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

Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from Senator Brandis representing the Prime Minister as to why my question No. 341, which I placed on notice on 12 January 2017, remains unanswered. As a courtesy, my office advised both the Prime Minister's office and Senator Brandis's office that we would be seeking this formal explanation.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not the truth. We were given 15 minutes notice. That is not sufficient notice to make the appropriate inquiry, and I will take the question on notice.

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

Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take notice of Senator Brandis's explanation.

That explanation from Senator Brandis was entirely inadequate. This is a serious matter which I placed a detailed question on notice on 12 January 2017, and this is a matter that I have been pursuing since April of 2016—in fact, since 4 April 2016. It arises from the issue of voting rights on Barrow Island, a big development run by Chevron. What happens on Barrow Island is that workers are required to work a four-week roster and then have a couple of weeks off. So, when it comes to voting, these workers are absolutely disenfranchised, because Chevron to date has refused to take up polling facilities so workers are able vote on site.

Firstly, with a four-week working period, it is very difficult for those workers to get to early polling—and, as we know, early polling opens for three weeks before an election. So, if you have four-week cycle that does not coincide with that three-week period, you cannot avail yourself of that opportunity to do early polling. Secondly, it is almost impossible to get a postal vote because, by the time you received it on Barrow Island and got it back, you would be well out of time.

My office was contacted by workers on Barrow Island—this is a matter they had tried to pursue themselves—who asked us to seek an explanation as to why they could not have polling facilities on Barrow Island. Barrow Island, at that point, was employing thousands and thousands of workers from all across the country who were not able to exercise their right to vote.

It is somewhat ironic, for a government that goes on and on about rights, particularly in relation to being able to offend people under 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, that this matter has fallen on deaf ears. We not only put questions on notice to the government about what was happening on Barrow Island and to seek a reasonable explanation of why workers were not able to get a polling place on the island; I also asked questions of the Australian Electoral Commission at Senate estimates. Quite frankly, their answers were equally unimpressive.

We have had a number of answers from the government, all of which have been evasive. We have so far dealt with Senator Ryan, Senator Cormann and, most recently, with Senator Brandis. But not only have the answers to questions been evasive; they have nearly always been uniformly late. So, for Senator Brandis to try and pull a stunt in here today to say that my office had not given him adequate time, when they have had since 4 April 2016 to answer this question—and most recently since 12 January—is a joke. Quite frankly, it is insulting to the thousands of workers on Barrow Island, who continue to be disenfranchised because we cannot get a polling place up there.

To add insult to injury, we were told by the Australian Electoral Commission—and we have also sought answers from Chevron in relation to this matter—that the quarantine requirements of Barrow Island ruled out putting—wait for it—a cardboard box on the island. We took that back to the workforce, and they told us there were other ways around that.

Now, as it so happens, I visited Barrow Island, and prior to going to the island—

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Yes, the quarantine laws that are in place are absolutely appropriate because it was pristine wilderness and it remains free of pests. We want to keep it that way, so, yes, of course, we have to have very strict quarantine laws in place. But I, along with some of my Labor colleagues, visited Barrow Island at the invitation of Chevron, and I was required as a matter of law to undertake an online safety test before I was allowed on the island. We also went through the normal quarantine procedures when we boarded the plane. But I was told very clearly that I could not go on to Barrow Island until I had done this online safety test, so I did it.

Now you might ask: what has that got to do with anything? Well, sometime later the Prime Minister and an unknown number of people in his party visited Barrow Island. So, given that we have been told that we cannot get a ballot box on Barrow Island because of the quarantine regulations, and having been told that I could not visit Barrow Island without doing this online safety test, we went back and asked the Prime Minister: did you do this, because why should anyone be exempt if we are keeping this island in its pristine state and free from pests and so on? Well, it took about three goes to get an answer that the Prime Minister did not actually do the same required safety test as me, which we thought was extraordinary given that the AEC have told us you cannot put a ballot box on Barrow Island because of the quarantine restrictions.

I was told along with my Labor colleagues that we could not visit Barrow Island without doing the online safety test. But guess what? The Prime Minister goes to Barrow Island, and he does not have to do the safety test. He does not have to do it. So I thought, if you can make an exception for the Prime Minister and the unknown number of people in his party, surely you can make an exception for a cardboard box so workers can cast their ballot papers—and that is the question we went back with.

We have asked I think twice now: how many people were in the Prime Minister's party? We have not been told that. We now know that he did not do the online safety test even though I was told—and it was put in writing—that I could not attend Barrow Island unless I had done the online safety test, and workers have been told that they cannot have voting rights on Barrow Island because somehow the cardboard voting box would breach safety regulations. Yet the Prime Minister goes, and he does not have to follow any of these regulations. So that is the question that we have on notice that remains unanswered.

