Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I present the committee's advisory report, incorporating dissenting reports, on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022.

This was an important inquiry, and I thank all who participated and the committee members. This will be the first time in 24 years that Australia will have a referendum. A lot has changed in 24 years, including how our elections are run and how voters engage in elections. It is important that Australians continue to have an electoral system that is modern and that meets our current-day needs. The bill referred to our committee for consideration does this work. It modernises the way referendums are run so that, this year when Australians go to vote, they'll have a voting experience very similar to last year's federal election, including early voting centres and postal voting, a timely count of ballots and transparency when it comes to authorisation of campaign materials, the financial disclosure and foreign donations framework and matching measures in the electoral act.

In conducting its work, the committee received submissions from members of the public, constitutional and legal experts, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative groups and others. I thank them all. The committee heard there was important ability in holding this referendum for us to update the experience of voters and bring it into line with their experience of voting in a federal election. The AEC told us that, essentially, this means that when people go to vote their experience will be very similar to what it was on election day.

The committee heard there are further opportunities that should be considered as part of the referendum experience to build on our modern electoral system, to allow especially for improved enfranchisement and participation particularly amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The current rate of enrolment amongst Indigenous Australians is around 82 per cent nationally. That is not good enough. The AEC is confident that trials of new measures will further boost enrolment in coming months. The AEC told the committee it saw opportunities in this referendum to improve this participation. That includes: conducting remote area mobile polling for up to 19 days ahead of the referendum date; trialling the provision of secure telephone voting in certain circumstances; and providing for secure on-the-day enrolment, enabling a potential new voter to cast a declaration vote that is admitted to the count once their enrolment is approved and processed. The committee urges the government to give serious consideration to supporting these measures that improve participation and enrolment. It is critically important that we allow all Australians to have their say as part of this referendum.

The committee also considered how information has been and should be provided during a referendum. There were a wide range of views the committee heard on this, including both for and against the use of the traditional yes/no pamphlet. Some legal and constitutional experts told the inquiry that, in the past, the pamphlet has not worked as intended to. Professor George Williams noted:

The pamphlets are often full of not only misleading statements but sometimes lies that we know to be false.

He added that he supported the removal of the pamphlet but was troubled that merely removing it was not enough, and that we should look at what we replace the pamphlet with.

Professor Anne Twomey said that such pamphlets have previously been used to provide the community with emotive, misleading and inaccurate statements. She said she wouldn't mourn the loss of the 'yes' or 'no' case but stressed there was a need for something substantial to replace it. Others stated that the pamphlet remains a valuable document for voters, providing them with the views of their elected representatives. The Australian Human Rights Commission said the pamphlet was an official source of information that summarises the key arguments for and against. The Central Land Council expressed concern that, without a physical pamphlet, older people and those in remote communities might feel they didn't have reliable access to information.

While views on the pamphlet varied, there was widespread agreement about the need for information to educate and inform voters about the referendum and help them make up their minds. That's why the committee recommends the government considers how best it can ensure all Australians are provided with clear, factual and impartial information as part of the referendum. This includes, and the government has announced that part of providing this information will be, a yes/no pamphlet. This will be coupled with broader efforts in providing the information Australians will need to feel assured they have been informed before they go to the polls.

With these considerations and recommendations in mind, the committee supports the passage of the bill.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of opposition members of the committee I make a few comments on the tabling of the report. There is a dissenting report. The previous speaker has just foreshadowed the government's position regarding the formal pamphlet. There was a lot of hot debate and a proposition of potentially removing that tradition. It seems the government's position has changed on that, which we welcome.

This was an inquiry into the machinery of referenda perpetually into the future; this could be a statute that applies to many referenda into the future, and it shouldn't be narrowly viewed specifically towards an eminent referendum related to the constitutional amendment for the Voice to Parliament. Regardless I don't think the fundamental principles of how we conduct referenda in this country should differ, no matter what the question is. It's highly concerning to those of us in the opposition to see propositions—and we, in our dissenting report, indicate we don't support the proposition of not having a proper, formal case protected through legislation for each side of the proposition to change the Constitution in any case in which we are looking to change the Constitution. That is proposed in this legislation, and we are very much opposed both to not having a formal 'yes' and 'no' case and to not properly financially resourcing each of those cases. Obviously that principle must include equal financial resourcing to each case. Of course, the particular legislative instrument to hold any particular referendum tends to encapsulate how the government intends to resource those cases, but we believe that should always involve equal funding.

