Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also wish to speak about the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2006, a bill which clearly demonstrates yet again how this arrogant, out-of-control government is using its Senate majority with complete contempt for the Australian people. This is a sinister bill which at its heart seeks to advantage the Liberal Party at the expense of the integrity and wellbeing of Australian democracy. Labor believes that all Australians should have the optimum ability to participate in their democracy, but the government’s view, as demonstrated in this bill, is that great numbers of Australians should be disenfranchised.

Here we have a bill that shows the government does not want to maximise participation in the electoral process; it just wants to marginalise and disenfranchise those groups of voters who it believes will not vote for them. Members and senators have spoken before me about how this bill will disenfranchise our Indigenous Australians. I will say a little bit more about that in the future. However, I wish to first of all speak about how this bill will further marginalise another important group of Australians: our young people.

Of course, this government already has an appalling record when it comes to young Australians. It has cut funding and scrapped programs and neglected Australia’s youth. We have seen 300,000 people turned away from TAFE colleges at a time when the nation is facing a skills crisis. This year 150,000 people were denied university places in areas of critical skills shortages. This year’s budget decision to cut funding to programs that assist young people in rural and regional areas to gain apprenticeships is yet another example of the government failing our young people. Of course, the icing on the cake as the latest and probably greatest example of the government’s failure to deliver for our young people is the completely botched introduction of the Australian technical colleges, with only four colleges open and fewer than 300 students enrolled.

Australian youth face many great challenges. For a start, we have the highest youth suicide rate in the Western world. The skills crisis, to which I have referred, was created through the Howard government’s 10-year neglect of Australian youth. We also face the problems of childhood obesity and the massive HECS burden with which our young people leave their tertiary education. And we now have the government’s so-called Work Choices regime, which will force vulnerable young workers to try to negotiate working conditions with their employers. So young people have many challenges and they need to be part of the solution to those challenges that they are trying to cope with. One very good way to enable them to be part of the solution is to enable them to participate in the democratic process. They understand these problems better than most of us because they are the ones that are living them.

But what have the government done to encourage people to participate in the democratic processes? In 1998 they abolished funding for the Australian Youth Policy and Action Coalition, which ended 40 years of bipartisan Commonwealth government support for a peak body which researched and advocated youth issues. In 2004 the government abolished the position of minister for youth affairs, which gave the clearest signal yet to young people that the federal government do not care about them. And in 2005 the government halved the number of new representatives on the National Youth Roundtable from 50 to 25, another blow to the youth sector, which was trying to engage more young people in the political process and to get them involved in their solutions to their problems.

Now the government wants to make it as hard as possible for young Australians to exercise one of their most basic rights: the right to vote, the right outlined in article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. At a time when we should be engaging with young people and involving them in our political process, this bill seeks to cut them out of that process. The government wants to close the electoral roll at eight o’clock on the day the writs are issued. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, a total of 423,975 enrolment cards were received in the week between the announcement of the 2004 election and the close of the rolls. Of this number, 78,816 were new enrolments. If this government’s legislation had been in place, those people would not have been able to vote at the last election, and we know that many of them were young people. If this bill passes, as it probably will, a similar number will not be able to vote at the next election.

It is a shocking statistic, a shocking fact, that almost half a million Australians could miss out on voting or be forced to vote in the wrong electorate if this bill passes without amendments. In my state of South Australia in the 2004 federal election nearly 50,000 people updated their enrolment details and 9,613 enrolled as first-time voters during the period this bill seeks to cut out. That is nearly 10,000 voters, most of them young people, that the government now wants to exclude.

It is important to understand the ramifications of this bill, as they are significant. Our system of government relies on an informed citizenry for the effective and legitimate functioning of administration. Without active, knowledgeable citizens, our system of government does not work. Without vigilant, informed citizens, there is no check on potential tyranny. It is all too often forgotten how fragile our democracy can be. But as we have seen in other legislation that has gone through this place, including the so-called Work Choices legislation, this government is not averse to throwing out the window long-held values and institutions based on the principle of a fair go. Here we see the government doing it again.

To return to the issue of engaging young people in the political process: the 2004 Youth electoral study conducted by Sydney’s Centre for Research and Teaching in Civics revealed some disturbing statistics. The survey reported that at that time over 300,000 young Australians between the ages of 17 and 24 were not enrolled to vote. Even more alarming, their interest in civics was dwindling along with their desire to vote. More than half of the young people surveyed said that, given the choice, they would not vote. This should be an alarming revelation, no matter what side of the chamber you sit on. But, alas, the government does not seem to care that young people are not enrolling to vote. In fact, this bill is seeking to make it even harder for them to enrol to vote.

On this side of the chamber, we have a lot of sympathy for young people who have become disenchanted with the political process in Australia. Many young people say they do not trust politicians—an observation that can only be reinforced by the actions of this government, which claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when in fact there were not and which claimed that children were thrown overboard when that was not true either.

The Youth electoral study, to which I earlier referred, also calls into question the extent to which Australia’s democratic system of government can be truly representative when such large sections of Australia’s youth are excluding themselves from the most fundamental aspect of the democratic system: voting. While it is a concern to Labor, it is obvious that it is not a concern to the government because they are doing exactly the opposite of what is required to engage those young people in the system.

Government members justify this bill with the pathetically weak argument that they are seeking to fix the integrity of the electoral roll. Senator Hogg went to great lengths to say that Australia’s democratic system is not in danger, that in fact it is an excellent system and it has been reported as such by many independent authorities. It is amazing that government senators can stand in this place and say that this bill is about electoral integrity. The way to protect the integrity of the electoral roll is to ensure that the Electoral Commission is truly independent and has the resources to maintain an accurate and up-to-date roll at all times. Another way to protect the integrity of the electoral roll is to listen to what the independent Australian Electoral Commission is saying. In its submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the 2004 federal election, as we have heard from other speakers, the AEC expressed no concern whatsoever about the workload it faces at each election during the seven days grace voters are currently given to enrol or update their enrolments.

