Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Referendum (Machinery) Provisions—nothing but a complete smokescreen—Amendment Bill 2013. In doing so, I would like to make some introductory comments in relation to this whole issue. It is no secret that there are many of us on this side of the chamber who were involved in local government prior to our entry into this and the other place. I include myself in that. I spent six years on the Ballarat City Council, and I remember it with great fondness. It was important from my point of view and important, I know, for my colleagues to be involved in local government, to put something back into our communities. That, of course, was the motivation for us to stand for local government. But the Australian Labor Party have used local government on many occasions not to put something back into the community but to take out what they could for their own personal benefit.

Many honourable senators will remember the Wollongong sex and bribery scandal. Labor Party members were using local government for their own cheap political purposes. It is a great irony that government ministers have been swanning around over the last week, indicating that they are doing this for the benefit of local government. This government and the Australian Labor Party care nothing about local government. It is just a smokescreen. It is a deceitful smokescreen. It is treating local government in this country with utter contempt as opposed to supporting them.

Debate on this bill in the other place—for those in the gallery, the 'other place' is the House of Representatives—commenced at five o'clock last night, and we will finish dealing with it in about 35 minutes. It shows complete and utter contempt for the process, complete and utter contempt for local government and complete and utter contempt for that body of work that binds us as Australians, which is our Constitution. If this was going to be done, it should have been done 12 months ago.

Everyone in the Australian community knows this has been done to try to provide a smokescreen for a very, very bad government that reinforced its bona fides as the worst government in this country's history last night at 7.30 when the hapless Treasurer rose to deliver his sixth and, hopefully, final budget speech, which delivered more debt, a bigger noose around the necks of our children and grandchildren, no support for families, no support for small business, no withdrawal of the toxic carbon tax and no hope for the future.

What concerns me about this bill are the two provisions that my colleague Senator Ryan has already referred to. What is of enormous concern to me is seeing the continual degradation of the principles that underpin the Commonwealth Electoral Act and the most important of rights that we as citizens have under that act. We have seen under this government constant and regular removal of the rights of the Australian community in relation to their right to vote and the integrity of the electoral roll. We have seen a chipping away to the extent that now anyone who goes into a polling booth will have a very serious question mark—not unreasonably, in my view—about whether the person beside them with a pencil in their hand is legitimately entitled to vote. I will go through those bits of legislation before my time to speak is up this afternoon.

The notion that something as important as a change to this nation's Constitution can be dealt with by way of email and material sent to households, not electors, is another significant attack on the fundamental rights of electors in this country. It is a fundamental attack on the rights of those Australians who are legitimately and properly able to vote. What utter contempt it is from this government to remove any right of an elector to himself or herself receive properly prepared information in relation to a very, very significant decision they must make on 14 September—and that is whether or not to change our Constitution. It is beneath contempt to think that this cannot be legitimately done by anything other than something sent by post to a household. It is the pits. Quite frankly, those who are going to support it today should stand utterly condemned. They are shamed.

The fact that the Australian Labor Party is doing it, of course, is no surprise to anyone. But they will undoubtedly be joined by the Australian Greens, who themselves have become completely complicit in the attack on those who are legitimately entitled to vote in this country. They have become the government's companions in the last six years. This notion of a divorce between the Australian Labor Party and the Greens is a complete and utter farce. The Australian community know that it is a complete and utter farce.

In relation to the second matter that we will be moving amendments to, we have a situation where the government are deliberately suspending the provisions of a bill introduced by the Hawke government in 1984—I think that is when it was, from recollection—which were specifically designed to limit expenditure on referenda to advertising and the preparation of a yes case and a no case. I was not here in 1984, but I suspect that was probably done to minimise the involvement and potential involvement of the government of the day to influence the outcome of a referendum. I suspect that is why that provision was there. So what we are seeing in this bill that is suspending this provision until election day is another attack on our democracy. It is another attack on what is right and the elevation of what is wrong. Those of us on this side are passionately of the belief that, when you are going to the Australian people to change the Constitution, at a very minimum they are entitled to not have the involvement of the government of the day. At a very minimum they are entitled to be given appropriate information in relation to the reasons why they should or should not support that referendum.

This is not about the government; this is about the people and the people's right to change or not change the Constitution. As honourable senators know, the Australian community have been very reluctant to change this Constitution and they have been reluctant to do so for very good reason. Rather than respect that fundamental historical fact, this bill seeks to completely and utterly change everything that has underpinned former governments' involvement in any referendum question. It is quite extraordinary.

I made mention before of some changes this government has introduced. I want to speak about a couple of them. The first one is the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Bill 2013. As I said before, those on this side of the chamber believe that, if you go to vote, you are entitled to know that the person standing beside you is also legitimately entitled to vote; otherwise, the whole process becomes a complete and utter mockery. If you are going to provide the Australian citizen with one fundamental right, it must be to know that their right to legitimately cast a vote is shared by every single person who walks into the particular polling booth they are in that day. That must be across the nation. If you do not maintain the integrity of the electoral roll then you are diminishing the value of a right that people have fought for and died to protect. People have given their lives to protect that right.

If you look at that bill, there were three recommendations that the coalition opposed. One was for the provision to the AEC by the ATO of protected information, or what had been protected information. We believed that to allow the AEC to provide protected information—