Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

You might laugh, but these are people in your marginal electorates that you are taking off the roll. In Bundaberg and Gladstone the member for Hinkler has abandoned fully 3,112 local residents and I know that Labor’s local candidate, Mr Gary Parr, will be working hard with the local community to overcome this disadvantage. In my local electorate of Moreton the member is too busy living a high lifestyle to care for locals. These changes are particularly savage on the strong local Chinese-speaking community in suburbs like Sunnybank and MacGregor in my local electorate. A jetset lifestyle is something that the member for Makin knows very well. She has chosen to abandon her electorate and in particular the 3,108 who enrolled in the grace period. Meanwhile her fellow South Australian the Liberal member for Kingston has managed to snub 3,498 local residents.

Turning to Tasmania, the new Liberal Party members for Bass and Braddon have shown contempt for the same local people who voted them in by kicking more than 2,000 off the electoral roll in each seat. Finally, in the Northern Territory the member for Solomon appears to have taken up cudgels against the substantial number of members of the Defence Force who would have enrolled during the grace period. In a population as highly mobile as that of Darwin, it is truly bizarre that the local member would back a bill that takes about 3,271 local residents off the roll.

I will seek leave to table the document for the benefit of the government and senators in this debate. These figures from the AEC show that, if the Howard government gets its way, about 423,993 Australians will lose their right to vote at the next election based on the 2004 figures. An analysis from the library shows that this bill disproportionately affects those between the ages 18 and 40. So much for the wacky theory of South Park conservatives—if that theory were true why wouldn’t the government invest a large amount of time and effort in disenfranchising generations X and Y? As the government knows, this bill is a disgrace. It is sponsored by a government that is increasingly becoming so drunk with power they are acting more like American Republicans than Australians. I seek leave to table this document.