Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I present the committee's report of the inquiry into the conduct of the 2010 federal election and matters related thereto, and move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This report continues the tradition of examining and reporting on the conduct of federal elections and relevant legislation which has been carried out by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and its predecessor, the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform, since 1983.

The 2010 federal election was the first winter election since 1987, which created some challenges for the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC, in terms of the locations to be serviced, due to the increased mobility of electors during this period. The High Court decision in Rowe & Anor v Electoral Commissioner & Anor reinstating the seven-day close of rolls period, and the Federal Court's decision in Getup Ltd v Electoral Commissioner regarding the use of electronic signatures, also impacted to varying degrees on the election and its conduct by the AEC. The Rowe case enfranchised almost 100,000 electors, including 57,732 new electors who would otherwise have lost their voting franchise. The decision highlighted the need to protect the democratic right of Australians to participate in choosing their representatives as provided for in the Constitution. This committee has a role to play in assisting to enfranchise eligible Australians. Making enfranchisement a priority does not mean that the integrity of the role is compromised.

The committee has made some 37 recommendations in this report to help protect the enrolment and voting franchise of Australians and to make other changes to improve the conduct of future elections. Overall, the AEC delivered a highly professional and independent service in its conduct of the 2010 federal election. However, there were regrettable incidents in the divisions of Boothby in South Australia and Flynn in Queensland where thousands of votes could not be counted due to polling official error. The committee trusts that these were mistakes which the AEC has learned from and that it will act to prevent any such occurrences in the future. The level of electoral participation at the 2010 federal election was of particular concern. AEC figures indicate that 3.1 million Australians, or 20 per cent of the eligible population, were either missing from the roll, were not marked off a certified list so presumably did not vote, or cast a vote that did not meet the formality requirements for a valid vote under the Commonwealth Electoral Act. This means that a significant proportion of eligible Australians are not exercising their franchise.

Eligible electors do have a duty to enrol for federal elections by completing an enrolment form and submitting it to the AEC and to notify the AEC of a change of addr­ess. However, it is sensible to recognise the changing nature of how Australians choose to interact with government and business. People increasingly expect to be able to conduct their professional and personal business electronically and effectively. The paper form and the post box are gradually going out of fashion.

AEC enrolment activities are necessary and must continue but they have not been effective in achieving growth in the Commonwealth electoral roll at the same rate as the growth in eligible electors. To help address this the committee supports direct enrolment and the updating of electoral details based on data received from trusted sources. This is not a panacea to the problem of the decline in electoral participation but rather another tool for the AEC to utilise when it performs the important role of its maintenance function.

Another issue the committee considered is where some eligible electors who have enrolled and believe they are on the roll turn up to vote and cannot be found on the certified list. This may be due to an error by a polling official or their having been removed from the roll as a result of the objection process the AEC is required to undertake. Electors not found on the list can cast a provisional vote. At the 2007 and 2010 elections, due to the stricter requirements introduced by the former government in 2006, even if an elector was found to be on the electoral roll, for their vote to be admitted to the count they still had to provide proof of identity on polling day or in the week following. However, those electors who had been removed as part of the AEC objection process on the basis that they were not resident at the enrolled address could not be reinstated even if they were still residing at that address.

At elections prior to the 2006 change, after the required checks to ensure an eligible elector was duly enrolled or could be reinstated if they had been removed in error, their vote could be admitted to the count. This meant that roughly 50 per cent of provisional votes at the elections between 1996 and 2004 were admitted. However, the stricter requirements for proof of identity and the prevention of reinstatements saw the percentage of votes rejected increase to over 80 per cent. In 2010 there were 166,148 provisional votes rejected and only 37,340 admitted. In contrast, at the 2004 federal election, prior to the tightening of restrict­ions, 90,366 provisional votes were rejected and 90,512 were admitted to the count. The government has since legislated to remove the proof of identity requirements that have contributed to the increased rejection of provisional votes. The committee feels that the government must go further to address this matter and enable the AEC to reinstate eligible voters to the roll if they were removed in error and also that their votes should consequently be admitted to the count.

