Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker D'Ath, I seek leave to make some comments concerning the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the conduct of the 2010 election.

Leave granted.

In listening to the remarks of the chairman of the committee, you might have thought that the report of the committee had universal support. It did not; it split very much along party lines. I think it is true to say there has not been a more partisan discussion in this committee for many years. Basically the thrust of the discussions surrounded the three changes—and I use the word 'change' as distinct from 'reform' because 'reform' has connotations of good things being done—that would advantage the government and the Greens. It is interesting that their submissions to the committee reflected each other and it was very disappointing that some commentary from the AEC seemed to support the Labor Party position.

There are three things that the Labor Party are very anxious to see introduced, as are the Greens. Firstly, they want to introduce the South Australian ticket-voting system, which would mean that electors who simply place a 1 on the ballot paper would have their vote allocated by a bureaucrat in accordance with a registered ticket and it would be illegal to tell people that is what would happen to their vote. The issue of how we vote is set out in our Constitution. The words in the Consti­tution say that 'The House of Representatives shall be composed of members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth,' and this proposal by the Labor Party is very constitutionally risky. Under the voting system we have for the Senate, where you may vote above the line, you may also place your preferences in every square if you wish. It is very important to note that the reason we changed the system of voting in the Senate was that we were seeing such huge ballot papers with so many people nominating that the margin of error was becoming something that was not considered acceptable. We will never see a House of Representatives ballot paper looking like that. So the so-called justification for the South Australian voting system is one that does not provide any justification at all in this context.

The AEC analysis said that 51 per cent of informal votes at the last election were assumed to be unintentional. The AEC has absolutely no basis to assume that those votes were unintentionally informal. In fact, if you look at the voting patterns in states other than New South Wales and Queen­sland, where it is a valid vote to put a 1 in the box or a cross or a tick, there is confusion between state and federal elections. Indeed, if you wanted to so-called 'save' those informal votes, the evidence is that, if you allowed ticks and crosses and 1s and you moved to an optional preferential system at the federal level, which would still meet with the constitutional requirement to be directly chosen by the people, you would save, in the terms used by the government, more votes than under the highly objectionable South Australian system with its secrecy and manipulation. People would be horrified to think that a bureaucrat could allocate their preferences in a way they did not intend. You may vote informally if you wish.

The second point that the Labor Party was very keen to push is the question of postal votes and postal vote applications. Currently the system, as everybody knows—this was challenged in the High Court and the chal­lenge was thrown out—is that the political parties send out how-to-vote applications and individuals can choose to send those applications back to the political party of their choice, who then take them to the electoral office where they are processed and the electoral office then sends them out. There are some people who choose to send them directly to the DRO, but a huge number of people choose to send them back to the party of their choice. The Greens, despite the fact that they have now received the largest donation ever known in the history of donations—$1.6 million, which they failed to disclose in a timely way—do not at this stage send out their own PVAs. They want to have some electoral advantage by being sent a list that they can simply get on the back of with regard to the Labor Party's PVAs.

Analysis shows that more electors who choose to vote by way of postal ballot vote for the coalition than vote for the Labor Party. This is clearly seen as undesirable by the Labor Party and so, if they cannot attract the votes, they want to change the system. The statistics show that with regard to postal votes only 2.63 per cent of those votes cast were in fact informal as distinct from 5.5 per cent of votes in the overall count, which shows quite simply that the current system works, but because it does not work to the advantage of the Labor Party and the Greens they want to change the system. This is not a good way to be running fair and free elections.

The third way in which the Labor Party and the Greens want to change the system is that they want to reduce the integrity of the roll. Let me remind the House that, presently, you are required by law to register to get on the roll. Having got on the roll, if you should change your address it is your obligation to advise the Electoral Commi­ssion so that that change of address can be recorded. Those are your obligations under the law. Through our system of compulsory voting, we already oblige people to turn up, get their name marked off, take the ballot paper and then mark the paper as they will—they can vote informally if they wish. Some people choose to put expressions of their objection to being forced to vote; other people write comments about what they think about candidates. In other words: they are busy showing what their will is, but the—

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