Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

in reply—I am pleased to be summing up the debate on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010, which I note has drawn significant interest across the political spectrum. It is obviously a very important piece of legislation, meeting two of the Rudd government’s 2007 election commitments and building on several recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. Of the 53 recommendations on electoral reform, 45 have been unanimously supported.

In summing up, I thank all the contributors—particularly the member for Barker, sitting there in the background—and wish to explore the five schedules in more detail. The schedule 1 amendment relates to the closing of rolls. The government is fulfilling its pre-election commitment to restore the close of rolls period to seven days after the issue of a writ for an election. I note the coalition does not support this amendment, which is disappointing. It is estimated that 1.5 million eligible voters are not presently enrolled to vote, and the government is committed to enabling all eligible Australians to participate in the electoral process, which is precisely what this measure aims to do. Many eligible Australians do enrol for the first time or update their enrolment details when an election is announced, and that is why extending the close of rolls from three days to seven is so vitally important. This will restore the policy that was in place for the 2004 federal election.

It goes without saying that there is a heightened enrolment activity once the election has been called, and we do acknowledge this. The AEC has, however, advised previously that the seven-day close of roll period is enough time to allow it to conduct the enrolment verification processes it performs for all applications for enrolment. Further, the AEC has advised that there is no evidence of wide-scale electoral fraud, which has been mentioned on an ongoing basis by those opposite. JSCEM also found that there is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud that would justify restricting access to the roll, especially for young Australians and also for people who move often. The opposition to this schedule and baseless claims made by some in the opposition demonstrate that the coalition’s primary interest seems to be keeping people off the electoral roll, not strengthening Australia’s electoral integrity.

Schedule 2 concerns evidence of identity for provisional votes. It removes a range of anomalies relating to provisional votes that have no logical foundation. The Howard government introduced an additional requirement that to cast a provisional vote at a polling place on polling day a person must provide a polling official with evidence of identity at the time of voting or by the first Friday following polling day. If this identity requirement was not met, this person’s provisional vote was excluded from the count. The result of this requirement has been that a silent elector, whose name is on a certified list but has an address that is suppressed, is required to provide evidence of identity, otherwise their vote will be excluded. A voter who may be on the certified list but whose name could not be found by the polling official, such as if their name had an unusual spelling, would be required to provide evidence of identity, otherwise their vote would be excluded. If the same person had voted by absentee, postal or pre-poll vote rather than by provisional vote, they would not have been required to provide evidence of identity.

The AEC’s estimate is that over 27,000 provisional votes were excluded at the 2007 federal election as a result of the current evidence of identity provisions, and this schedule remedies this. There is no evidence that the Howard government’s evidence requirement for provisional voters did anything to reduce actual or perceived electoral fraud or to suggest provisional voting has more fraudulent behaviour connected to it than any other forms of voting on polling day, nor is there any evidence to suggest any widespread electoral fraud. The bill will, therefore, remove the requirement to provide identity to cast a provisional vote and restores the requirements for provisional voting in the operation of the 2004 election. Votes cast in this manner will, of course, be subject to the same prescriptive preliminary scrutiny processes in the electoral act that apply to all declaration votes. This change will provide the appropriate balance between providing eligible voters with the opportunity to vote in an election and protecting the integrity of the electoral processes.

Schedule 3 amendments relate to prepoll ordinary votes. Schedule 3 of this bill provides for prepoll votes cast in an elector’s home division to be cast and counted as ordinary votes wherever practical. Previously prepoll votes were not counted on election day and took between six and 12 days to pass through preliminary and further scrutiny processes and then for the ballot papers to be counted. This schedule will provide for prepoll ordinary votes to be counted at the close of polling on polling day. In recent elections, more voters have been casting their votes before polling day. At the 2007 federal election almost 15 per cent of the total votes cast were early votes. Indeed, the AEC estimates that, if this amendment had been in place for the 2007 federal election, an additional 667,000 votes would have been counted on polling night. The additional demand for prepoll votes—exacerbated by the fact that these votes are not counted on polling day—increases the likelihood that the outcome of an election will be delayed. The bill maintains the integrity of the electoral process as voters are required to be marked off a certified list before they will be issued with a vote, similar to the way in which voters are scrutinised at a polling place on polling day. This is a measure that was recommended by JSCEM and I welcome the opposition’s support for it.

The amendments in schedule 4 of the bill are administrative and do not affect the voting enrolments, rights and obligations of eligible Australians, but they will make it easier for the AEC to undertake its ordinary operations. Presently the Electoral Act provides that the AEC allocates work—principally being enrolment applications and enrolment changes—through its divisional office network within a state or territory. This bill will expand the operation of workload-sharing ability to non-election periods and will not be limited to the divisional office network in the affected state or territory. These amendments will therefore provide the AEC with additional tools to maintain the electoral roll in a timely and efficient manner.

In addition, this bill will allow for a person who is already on the electoral roll to inform the AEC of a change of address by electronic means. The Electoral Act will still require voters to complete and sign paper forms when enrolling for the first time. Providing a facility for electors already on the roll to update their address electronically will bring the AEC into line with the manner in which the community expects to interact with the government and will provide services similar to those provided by other government agencies, such as the ATO. The bill does retain mechanisms to preserve the integrity of the electoral process—such as regulations enabling the AEC to request information such as drivers licence number and date of birth to ensure the electronic transaction is authentic and has been undertaken by the elector to whom the information relates. We believe that this will improve participation in the electoral system, especially with younger Australians. Because this government is committed to ongoing reform, we will also consider the JSCEM report on the New South Wales smart roll initiative in due course. We are actively investigating whether and how automatic enrolment—which arguably goes much further than electoral enrolment—could be introduced at the Commonwealth level in the medium term.

The fifth and final schedule in this bill restricts the number of candidates that a single registered political party is able to nominate as an endorsed candidate in any one division. This measure arises from a practice at the Bradfield by-election where, of the 22 candidates, nine were endorsed by a registered officer of a single registered political party. The result of this was a significant increase in the informal vote at this election. We believe this amendment is necessary to prevent a similar rise in the informality rate in multiple divisions at the next federal election.

In conclusion, in 2007 the Rudd government came to office with a strong reform agenda. This bill is but one tranche in a large and growing agenda, and I am proud to be able to add to this a bill that builds on the integrity of Australia’s electoral system. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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