John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The authority of different forms of government rests on different foundations. Dictatorships are founded by force; democracies stand on suffrage. A democratic government’s moral authority to pass laws and levy taxes rests on citizens’ participation in the democratic process. The more limited and partial that participation the more limited and partial is the government’s authority, for sovereignty comes from the people.

Today the Senate is debating a bill, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2006, which has at its core the deliberate intention of limiting the franchise in Australia. This bill makes it more difficult to vote. This bill makes it more difficult to enrol to vote. But at the same time this bill massively reduces the transparency both of political parties and of the political process. This bill allows massive donations to political parties to be covered up. This bill allows large donations to political parties from individuals to be tax deductible, and this bill extends tax deductibility of such donations to companies. I believe that this bill corrupts our electoral system. This bill makes it much harder to cast a vote, but so much easier to secretly funnel huge amounts of money to political parties. This bill reduces participation in the electoral process in Australia; it reduces it from a right to a privilege, but a privilege only for some and only to be bestowed by the Howard government.

In 2004, in the most recent federal election, 520,086 enrolment transactions were actioned by the AEC in the seven days available after the issue of the writs. Why? Why does that flurry of activity occur? Because the calling of an election triggers action from new enrollees and those who need to update their electoral enrolment. It has ever been thus. These people are not crooks. They are not rorters. They are not trying to manipulate the electoral system. They are ordinary Australians—perhaps less obsessed with politics than the people who sit in this chamber—who want to vote. They want to cast their votes for the political party or candidate of their choice at an election. In this bill the seven-day period between the issue of the writs and the close of the roll is removed. New enrollees will have no time at all after the issue of the writs to enrol—none at all. People who are already on the roll will have not the seven days but only three days. So, as a result of the passage of this bill, many tens of thousands of people who would otherwise have voted will not get to vote at all. And many, many other tens of thousands of people will vote in the wrong electorate as a result of the passage of this bill.

Ask yourself this question: are there any winners? Yes, the Liberal Party is a winner. What is the motivation? It is partisan. It is just base partisan politics. No justification for these measures has been provided by the responsible minister, publicly, in the second reading speech or in the explanatory memorandum for this bill. The Electoral Commissioner could not justify these changes when he appeared before the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee. When asked for justification or the rationale, he said:

I do not think that is a matter for the commission to answer.

These sorts of changes have never been supported before by the Australian Electoral Commission, but one thing the AEC could say is that 423,000 people enrolled, re-enrolled or changed enrolment in the seven days before the 2004 election. That figure included 78,908 new enrolments, 78,494 re-enrolments and a further 255,000 people who changed their enrolment details. So we know that. We also know—and I will speak more about this in the committee stage debate—that, in the 1983 federal election, which was announced on 3 February 1983, an attempted trick by the then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, was to close the rolls on 4 February 1983. In the history of the Commonwealth of Australia it was an unprecedented one day that the rolls remained open. What did we have? We had an utter fiasco at the polling booths all around this country—complete pandemonium right across the length and breadth of Australia—because Malcolm Fraser made the partisan political decision to close the rolls early.

I was interested to remind myself of the Australian Electoral Commission’s submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which did an assessment of these changes in 1993—10 years after the event. This is what the Electoral Commission said at the time:

The closing of the rolls in 1983 only one day after the announcement of the election represented a major departure from the practice which had prevailed until then, and it was for that reason that the matter became one of public debate.

That is very true. It became a matter of public debate also because of what occurred at polling booths. What was the assessment of the AEC? What did they say about the changes that occurred after that debacle in 1983—the seven-day period between the issue of the writs and the close of the rolls? This is what they said about those important, positive changes to electoral law in this country:

It has guaranteed the franchise to large numbers of people who might otherwise have missed out on their votes, and has ensured more accurate rolls by guaranteeing people the opportunity to correct their enrolment details. Its elimination would reopen the door to sudden roll closes such as that of 1983, which cause the retention on the roll of a large number of out-of-date enrolments, and tend to force a large number of people to vote for Divisions in which they no longer reside.

That is not the Labor Party’s view or my view; that was the Australian Electoral Commission’s view as it examined the experiences of the decade following the 1983 federal election.

