Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011 and the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Protecting Elector Participation) Bill 2012. I look across the chamber and I see my new Senate colleague Senator Whish-Wilson up the back there now. I welcome him to the chamber for his first day and congratulate him on signing in and attending. I also welcome another winemaker into this chamber. It is great to have somebody on the other side whom I can now go and talk to about such matters, and I hope that he brings a commercial application to the role that I rarely experience from that end of the chamber. Let us hope that in our work together, Senator, we can get down to getting some good outcomes for all Australians.

Along with my coalition colleagues and, I think, any thinking person from the free world, I strongly oppose these measures. This government legislation introduces an amendment to the Electoral Act which will allow the Australian Electoral Commission to automatically update the details of an elector when they change their residential address, based on information obtained from other sources. Let me be very clear—