And the Electoral Commission has not supported the argument repeatedly made by the government that last-minute enrolments create opportunities for electoral fraud. Indeed, not only did the AEC disagree with the government’s assertion; it actively opposed that view, arguing in its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in 2002:

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.

Despite its title, this bill is not about the integrity of the electoral roll. On the contrary, it is about undermining the integrity of the Australian democratic system. It is all about fixing the electoral system to suit this extremist government. Indeed, the strategy of the bill seems to be to create problems where there currently are none.

Apart from disenfranchising Australia’s youth, this bill also disenfranchises those Australians who are unfortunately in prison for terms of three years or less, ostensibly there for the purposes of rehabilitation. Disenfranchising prisoners is bad penal policy. The basis of a contemporary and progressive penal policy is ultimately rehabilitation rather than punishment. But here, clearly, the government wants to punish people. It proposes to take away prisoners’ rights, rights that again are prescribed under article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which says citizens should have the right to vote. Regardless of what people have been sent to prison for, they are targeted by this legislation. It is a throwback to the archaic penal system of the days of Australian settlement and it sets a terrible precedent. What class of Australians will be the next to be disenfranchised by this government? Will it be whomsoever the government of the day deems to be unworthy? I said before this bill is sinister and I think in that precedent it is certainly chilling.

As I mentioned earlier, this bill is also particularly discriminatory to our Indigenous Australians. Unfortunately, Indigenous Australians make up a disproportionate percentage of Australians in incarceration. For example, in my state of South Australia they make up less than one per cent of the population but more than 10 per cent of the prison population. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Indigenous Australians will be disproportionately affected by this bill, not only because of incarceration rates but because, as other speakers have pointed out, the procedures necessary to become enrolled are particularly difficult to access because these people live in remote communities.

But we should not be surprised about the government’s attitude towards Indigenous Australians. It is probably even more appalling than their record with youth—far more appalling when you recognise that, after 10 years of the Howard government, Indigenous life expectancy is 17 years less than that for other Australians and the infant mortality rate for Indigenous Australians is three times as high as that of non-Indigenous Australians.

Yet what is this government doing to help Indigenous Australians participate in the democratic processes that may assist them overcome their problems? It is making it harder for them to participate. Indeed, one of the first actions this government took when elected in 1996 was to cut the AEC’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Electoral Education Service. The effect of that was to reduce the number of field officers employed by the AEC, who provided invaluable education programs to encourage Indigenous participation in the democratic process.

One final element of this legislation that Labor opposes vehemently is the proposal to change laws relating to the disclosure of political donations. It is a truism and a cliche, but I will say it: corruption flourishes in the dark and the best way to deal with corruption is to shine a spotlight on it. That is why the Australian Labor Party brought in election disclosure laws designed to introduce a base level of transparency into the campaign funding process. We do not want a political system in this country that is susceptible to corruption and where the cost of elections can give rise to a heightened possibility that political parties and their candidates will become beholden to those who contribute to their campaign funds. Indeed, the recent corruption scandals in the United States point to the need to be strengthening and making more transparent our disclosure laws, not weakening them.

The attacks on accountability in Australian democracy that the provisions of this bill represent will in time allow ministers and government members of parliament of any government to hand out contracts and favourable policy decisions in exchange for campaign donations. This is Americanisation of the Australian electoral system, and we oppose it. What the government is proposing to do in this bill will lead to the deterioration and weakening of Australian democracy at a time when it most needs to be strengthened. Labor believes in the principle of one person, one vote and not one dollar, one vote—and that is the path that this legislation takes us down. We oppose donations to political parties or to candidates being made in secret and behind closed doors.

What the government is trying to do is absolutely the wrong way for Australia to go—but that is nothing new for this government. Labor recognises that our current laws have not been perfect and that people have worked to try to get around them, but it seems from this bill that the people working hardest to get around our current electoral laws are those currently in government.

The argument has simply not been made for the disclosure threshold to be increased from $1,500 to $10,000. The government argues that the amount needs to be changed to keep pace with inflation, but that is misleading—and it is not just misleading; it is blatantly wrong. The disclosure amount was set at $1,500 in 1983 and, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, that amount is now worth approximately $3,500. That is nowhere near $10,000. The current disclosure levels are entirely appropriate, and no evidence was presented to any of the inquiries held into electoral matters that suggested that those amounts should be increased.

While the government argues that these changes will bring Australia into line with other comparable countries, that is not true, either. The proposed threshold is comparable with that in New Zealand, which is $A8,500, and that in Britain, which is at $A12,200, but it is well above the limit in Canada and the limit in the United States, which is still $A1,400. What the government does not say is that these otherwise comparable countries—New Zealand and Britain—both place campaign spending limits on parties and candidates, unlike in Australia. When you add all of that together, we end up with a proposal from this government that has the potential to turn Australia’s system into one of the most rortable and weakest systems of political funding in the Western world.

Before the last federal election, the Prime Minister claimed that he would govern for all Australians. This bill represents the exact opposite of those words. It is about disenfranchising voters and about removing from the roll people who this government does not believe will vote for it. It is an insult to an open, democratic and accountable society. It is another example of how this government looks after itself and its mates, at the expense of hard-working ordinary Australians.

The facts about this bill are that it disenfranchises young people and Indigenous people, undermines the integrity of the electoral roll, undermines the rehabilitation of persons in prison and throws open the door to the rorting of political donations and to the corruption of our democracy. If the senators in this chamber have any sense of civic duty and commitment to Australian democracy, they will vote against this bill.