As I said before, for Senator Brandis to attempt to dismiss that question today is outrageous. We have been trying since 4 April to get an answer to this question, and I do not think any reasonable person would think that it was not okay to provide thousands of workers on Barrow Island with the opportunity to vote. That is what they are asking for, and yet we cannot get straight answers. Chevron, a multinational company that is not paying one cent of tax in this country, has simply ignored my requests for information. We have asked them: what is your objection to setting up a polling station on Barrow Island? Workers, when they are there, do 12-hour shifts. When you have workers on a four-week roster and 12-hour shifts, it seems to me that the most obvious answer would be to simply set up a polling station on Barrow Island. Chevron have refused to answer the question.

Despite us asking the AEC at estimates why we could not set up a polling station on Barrow Island, the best answer we have had to date—and we have had some doozies—is that it is because of these quarantine restrictions, which are so strict they apply to everyone, except the Prime Minister and his unnamed party. We are still waiting for an answer about the number of people in that party. Imagine if 20 people had gone up with the Prime Minister. It is not beyond the pale. Twenty people, none of whom had to do the online safety test that I, along with other Labor members, had to do. That is a big party to land on Barrow Island. But somehow the quarantine restrictions, which are placed on me and the AEC, are lifted for the Prime Minister. I can only conclude that if they are lifted for the Prime Minister then they can be lifted to provide a polling station.

A government that goes on and on about rights are denying workers on Barrow Island the opportunity to have the right to vote. Something as fundamental as the right to vote is being denied to those workers on Barrow Island. Imagine if some of the workers are fined by the AEC for not voting because they could not get to a polling station because of their four-week roster, or they were unable to exercise early voting because of their four-week roster, or the issue of a postal ballot was out of the question because they are on Barrow Island and it takes weeks for the post to get up there. Imagined if they were fined by the AEC for not voting. This is outrageous, and for Senator Brandis to simply dismiss out of hand a question that, at best, has been outstanding since 12 January and at worst outstanding since 4 April is saying to those thousands of workers on Barrow Island, 'Well, actually, we don't really care about your rights.' It was a pretty simple question about why we cannot get beyond the quarantine restrictions on Barrow Island. We seem to be able to lift them for the Prime Minister and his party but cannot get a ballot box up there to enable people to exercise their fundamental right to vote. It is absolute hypocrisy.

For Senator Brandis to dismiss the question out of hand today is not good enough. I will be making sure that the workforce on Barrow Island are told very clearly that today Senator Brandis simply dismissed out of hand why there is still no explanation or satisfactory answer to my question. It is not going to go away. I have pursued this issue since April 2016 through three senators so far and through the estimates process, and we are still waiting. If Senator Brandis thinks of frustrating me further today by refusing to answer the question, he is wrong.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He does not know you!

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It makes you think they don't want them to vote, Senator Lines!

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

Well, thank you Senator McAllister. That is exactly the conclusion—it is the only conclusion that I can come to. They do not want them to vote because they fear that they might all vote Labor. But these workers are from across the country, out of all electorates. There are workers from the eastern states—from New South Wales and from Queensland. They are from all over the country; they are not uniquely Western Australian voters and yet every single one of them is denied that opportunity to vote while they are at work because—who knows why?

We have seen that exceptions can be made, so it is time that the Turnbull government, and particularly Senator Brandis, took this matter seriously. Make no mistake: I will be alerting the workers on Barrow Island to the flippant way that Senator Brandis simply dismissed their request to have that opportunity to have a vote in their workplace because of the shift configurations they work. It is a disgraceful way for the Turnbull government to treat workers. I do not know why I am surprised! That is the way that they treat workers generally—just to dismiss them, whether it is about penalty rates or not allowing them to vote. I should not be so surprised that that is the way these workers have been treated. But make no mistake: I will make sure that the video of Senator Brandis basically saying, 'Oh, I haven't had enough time!' is shown to the workforce on Barrow Island. Believe me, this will not be the end of this matter, because I am determined that those workers get that fair opportunity to vote like every other Australian and not to be disenfranchised because of the very long shift configuration patterns that those workers currently operate. Thank you.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It must be broadcast day in the Senate. The Labor Party senator who just spoke must be suffering a bit of relevance deprivation syndrome in that she needs 20 minutes to raise an issue—and to raise it improperly, I might say, and I will come to that very shortly.

Can I say that the speech by the previous Labor speaker is one that we will not forget for a while, because she repeated herself—10 times over, I counted. She kept repeating the same thing. Obviously, she had run out of material; she had to fill in 20 minutes and so she kept repeating the same things over and over again. So we will not forget or misunderstand what she was on about—no matter how untruthful and how mischievous—and how she deliberately chose to misrepresent not only the Attorney-General, as is the wont of the opposition in this place, but also to cast aspersions on the independent authority which runs elections in this country.

