Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is right, Senator Dastyari: he does not know me. I represent voters in Western Australia and I was shocked and outraged to hear that the thousands of workers on Barrow Island were prevented from voting. I do not think it is unreasonable for the Australian Electoral Commission to set up a mobile polling station. We have them in the most obscure places. We have them on Rottnest Island, which is a holiday island off the coast of WA. It is about a 30 minute boat trip and less than 100 people vote there. But guess what? For the state and federal elections we could put a mobile polling station on Rottnest Island when it would be very convenient for people on the island to come back to Fremantle to vote or to get a postal vote or to do early voting. But, no, we have a mobile polling station on Rottnest Island but we cannot put one on Barrow Island, which is thousands and thousands of kilometres away. Workers are required to do a four-week roster there which makes it almost impossible for them to exercise their right to vote, but we cannot put a polling booth there. And worse: despite my very, very best endeavours, the AEC has failed to give me an adequate response to my questions as to why we cannot manage this on Barrow Island. Three senators in this place—Senator Ryan, Senator Cormann and Senator Brandis—have simply refused today to give me a reasonable explanation as to why we cannot achieve a polling place on Barrow Island.

Western Australia presents a lot of challenges to voting because there are many remote places, as there are right across northern Australia and indeed parts of southern Australia because of our vast geographical regions. But somehow we still manage to provide voting opportunities for people across this country except if they are on Barrow Island. This is simply not good enough.

Today, for Senator Brandis simply to dismiss the matter out of hand and to leave this chamber is quite disgraceful. But it is typical of this government's arrogance that they do not really care about ordinary Australians. We have seen that through the harsh legislation they have put in place, we have seen it through their arrogance, we saw it in Western Australia from the Barnett government before they got completely smashed in the election and we continue to see it here today with the response from Senator Brandis as to why my question on 12 January remains unanswered. Why is it that workers on Barrow Island cannot be given a vote on polling day in the same way that other Australians go along to their polling place, get their names marked off and cast a vote? Maybe it is because they think all of those workers will vote for the Labor Party, but, like any workplace, there will be a diverse range of workers in that place. I would not be surprised if the government thought. 'We won't give them the vote, because they might all be union members and they might all vote Labor.' They are not playing fair, but we can make any explanation we like in the absence of a proper explanation forthcoming from Senator Brandis.

Since 12 January we have been waiting for a simple set of answers to a range of questions. As I said, I am not going away. There are thousands of workers on Barrow Island. They deserve to be respected by the Australian Electoral Commission and by the Turnbull government. To date, they have not been respected by either. We have had numerous explanations from the Australian Electoral Commission, the last being about quarantine standards. If the quarantine standards are so strict, they should apply to everyone, including the Prime Minister. Yet I know from previous questions on notice that those same standards did not apply to the Prime Minister. Come one, come all. If there are strict quarantine procedures in place, they should apply evenly. If they can be lifted for the Prime Minister and his entourage—as I said, it might have been 20 or it might have been 30 people, who knows? That question has not been answered—then they can certainly be lifted to place a ballot box on Barrow Island so that workers get their due entitlement, like every other Australian, and get the opportunity to vote. Who knows when there will be a federal election. This is such a precarious government that there could be a federal election in the next couple of months. I would hope that workers on Barrow Island are given due respect by the Turnbull government and by the Australian Electoral Commission, and are given that opportunity to vote in their workplace.

We put polling places into nursing homes and we put them into public hospitals. As I said, we put them on Rottnest Island, a 20-minute boat ride off the coast of Western Australia, and yet we cannot manage to put a polling station on Barrow Island.