Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This legislation, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Counting, Scrutiny and Operational Efficiencies) Bill 2021 and related bills, responds to the recommendations of the bipartisan Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, JSCEM, as part of their reviews of the 2016 and 2019 federal elections. It also responds to a number of recommendations raised by the Australian Electoral Commission in their submission to the 2019 inquiry.

Firstly, in relation to the prepoll voting period, this bill proposes a statutory limit on the length of the prepoll period from three weeks down to two weeks prior to election day. The government, recognising the bipartisan recommendation of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, proposed this change, noting the benefits of the shorter prepoll period. It will allow the AEC additional time to secure the best available prepoll facilities for disability access, security and voter convenience. Any voter unable to vote in person on election day has multiple options to cast their ballot. They can request a postal vote, they can cast an absentee vote if they are outside their home electorate or they will be able to prepoll vote on any one of the 12 days prior to the election at a prepoll voting centre open in their area.

This is a very important reform. I am sure everyone in this chamber would have been involved in elections for a long time and would know the tyranny of a three-week voting period. So I am very much welcoming this from an organisational point of view such that parties are able to get the volunteers that are necessary. The Liberal Party relies completely on volunteers. We don't have paid-up union members to send along to voting centres to be there by proxy. We rely very much on volunteers and are very grateful for the support that those volunteers provide. But the feedback that we get from volunteers out there on the voting booths is that those first few days and up to a week of the three-week prepoll voting period is very desolate in terms of the number of people who come through. That was certainly my experience. That is what I was experiencing at the last federal election and even at the last state election in WA. In those first five days or so, very few people were coming through. Of course we have seen an increased number of people take up that option of prepolling, but the bulk of those people are really coming through towards the end of the prepoll period heading up to election day.

So I asked the question of the AEC commissioner when we were last in estimates, 'That's what I've experienced, but can you let me know if the stats back that up?' I had an answer that came back on notice from the commissioner. He's a fantastic commissioner, indeed. He said that, by the last five days—so in the 10 days before that—54 per cent of people had voted. So the balance was 54 per cent voted over the first two weeks and 46 per cent voted in the last five days leading up to election day. That's showing you that the majority of people are coming in at that point and there are very few people coming in during that first week. So this reform recognises what is happening anyway. It's making it simpler for parties, particularly smaller parties. This is an opportunity for smaller parties who struggle to get the volunteers that the major parties get. They can't get the people out on the ground. So this is a very fair, important and good reform that is happening.

The other aspect of this bill that I certainly support is in relation to the sorting of prepoll votes. As more Australians choose to vote by prepoll or by post, the AEC faces unique challenges in ensuring that the speed of the count on election night meets community expectations. More and more people are voting early, be it prepoll or postal. We want to see a result on election night. As political tragics, we can't wait to see the numbers start to come in. It can be disappointing when you've got to wait for prepoll votes. With elections of late tending to be so close—except in my home state of WA, sadly—the earlier we can get that information from voting centres, the clearer it will be on election night, and that's a very good thing.

This bill proposes to open up the unfolding and sorting of prepoll votes between 4 pm and 6 pm on election night. This will assist the AEC to meet community expectations by delivering that result in a timely manner. It doesn't mean votes are going to be counted. This bill doesn't do anything to change that very important point. Votes will only be counted after 6 pm. But scrutineers will be invited in to watch the opening of envelopes and the sorting of ballots to ensure we have a secure, compliant and robust electoral system. That's very important. This bill will ensure scrutineers are able to do that. Having those votes sorted by 6 pm means they can be counted immediately and we can start to see the results come in.

We have an excellent electoral system. Arguably, it is the best in the world. Thank goodness we have such a great system. We saw the debacle surrounding the US elections in November last year—the allegations of fraud. We don't have that in Australia. We have an independent commission, and an excellent administration is being run there. It is independent of government and political interference. It is fantastic. Australians can be confident in our voting system. These reforms are good; they are important. They will help to ensure a more transparent system, a better system, that is clear and transparent.

