendment is to remove the provision that would suspend the provisions of section 11(4). In speaking in this second reading debate I have foreshadowed the amendments we will move because the coalition believes when you are looking at conducting a referendum to alter our Constitution that it is a critically important issue that the Australian people need to be well appraised of, that they need to be properly informed so they can make up their minds, that they should not be subject to expenditure which is not evenly divided between the yes and no cases, and that at a time when we are fiscally restrained it is really economically improper of the government to propose to spend additional money, which presumably they will have to borrow to spend, outside the provisions that are already satisfactorily provided for in the existing legislation.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mackellar for her contribution to the debate on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2013. Last week the Prime Minister announced that the Australian government will hold a referendum on 14 September to ask Australians to financially recognise local government in our nation's Constitution. If agreed by the Australian people, the amendment will make a modest but important change to our Constitution so that the existing practice of federal government support for local communities is formally recognised in our Constitution. The change would formally recognise the reality of our three-sphere system of government in Australia. The Australian government works closely with local governments every day to deliver vital services to communities, and I expect the referendum proposal will receive broad and bipartisan support in this federal parliament and across the country.

Making two small, sensible amendments the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2013 helps to ensure that electors are able to make an informed vote in the referendum. These amendments will allow for stronger, more efficient communication with Australian electors. This bill implements the government response to two recommendations made by the then House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its 2009 report A time for change: yes/no? It is personally pleasing to be here today as the Attorney-General and Special Minister of State implementing recommendations from a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs report prepared at a time when I served as chair of the committee.

In the 2009 report the committee made several recommendations to amend the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984. Under section 11 of this act the Australian Electoral Commissioner must arrange for arguments in favour of and against the referendum proposal to be printed in a pamphlet and posted to each elector. As the A time for change:yes/no? report noted:

The printed pamphlet as the primary method of communication has been in place since 1912 and retains support from many within the community.

…   …   …

This requirement to post material to every elector has been the subject of much criticism.

Recommendation 3 of the report was that, instead of posting the pamphlet to each elector, it be sent to each household. The amendments contained in this bill implement this recommendation but do so in a slightly different way than originally proposed. The amendments allow the Australian Electoral Commission to use the addresses they hold for Australian electors. Rather than attempting to describe what a 'household' is in the referendum act, it is more sensible to be able to draw on the existing database of addresses. Listening to the member for Mackellar's speech, it would appear that she has misunderstood the provision in the bill. I want to stress that email addresses are not provided for as an alternative to the use of postal addresses; they are an additional method of communication with electors that is proposed by this amendment. The whole intent of this amendment is to make sure that there will be as full communication as possible with Australian electors.

The bill also allows the Australian Electoral Commission to send pamphlets to any other address it considers appropriate, and I have mentioned the additional provision to allow pamphlets to be sent to an email address again if that is seen as appropriate. Many electors share residential addresses—for example, two adults who share a domestic partnership with, perhaps, adult children living at the same address. This amendment is aimed at making sure that the referendum pamphlet reaches Australian electors at least once, with less unnecessary and costly duplication. It is a provision which will save money.

The bill also implements recommendation 11 of the committee report, which was to lift the current limitation on spending imposed under section 11 of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act. As many submitters to the A time for change report pointed out:

… the restriction on Commonwealth expenditure is a barrier to the development of better and more effective referendum process.

I would adopt the comments made by the member for Mackellar a moment ago about the need to ensure that electors are as informed as possible. That is what the lifting of this current limitation on spending is directed to. As the legal and constitutional affairs committee found in its recommendations:

It is apparent that referendums require a flexible and adaptable approach … the Committee is of the view that the funding level for referendum campaigns should be determined on a case- by-case basis and that decision should be taken by the Australian Government.

This bill lifts the limitation on government spending from when this bill commences until polling day for the 2013 general election. Lifting the limitation on spending is a sensible amendment which was also adopted in conjunction with the 1999 referendum—that is the last time that the Australian people were asked to vote on a change to our Constitution. The form of this provision in this bill to lift the limitation on spending is in exactly the same form as that used by the Howard government in 1999. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.