Bob Carr (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

We cannot be the electoral commission for Malaysia. We cannot make determinations about which voter is eligible and which is not. We cannot make determinations about whether the ink put on the finger of someone who had completed a vote washed off easily. We cannot make those sorts of judgements. We do not have the resources to do it. The people from our high commission were out and about around polling places throughout Malaysia, observing the election, but they cannot make determinations about these sorts of arguments. We are not the court of disputed returns for Malaysia. We cannot make a determination from our high commission on the validity or otherwise of complaints made about it. On the question of observers, and Senator Joyce suggested we send observers, it is not the practice of the Australian government to send observers uninvited into a country that is conducting an election. Observers go as part of a Commonwealth mission, as they did to the elections held in Papua New Guinea last year. Observers will go to Zimbabwe as part of a Commonwealth mission, but again—(Time expired)