I am really concerned, frankly—we all have political experience in this chamber—that any attempt to rig the system and to suggest or make changes that some people might believe are designed to facilitate a certain outcome is actually going to achieve the complete opposite political objective. We understand that the public funding of 'yes' and 'no' cases is always going to be a small proportion of the total amount of resources deployed into a campaign. That's the case in our actual elections, as we know. So there is going to be a 'yes' campaign and a 'no' campaign in any referendum, including for the Voice to Parliament. If it becomes the position of the parliament to change the law to remove the tradition of providing taxpayer resources equally to each of the cases, I think the damage to any effort to change the Constitution will far outweigh whatever resourcing and argument against changing the Constitution would have provided in the court of public opinion through the expenditure of those funds.

So we are opposed to the principle but also quite surprised that anyone who thinks they are helping an outcome to be achieved by starving it of taxpayer resources—it's going to achieve the opposite result. It is very difficult to change the Constitution. We know that. We've got a lot of evidence. We try, but it rarely occurs. At the most recent time, the republic referendum in 1999, we had formal, official 'yes' and 'no' cases, and appropriate financing was provided towards that. I think that any kind of trickery or rigging of in the system and effectively trying to advantage one side of a debate over the other will only increase scepticism amongst the people of the country and will only contribute to the defeat of whatever proposition is put to them.

It will be difficult to change the Constitution any time we try, no matter what the proposition is. Why you would want to add and be saddled with the additional challenge of having made a legislative change that unwinds the precedent of supporting proper debate on changing our Constitution in this nation is absolutely mystifying to those of us in the coalition. We urge the government to dramatically reconsider the message it will send and the damage it would inflict on attempts to change the Constitution by saying we don't want to have properly resourced arguments for and against that change. I think the people will react quite strongly against that change, and it will dramatically doom future attempts to change the Constitution that may or may not have credibility, because the politicians have rigged the system against it. (Time expired)

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm broadly supportive of the government's recommendations in the advisory report on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022. In particular, I am glad to see a recommendation to support increased enrolment and participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in remote communities and the uncontroversial updating of the mechanics of how we run referenda. On a broader note, after this referendum we should do a compressive review of the referendum act to reflect the developments of the last century so that last-minute changes don't need to be made through new legislation relating to each referendum.

I'm supportive of the somewhat vague recommendation that the Australian government ensure appropriate structures and mechanisms are put in place to ensure impartial information is made available. While I have some concerns about the veracity of the information to be included in an official 'yes/no' pamphlet, I am not against the opposition's suggestion that having official 'yes/no' pamphlet may be useful for the diminishing part of our community that does not get its information from the internet. I support this change.

I would like to speak briefly to the three additional comments I make in the report. It's essential that we do a better job of ensuring truth in political advertising. This is broader than the proposed Voice referendum, but concerns about racist misinformation in this context are real and sharpen the focus on truth in advertising because of the potential damage that could be done. I accept that it will be difficult to establish a robust truth-in-political-advertising regime in time for the referendum. In the short term, and so as not to interfere with the timing of the referendum, a compromise position could be to establish an independent panel to fact-check information disseminated in the referendum campaign. This panel is consistent with the government's second recommendation, to establish structures and mechanisms to ensure impartial information, and could play a role in that function as well. The panel could also play a role in determining the wording of the question, and many expert witnesses backed this idea.

Another broad area of reform that will surface in relation to the referendum is financial disclosures. The bill recommends the same excessively high threshold of $14,500 and late timing for disclosure of who's supporting the yes and no campaigns. I recognise that this would create a reporting burden, but there is overwhelming community support to improve the transparency of who is funding political campaigns before we vote, and I think it would be a good idea for any organisation campaigning on the Voice, either way, to think about the fact that their support will be made public. In relation to financial disclosures, I would support a recommendation for greater transparency in line with most states, with more immediate disclosure of all donations above $1,000.

For such an important referendum for the future of the country, truth and transparency are vital, and I urge the government to consider improvements to this end in the implementation of the legislation.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allocated for statements on this report has concluded.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Debate adjourned.