Not only will the time available to enrol be reduced but also, for those who manage to newly enrol or change enrolment before an election, the enrolment process is being made deliberately more difficult. This bill amends the current legislation to require that people enrolling to vote or updating their details have to provide one of two forms of identification—a drivers licence, or they can show a prescribed identity document to a person who is in a prescribed class of electors and who can attest to their identity—and, of course, they must have their application for enrolment signed by two referees who they are not related to, who have known them for one month and who can provide a drivers licence number.

We know from evidence before the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee that somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent of adults in Australia do not have a drivers licence. But, of course, these new provisions are deliberately designed to be an impediment to enrolling and to voting. Similar stringent requirements are going to be placed on people trying to cast a provisional vote on polling day. They will have to produce a drivers licence or another type of prescribed identity document at the polling booth. If they cannot do that, they will need to provide such identification to the Australian Electoral Commission before the end of the week after polling day. That does not mean it has to be sent by the Friday after polling day; under this legislation, it has to be in the hands of the divisional returning officer by the Friday after polling day.

All these provisions have a clear partisan and political motive. All these measures are aimed at making it harder for Australians to vote. They are about limiting the franchise in this country and they are targeted at the most marginalised people in the community and at young Australians. Bad luck if you are from a non-English-speaking background. Bad luck if you are Aboriginal. Bad luck if you are homeless. Bad luck if you are 18 or 19 years old. Bad luck if you do not have a drivers licence. Bad luck if you want to vote. Bad luck if you want to participate in the democratic process in this country.

But good luck if you are from Liberal Party and good luck if you are a Liberal Party candidate in a marginal seat. After all, you do not want those people to vote, do you? You sure want them excluded from the political process, because if you are from the Liberal Party you think they are far more likely to vote Labor than they are for the Liberal Party. So your Liberal Party government passes legislation like this to stop those people voting altogether. How contemptible! How contemptible this legislation is.

But just to make sure that Australia’s electoral laws are completely politically biased and partisan, completely lacking in transparency, what else does the government of John Howard do? It does not stop at making it harder to vote. No, it proposes changes to legislation to pervert the disclosure provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. This bill provides for all disclosure thresholds for political donations to be increased to $10,000. Currently some of the thresholds are $200, some are $1,000 and some are $1,500—all will become $10,000. Transparency, accountability and scrutiny of political parties and their actions will all be massively reduced as a result of these changes. These changes are absolutely indefensible.

No justification has been provided by anyone in government for these changes, so I have to take the responsibility of explaining to the Senate why it is being done. Why are these disclosure provisions being changed? To cover up donations from Liberal Party mates; to ensure that sleazy deals between the Howard government and Liberal Party donors will be impossible to track down; to create a system where a clever corporate entity can donate $90,000 to the Liberal Party and no-one will ever know. How do you do it? Six states, $10,000 in each state, two lots of $10,000 in the territories and another $10,000 to the national entity of the Liberal Party. That is $90,000 to a political party and no-one will ever know. This is sordid politics. It is inevitably going to lead to a real stench in Australian politics, which we have been very free from up to now.

Then there is the icing on the cake. That is not enough. This legislation enables tax deductible contributions to parties and candidates to be extended from $100 a year to $1,500 a year. And, of course, it is also being extended from individuals to include corporations as well. So now quite significant donations to political parties will actually be subsidised by the taxpayer—just another favour to the rich mates of the Liberal Party.

This bill is not about electoral law; it is about politics. It is about political advantage. It is about rigging the electoral laws to favour the Liberal Party. It is about narrowing the franchise in this country. It is about money—dirty money and lots of it—in the coffers of the Liberal Party, and it is about making sure that no-one knows where that dirty money is coming from.

This bill will undermine our electoral system. This bill will debase the political process. There you have it: electoral laws of the Howard government, electoral laws by the Howard government, electoral laws for the Howard government. The Howard government are prepared to sacrifice anything to win elections. You have seen their behaviour. You know what they are like. They have sacrificed honesty, they have sacrificed decency, they have sacrificed humanity, they have sacrificed integrity, they have sacrificed good governance and now, with this legislation, the Howard government will sacrifice our democratic processes themselves.

I want to conclude my contribution by answering a question that is often asked. This question is often asked by the public and the media, even sometimes in parliament—the age-old question: what price democracy? Answer: a sleazy, underhand, unethical, rotten, stinking, covered up $10,000 donation to the Liberal Party. That is the price of democracy in this country.