Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I commence by thanking all members of the committee and the committee staff for their work on these two reports, particularly the committee staff, who really did put an enormous amount of work into this, as did the chair, the deputy chair and other members.

These two reports are the Report on the conduct of the 2007 federal election and matters related thereto and the Advisory report on the Commonwealth Electoral (Above-the-Line Voting) Amendment Bill 2008. The first report comes from a long line of holistic inquiries which have taken place after every federal election since 1984. The second comes in response to a bill brought into this place by the Greens. All I will say on this matter is that we believe that the existing method of voting serves us well and there is no compelling case for change. This is a bipartisan position.

Although there is a substantial and compelling dissenting report in the main inquiry, it should be noted that we have agreed more often than we have disagreed with the government members. While the coalition would prefer to have a unanimous JSCEM report, we are not prepared to trade away our principles for the sake of agreement. It would not be lost on many that Labor has consistently ignored evidence of electoral fraud over many years, and I have no doubt that this is because, in large measure, the fraud is often committed by Labor Party operatives. I refer honourable senators to the Shepherdson inquiry report for further information with regard to that.

The opposition believes the sanctity of the electoral roll and the voting process is paramount, because that is the basis for achieving a just, democratic outcome. While I am the first to admit that the participation rate could be better, the ‘cure’ proposed by Labor is worse than the disease. As Mr Morrison, the member for Cook, has said in another forum:

If you believe Labor, they say in their majority report tabled last night that the problem with participation is not apathy, but that we are placing too unreasonable a burden when it comes to voting. Please! You fill out a form, you change it when you move and you turn up at your local public school every 3 years and count to ten. I have no doubt some administrative processes could be improved, particularly in the use of technology, by they are missing the point.

Labor are indeed missing the point. It is for this reason that certain elements of the government report cannot be supported by the opposition. Let me draw out in the brief time available a couple of examples as to why the opposition has reached these conclusions.

The Commonwealth Electoral Act mandates that Australians have some basic rights and responsibilities: first, upon reaching enrolment age, to enrol to vote; second, to accurately maintain their enrolment; third, to vote in an election; and, finally, to fully extend their preferences to all candidates in their electorate who are contesting election for the House. As our dissenting report makes clear, these are the basic building blocks of our system of compulsory preferential voting. Yet the majority report of the government members of the committee concludes that these requirements impose an unwarranted inconvenience on citizens. No—a shift to the lowest common denominator approach is wrong, and we oppose it.

We know that their suggestion for closure of the rolls to be mandated to seven days after the date of the writ is a significant threat to the integrity of the electoral roll. It is simply impossible, given the statutory time frame, to remove bogus enrollees from the electoral roll. In a seat like McEwen, which was won by a handful of votes, it is unquestionable that a concerted effort at fraud would not be detected and might well change the result in a seat. The existing arrangements afford a high degree of accuracy and integrity to the electoral roll because they give the Australian Electoral Commission an extra seven days to verify new enrolments and an extra four days to verify changes of address. Therefore, these arrangements should be maintained and Labor’s changes should be rejected.

The opposition members made further recommendations against weakening proof of identity requirements because we do not believe they are onerous and we believe they act as a major disincentive to enrolment fraud. We also recommend against weakening sanctions to ensure correct enrolment. You have the ridiculous situation under the government members’ proposals of having absolutely no penalty for failing to keep your enrolment up to date. We oppose the notion of financial inducement to encourage enrolment because it is not an option; it is the law. We should not be paying people to make sure that they obey the law.

We also recommend against establishing mobile phone polling places in areas which clearly do not need them. We oppose the removal of the requirement for voters to sequentially number their ballot paper for the House of Representatives. Just on this point, government members, if you want to push for optional preferential voting then do so, but do not try to hide behind the fig leaf of saying, ‘Oh, well, we support full preferential,’ and then allowing optional preferential votes to be counted as valid.

Finally, we reiterate our position in relation to prisoner voting. If a person has done something that pushes them so far outside the bounds of civil society that a court believes that they should be locked away from the rest of the community then that person should not be allowed to vote. If you are in serious breach of the laws, you should not be allowed to vote for people who set the laws of this country. It is an outrageous notion that people who are incarcerated should be able to cast a vote, given that their behaviour has actually effectively taken them out of community involvement. I commend these recommendations and the dissenting report to honourable senators.