Nova Peris (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I said, the Independents and microparties are a vital part of the Australian political system. Without them, we lose a great deal of faith from the Australian voting public by restricting their voting options

I am not ashamed to say that I actually enjoy working with the crossbenchers. I actually even do not mind saying that a few of them have become acquaintances. I would not go as far as saying 'friends', but I do believe, and the Australian public believes, that they bring diversity and vibrancy to this chamber—not to mention their colour and movement, and their sometimes unique and unusual points of view. All of this will be lost: without them in this chamber, our workplace—this Senate—would become a lot less interesting. I believe that the uniqueness of our minor parties are important to the Australian democracy.

Recently, I worked with Queensland's Senator Lazarus on the arts funding inquiry. He attended the hearing in Darwin last October. As chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Senator Lazarus understands the importance of regional communities and the place that arts and culture have in our communities. Maybe they are not as important as sport—and I might be a bit biased—but he certainly knows that we are stronger in our diversity in both of these areas.

The same goes for Senator Leyonhjelm. He is not quite my cup of tea, but in many ways I respect him as a fellow senator. Just during the last sitting, he introduced a private senator's bill to restore the rights of the territories, namely, the Northern Territory and the ACT, so that our legislative assemblies can make laws for the peace, order and good government of our communities and citizens without the fear of being overturned by an overzealous federal government. For that, I thank him and respect him.

Surely it is more important that the nation's parliament reflects our whole country and all our communities, rather than just a narrow inner-city view where the Greens snipe away at the efforts of Labor and Independents to find pathways for a progressive, smart country that takes the regions with it—like we strive to do in our nation's Northern Territory.

One of the major issues I have with these reforms is the lack of clarity for the voting public. As we all know, the entire Australian public need to be aware of voting rules and how to vote. This helps lift voter turnout and helps limit informal voting. My electorate of the Northern Territory is one of the most ethnically diverse constituencies in Australia. Consequently, a huge proportion of Territorians do not speak English as their first language. Many speak English as a third or fourth language. And, of course, many do not speak English at all.

Of the 200,000 people living in the Northern Territory, about 40 per cent of those speak a language that is not English as their first language. Around 4,000 Territorians speak Chinese as their first language; 3,000 Territorians speak Greek as their first language; about 2,000 Territorians speak Tagalog as their first language; another 1,500 speak Filipino; 1,000 Territorians speak Indonesian as their first language; and another 1,000 Territorians speak Vietnamese as their first language. And, believe it or not, about 40,000 Territorians speak an Aboriginal language as their first language. So in total, about 60,000 Territorians do not speak English as their first language. This seems to have been ignored by the supporters of this bill. It can be difficult for English-speaking Australians to understand our voting system, let alone for people who do not speak English.

Voter education is extremely important, but you want to tell 60,000 Territorians you are moving the goalposts on them within months of an election. In fact, the Australian Electoral Commission has said it will take three months to implement these reforms from the time the bill passes. If that is how long it takes for the Electoral Commission, imagine how long it will take to explain these changes to the 60,000 Territorians who do not speak English. This is made worse by the fact that most Aboriginal people who do not speak English live in remote communities and will be further marginalised by this bill.

Turnout is already low in remote communities and informal voting is already high, and your plan to address that informal vote is to change the rules on the Senate voting within a few months of an election. You move the goalposts for Aboriginal people, many of whom do not speak English as a first language, who do not receive the same voting education that people in the cities do, and then you wonder why turnout in remote communities is so low—not to mention the millions of our fellow Australians who do not actually give a toss about politics and politicians and do not engage with the political process at all. What about them? How much community awareness is going to be conducted between now and the election? How much will that cost? What measures will be put in place to make sure every last Australian fully understands the Senate voting process?

The question is this: will this bill put power back in the hands of the voters, as the Prime Minister asserted yesterday? Voters already have the power. Ninety-six per cent of Australians voted above the line at last election. As my colleague Senator Polley pointed out last night, 25 per cent of voters—that is 3.3 million Australians—did not vote for Senate candidates representing the coalition, the Greens or Labor. This bill is not a vote for democracy. This bill is born out of spite. In 2013 the Australian public exercised their democratic right to elect members from across the political spectrum to represent them.

Whatever you call it—holding hands, hugging or loving up this coalition government—the Greens have lost all their virtue and all their credibility, but unfortunately they have not lost their naivety. They have graduated from being a protest party to becoming a full-blown dunce. Congratulations, Senator Di Natale: you have finally shown us the way you go. This bill stinks. It is a dirty deal. I will end by repeating what Abraham Lincoln once said: 'The ballot is—indeed—stronger than the bullet.' I encourage all Australians, including the Greens supporters, to use the ballot to vote this lot out.