Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Amendments) Bill 2010

 Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (6:32 PM) —I rise tonight to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010. I want to start by rejecting many of the comments of the member for Reid in his typically bleak fashion. He sought to paint a picture of the electoral roll and the agenda of the coalition in relation to the measures proposed by the government. In that bleak assessment perhaps the main criticism I would have of the member for Reid and his arguments was that he suggested that somehow our opposition to many of these changes, particularly the voter identification and other scheduled changes proposed in the bill, was that we were seeking to disenfranchise people, or not have a group of people vote. Of course, the significant problem with the member for Reid’s contention in this regard and with the Labor Party’s contention in this regard is that the argument that more voters were disenfranchised under the coalition’s changes to voter identification in the seven-day grace period is erroneous. The facts tell a different story.

In 2004, under the previous system where there was a seven-day grace period, there were 169,000 people who missed out on the enrolment deadline. But, of course, in 2007, at the last election under the coalition’s changed three-day grace period, there were only 100,000 people who missed out. These are not estimates from us; these are the AEC’s figures. So this argument that somehow this is an attempt to disenfranchise a body of people is of course erroneous and the member for Reid knows it.

The changes proposed by the government today seek to reinstate the seven-day grace period, and this is an argument that I oppose, because the integrity of the electoral roll is something that is paramount to the functioning of our democracy. It is the member for Reid’s assessment that everything is fine and rosy with the electoral roll—that it is fine to contend in this parliament that there is no need to be rigorous in our ongoing examination of the roll and of the system that we have of voting in Australia and that, somehow, just by encouraging everybody to participate, participate, participate, we have a benevolent democracy where everything will end up just fine. Of course, the reality is very different. That is, we do have to have a strong system in place. We have to have a system of ensuring that the right people are casting votes in the right way and that people do not attempt to manipulate our electoral system. We do have examples of people attempting to manipulate the electoral system in recent history. Perhaps you should not take it from me—I know the member for Reid and I have a history in relation to politics which is different—but noted communist author Frank Hardy wrote a book called The Stolen Election: Australia 1987. Maybe the member for Reid would care to read what he had to say about the 1987 election and the potential for manipulation in that election. Frank Hardy is the famous author of Power without Glory. In that work he suggests that there is a propensity in Australia for people to attempt to manipulate the electoral system at various selections. When you consider many of the results in marginal seats or seats where elections are very tight and come down to a handful of votes one way or another, I think it is proper that the parliament ought to remove any opportunities for fraud and seek to constantly improve the system we have in place to ensure that the opportunity for fraud is minimised.

I will oppose schedule 2 and the amendment relating to the evidence of identity for provisional votes. The previous government, in line with long-standing policy, moved to prevent fraudulent voting and impersonations by requiring that people who claim a provisional vote in an election produce evidence of their true identity and enrolled address either on polling day or in the week following polling day. I think that is a proper mechanism. People who live at a location for 21 days are, by law, required to enrol and, if they do not, they are breaking the law. But, as we know, the reality is that many people in our community choose not to enrol within that 21-day period. It is true that they may not be aware of any changes to boundaries which could affect the electorate in which they now reside. However, people are aware of the fact that they have changed address, so they are making a choice in relation to that—that is, not to re-enrol or not to be on the electoral roll—they simply forget or there are other reasons for them not to re-enrol.

However, effectively the changes that are being proposed in schedule 2 mean that there is no consequence for breaching the Electoral Act. The benefits of correctly enrolling are reduced to nothing and there is no disincentive for any person who fails to correctly enrol. That leads to a situation where the whole basis for the continuous roll update, which was something brought in by the coalition in 1999, is severely undermined.

Any proposal to weaken the rules in relation to the identification requirements for provisional voters should be opposed. It should be opposed because it gives the impression that if you do not obey the law and seek to put yourself on the roll, which all responsible citizens should do, somehow you should be rewarded for not maintaining correct enrolment for a substantial period of time. That is a very important argument. The integrity of the roll does matter. While we have a compulsory voting system we should discourage people from choosing not to be on the electoral roll.

