Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary contribution from the member for Moncrieff. This bill is a backward step for democracy in Australia. When it comes to electoral reform, governments have a choice. They can increase transparency and make it easier for people to participate in the democratic process or they can reduce transparency and make it harder for people to vote. When they take the latter course, you can bet it is for partisan political reasons. The government, of course, in this bill is taking the latter approach. This bill reduces transparency and makes it harder for people to participate in Australia’s democratic processes.

There are two concerning aspects of this bill primarily: the change to the threshold for declaring electoral donations and the early closure of the rolls. The government says that the law is that you should change your enrolment immediately you move house and that you should enrol immediately when you turn 18. I have a reality check for the government. Forty per cent of people do not immediately change their enrolment details when they move. These people are not criminals. They are not flouting the law. When you move house you have a million things to do. Changing your electoral enrolment is not necessarily at the top of your list. There are 40 per cent of people who move house in this country every year who do not change their enrolment immediately. They are not criminals but this government’s approach is to deny them their right to vote. An even bigger problem is that people who have turned 18 since the last election also no longer have a right, if this bill is passed, to enrol to vote after the writs are issued. I do not know many 18-year-olds who have as their No. 1 priority in life enrolling to vote when they turn 18. They have other things on their mind. Across the country, 78,000 people enrolled for the first time between the issue of the writs at the last election and the closure of the rolls. That is almost an entire federal electorate which would be disenfranchised once this bill passes this House and the other place.

The government’s rationale for this, as we just heard in that extraordinary contribution from the member for Moncrieff, is that the AEC is deluged with electoral enrolments and therefore its veracity checks are not as reliable as they are at other times. The only problem with that argument is that it is not what the AEC thinks. In a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the AEC said:

When the AEC processes an application for enrolment, every component of the enrolment form is checked for any anomalies and to ensure that it complies with the provisions of the Electoral Act, prior to the form being processed and the elector’s name being entered on the roll. This occurs during close of rolls and in non-election periods.

An elector’s name is not added to, nor amended on, the roll during close of rolls, or at any other time, if the DRO has reason to believe that the enrolment form is not in order or if there is any doubt as to the elector’s entitlement to electoral enrolment. During the roll close period, the AEC applies its established procedures with the same degree of rigour as it does in a non-election period.

That was in the AEC’s submission to this inquiry. But even more telling was the AEC’s submission to the joint standing committee in 2000. Again I quote the Australian Electoral Commission, the independent umpire in Australian elections:

... the early close of rolls will not improve the accuracy of the rolls for an election ... In fact, the expectation is that the rolls for the election will be less accurate, because less time will be available for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received.

It gets better. The AEC went on to say, in relation to a proposal to close the roll on the day that writs are issued for an election:

This expected outcome is in direct conflict with the stated policy intention of the Government to improve the accuracy of the rolls. Further, it will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the franchise, an outcome which the AEC cannot support.

Nothing has changed since that submission. There has been no evidence brought forward from the government that anything has changed. This government is rolling the Australian Electoral Commission for its own partisan political purposes and it is a sad day for democracy.

As Brian Costar and Peter Brown pointed out in the Independent Weekly on 18 March this year, the Australian National Audit Office, an independent body, examined the integrity of the electoral roll and could very easily have recommended to the government the early closure of the roll to ensure its integrity. Instead, the Audit Office found:

... overall the Australian electoral roll is one of high integrity, and can be relied on for electoral purposes.

The practice of having a grace period for people to enrol or to change their enrolment after an election has been called is not a new one. It was introduced into the law of this nation in 1983. However, it has effectively been the practice for much longer. In every election from 1940 to 1983, there was a gap between the election date being announced and the issuing of the writ when rolls closed and consequently a gap allowing people to enrol to vote. The smallest gap was in 1949, when people had five days to enrol; the longest gap was in 1958, when there was an extraordinary 63-day gap allowing people to enrol to vote. The average period that people have had to enrol to vote in between the calling of an election and the rolls closing, in the 40 years after that practice was introduced, was 20 days.

The government have no credible rationale apart from their own partisan political purposes for abolishing this longstanding arrangement. They have made a crass political judgment that abolishing the franchise of those people who enrol after the writs are issued is to their partisan advantage. They are particularly disenfranchising the young people of this country. I am also worried about the impact of this bill on people of non-English-speaking backgrounds, many of whom are in my electorate and the electorate of the member for Fowler. The government have an obligation. They can spend their $55 million advertising their workplace relations bill; they can spend their $20 million advertising changes to Medicare before the last election, changes which they then scrapped. If they can find money to advertise that, it is incumbent on them to spend a large amount of money to advertise these changes to the electoral system. They should go and say to people that they no longer have the right to vote.

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