Another matter of concern to the committee was the high number of informal votes at the 2010 federal election. The House of Representatives informality rate was 5.55 per cent, or 729,304 votes, an increase of 1.6 per cent, or 218,482 votes, on the 2007 federal election. The committee has consid­ered the options presented by participants to reduce the impact of informality. After careful consideration the committee has recommended the adoption of a savings provision based on that used in South Australia. The committee notes that the system has been used in South Australian House of Assembly elections since 1985 and has saved many votes which would otherwise have been informal. The committee is particularly attracted to the system because it reinforces compulsory preferential voting, prohibits advocating other than full preferential voting and is transparent in that the ticket must be lodged with the Electoral Commission and was designed by electoral administrators, not politicians. The South Australian ticket voting system, if applied to the House of Representatives ballot papers, could save a significant portion of informal votes. For the 2010 federal election this could have been as much as 42.12 per cent, or 307,156 votes, assuming that all relevant candidates had followed the appropriate procedure and lodged tickets with their preferences.

Australians expect that participation in the electoral process is accessible, convenient and does not impede their ability to go about their business. At the same time, it is fundamental to ensure accuracy, secrecy and integrity in the enrolment, voting and counting processes. These competing demands must be satisfied in such a way that the electoral process remains inclusive by preserving the high levels of integrity necessary to ensure continued trust and acceptance of election results. The committee has sought to achieve such an outcome with the recommendations made in this report.

I take this opportunity to thank my fellow committee members for their contribution to the inquiry and those who participated by making submissions or appearing at public hearings. I would also like to thank the committee secretariat for their assistance. I commend the report to the Senate.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to begin by thanking the secretariat for the extraordinary effort in getting this report out under a very tight time line. With the changeover in the Senate and the Senate sitting this week and a number of other committee reports due, the secretariat did an extraordinary job of incorporating the changes. I think all committee members would accept that. I would like to express my personal thanks as well.

The report, as Senator Brown has outlined, is quite comprehensive. But it contains some very troubling recommend­ations, and I will emphasise several of them this afternoon. What Senator Brown referred to as 'vote saving' is nothing short of vote theft—and I will go into that in more detail. I would like to highlight that it was not the committee as a whole that made this contentious recommendation; it was merely the Labor members of the committee and occasionally a Greens member of the committee as well. One of the contentious but recurring recommendations from the Labor members of the committee would effectively prohibit political parties from processing postal vote applications. There has been no demonstrated need to prohibit political parties from being able to process postal vote applications before they are forwarded to the AEC. There are no examples of people missing out on votes. There are no examples of these being withheld. It is merely something that supports the agenda of the Australian Labor Party and the Greens. In particular, there is a proposal to have only the AEC process postal vote applications and then put a list up on the website so that people like the Greens or the ALP who do not go to the trouble of trying to encourage voters to use postal votes—those who may not be able to access a polling booth on election day or who may not be able to access a pre-poll facility—can see all the details of those voters on the website and the ALP or the Greens can target specific voters for their political interests. This also poses a real security risk. Do we want to be posting on a website details of people who have applied for postal votes weeks out from an election with a high correlation between applying for a postal vote and people going away? This is effectively a sign that their homes will be empty, yet there was no consideration of those issues when this was proposed and when this proposal was challenged by members of the opposition.

The ALP majority have again tried to recommend what they now refer to as direct enrolment. Direct enrolment on the Australian electoral roll is by someone complying with the law and filling out a very simple form, signing it, having it witnessed and then it being placed on the electoral roll. That is the obligation of every Australian citizen and others on the electoral roll, but it is not good enough for the Labor Party. They want to be able to take data from databases like drivers licences and high schools and add people to the electoral roll automatically. They say they will check this by SMS, email or letter, but if you do not return it they will assume it is okay. Let us outline the perverse nature of this. If they send you a letter to an address they have which is incorrect, by virtue of you not returning it they will deem the address to be okay—that it is a correct enrolment and you will be added to the electoral roll. Not only does this profoundly undermine the integrity of the electoral roll through using databases that are not fit for purpose but also this removes the paper trail we have to protect the electoral roll when there are cases of voter fraud.