I note the member for Reid challenged the coalition, saying that our opposition to the bill is really part of some sort of secret agenda of ours to bring in voluntary voting, which I find a weak argument in relation to this legislation. I can publicly put on the record that I do have a view that voluntary voting is something that we should look at as a nation. We ought to have a free society where people are allowed to choose whether or not they want to vote. Currently in Australia we only compel people to attend a ballot box and mark off their name on election day. There is no such thing as forced voting. You cannot force a person to vote. We simply force attendance at polling booths, and many people register their votes in an informal way or take another way of not voting. We simply force attendance, and some people suggest that is a good thing. I do not violently object to that system; however, if we are continually to push to have a freer society, voluntary voting is a mechanism we should look at. Indeed, looking at the United Kingdom and the United States, there are many good arguments for voluntary voting. However, that is not the agenda of the coalition today and it certainly is not the topic we are presented with in the legislation before us.

Many of the proposals here weaken the integrity of the Electoral Act. The member for Reid said that he was not aware of any examples or any matters which caused him to be concerned about our current electoral system, which I again find to be an unusual contention. The HS Chapman Society was set up in 1996, meets regularly in Sydney and is a society with which I have had something to do. Other members of this place quite regularly have interaction with the HS Chapman Society. That society was purely set up to examine and look at our electoral system. Included in their objectives are:

That is a fine body of objectives for any organisation. It is good to see that we have private citizens taking an interest in the electoral roll and the operation of our electoral system who are prepared to meet in their own time, examine proposals for improvements and make recommendations. Indeed, along the way they have certainly highlighted a number of cases where there have been concerns with the roll. The member for Reid said there have only been 71 instances of people multiple voting or conducting voting fraud. Considering that many of these elections have very close results, I think that is a reason why we should have strong electoral provisions and should constantly look at ways to improve them.

Identification is an important issue. I still find it a very odd situation that if you go to the bank you are required to have 100 points of ID, if you want a passport you have to prove your identity and if you want to hire a video at a video store you have to prove your identity with a licence, but there is no real identification required at a polling booth on election day. However, that is a different matter.

There are some amendments within this legislation that we can support, and the coalition has provided its support for schedules 3, 4 and 5. In relation to the proposed Electoral Act provision that a political party cannot nominate multiple candidates, that is a valid and worthy amendment to the act. It has grown out of recent examples, particularly in the Bradfield by-election, where a political party sought to, I think, deliberately manipulate the electoral process by nominating multiple candidates. The Christian Democratic Party nominated nine candidates for the Bradfield by-election. There has been plenty of speculation about the motives behind that, but it is the case that the AEC records over many elections and many years that the more candidates you have the higher the informal rate. I note from the member for Bradfield’s contribution earlier in this debate that there was an unusually high rate of informal voting in the Bradfield by-election, which should be of great concern to all members in this place. So it is easy for us to support such an amendment. A political party ought not to deliberately seek to manipulate the electoral system in that fashion. Therefore, that is a good amendment.

Schedules 3 and 4 relate to provisional voters and are certainly an improvement in administration for the AEC. Provisional voters certainly caused a lot of difficulty for the AEC and scrutineers alike in terms of the time it took for administrative checking in the weeks following polling day. The proposal to treat them as ordinary voters is a worthy one and something that we support.

The bill before us has some worthy provisions. However, schedules 1 and 2, as they relate to particularly the close of the rolls but also the changes to identification for provisional voters, are changes that I cannot support. The electoral roll is an enormously important mechanism and the administration of it is something that we should constantly be seeking to tighten. The government’s proposals certainly weaken the administration of the roll. As we saw in 2004 and 2007, the coalition’s tightening of the three-day and seven-day periods was not of any impact upon the number of people that missed out on voting; in fact it was reduced. I am happy to support schedules 3, 4 and 5, noting the great concerns that the coalition has with the weakening of the electoral roll.