Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is right—it has never been tried. But, of course, they have to scratch around and find an argument. The real reason is to make it harder for certain groups—who the government think might vote against them or might vote for the Labor Party or some minor party—to get on the roll. For instance, I refer to young people who have turned 18 and are eligible to go on the electoral roll. It is a fact that they do not automatically, on the day they turn 18, go down to the electoral office and get themselves on the roll. Campaigns are run and information is provided to schools to draw young people’s attention to the fact that they will be entitled to get on the electoral roll. But most of those 18-year-olds are probably in their last year of school, working towards their Higher School Certificate, and they have a lot of other things on their mind.

It is also a fact that, for a number of years, federal elections are held in the latter part of the year, September, October, November—the very time when those students are focused on their exams. The government’s view is that, if they do not get themselves on the roll the day before the election is called, then bad luck: ‘You shouldn’t participate in the process. You shouldn’t have the seven days that you currently have to get yourself on the roll.’ What sort of message does that send to the young people of Australia? That is not at all encouraging them to vote.

The other problem that I see with this—and we point this out in our report—is that, by reducing the number of days that are available once an election is called for people to regularise their enrolment, such as notifying a change of address, the real potential is that on election day you end up with an electoral roll with a lot of people still at the wrong address. The figures that were provided to us during the inquiry after the last election showed that, of the 423,000 changes to the electoral roll in the period after the election was called, the overwhelming majority—255,000—were people fixing their electoral roll address, or regularising their enrolment.

My time is running short and so many other things in this legislation are so fundamentally flawed that we could spend hours debating it, but I want to turn to the issue of the disclosure thresholds. In the current legislation, the thresholds provided beyond which disclosure is required range from $200 to $1,500—$200 in relation to donations to individuals and $1,500 with regard to a political party. The government’s legislation proposes that those limits be increased to $10,000. That is a massive increase. What is their argument for that? They say, ‘The limits haven’t been increased for some time and they should be adjusted, such as for inflation.’

In the inquiry, it was demonstrated quite clearly that an increase of some 10 times, or 1,000 per cent, is well beyond the inflationary impact since the last time those amounts were adjusted. The other point to make is that, again, there is no evidence to demonstrate that those figures should be increased and that they are some impediment to the electoral process. The only organisations that supported the changes in financial disclosure limits were, again, the Liberal Party and the National Party—that is all. Of course, who stands to benefit from the changes? Obviously the political parties, but I would put forward that it is particularly the government political parties.

It means that people who would make individual donations, or businesses that would make donations, to political parties will now be able to donate anywhere up to $80,000 or $90,000 without having to disclose it; rather than the $1,500 limit that currently applies. This proposal means that you can make a $10,000 donation to each state division of a political party as a separate donation without having to disclose the fact that you have donated it, and the candidate does not have to disclose that they have received it or from whom they received it.

This is just hypocrisy by the government. On the one hand they allege, without any evidence, that there is a potential for massive fraud in the electoral roll, and they take away the opportunity for people to get themselves on the roll or regularise their enrolment so as to exercise their democratic rights to vote. Then, on the other hand, they jack up the limits on financial disclosure, where the result will be many more donations made secretly to political parties. That goes to the heart of the issue of electoral integrity. If this government had any idea of what electoral integrity means, they would withdraw this bill. (Time expired)