Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise and support the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010. We have been hearing a lot lately from some quarters about the importance of governments keeping their election promises. I am pleased to say that this bill represents the fulfilment of commitments made by Labor at the 2007 election and, indeed, well before the election. We have said that these amendments actually go towards some of the most important debates that this nation can have about the quality and direction of politics. I believe the electoral roll is perhaps one of the most important books in Australia. It is an ever-changing, ever-updating embodiment of our democracy. It is the practical guarantee of a theoretical right to a free vote, the right to which there have been disputes and arguments and for which people have marched, fought and endured all sorts of struggles to achieve.

Our right to vote is one that thousands of new immigrants and refugees who have come to this country have clutched tightly, scarcely able to believe that they can cast a vote without fear of violence or reprisals, without fear of a knock on the door in the middle of the night. The right to a free vote is, in fact, one of our oldest rights in the history of our great country and it is part of the gift-wrapped bundle that today’s citizens have presented to them. I believe it sits along with habeas corpus, trial by jury, freedom of expression and the right to join a union, as part of Australia’s compact of rights with its citizens. The sanctity of the electoral roll is safeguarded by those guardians of political neutrality at the Australian Electoral Commission. I believe the importance of our electoral roll is often taken for granted by those of us who have been lucky enough to have been born in this country and to have spent our lives in a stable and functioning democracy.

In 1903, two years after Federation, the Australian Electoral Commission prepared the first nationwide electoral roll with two million people, estimated to have been at 96 per cent of the adult population of Australia at that time. It was the most comprehensive enrolment of any nation up to that time for the purposes of democracy. Along with the franchise for women and the secret ballot, it is one of the ways in which Australia has led the world in the development of democracy. It set a benchmark that has been maintained by the good work of the Australian Electoral Commission ever since. Indeed, in 2005, 96.3 per cent of people eligible to vote were enrolled and enrolled in their correct division.

I am sad to say that, despite the venerable, noble and precious history of the electoral roll, its integrity was the subject of a campaign of sniping and undermining by our predecessors, the Howard government. Vague allegations of rorts and voter fraud were used to justify measures that were supposedly aimed at tightening the roll but were really attempts to disenfranchise voters. Most notable among these decisions was to end the traditional practice of closing the rolls seven days after the calling of an election and to replace this with a roll that closed at 8 pm on the day the election is called—never mind the fact that up to 100,00 people enrol or upgrade their addresses in those seven days, never mind that the Howard government change would be enough to deprive nearly 100,000 people of their votes and never mind that the Liberal government of the day forgot that in 1983 the Liberal Party, with eminent representatives such as John Carrick, proposed that there should be this seven-day grace period after the calling of an election. The very idea that the Howard government overturned had been in part born through Liberal Party concerns in 1983 that closing the roll on the day the election was called was some sort of secret socialist plot where the Labor Party would have been campaigning to sign people up to the electoral roll and then, when it believed that it had sufficient numbers, the election would be called and the rolls would be closed.

In fact, it was the Liberal Party in 1983 who proposed and supported a seven-day extension; but, unfortunately, as we know, the later years of the Howard government included a Liberal Party which bore little resemblance to some of its more principled predecessors. It was a measure which was pushed by the Howard government as part of an ideological determination to remove from the roll all those they felt might be inclined to vote against them. This measure we are seeking to change was a form of practical discrimination against young people and against tenants who do not have the security of a mortgage but need to move from time to time. Often these people are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. They are often Indigenous Australians, people with disabilities and people suffering from mental illness.

It was a tawdry, transparent attempt to limit the participation of Australians in the national conversation which is our democracy. We thought it smelled at the time and we made an election promise to change it back. I know it smelled because here in the chamber is the member for Melbourne Ports, who was the canary in the coalmine—the smeller of Liberal trickery who made this point even then. But now I am pleased to say to him that, through this bill, we are keeping the promise.

A second change made by this bill is to remove the restrictions on casting a provisional vote, which also stripped away the right of Australians to have their vote counted. Provisional votes are cast by those who turn up to a polling place only to discover that they are not on the roll. Under the Howard government, they were required to provide identification at the polling booth or within five days of the election. It is estimated that this requirement, sprung on people who honestly believed that they had placed themselves on the roll, denied 30,000 people the chance to cast a valid vote. The opposition claims made by Senator Eric Abetz and others that the electoral roll is compromised and that it was riddled with fake enrolments or inaccuracies have never been backed up by evidence. The mythical bogeyman of electoral fraud and false enrolments on the federal roll was whispered by those opposite but, like the Loch Ness monster or the abominable snowman, it was much easier to talk about than to catch.

