Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Enrolment Integrity and other Measures) Bill 2005 will, if passed, severely disadvantage thousands of Australians in terms of enrolling and voting, especially those in rural and remote areas such as in my own electorate of the Northern Territory.

This bill, far from following recommendations made by the minority members on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters after the last election, goes hard against them, and of course follows closely the recommendations made by the government members.

This bill proposes to make regulations that will make it far harder for people to enrol or change enrolment details. It will make regulations requiring proof of identity or address for applicants for enrolment or changes.

It will close the rolls for new electors at 6pm on the day on which writs for an election are issued and 3 days after writs for enrolment amendments; enrolment will include sex and date of birth on the certified list as a further check on identity when voting.

Senator Faulkner and others have estimated this bill would disenfranchise 80,000 new enrolees and some 200,000 would be unable to change their details to new addresses.

This bill will make it easier to donate to political parties without public disclosure.

Norm Kelly, writing in The Canberra Times of 21st March 2006 points out that “In a healthy democracy voters make their decisions based on representations from a diversity of parties and candidates. To make an informed decision it is important they are aware of who is funding those parties and candidates.”

Marion Sawyer, writing in The Public Sector Informer of 6th June 2006 says “Australia has fallen well behind comparable democracies in regulating political donations and Electoral Act changes will see it fall further behind in enrolment procedures.”

This bill will ensure that voters are kept increasingly in the dark about who is bankrolling whom.

The Government argues that the increase in the disclosure threshold is needed to bring us into line with other countries. Again more than just a tad misleading—the threshold in the USA is $A1,400

The new Government in Canada is further tightening their regulations on political donations, introducing a limit of Canadian $1,000 on the amount any individual can donate to a political party in any year, and actually moving to BAN contributions by corporations, trade unions or associations

So under this bill, parties and candidates will be able to pull in the funds at under $10,000 per donation, keep it quiet and spend up big—there will be a far higher chance of someone with enough money being able to unduly influence an election—along way from the claimed “integrity” purpose of this bill indeed.

Figures provided in Political Financial disclosure under current and proposed thresholds (DPL research note 24 March 2006) show that under the present threshold in 2004/05 the ALP disclosed donations of $13,930,195 and the government coalition a total of $19,206,952.

If this bill goes through under the new disclosure requirements the coalition would have been required to disclose only just over $14 million (some $5 million undisclosed) as against ALP of nearly $11 million (about $3 million undisclosed).

In raising the threshold it can only mean more donations to a party are hidden, and we can only assume that is absolutely what the government intends to happen, for they have never shown any inclination to be transparent on donations.

So this bill will simply make it harder to enrol and vote, but easier to donate to and influence political parties without disclosing it.

This bill will impose identity requirements on those attempting to get enrolled—again adversely affecting those in rural and remote areas the most—they cannot just stroll down to a photographer for ID photos, or even find anyone to certify photos or documents.

This bill will further include a number of amendments such as who can assist voters and also restrict scrutineer activities in relation to assisted voting. This would clearly disadvantage say Indigenous voters who required help in the polling booth.

Clearly all these changes proposed will make it harder for rural and remote voters to enrol, change enrolment details or to get assistance in voting at the polling booths. This will affect the NT very much, and Indigenous people more than most.

Evidently these changes are aimed at disenfranchising as many Indigenous Australians as possible. Not satisfied with taking away their elected representative bodies to reduce their say in Aboriginal Affairs, this government now intends to make it harder for Indigenous Australians to get to vote too.

Remember that until the Howard Government abolished it, there was also an Indigenous Electoral Information program. This program was well run and of great assistance in helping remote Indigenous Australians to enrol. They took little time after gaining power in 1996 to abolish this program.

This bill would also disadvantage young people enrolling for the first time. Michael Danby, writing in the Herald Sun back on 27th May 2005 (Page 20) said that in 2001, some 83,000 first time voters enrolled in the existing seven day period. If this bill were passed, these people would simply miss out. How this bill can be seen or called anything to do with enrolment INTEGRITY is beyond me.

It would also completely remove the voting rights of all prisoners serving any sentence of full time detention, however long or short.

Similar moves to disenfranchise groups of people have been made and failed in the past. This government may now have the numbers to get this legislation through but Labor will not support it.

The previously mentioned JSC on Electoral Matters found, based on information from the AEC that electoral fraud is a fairly minor problem in Australia, so this bill is not seriously aiming at overcoming that. There is no justification for doing anything, for our electoral system is already fair, just and honest.

What was found was that under enrolment of certain groups was much more of a problem and these under enrolled groups certainly included the young and people in remote areas of our nation.

