Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take issue with a number of points in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2006, but the first thing I want to take issue with is the bill’s name—calling this an ‘electoral integrity’ bill when indeed it is not that at all. Since I have been a member of the Senate, every time the government has some sort of rort that it is about to play on the Australian people, it has fancied it up with a different name—‘Work Choices’, for example. Anything to do with industrial relations, social security or health, whereby the government is going to deprive the majority of the population of some right or privilege or benefit, has some Orwellian name attached to it.

I do not know if it started under the Labor government, but I think it should stop. I think it is wrong, because it implies entirely the opposite to what the bills are intending to do. Historians will have an opportunity, when looking back at the Howard government, to look clearly at the bills that have all these strange titles—as I said, like ‘Work Choices’, ‘Welfare to Work’ and whatever else you want to nominate. They will be able to isolate straight from there what the government’s ideological agenda was—to target those areas they believed were the Labor Party support base, or because they were ideologically opposed to trade unions, or to target people who are unfortunately on welfare, or because they believed they were going to deprive them of something.

The other aspect that I think historians are going to have difficulty with will be when looking at the names of the ordinary bills. If we have a look at the names of the bills that are going to come after this, we see the excise laws amendment bills, which is pretty standard language, and the Fuel Tax Bill, which is standard language. All of the non-controversial bills that we dealt with last night were in standard language. That should be the language that is used for legislation that is presented before this parliament, rather than this Orwellian language being used at the moment.

When we look at some of the bills that are going to hit us in the next week or so, some of the things that are encapsulated in those bills are indeed significant rip-offs of the Australian community. If we are going to be fair dinkum about the names of these bills, maybe there should be a bill sometime next week called something along the lines of ‘Superannuation (Rich Old Bastards Relief) Bill’ or something like that for any of the other things where we are going to provide some sort of tax or financial benefit to the top end of town. You should be honest and consistent rather than dishonest, as you are in this proposed bill before us this afternoon.

The government proclaims that this bill will defend the integrity of the system, but what it is about is disenfranchising Australian voters by the early closing of the electoral rolls and increasing the political donation disclosure thresholds. Indeed, in the end, it does very little to defend the robust nature of our democracy. I want to go first to the closing of the electoral roll. The government has claimed, in fact, contrary to the evidence before it, that the seven-day grace period currently provided to electors to enrol makes the system vulnerable to fraud. The Australian Electoral Commission does not support this view. It provided evidence to this effect to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in 2002. It stated:

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.

‘A backward step,’ says the Electoral Commission. But the government are not listening. They are walking, whether it is backwards or otherwise, in step with their own tune and in the process ignoring the evidence before them and ignoring the ramifications this bill will have for voters.

Let us have a look at the figures available to us. As Senator McEwen said, at the 2004 federal election 78,816 new enrolments were registered in the seven-day grace period. Under this piece of legislation, those 78,000-odd voters would have only until 8 pm of the day of the issue of the writs to enrol to vote. Time is precious. Mums and dads dropping their kids off to child care and then rushing to work know this. Australian workers having their weekends, public holidays and even their rest breaks taken away from them under this government’s IR laws are particularly aware of this precious time. But, indeed, maybe they are the people that this legislation is targeted at.

The seven-day grace period under the current system affords Australians that time to get their applications in so they can make their important contributions to the process. Yet this bill before us will restrict the opportunity of Australians to vote by cutting the time they have to enrol. Theoretically, once you turn 18 or become eligible through citizenship, you should be registering on the electoral roll immediately. I would say that the majority of electors do just that. However, there are those who have put it off or simply forgotten to do so. The calling of an election provides an imperative for them to get their names on the roll and have a say in the running of this country. But to these people the government is saying, ‘Too bad—you don’t get to have your say.’ The number of 78,816 people enrolling to vote after the calling of the 2004 election is not one to sniff at. This is almost the size of some electorates. If this legislation had been in place before the 2004 election, it would be fair to say that a sizeable chunk of these people would have been excluded from exercising their right to vote as Australian citizens.

While they are at it, the government wants to add to the disenfranchised heap by excluding all serving prisoners, no matter what the length of their sentences are, as I understand it. At the last count there were 19,236 people. This will invariably target Indigenous Australians due to their overrepresentation in the prison population. In the UK, where they have tried a similar system of prisoner disenfranchisement, it was found that the law violated the European Convention on Human Rights. As noted in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, where the UK law was challenged:

... removal of the vote in fact runs counter to the rehabilitation of the offender as a law-abiding member of the community and undermines the authority of the law as derived from a legislature which the community as a whole votes into power.

Clearly, Australia is not a signatory to the European convention, but it follows that the same questions on legitimacy of the government are raised in that government is seeking to remove a citizen’s right to vote. There should be a concern in the Liberal Party about this. I am not sure about how often, in the eastern suburbs set in Sydney, Ray Williams, Rodney Adler and a lot of other white-collar criminals used to frequent the cocktail parties—and probably Liberal Party fundraisers. Maybe Senator Forshaw, in his contribution, might be able to tell me.