Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010: Second Reading
We should be proud of our great democracy and we should strive to protect and uphold it. As Joni Mitchell said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.’ Here we have people who whinge about having to vote. Some of the 10 million or so people who voted on 24 November 2007 whinged about having to do so. You should have some of my constituents, particularly some of the Hazari people from Afghanistan, talk about their involvement with democracy, especially about some of the journeys they had to undertake to get to a polling booth, especially when they were being discriminated against. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Afghanistan has been in transition to democracy and is still developing accountable public institutions and electoral processes.
I want to particularly focus on Afghanistan. Last year the presidential election in Afghanistan was an admirable achievement for a country going through some tough times, but there was a very low voter turnout and those who did vote risked their lives to participate. They travelled through valleys and experienced incredible circumstances to get to a polling booth. Unfortunately, the results were marred by allegations of intimidation and fraud. Yesterday, I heard on The World Today on the ABC that the position of the Canadian head of the international election watchdog commission had been terminated by the president for doing his job. Apparently, now the president will be choosing a new watchdog.
Afghanistan’s transition to democracy continues and hopefully the forces of good will ensure a more robust and transparent election next time around. You will recall the 2000 Al Gore defeat in the United States and the problems with hanging chads and the like in the Florida electoral process. So when we look at places like Afghanistan, the United States or Iran and many other countries around the world, we should be especially thankful for our democracy and, as members of this parliament, we must do whatever we can to protect the democracy that we have inherited. That is why, through this bill, we are undoing some of the previous government’s work which I firmly believe had a negative impact on our democracy as a whole.
It is no secret that former Prime Minister John Howard enjoyed being the Prime Minister, so much so that when his mates started tapping him on the shoulder he refused to budge. Worse than that, he also started to make some subtle changes to the very electoral processes that had put him in power to further enhance his re-election chances in 2007. In my opinion, this is unforgivable. The coalition were prepared to put bad power before good government. These changes were bad for democracy overall, because they were about intentionally excluding certain people from voting. We heard from the member for Melbourne Ports, and it was stated in one of the submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, that analysis of the empirical data showed that the people most likely to be excluded were those who would vote Labor or Green.
If you are John Howard and you are reaching for a fourth term, what do you do if you are on the nose with young people—that particular cohort? Perhaps young people particularly care about climate change, so what do you do if power is more important than principle? You amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act before the 2007 election to close the electoral roll to new enrolments on the very same day that the writ is issued. It was the best way to keep pesky young people off the electoral roll and out of the electoral process and hopefully keep John Howard’s shaky grip on power.
As you know from your own circumstances or from your own electorates, young people are actually much more likely to change address. They tend to rent, rather than to own homes, and they go where the wind takes them, or where friendships take them. You see them on the weekend, lined up and knocking on the doors of their friends with utes, asking to move from one place to another. You see them on Saturdays, moving from place to place. So this was quite a strategic and tricky manoeuvre by the current opposition. It was subtle, but it was mean and tricky, and responsible governments should flee from any similar attempt to manipulate electoral processes or to water down our democracy. This House, and all that it represents, is bigger than all of us. It was not the finest moment for those opposite; that is for sure.
The Rudd government believes that a healthy democracy relies on giving all eligible adults the opportunity to vote. The fact that at December last year almost 1.4 million eligible voters were not on the electoral roll tells us that too many people are fed up with the political process and they do not want to jump through the hoops to get on the electoral roll. 1.4 million people—that is about 15 members of parliament. Look around the chamber and think of how many MPs that is and the voices that would not get a chance to speak in this parliament. A third of these unenrolled eligible voters were aged between 18 and 25. That is about five MPs—for example, the members for Bowman, Dickson, McEwen, Swan and Mayo—who would not have had a chance to speak because of those young people who did not have a voice in this chamber.
