Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition oppose schedule 1 in the following terms:

(5) Schedule 1, items 8 to 23, page 4 (line 28) to page 6 (line 6).

(6) Schedule 1, item 27, page 9 (lines 14 to 15).

(8) Schedule 1, items 29 to 31, page 10 (lines 4 to 9).

(11) Schedule 1, items 35 to 48, page 13 (line 19) to page 14 (line 17).

(12) Schedule 1, item 51, page 14 (lines 23 to 24).

These amendments that the opposition is moving regard the proposal in the legislation and the proposal of the Labor Party to remove the certificate that the voter is required to sign for accessing a pre-poll vote.

I addressed this issue earlier in my speech on the second reading, and this amendment was also moved in the other place. The logic behind the government's proposal is that since we now count the pre-poll votes on a Saturday night and since they are now considered, effectively, ordinary votes for that purpose and constitute a polling booth in the public mind when they look at tables of election results, that we should not actually have this requirement for voters to submit a certificate.

Can I, respectfully, disagree. The reason for that is that what we did when we changed the way that pre-poll votes were counted was not in any way to change the treatment of the votes other than the fact that they would be counted on a Saturday night. With the number of people who are voting pre-poll, particularly in close elections and in close electorates, it was generally agreed that counting them on the night of the poll would facilitate people getting a quick result, and that that is actually something people would be interested in knowing about on the Saturday night rather than having, potentially, 10 or 15 per cent of the votes not being counted until another time.

None of that undermines our view that voters should still be required to outline, effectively, why they are accessing a pre-poll vote. This goes to the point I made earlier: we do not believe in the logic of a polling period. We believe that there should be a polling day, with facilities made available for those who cannot access that polling day. We strongly support postal votes and we strongly support the distribution as widely as possible of postal vote applications. This particular amendment proposed by the opposition will in no way reduce the ability of someone to access a pre-poll vote. In no way does it make it harder. In fact, if people want to put the argument that it is a compliance mechanism I would say that this must be the only form of red tape this government seeks to abolish, because businesses and everyone else are being wrapped up in it and yet, again, here we have a seemingly inexplicable urge to remove a paper trail that can be part of protecting the integrity of the electoral process.

And so the opposition is not convinced by the logic of the government's proposal. The opposition is not convinced that it does not pose another little crack in the wall of the integrity of how votes are exercised. The way that I understand the process is that this certificate is not an onerous one—I have never exercised a pre-poll vote that I can recall—it is not an onerous burden, but it is something that can be used, whether that be as a disincentive for someone to try to exercise a vote to which they are not entitled or whether it provides a piece of evidence in the chain that may be used to exonerate or otherwise tackle issues of electoral fraud.

What worries me and what worries the coalition is that without this we may see yet another surge in pre-poll votes. I have outlined why I do not think that is a good idea with respect to the focus that should remain on a polling day. Also, if indeed signing a certificate is a disincentive—and I do not know whether it is for people who are accessing a pre-poll vote—then there is a reason for that. We still say that pre-poll votes should not be like turning up to the local primary school on polling day itself to exercise your ballot. We say that people need a reason for a pre-poll vote. This particular proposal by the government goes further to undermining polling day as the focus of the campaign. Combined with the other provision, about which the opposition just lost an amendment, effectively we now have almost three weeks of pre-polling.

Again, I think that we get to the point that there is no established need for this. There is no established need that this is a disincentive and that people entitled to a pre-poll vote are not accessing it. There is no established need that this is imposing an undue burden upon people who want to access a vote. There is no established need that it is imposing an undue burden on the Australian Electoral Commission. But there is a risk, and the risk is that we are seeing the lack of focus on polling day; that we may have more and more people voting nearly three weeks before polling day, which may be less than halfway into the campaign; that we are not asking people to exercise their judgement as to whether they are entitled to a pre-poll vote; and, potentially—and I say this only as a worst-case scenario—whether or not having the certificate acts as a disincentive. Does it facilitate people voting more than once or people voting in the names of other people? If indeed the certificate does have a disincentive effect with respect to that, then I do not think that is something we should be removing.