Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is certainly a pleasure to follow Senator Lundy and that very thoughtful contribution to the Electoral and Referendum Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, which we are debating this evening. An interesting aspect of this bill is that provisions in the bill make it easier for people to participate in our democracy. That is quite in contrast to the shenanigans that this government got up to in the bill they put through last year. It has been highlighted by my colleagues that the provisions in this bill do make it much easier for people who are sight-impaired or members of the Australian Defence Force and the Australian Federal Police to participate in our democratic processes. The government is to be commended for that.

As I said earlier, Mr Acting Deputy President Ferguson, it is in stark contrast to what the government—your government—put through late last year in amendments to the electoral laws that we have operated under for some years. You may recall, Mr Acting Deputy President, that one of the significant changes that was effected by last year’s bill was that when the election is called you only have that evening to enrol. The other significant change to the previous laws was that you previously had seven days to change your enrolment; under the new laws you only have three. The two significant issues that have come out of those changes are, firstly, if you are a new enrollee you have only until the evening of the day of the election being called to get on the electoral roll; and, secondly, if you are trying to change your enrolment you have only three days whereas previously you had seven.

I do not know what goes through the minds of the members of the government in relation to their concern about these new enrollees. I can only talk from my own experience. I understand that 80,000 people enrol in that week’s grace that they have to enrol. One would think that the government have it in mind that there are all these Labor supporters out there sitting around on some bench or collecting their Centrelink payments or something like that who just somehow or another get motivated in that last week before they have to vote to go and put themselves on the roll so they can vote Labor.

I would say that the people who do not have the opportunity to go and get on the roll are independent contractors, tradesmen and people who work in the cities and commute. They are people who might once have been called Howard’s battlers. They are the people who, in my city of Sydney, live on the fringes of the city. They are people who live in seats that are located almost exclusively in an arc from Wyong right around Sydney to Sutherland. I would suggest that those people have not been voting for us since 1993; yet by your actions in the bill that was passed last year those people will become disenfranchised under this legislation. I would think that the people whom we think might vote for us—maybe the unemployed, people who are not working, people who are housebound and students—have plenty of opportunity to enrol. They can walk down the high street in Penrith any time and get on the electoral roll. It is those people who are working who will not have the opportunity. It may well be that you have outsmarted yourselves and disenfranchised a number of coalition voters. Good luck!

We know that the changes that occurred last year will disenfranchise up to 80,000 people. We know that at least up to one-quarter of a million people change their enrolment. Perhaps the minister, in reply, will clarify this: if people are at one address and they have not re-enrolled at another and they go and vote at the old address, is that improper? Is that illegal? Maybe that could be answered in the minister’s contribution at the end.

I am also very concerned about the need for people to present evidence that they are who they say they are. We have not had that before. In my last contribution in the last session of parliament I mentioned a seminar that I addressed with a director of the Exodus Foundation, Michael Crews. Michael Crews was speaking about the difficulties of the people whom their foundation assists in Ashfield. One thing he mentioned, which was quite astounding to me and I was not aware of it, is that some 100 of their clients—I think that is the term Michael uses for the people who seek their assistance—do not have birth certificates. They do not have birth certificates because they were never registered at birth. The Exodus Foundation is constantly going to Centrelink and other government bodies arguing on behalf of these men and women who have not been registered at birth. They have the difficulty that they are never going have a birth certificate because they do not have one! Where are they in this hodgepodge of changes that have occurred? I am not exactly sure. Hopefully, those men and women have got the assistance they need to be sorted out in that regard. But it is not just those men and women that seek the assistance of organisations like the Exodus Foundation. I am sure there are a number of our Indigenous people who may not have ever been registered at birth because it was not the custom of the tribe or the system in which they were born. So there are difficulties in the legislation.

But what seems to me to be the overriding obsession of the government in the introduction of the bill is the fact that they think the Labor Party are out there massively trying to rort the electoral system. To my knowledge, in the last two decades, there has been only one inquiry that has mentioned electoral rorting—that is, the Shepherdson inquiry in Queensland. I had the opportunity this afternoon to have a look at the outcome of that inquiry and the people and the issues involved. One would think the obsession of the government is, as I suggested, that there is a Labor rorting unit out there somewhere that operates by going from seat to seat with hundreds, no thousands, of men and women who they falsely enrol. You would think that that is what it is about—not only is it about enrolling for the potential to vote in elections, as the Shepherdson inquiry exposed, but it is about being involved in internal Labor Party ballots.

I went through and counted how many people seemed to be involved in this massive rorting operation that was conducted in Queensland. I do not think there were more than 150 people involved, and they were mainly involved in internal Labor Party ballots. I am suggesting that there is not this great army out there that is trying to rort the electoral system. It just cannot be done and, in fact, the result clearly is that if you are going to have an operation like that, you need a lot of people to shut their mouths. Clearly, the Shepherdson inquiry was as a result of people who did not shut their mouths. As a result of that, I think, one woman went to jail, three MPs resigned, and I cannot recall whether the government lost in that period or was in a lot of trouble for a while, but in the end the electoral processes were sustained. The inquiry pointed the finger at the people who needed to be put on the spot, and the transparency was maintained.

I do not think that the reasons behind the changes to enrolment which occurred last year are at all justifiable. In fact, all I think they are going to end up doing is making sure that 80,000 people do not get to vote, and that up to a quarter of a million people are going to vote in seats they do not live in anymore, so they will not be voting for the person who represents them. I think this is a reflection of the obsession by the government with what is quite an honest and honourable electoral system and the electoral officers who conduct our elections for us.

I am not sure where we will end up with these seemingly constant attacks on the system by the federal government. I wonder whether or not, in their cups, when they really think about the sort of system they would like, they would like to go back to the 19th century when we had a property franchise where only males could vote. I am sure that in their cups in the dining rooms, where they all sit around and think about the conspiracies that we are up to, in the end that is really what they would like: to go back to males only and a property franchise.