What motivated this incredible change to the process that got the Howard government elected in 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004? What incredible things forced the removal of 1.4 million people? Look at the report from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters entitled Report on the conduct of the 2007 federal election and matters related thereto. On the day about 10 million people voted in that election and the total number of votes, when you count them all up, was 12,987,814 votes. How many multiple-voting occasions were there, if this is about cleaning up the roll? Let us look at it: the hot number of actual multiple-voting occasions referred to the Australian Federal Police out of that 12,987,814 was 10, which was 0.0001 per cent. Ten occasions were actually referred to the Australian Federal Police, and of those how many that resulted in prosecutions? Zero!
It is disgraceful to think that for those sorts of results you could wipe 1.4 million people’s votes out. It is shameful. The Rudd government wants to ensure that all people who want to be enrolled to vote have a reasonable opportunity to get on the roll, and we want to remove any unnecessary roadblocks. The suggestion from those opposite is that people who turned up without ID can go down to the electoral office and show the returning officer their ID. How many did it? How many actually turned up to their electoral offices in the next couple of days? It was something like four per cent. So, even though they had turned up to vote and to participate in the democratic process, how many then actually got in their cars—and if you are outside of a city you might have 100, 200 or 500 kilometres to go—to drive to that office within five days of the vote? You are just not going to do it. That is just a reality of the political process. Most Australians are not that passionate about elections or politicians or the like. That is the reality
The Rudd government wants to ensure that people do have a reasonable opportunity to vote. It is why we made an election commitment to restore the close of rolls to seven days after the issue of the writ for an election. This is a much more appropriate time, a reasonable time, a common-sense time. This bill delivers on our commitment that we took to the Australian people in 2007.
As I said, the Howard government introduced changes to close the electoral roll to new enrolments at 8 pm on the day of the issue of the writ. As it turned out, it was eight o’clock on a Sunday night when you would have had to sort out your details. It meant that people who move around a lot, young people and potential first time voters who are not aware of the process and who do not just turn up to the same polling booth every year, were excluded. They were not able to get on the roll and, consequently, they were not able to take part in the election in 2007.
This bill restores the seven-day enrolment period after the issuing of election writs. This bill also repeals the onerous proof of identity requirements that Howard introduced for provisional voters. As I said, if these voters could not produce a driver’s licence or some photo ID or other evidence on polling day, the elector had five business days to return to the AEC office with proof of identity. It is no wonder that 25 per cent of voters were unable to produce evidence of identity on polling day, and subsequently 27,000 votes were rejected. They were the people who turned up but who had not actually been following the machinations in Parliament House and did not realise that they needed photo ID.This bill removes the identity provision, but to ensure the integrity of the system it requires the division returning officer to check a voter’s signature against the most recent record whenever there is any doubt about its validity. Australians just want to take part in the democratic process and do not want to have to jump through the hoops to do so.
This bill also brings the enrolment process into the 21st century. While most public institutions are riding the digital wave of the modern era, the electoral roll is back in the horse-and-buggy era. Paper enrolment forms are still required to be signed and sent to the AEC. This bill amends the process, enabling enrolled voters to update their enrolment details electronically. It streamlines the process and, obviously, lowers costs as well. It allows flexibility in how and where enrolments are processed, and where possible enables the counting of prepoll votes cast in an elector’s home division as ordinary votes on election night. That is obviously good news for the psephologists out there, like Antony Green or Malcolm Mackerras, and the election night junkies—many of us are those, and actually like watching results. So it would be good to have that spread of results around the country on election night.
Finally, this bill restricts the number of candidates that can be endorsed by a political party in each division. This amendment is in response to the Bradfield by-election where 22 candidates ran including nine candidates nominated by the Christian Democratic Party. It is ironic that their title should result in this amendment. This is obviously a very confusing situation for electors to face on their ballot paper. This bill closes the loophole and ensures political parties can endorse only one candidate in each electorate.
All these measures are about simplifying the enrolment and voting processes and ensuring that as many Australians as possible are eligible to vote. The quick passage of this bill will ensure that these reforms are in place before a 2010 or 2011—whatever the Prime Minister decides—federal election. I have always been keen for a Kevin 11 campaign, but I am not getting a lot of support. The bill restores democracy to the House and I commend it.