A review in 2002 by the Australian National Audit Office found over 96 per cent accuracy, which rose to over 99 per cent when matching the roll against Medicare data. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted a thorough investigation into the integrity of the electoral roll in 2001. It found only 71 cases of fraud between 1990 and 2001, a period which included no less than five federal elections and a referendum. The Electoral Commission noted that these false enrolments were not deliberate attempts to corrupt or unduly influence electoral results.

We have a strong and honest system in this country. We are not bedevilled by the parade of hanging chads, spoiled ballots and unreliable electronic machines that turned the 2000 US presidential election into a farce. Our simpler and modest system—of pencils and paper and curtained booths in school halls, the generally peaceful milling of candidates and supporters around parent sausage sizzles in school playgrounds and the counting by dedicated volunteers recruited by the AEC—delivers fair result after fair result. To try to pretend that electoral fraud is a persistent problem in this country is a slur on both the electorate and the Australian Electoral Commission. One tightening of the rules that will be made by this bill is an end to the practice of allowing the returning officer of a political party to nominate more than one candidate for a House of Representatives division. In the Bradfield by-election held recently, nine different candidates were nominated by the registered officer of the Christian Democratic (Fred Nile Group) out of a total of 22 candidates on the ballot paper. I believe instances like this undermine the quality of our system and provide, either deliberately or inadvertently, confusion for voters. This bill includes the common-sense provision that the registered officer of a registered political party is able to nominate only one candidate as an endorsed candidate for any single division in any state or territory.

Australia is one of the oldest members of the global family of democracies. We have a system of compulsory voting—or, to be precise, compulsory attendance at the polling booth—which does seem odd to some visitors to our country. But I suggest that it is as uniquely and importantly Australian as our coat of arms. It is a way of ensuring that every government elected can rightly claim the support of the majority of the population. This is unlike the great United States of America, where despite its many, many strengths Congress representatives or senators can be elected by less than 50 per cent of the adult population. I believe the drift away from people voting in elections can only be a negative in any democracy.

Democratic societies create responsibilities as well as rights. I believe one of those responsibilities is participation in elections. But this can only be done with that most important book that I referred to before—an accurate electoral roll—and a process that does not place needless hurdles in the way of those wishing to play their part in the democratic process. It is a government’s duty to preserve the right to vote by making the practice of voting as easy as possible. This bill aims to do that and to remove unnecessary obstacles in the way of people exercising their responsibilities to vote.

The constant evolution of our democracy in both the United Kingdom and Australia has been one of the continual widenings of the franchise. Laws which limited voting to the nobility—that is, those considered to have the right blood and background to run the country—have been gradually extended over time. Wealth or property quotas have been introduced. The reform acts of the United Kingdom have certainly widened the franchise. However, the wealth and property quotas, whilst more democratic than what they preceded, have certainly still denied the majority of citizens the right to choose their government.

At the Eureka Stockade people fought for their rights—not just those of property owners—to be extended and, eventually arising from that and the efforts of a nascent, progressive Labor movement and indeed the Deakinite Liberal tradition, franchises have been extended in the new world. The franchise was extended to women in 1903 and finally, and far too late, to Indigenous citizens of this country of the 1960s. I found it remarkable as a young man with an interest politics when my mother, who has five tertiary qualifications and has worked her whole life, informed me that in Victoria she could not vote in the Legislative Council elections because she lacked the sufficient property qualification when she was a young woman. I do find it remarkable, in any day and age, when people are excluded from the right to vote because they lack sufficient property. Unfortunately, I believe the previous government—perhaps not intentionally or perhaps so; I do not know what was in their minds—did endeavour to throw the engine of history into reverse and to wind back the franchise enjoyed by Australians. This, I suggest, was an aberration in our democratic evolution, and I believe we are right to correct that wrong.

Our country quite rightly takes the title of one of the world’s oldest continuing democracies. In fact, we were a democracy both in spirit and in practice even before we formally achieved independence in 1901. I believe that the notion of equality as typified by the spontaneous outbreak of anger at injustice and unfair taxes at the Ballarat goldfields is hardwired into our national DNA. This is translated into a democracy that is both robust and civil, where ideas are treated on their merits and where politicians are repeatedly reminded not to get ahead of themselves. Our system has survived two world wars, a depression and a dismissal and emerged stronger from each. During the First World War, the people were twice asked to decide whether conscription should be introduced in this country because politicians trusted the instinct of the people on such a grave matter. This bill, I believe, is a contribution to strengthening democracy and ensuring that all Australians retain their right to vote, not just in theory but in reality. I commend this bill to the House.

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