Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Today I introduce the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) Bill 2021. This Bill responds to recommendations from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Report on the conduct of the 2016 federal election and matters related thereto, and amends the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to assure the security, accuracy and transparency of the computerised scrutiny of Senate votes.

The Bill also makes technical amendments to streamline the process for counting Senate ballots in computerised scrutiny, and to clarify the procedure for resolving ties between candidates.

Security assurance

This Bill requires the Electoral Commissioner to arrange for a security risk assessment of the systems used for the computerised scrutiny of votes in a Senate election. The assessment must be conducted by an independent provider who is accredited by the Australian Signals Directorate.

The assessment must be conducted before a Senate election, and following the assessment the Electoral Commissioner must publish a statement on the Australian Electoral Commission's website advising of its completion.

Ballot paper sampling

This Bill further requires the Electoral Commissioner to assure the accuracy of the computerised scrutiny of Senate votes by arranging a statistically significant sample of ballot papers to be checked during course of the scrutiny, at each counting centre. This will compare the electronic data captured by the computerised count with physical ballot papers.

The Electoral Commissioner must publish the methodology to be used for the ballot sampling process and the process used for reconciling preferences before the election, as well as the outcomes of the sampling process after the election.

This ballot sampling process is not part of the scrutiny for the election. However, for transparency, scrutineers may inspect this process.

Right of scrutineers to access ballot papers

Candidate scrutineers play an important role in the ensuring the transparency and integrity of Australia's electoral system. This Bill grants scrutineers the right to request a physical ballot paper to be recalled during the computerised scrutiny of Senate votes in cases where the scrutineer makes a challenge that is unable to be resolved on the scanned computer image of the ballot paper. This will allow the challenge to be resolved on the original, physical ballot paper.

Only an Australian Electoral Officer, a Commonwealth statutory office holder, may refuse a scrutineer's request. This request can be refused only if it would unreasonably delay the scrutiny of votes, due to multiple instances of frivolous or vexatious behaviour on account of the scrutineer, and where such behaviour could risk the return of the writs prior to the 1 July commencement of Senate terms.

Counting votes and publishing information

The Bill also makes a technical amendment to how ties between continuing candidates in a Senate election are resolved. This is to address any unintended results that may occur in the rare case of a tie between three or more candidates. It also ensures that in instances where two or more candidates are in an unbreakable tie during the count, that the exclusions are determined 'by lot', as occurs in the House of Representatives.

The Bill further amends the Act to clarify that the 'bulk exclusion' process is not required to be used in the computerised scrutiny process. The 'bulk exclusion' process simplifies the manual counting of Senate ballot papers, but is unnecessary in a computerised count.

To support transparency and public confidence in electoral outcomes, the Bill requires the Electoral Commissioner to publish detailed data on votes and preferences in a Senate election within seven days after the return of the writs.

Accuracy assurance

This Bill also requires, the Electoral Commissioner to arrange for an independent accuracy assessment of the counting software used in the computerised scrutiny of Senate votes.

This highly technical assessment is to provide the public with confidence that the software used distributes preferences and counts votes in accordance with the processes set out in the Electoral Act.

The Electoral Commissioner must publish a statement on the Australian Electoral Commission's website advising the software accuracy assessment has been completed, and to advise whether the accuracy of the software has been assured to the appropriate standard.

No more than seven days before the election, the Electoral Commissioner must publicly verify that the software to be used in the computerised Senate scrutiny is the assured version, and must further advise of any variations to the software within seven days of the return of the writ.

Conclusi on

This Bill demonstrates the Government's commitment to supporting voter confidence in election processes and the legitimacy of election results, which is essential to the integrity of Australia's democracy.

I commend the Bill to the House.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

GHER (—) (): Labor will be supporting the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) Bill 2021. The bill does two main things: it requires the AEC to commission and audit a risk assessment of the counting and scrutiny software used in a Senate election and it amends the way ties between candidates in the Senate election are resolved.

The bill has the aim of enhancing the transparency and integrity of our election counting system. We know that we have one of the best electoral systems in the world. The independent AEC operates with the utmost integrity and rigour and does everything right to ensure a fair and accurate election result. Nevertheless, there will always, unfortunately, be detractors and those who question the result, even when there is not a shred of evidence about anything but an accurate and transparent outcome.

We remain concerned about the messaging coming from some in this place that is designed to cast doubts on the integrity of our electoral system and to undermine our democracy. The AEC already has a robust system for assurance and transparency of its software systems; however, we are satisfied that this bill will assist in providing increased confidence to the voting public and, indeed, to parties and candidates.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) Bill addresses an important issue regarding the transparency of the Senate ballot count. It's an issue that's been consistently raised in submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, on which I sit, and it's an issue on which the Greens proposed amendments to address several months ago. I want to say unequivocally that Australia has an electoral system to be proud of. There is no evidence of widespread inaccuracies in the current count. However, greater transparency always leads to greater public trust that electoral processes are robust and best practice. We've seen recent international experiences where a lack of transparency, and doubt, have been weaponised to undermine confidence in election outcomes. We saw these very dangerous tactics and false narratives start to circulate around the government's proposed voter ID bill. It was fanned by conservative voices more interested in importing American unrest than ensuring that everyone gets a vote. We were glad to see the voter ID bill dropped from the program and hope that it never returns.

The improvements to transparency and scrutiny of the ballot count proposed in this bill are welcome. They will help Australia to avoid seeds of doubt being used to destabilise public trust in democracy, which is already at an all-time low, and to reduce faith in election outcomes. This bill would be strengthened by requiring scrutineers to have access to digitised records prior to overseeing the audit, and requiring audit reports to be tabled in parliament rather than just a summary published by the AEC, as our amendments would have earlier achieved. However, these are measures that can be implemented with the goodwill of the AEC, and the Greens will push for them to do so as the audit process is rolled out. We support the bill.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One Nation want to acknowledge the government's work on this and we also want to acknowledge some facts on the history of this Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) Bill. We applaud the government for its work. We first raised this issue in the bill that I put forward. That bill was voted down. We want to acknowledge that the facts of the matter are that we found that the Senate election has never been audited properly and never been independently audited properly. We had some conversations at Senate estimates with the Australian Electoral Commission. They weren't satisfactory. We put together a bill and that was defeated, but it went then to the government. I want to applaud the government for taking up the bill and putting forward the bill, largely in much the same format and content as we originally proposed it. We acknowledge the government because it is very, very important in the Senate election that people can have confidence in the result of the Senate voting.

So this bill will now require an audit before the Senate election and immediately after the Senate election. That way we and the people of Australia will be very happy—or reassured—that the election is in fact representing the people's will.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all senators for their contributions. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.