Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Western Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have a fake Prime Minister with a fake plan for climate change, and now he is seeking to legislate a fake democracy for Australia. The voter suppression laws that the government plans to vote for and push on to the Australian people before the next election are morally wrong. He wants to make it harder for people to vote so it's easier for him and his MPs to hang on to office. In their ninth year in government, this is their priority? In response to a COVID pandemic, this is the legislation that the government decides it must pass before an election?

We proudly had the Australian ballot. Now the member for Tangney is giving us the American ballot, an idea stolen from the dark heart of Donald Trump and inserted onto the floor of the parliament of Australia. People will be queuing for hours and hours to be able to vote. Marginalised voters will be turned away. The democracy sausage will become a suppression sanger. Talk about ending the weekend—the weekend will mean that you spend your entire time waiting to have your voice heard in an election.

Democracy is a fundamental Australian value. We make people commit to democratic values when they become citizens. We don't make them show ID when they rock up to their citizenship ceremony. You don't need ID to come onto the floor of the parliament. And even our treasured democratic institution, the Australian Electoral Commission, has said that voter ID would 'involve significant start-up and ongoing costs'. We do not know the cost of this proposal.

The Australian Electoral Commission has said that this will cause voter inconvenience. The Australian Electoral Commission has said that it will lead to possible disenfranchisement of a number of voters. The Australian Electoral Commission has said that this will result in possible delays in the delivery of an election result because of an increase in the level of declaration voting. So we'll have to wait even longer to hear the voice of the Australian people. That's what the independent umpire says.

This government's record on democracy is terrible. We still have, in their ninth year, no federal anticorruption and integrity commission. They refuse to change the donation disclosure laws. They let the member for Pearce take secret money out of a trust fund and then vote to clap him along in doing so. They happily do preference deals with One Nation.

The democratic attack extends to an attack on our states and territories, too. Last month we saw the Deputy Prime Minister compare Western Australia to North Korea. I'll give them this: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea claim to be a democracy, but they don't like people voting either. We've got a government stealing ideas from North Korea, Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson, who is claiming the credit. What could possibly go wrong?

The same government controlled committee that is recommending these voter suppression laws also recommended optional preferential voting and scrapping by-elections. They wanted to scrap by-elections. If that doesn't tell you that they don't believe in democracy and that they want to suppress the will of the Australian people, what does? What comes after this? Does the member for Tangney want to draw his own electoral boundaries? Are we going to start seeing Liberal mates appointed to the Electoral Commission in highly paid jobs? Are we going to move elections to a Tuesday, like they have in the United States?

There are serious democratic deficits in Australia. Indigenous enrolment in Western Australia is the equal worst of the states and territories. The Electoral Commission estimates that only 69.7 per cent of all Indigenous eligible voters are actually on the role. There are 20,954 Indigenous Australians assumed to be unenrolled in Western Australia. This should be the priority of this government: making sure that every Australian can have their say, that every Australian is enrolled to vote so that they can rock up and have their say at election time, rather than arrive and queue for hours only to be told: 'Sorry, you don't have the correct paperwork. Go home. You don't get to vote in this election. Come back in three years time.'

Labor believes in democracy. We believe in Australia. We believe the Australian people deserve to have their voices heard and, unlike this government, we trust the Australian people. We will fight these laws. We will oppose their voter suppression agenda. We will oppose them bringing the worst of Trump's America here to Australia.