Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2006 makes it harder for some Australians to vote, and it does this by changing the enrolment time lines. A number of commentators have noted that, effectively, the close of rolls will be on the day that writs are issued and that this change will disadvantage a number of people in particular. This includes young people, people of non-English-speaking backgrounds, people who are renting and changing homes, and Indigenous people.

The interesting thing is that this is a move that has been made against the specific advice of the experts in the field, the Australian Electoral Commission. In its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the Electoral Commission specifically said:

The AEC is on record repeatedly expressing its concern at suggestions to abolish or shorten the period between the issue of the writs and the close of the rolls. That period clearly serves a useful purpose for many electors, whether to permit them to enrol for the first time (tens of thousands of electors), or to correct their enrolment to their current address so that they can vote in the appropriate electoral contest (hundreds of thousands of electors). The AEC considers it would be a backward step to repeal the provision which guarantees electors this seven day period in which to correct their enrolment.

Against the absolutely clear advice of the AEC, the government chooses to bring in this change, which will disadvantage a number of voters and ensure that a number of them will not vote.

Like many people in this parliament, I have a long history in my party as a volunteer or a worker, for a mercifully brief period, in the party office. I was out there in many instances trying to encourage people to enrol to vote. It was a particularly difficult job. Many people are reluctant to vote and take part in the democratic system, even though a lot of those people are the ones that could benefit most by having a say in the government and the system of government they live under. While I was out there during election campaigns or in between trying to encourage people to enrol—certainly during campaigns—I spoke to many people from other parties. I did note that a lot of the Liberal Party campaign workers seemed to be very ready to indulge in conspiracy theories about people voting twice or dead people voting. They seemed convinced that the Labor Party was rorting the rolls and getting electoral advantage.

This was not true. As I said, I was involved in many campaigns and I never saw any evidence of that. And, I have to say, I never saw any evidence of other parties indulging in that kind of exercise either. It seemed to be a tenet of faith among the Liberal Party that this was occurring and that the Labor Party were better at it than they were. Today, this bill is going through to fulfil the wishes of Liberal Party people in the same way that the student union legislation went through. There is a myth within the Liberal Party that it disadvantaged them to a great extent.

It does disadvantage a lot of people who should be on the roll and who should be voting. Both the change in the enrolment time lines and the requirement for proof of identity will affect a lot of people. The new provision 99B will mean, for example, that provisional voting enrolment for noncitizens who will be granted citizenship between the issue of the election writ and the date of the election will be possible, but it will be a provisional enrolment which will require proof of identity at the polling booth. This means that young people and new migrants—often people who have spent the statutory two years in this country and are still not familiar with the systems—will be required to front up to the polling booth, go to the provisional-polling counter and produce their papers before they can even vote. This will cause difficulty and embarrassment to a lot of those people, to such an extent that they will be deterred from voting. For many people coming from countries where the proof of identity is something that was used by military and totalitarian regimes, that will be especially difficult.

So this bill will be particularly difficult for those from migrant and ethnic communities and non-English speaking backgrounds, and I, as the shadow minister in that area, find this particularly difficult and offensive. There is a paper which talks about the multicultural and ethnic vote, and I think this harks backs to the conspiracy theory where the Liberal Party are looking at ways that they believe that they are disadvantaged and are trying to remedy it through this bill. There is a paper called ‘Labor’s shrinking constituency’ by Bob Birrell, Ernest Healy and Lyle Allen which talks about non-English speaking background voters, particularly in the Melbourne-Sydney area, and looks at voting patterns compared to the percentage of people of a non-English speaking background. They say at one point:

The blue-collar vote in Australia, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, has been split on birthplace lines. In 2001, those born in Australia, the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries gave majority support to the Coalition, while those born in NESB countries supported Labor—by a wide margin. This division is of  particular significance in Sydney and Melbourne because of the high concentration of blue-collar NESB-born voters in these cities. Their strong support for Labor, as well as their concentration in Sydney’s western and south-western suburbs, was sufficient to account for most of the seats Labor held in Sydney in 2001.

I believe that that kind of research—and, quite probably, there is similar research for young people and other renters who move around quite frequently—shows the Liberal Party that they are on the right track in ensuring that it is much more difficult for those kinds of people to vote. The other group that is disenfranchised by this bill are prisoners who are serving a less than three-year term. Again, I think this is a particular example where it might indeed be that the Liberal Party believe that the majority of people in prison under those circumstances would not vote for them.

I find that very disappointing, coming from a state like South Australia, which, as Senator Webber described, had a particularly strong role in widening the franchise in Australia and South Australia. It was the state which first gave the franchise to women and allowed women to stand for parliament, and it was very active in other areas of widening the franchise. So it is disappointing for me personally to come from a state parliament where that was celebrated to the federal parliament and have to watch while a bill is presented to the parliament—and will no doubt go through, given the government’s numbers—that actually decreases the franchise of Australians.

It is very interesting that this is a government that talks often about the value of democracy and uses that now as a justification for going to war in a Middle Eastern country—a government that talks so much about the idea and value of democracy, which we would all certainly agree with in this place—but then in these details is willing to sacrifice democratic principles for a reason that I do not think we have had clearly explained to us. Going against the expert advice of the Electoral Commission has not been clearly identified by the government in its explanation of making the electoral system a bit more robust. There has not been clear evidence of any fraud against the electoral system and no real justification by the government for the reason it has done this. So I think it throws itself open to my accusation that it is doing it for straight electoral advantage, and I think it is a very sad day when this occurs.

In the United States, I think it is fairly clearly documented that it is the poorer group in that country—the black people and the migrants—who do not vote under their voluntary voting system. I think this current bill serves to start off in a small, but very significant, way that kind of process in Australia, where those people who are poor, homeless or come from a disadvantaged background are also deterred from voting. I think it sends a fairly clear signal to the people I look after in my shadow portfolio—the people from a multicultural community—that their vote is not being facilitated either, that their vote is not wanted by the current government.

I will leave it to other people to go into detail about the financial provisions of this bill, but I want to say that I too am opposed to the changes in the political donation system that are outlined in this bill. The transparency of our current system should be continued. The increasing of the donation level that will happen as a result of the passing of this bill will mean that our system will be less transparent and we will not be able to see who is donating—and that will clearly advantage the party that has the wealthiest donors. Again, we have heard many times from the Liberal Party that they believe that the Labor Party is advantaged by having the union donors. I can tell you that a lot of people in the Labor Party think that the Liberal Party are advantaged by having a much wealthier constituency that the Labor Party. Again, I think we see a lot of the wish list of Liberal Party members fulfilled in this bill, and I will be strongly opposing it.