So what does the Government now try to do to these people?? Just make it even harder for people in these groups to get enrolled to vote! Typical of this arrogant and out of touch government who are quite simply and ruthlessly making life harder and harder for the average Australian.

Of course, this government does not give a hoot for people in rural and remote and areas, and this certainly includes the Nationals, who continually just roll over for the Liberals, so although many of their rural constituents will be disadvantaged they will again cave in to pressure from the Liberals.

This government does not really understand rural and remote areas—they cannot see that if the rolls will close at 6pm on the day an election is called that rural and remote residents cannot pop down to the post office or electoral office and get an enrolment form as they could in Canberra or Sydney. Or if they DO know that then this bill becomes an even more cynical act of political disenfranchisement.

Turning back to my own electorate where just under half the voters are Indigenous. As has been pointed out by my NT colleague in the other place, one of the first things the Howard Government did in 1996 was to abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Electoral Information Service.

The AEC held this program in high regard, and it was a vital part of updating Indigenous enrolments. Without it there was a drop off in Indigenous enrolments. Not that the Howard Government cared—these votes never went their way anyway.

Now they try to make it even harder for Indigenous people to enrol and vote. No wonder the Social Justice Report finds this government lacking in real efforts at reconciliation! Why do they have to play cynical political games—why can’t they be honest and say they don’t really care about the problems and barriers faced by our Indigenous people.

Of course, prisoners also lose the vote under this bill, and again a disproportionate number of prisoners are Indigenous.

But this bill goes beyond that in denying all prisoners a vote. As has been pointed out by Bob McMullan such a denial is in breach of our obligations under the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights, re-signed by this government in 1999. Again one could be cynical and say that this government signs such treaties with no intention of being bound by them.

This bill proposes changes to voter assistance regulations. At present if a voter has a problem—sight impairment or illiteracy for example, that voter has the say in who helps them. They can chose someone they know and trust to help them vote in secret, and this surely is how it should be for an important moment like voting.

Again though this bill proposes change that would go far from this ideal. This bill would give the person requiring assistance no say in who helps them. This bill would have the booth Presiding Officer mark the paper with scrutineers free to observe in some circumstances. It would remove the trust and secrecy. It would remove the ability to chose a helper who could cross language and cultural barriers.

There would be several people, probably unknown to the voter, in or close enough to the voter to see his vote, to remove all secrecy. The voters privacy is grossly intruded upon.

Neither the Opposition nor the AEC support such changes, and both believe the current system is totally acceptable. It is workable, it is fair, it is manageable. There is no fraud, neither in the history of Australian elections has there been.

This government tries all it can to enforce very secret ballots in other areas of our lives, when it suits them in the workplace for example, but NOT in casting a vote in an election—again one can only see this bill as a cynical political move with an ulterior motive.

In conclusion, the Opposition believe that the integrity of electoral enrolment can only be assured if all Australians can easily get their names on the rolls. We believe that the rolls must be secure and voting occur without fraud.

However, the proposals in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Enrolment Integrity and other Measures) Bill 2005 do nothing to ensure this. Indeed they will reduce the integrity of the rolls, reduce the franchise especially for those already disadvantaged, cause confusion at the polling booths through a great increase in the demand for Declaration Votes, and this will increase the time needed to declare results.

Labor certainly does not support the Electoral and Referendum Amendment Bill, which we believe reduces the franchise and makes political parties less accountable, and neither of these are acceptable.

We do not believe that preventing people from enrolling on the same day as writs are issued will do anything to improve the integrity of the rolls. Neither do we believe the additional identity requirements will do so.

The government claims otherwise, but as outlined in the Minority Report of the JSCEM Report on the 2004 Federal Election, these claims are totally unsubstantiated.

The only real justification for these changes is that the Government believes they will gain advantage in future elections.

We believe that all Australian citizens should be actively encouraged to participate in their democracy, and this bill runs counter to that belief.

We believe that raising the threshold for political donations to be made public up to $10,000 is a huge jump, and will enable massive sums of money to go into party coffers without the public knowing or indeed being in any way aware of these donations.

The government justification for this legislation is flawed and dishonest. There is neither evidence nor history of electoral fraud in Australia.

Senator Abetz has agreed that there is not and never has been evidence of fraud in the outcomes of any election in our country. (Media Release Alan Griffith 8th Dec 2005). He has even admitted that this bill is largely a response to changes made by Labor over 20 years ago.

All this legislation will achieve is to make it easier for donations to influence the democratic process, but a lot harder for the ordinary people, especially in rural and remote areas, to exercise their democratic right.

This is just yet another example of the arrogant Howard Government using control of the Senate numbers in a totally irresponsible, undemocratic, un-Australian way to ram through yet more of their blinkered ideological agenda to the disadvantage of a huge number of Australians.