At the moment one must actually sign a form. That form is kept physically and electronically and when people use provisional or postal votes their signatures can be compared. We have had seats in this place in recent years decided by fewer votes than members of a footy team, yet the Labor Party is intent for its own purposes on conscripting people to the electoral roll using databases that are not fit for purpose and not having any process in place to ensure the integrity of the roll is retained. It is disappointing to the opposition that the Australian Electoral Commission expressed some support for that measure, because it is by its nature very contentious.

I have a couple of statistics that were highlighted in the previous opposition minority report on this issue and that we have restated today. A 1999 report by the House of Representatives Standing Com­mittee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration—this is outlined on page 183 of the minority report—found that in an ANAO report there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than people in Australia at the previous census and there were 185,000 potential duplicate tax records for individ­uals. Also, 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in a sample match that the ANAO undertook. This is the data that the ALP wants to use to enrol people to vote. Even though people fill out much more complex forms to access Centrelink payments or vaccinations or put the kids in school, the little DL sized form that we ask people to write their name and address on and sign and have witnessed is apparently too much to get people to enrol.

But that is not the worst proposal outlined here. What Senator Carol Brown euphemisti­cally referred to as the South Australian ticket vote model is nothing short of vote theft and institutionalised fraud. Let me tell you what will happen under this. After you have been conscripted and enrolled without any choice, potentially at an incorrect addr­ess, you have the right under Australian law to cast an informal ballot. We require you to turn up; we do not stand over your shoulder to make sure you cast a formal ballot. How­ever, if you decide just to tick a box knowing your vote will be informal, what the Labor Party now wants to put before the House of Representatives is that if you just mark a vote for a minority party or the Greens or an Independent, for example, that vote can then be counted according to the how-to-vote card of that particular candidate. What you call—

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's what happens for the Senate.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has nothing to do with the Senate, Senator Brown, and this is the difference. For the Senate the Australian Electoral Commission are required to publish details of where those votes go. Everyone knows that when you vote '1' above the line those votes are distributed. Copies are available from the AEC at polling stations and they are on the website. They are publicly available, yet what you want to do is prohibit the people being told this is what is going to happen. At the same time as you want to count votes that are not marked on a ballot paper, you want to prohibit people from being told that is exactly what will happen. You want to make it illegal. This is institutionalised voter fraud, because you want someone to be able to mark a box and then count votes that are not on a ballot paper. We could hold these ballot papers up—we are not talking about dimpled chads; we are talking about empty squares that you are going to count as votes for the House of Representatives.

This represents a new low, even for the Labor Party. We in the opposition will oppose this with every breath in our body. If you are serious—and I make these comments personally—about removing informal votes, then you move to an optional preferential voting system. An optional preferential voting system allows any mark on a ballot paper to be counted and you can tell people they can mark it with a tick, a cross, a '1' or '1', '2', '3', '4'—whatever you choose. Yet what the Labor Party is proposing is for voters to put a tick on the ballot paper and we will count it according to what the political party in the House of Repre­sentatives wants.

Accuse me of being cynical, but I think this might have something to do with the current political morass the Labor Party find themselves in. With Labor's alliance partners now sitting on the same side of the chamber, the Australian people know that the Greens-Labor governing alliance is a reality. But I think the Labor Party are concerned because what really worries them is that at the next election, just like the rest of the Australian people, their alliance partners and their voters may not be willing to follow through on the deals that people like Senator Bob Brown have made with leaders of the Labor Party. This is an attempt to grab more Greens votes where preference for the Labor Party is not expressed. Where a ballot paper is left blank of anything other than a single mark, like a '1' or a tick, what the Labor Party wants is to be able to count that. It does not pass the sniff test the Australian people will apply to free and fair elections because you cannot count votes that are not written down on paper. You cannot count a number or a preference when it has not been written down. This shows the desperate lengths to which the Labor Party will go to try to maintain an electoral advantage despite the Australian people repudiating it and its agenda.

The opposition will oppose these measures and support the others that we have outlined in a minority and dissenting report. We will oppose those measures that put the integrity of the roll at risk and that remove the duty for people to enrol personally. We will oppose the use of databases that we know are flawed. Most importantly, we will protect the integrity of the secret ballot in Australia and we will count votes when they are marked. We will not count empty squares as votes. This needs to be stopped to ensure public faith in our electoral system is maintained. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was curious to hear the senator who tabled the report indicate that we were taking away the need to identify oneself to be enrolled. I have not read the report but I will read that with some interest to see what justification there could possibly be for that.

