Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is for the Prime Minister. The AEC sends written instructions to all polling booths in Australia, approximately seven days before an election, directing AEC staff to distribute preferences to two candidates chosen by the AEC, regardless of the number of votes by Australians for each candidate as shown on the ballot paper. Shouldn't the AEC be impartial? Will the government stop this biased practice? Why have an election if the AEC can decide, weeks before an election is held, who preferences will be distributed to? Is this really a democracy?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fairfax for his question and I can certainly understand some of his anxieties that were expressed in his question. Obviously all of us have been dismayed by the fact that some 1,000 ballot papers appear to have been lost for the Western Australian Senate election. All of us are dismayed and dumbfounded as to how this could possibly have occurred. But there is, as we know, a case before the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, dealing with, amongst other things, the way the AEC conducted the Senate count and the Senate ballot in Western Australia. There is also a report due from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and I think I would like to wait for that case to be concluded and that report to be delivered before I further comment on the Australian Electoral Commission.