Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

The minister is right—he would not be able to. And Mayo, as you know, is a tight marginal seat.

Mr Crean interjecting—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

What he does with his vote is his decision. We are not like the Labor Party—we do not force people to follow the ticket. We do not ask for ballots to be shown. We just let people get on and make their own decisions based on the policies put before the electorate. I am very happy for the people of Mayo to make their judgments based on what I do and put to them before the next election. I think the minister at the table knows that. I think he is just being a little frivolous, which is disappointing because he is not a minister I ever thought would be frivolous in this place.

But this legislation is not frivolous. These bills are very serious. They are a very serious attack on the fundamentals of our democracy and on the integrity of the electoral roll and they are designed purely for the political benefit of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens, their coalition partner. They see the opportunity to drag in votes which they think are rightfully theirs. They base their judgment on data which suggests that people who are not enrolled would be more likely to vote for the Labor Party or, at worst, the Australian Greens, from whom the Labor Party know they will get the preferences in the end.

So they are creating law to make it easier for bureaucrats to make decisions about electoral enrolment rather than ensuring that electors make those decisions. We should oppose this. These are bad bills and this is a bad direction for our country to go in. We have a tremendously successful electoral system. We are very lucky that our elections are largely free of corruption. There have been very few examples of serious matters being taken to the Court of Disputed Returns. That is something we should be very proud of. Generally we know that the winner announced on election night—there are exceptions of course and the last federal election was one of those—will indeed turn out to be the winner. In fact, following the 2007 election, I remember an American friend commenting to me that he was always taken aback at how simply a change of government occurs in Australia—how people accept the result, the verdict of the electorate, and move on. The new government come in and make their decisions—sadly, this one has made some very bad decisions and we are suffering from that now—and we accept the fact of democracy and that we put our fate in the hands of the voters. But we do so on the basis that we completely trust the integrity of the electoral roll.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Let me tell you, Member for Moreton, that I will trust the voters of Queensland this Saturday. I reckon they will get it right, as Bob Hawke once said.

We need to guard against moves which will weaken the integrity of the electoral roll, especially moves based on spurious reasons which, at their heart, are more about political benefit for one side or another. That is why these bills should be opposed. They should be opposed by this House and, if they get to the next house, they should be opposed there as well.

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