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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents.

I am only going to speak very briefly to this. This is an extremely unusual matter before the chamber, and I do not think it should pass without attention being drawn to it. We have a situation where two documents of additional information—one dating from 24 September 1997 in relation to the Public Service Bill 1997 and another relating to the enrolment of new electors at the 1996 federal election close of rolls, which was received on 23 June 1998—have today been tabled before the Senate. It does not take a great deal of analysis to realise that this material ordinarily would have come before the Senate the best part of a decade ago.

I want to acknowledge the efforts of the Secretary of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, Mr Alistair Sands, who is so competent that he managed to find these reports the best part of 10 years after they should have been brought before the Senate. I assume that Mr Sands was tidying up the office—and, of course, these well predate his time as the committee secretary—and that this material was found in some old files. I think the secretary of the committee was reviewing files due for destruction and discovered these two items of evidence that obviously should be preserved for the full record but had not been tabled before the Senate. They now, of course, form part of the official records as of today.

The first one, in relation to the Public Service Bill 1997, is a letter from the then, and still, Clerk of the Senate, Mr Harry Evans. This was received on 26 September 1997 by the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee and enclosed a report of what is described as the corporate links subcommittee of the Department of the Senate, which relates to staff concerns arising from the Parliamentary Service Bill and associated legislation. Some senators would know I took a very active role in the debate on that legislation at the time. Interestingly enough, this report is referred to in the report of the committee, but it was never published. It is also interesting to note that the corporate links subcommittee report that we are dealing with today was for a committee that no longer exists. It was an internal staff committee that some time prior to the turn of the century ceased to exist.

That is an unusual situation, as is the second item, which relates to evidence from the Senate with regard to an inquiry by the committee into the Electoral and Referendum Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1998. The secretary, Mr Sands—as I said, this was very diligent and good work from him—wanted to make sure that the records of the Senate were complete. It is a worthy objective, and I am pleased we have been able to achieve it, but this material needs to be tabled to do so. Effectively, that is happening today to complete the records of the Senate and to complete the records of evidence.

The only other point I want to make in relation to this very unusual, and I suggest unprecedented, tabling today is that the AEC material that is now being included formally in Senate records relates to the enrolment of new electors in the 1996 federal election and the close of rolls. It was signed by the then Acting Deputy Electoral Commissioner, Mr Dacey, who I note is still a very senior official with the Australian Electoral Commission. It was also signed by Mr Jim Doyle, the acting director of enrolment. This material was presented by the Australian Electoral Commission at a time when it was strongly of the view that the electoral rolls should not be closed on the day that an election is called. The Electoral Commission provided this parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters with consistent advice over very many years about the closure of the rolls, the impact of any proposals to change those close-of-roll arrangements and the numbers of people who would be disenfranchised if that were to occur.

The interesting element of this letter is that it gives details about those new enrolees, a breakdown of those details and the impact early closure of the rolls would have had on them. Since that time, but only very recently of course, we have seen the Australian Electoral Commission change its view in relation to the consistent advice it has provided over very many years about the early closure of the rolls. We still have not got to the bottom of why it has changed its views, but it is now consistent with the Howard government’s legislative changes. These were dealt with in our last session, and I think they remain some of the most significant and reprehensible legislative changes that have ever been passed in the Australian parliament. But this interesting artefact is something that I thought was valuable to draw to the Senate’s attention. It points out a number of things. It points out the competence of our Senate committee secretaries. I give a pat on the back on this occasion to Mr Sands for finding this material. It graphically points out the fact that the Australian Electoral Commission has changed its previously consistent approach over decades in relation to early closure of the rolls. It also shows the number of people who would have been impacted by early closure of the rolls in 1996.

Question agreed to.