Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

The confession in fact comes later because Senator Sterle foolishly said, ‘If it happens to have suited Labor and it is good for the nation then so be it and let the cards fall where they will.’ Unfortunately, Senator Sterle’s researcher did not read further on in the Graham Richardson chapter because Senator Richardson made a confession. It is very interesting that you should talk about confessions, Senator Carr. This is what Senator Richardson said:

It is hard to argue that we have a better country for it.

Senator Richardson is willing to say that, with all of those changes that the Labor Party forced through, it is hard to argue that we have a better country for it. We now move onto the issue of people’s votes being accepted which are not able to be substantiated. At the last federal election 27,000 provisional votes were accepted into the count. There were more than 27,000 votes in total; but, of those provisional votes that were taken into the count, the Electoral Commission was unable to follow up on 27,000 of them to verify that they actually lived where they had asserted. When you divide that by the number of seats we have in this country, noting that some seats are won by 100 or so votes, that becomes a very serious concern.