First of all, for those who might be following this debate—that is, if they are still awake after that 20 minutes of boring repetition from the previous speaker—can I just explain what the procedure is here? Questions are placed on notice and they are supposed to be answered within a short period of time—four weeks, I think it might be. And if they are not answered in that time it is up to the senators in the chamber to raise that during the day in the Senate and to ask the minister why it is that these questions have not been answered.

Now, because there are a lot of questions on the Notice Paper and because there are a number of different ministers involved—many of them are not ministers in this chamber, but in the other place—then the office of the minister in the Senate has to get in touch with the other minister and find out why these questions have not been answered. And so the convention, the courtesy, in this chamber is that if you are going to raise this matter and you are serious about wanting an answer, what you do is to advise the Senate minister's office in good time that you are going to raise this. That gives the Senate minister the opportunity of trying to find out why the answer has not been given.

Now, this is particularly important when it is a question not of a Senate minister but of a minister in the other chamber—as was the case today. In spite of what the previous Labor speaker has said, as Senator Brandis has indicated—and I believe Senator Brandis before I would believe the previous speaker—his office was given just 15 minutes notice. That is, at a quarter to two, his office was advised that this matter would be raised after question time, not giving the minister's office the opportunity of contacting the House of Representatives minister to find out what the reason was. So, clearly, the Labor Party were not interested in an answer; they were simply wanting to waste 20 minutes of time babbling on 10 times over about this particular issue.

Now, there are a couple of other points that should be raised. Sure, ministers should answer quickly. I might say to the chamber that I am still waiting some four or five years later for questions I put on notice to the previous Labor government. I put some questions on notice to the Labor government five years ago and they were never answered. Clearly, they are never likely to be. But I know that most of the ministers in this chamber are assiduous in their attention to detail, and had they been given some notice then the Senate minister—in this case, Senator Brandis—could have got in touch with the House of Representatives minister to try to get an answer for the previous Labor senator who spoke.

If the previous Labor senator who spoke were at all genuine on this matter, she would ask the questions of the Australian Electoral Commission—the commission which deals with polling booths. It is not the government that sets up polling booths; it is the Australian Electoral Commission—an independent statutory authority that runs elections in Australia. I have my issues with the AEC, like the previous senator apparently has, but I do not get up and make outlandish statements in this chamber. I go to committee hearings where I can ask the AEC what is happening.

In case the senator who spoke previously is not aware, there is a Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that after each election conducts an inquiry into the previous election. Things like where polling booths are, why they are not there or why they should be there are asked of the AEC at those committee hearings. There is plenty of time given. The AEC have been back to the joint standing committee about this election on three or four occasions already, and they will be coming back again. I invite the Deputy President to do what I have done and put yourself on that committee as a participating member. You can go along and ask those questions of the AEC and get answers from them.

To suggest that the AEC did not put a polling booth at Barrow Island because the AEC apparently thought that the people on Barrow Island might vote for one political party or another is simply an outrageous and disgraceful allegation from anyone in this chamber, particularly someone holding a high office. I think the AEC deserves an apology for that outrageous, untruthful allegation.

I do not know why there is not a polling booth on Barrow Island. It is the first I have heard of this issue. It certainly has not been raised in the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. If the previous speaker really wants to help people on Barrow Island, there are things like postal voting and pre-poll. There are other ways in which people can cast a vote. I would have thought that people working on Barrow Island would have known an election was coming up and would have applied for a postal vote or found out when the pre-poll could have been undertaken.

It is a matter for the AEC. Perhaps this is a valid issue. But it is clearly not being treated as a serious issue by the Labor Party, which is simply using 20 minutes to have yet another baseless, groundless, misinformed and deliberately misleading attack on the Attorney-General. They continue to try and do it in this chamber. One day they will wake up and see that the Attorney is assiduous in his attention to detail and making sure things are done properly. Had he been given some notice today, as is the normal custom and courteous custom—the custom you follow if you seriously want an answer rather than just making a political point—it would have allowed the Senate minister to contact the minister in the other chamber to get the detail.

The Senate has other important business to discuss today, so, unlike the previous speaker repeating herself so many times, I am not going to take the time of the Senate on this particular matter. I simply, again, call for the previous speaker to apologise to the AEC. I suggest to the speaker that if she is serious about this matter in the future she should give appropriate notice so that, if she is genuine about getting an answer, the Senate minister has the opportunity to find the answer. I raise these matters so that anyone who might be listening to this debate understands what it is about and the import of what was said in the last 20 minutes.

Question agreed to.