Briefly, I wanted to thank the AEC both here in Canberra and in Brisbane for their courtesy in making time to talk to me about the way electoral boundaries are drawn. I have had a particular concern about the way that the boundaries are drawn in my state of Queensland, particularly in the north. In the electorate of Herbert, which is based on Townsville, a city of 200,000 people—which is very vibrant and is going ahead—one of the almost inner-city suburbs is now part of the electorate of Dawson, which is based on the city of Mackay, some 400 kilometres south.

I know these sorts of things happen, but it is ridiculous that people who live in the suburb of Annandale in Townsville, not a couple of kilometres away from the electorate office of the federal member for Herbert, Ewen Jones—an excellent, active, energetic and caring representative—actually do not go to Ewen Jones for assistance in the city of Townsville; they go to Mackay, some 400 kilometres south. I know you have to get the numbers right but it does seem stupid.

It is even more silly when you look at the seat of Dawson, which is based on Mackay and goes right up through the Whitsundays, Bowen, Ayr and Home Hill, where I live, and into the inner suburbs of Townsville. It is well represented now by Mr George Christensen. He is another very energetic, able and caring member who gets around the whole electorate. He has to do all of that. Pioneer Valley, which is five kilometres behind Mackay—and the community of interest between Pioneer Valley and Mackay is very old—is not in his electorate. That is in the electorate of Capricornia, based on Rockhampton, which is 300 kilometres to the south. Again, five kilometres from George Christensen's office there is a part of the Mackay community that he does not represent. If that community want some assistance in federal matters they either come to me as a senator based in the general vicinity—and many of them do—or they go to Kirsten Livermore who is the Labor member for the seat of Capricornia. She is a nice enough lady but is not very active in what she does, I must say. That is why a lot of people from her electorate come to me—they do not seem to get much assistance from the sitting member.

Again, it is a silly situation wherein she has to travel 300 kilometres through Mackay and then up the Pioneer Valley. It is compounded when looking at the town of Gracemere, which is part of the Rock­hampton area. It is about 10 kilometres from Kirsten Livermore's electorate office but it is not in the electorate of Capricornia; it is in the electorate of Flynn—well represented by Mr Ken O'Dowd, a very active, able and caring member. That is about 110 kilometres from his office. It is compounded further by Flynn now taking in that part of Bundaberg, another substantial regional city, which is—do not hold me to this—about 200 kilometres south of Gladstone. Mr O'Dowd looks after that whereas the member for Hinkler, Mr Neville—another very active, caring and able member—lives in the Bundaberg area but half of the major town of Bundaberg is in the electorate of Flynn based, on Gladstone.

When you go further south, the electorate represented by Mr Warren Truss used to very capably contain Hervey Bay, which Mr Truss lives quite close to, but that is now represented by Mr Neville. Mr Truss's seat now takes in the northern sunshine tourist mecca of Noosa. That is very well represented by Mr Truss, but one wonders what the community of interest is.

I know these things are difficult, and I have raised this issue with the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and another committee and I have also raised it at estimates. I thank the AEC for explaining it to me and going through the figures with me, particularly the CEO of the AEC in Queensland. I spent some time with her. She is getting me some figures. I understand the difficulties, but anyone listening to this might be able to understand that it is unfortunate when parts of communities so close to substantial regional cities in Queensland are represented by someone who quite a way south. So I thank the AEC for explaining it to me. I know it is not their fault as such, but we really have to look at something where you can get communities of interest in situations like that which now applies in those seats up along the Queensland coast. Of course, the boundaries did not make much difference to the result. It was a fabulous result for the LNP in Queensland. All of those seats, with the exception of Capricornia, went to LNP candidates, and in Capricornia there was an eight per cent swing against the sitting member by the LNP candidate Michelle Landry, who conducted a magnificent campaign. I am not complaining that the boundaries had any particular significance, but it is just unfortunate for people in those localities to find that their local member of parliament is 200, 300 or 400 kilometres away.