Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I refer to the second reading amendment that the opposition proposes, which says:

(1)

reduce the period of time Australians have to enrol to vote ...

The period of time available to Australians to enrol under legislation approved and managed by the previous Labor government is 21 days. It is an offence under section 101 of the Electoral Act to not enrol once you become eligible within 21 days of that date of eligibility and, similarly, to not report the fact that you have moved. That is what the legislation says. All these crocodile tears about rounding up all your mates to enrol and confuse the system after the declaration of the writs is rubbish. What about:

(2)

introduce new proof of identity requirements …

Doesn’t the member for Bruce remember when the ALP in Queensland were going around to get themselves union votes and enrolling themselves all over the blooming country? And they say you don’t need identification! You certainly don’t when you want to rort the system like that. Every kid who wants to go to a disco carries identification today and does not consider it onerous. So much for the crocodile tears on that.

Then we were told that we are all going to have multiple donations. I have advice here that five unions made 183 multiple donations valued at $1,632,885 to the Labor Party. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Everything that the shadow minister has said is refuted by the actions of the Labor Party and their supporters—more particularly when it comes to disclosure, they know how their union heavies went around. The average small business, the average truckie, was totally afeard of making a declarable donation to a party other than the Labor Party for fear of disruption to their business and other matters that were done by their union heavies—they might have sent Tom Domican around or something.

The fact of life is that it is ridiculous for these people to claim that the measures the government have introduced are inconvenient. Their arguments about enrolment are contrary to the law as it exists and they are encouraging people to break the law and putting an argument that says 50,000 or 80,000 of them should line up when they all should have done their enrolment months if not years before.

Debate interrupted.

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