This bill will address issues around overseas postal voting. Australia is a country with a proud democratic tradition. While voting is compulsory for those who live within our nation's borders, tens of thousands of Australians also take pride in taking up the opportunity to vote while living abroad. Australians abroad can request a postal vote just like any Australian at home who is unable to access a polling booth. Being outside of Australia can present unique challenges. This bill will expand the options of Australians abroad who cannot find another Australian citizen to act as a witness by expanding the current allowance for voters to provide a self-certified copy of their passport to allow the equivalent online identity check options administered by the AEC. This is an important reform and, should this bill be passed today, it will be enabled.

Another bill we are discussing is the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Offences and Preventing Multiple Voting) Bill 2021. This bill will introduce a new term, 'designated elector'. This term will be applied to voters suspected by the Electoral Commission of previously having voting multiple times in the same election. While Australia, as a democratic nation, is fortunate to have experienced very few instances of voter fraud, this amendment will help strengthen our electoral system's defences against the rare instances of multiple voting. It is very important. It is an issue that came up at some point in estimates. I'm on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, and I recall the committee saying that the number of instances of voter fraud in Australia is, thankfully, very, very low. It doesn't make a material difference to the outcome, but we've got to make sure the system is the best it can possibly be. We've got to make sure it is almost impossible to skew a result by, in this case, voting multiple times. It's a very important reform that this bill is addressing.

There are a number of safeguards to protect the privacy of designated electors, including that the Australian Electoral Commission cannot disclose information about the person's status as a designated elector. So no-one's going to be named and shamed in this regard. It's just going to be an issue that will be dealt with in a discreet way. Those electors will appear on the electoral roll as silent electors for the purpose of elections, so this means that AEC polling staff will treat designated electors the same as a person who, for privacy reasons, has their address suppressed from the electoral roll. So, when someone walks in, if they're a designated elector, it's not going to be revealed. The person that's working there for the AEC won't understand the difference, so they won't know that they're listed as silent, just the same as someone who's voluntarily elected to be silent. There won't be any difference, so there's no reason for that person to be named or shamed at all.

What we want to also see through this bill is limiting the interference with political liberty. This amendment clarifies the existing offence of interference with political liberty under section 327 of the Electoral Act to note that interference may, for example, include 'violence, obscene or discriminatory abuse, property damage and harassment or stalking'. The amendment responds to recommendation 16 of JSCEM's report on the inquiry into the 2019 federal election. After hearing submissions and testimony from witnesses, it recommended the Electoral Act be amended to penalise such behaviour in the context of an election. It also increases the penalty for an interference with political liberty from imprisonment for six months or 10 penalty units or both to imprisonment for three years or 100 penalty units or both, to bring the offence in line with the existing offence provisions in the Criminal Code Act 1995 for interference with political rights and duties.

In the remaining time that I've got, I will talk about another element of this bill in relation to party registration integrity. I'm very pleased to see that there's going to be, through the passing of this legislation, some clarity given in the registration of political party names. There is often confusion out there on polling booths or even in a postal ballot situation where there are parties with similar names. It provides confusion for those electors when deciding. We saw it even at the last state election in Western Australia, where the Liberal Democratic Party even went so far as to get exactly the same colour T-shirt and exactly the same font and logo for the name of their candidate—and I saw it with my own eyes and witnessed it on a prepoll booth. A volunteer was even confused as to which organiser they were meant to go to on the day to get the right T-shirt. So these changes are important in dealing with the names of political parties and the logos that they're using and just making sure that it's completely clear for the Australian public as to who they're voting for, because we can't have situations where people are mistakenly voting for one party thinking they're voting for the party that they wanted to.

We know that this is statistically backed up, because, if you look at the history of results for both state and federal elections dating back to 2013, in all six instances that the Liberal Democratic Party has drawn to the left of the Liberals on the upper house ballot paper, whether it's the upper house in the state parliament or indeed in the Senate, their primary vote has exceeded two per cent. In all the other instances, the 11 times when they've been randomly drawn to be on the ballot paper to the right of the Liberal Party, their vote has tallied less than two per cent. Now, you could say that's just random, but hang on: if it were random, it would be like flipping a coin and getting 17 consecutive coin flips returning the same result—17 times and getting heads every single time. The odds of that are one in 131,072.

This change is very important. Parties need to stand up for what they believe in, their principles. They need to stand up for their own policies and not just ride on the coat-tails of another party. This does not just change it for the Liberal Party; it registers the important words that are used within the names of the Labor Party, the Greens and all other major parties. So it's a very significant, important and sensible reform. I support this bill.