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

by leave—There were serious differences between the government and opposition on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Bill 2012 referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. These differences are ongoing. They relate to the protection of the integrity of the roll. In many of the dissenting reports we have written since the government introduced automatic enrolment, we have made the point—and we continue to make the point—that we believe it destroys the integrity of the roll.

We object to the proposed changes which allow the Australian Taxation Office to give material to the Electoral Commission not only because they put at risk the integrity of the roll—it is utilising material which has been developed for another purpose and the accuracy of which cannot be vouched for—but because people's individual details in tax office material have always been regarded as sacrosanct. There have always been serious penalties for anyone in the tax office who divulges such information. The proposed changes to the act will in fact remove penalties for any officers involved in such behaviour.

With regard to the proposed changes to the Taxation Administration Act, we point out in our dissenting report, as we do quite often, that a 1999 report by the House of Representatives Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration, Numbers on the run: review of the ANAO audit report No.37 1998-99 on the management of tax file numbers, found that there were 3.2 million more tax file numbers than there were people in Australia at the then most recent census, that there are potentially 185,000 duplicate tax records for individuals and that 62 per cent of deceased clients were not recorded as deceased in the sample match. It was again pointed out in evidence given at the public hearings initially, dealing with automatic enrolment, that a single roll that may be given to the Electoral Commission is in fact a composite of a lot of other sources, all of which are not checked either. If we look at another example of inaccuracy of government-held information, in this case the integrity of the Medicare enrolment data, the ANAO audit report stated:

ANAO found that up to half a million active Medicare enrolment records were probably for people who are deceased.

I cite those examples just to show that the integrity of the roll is very much at risk. When the bill comes up for debate we will be able to deal with these matters in more detail.

We also think it is still necessary for someone who is exercising a prepoll vote to sign a certificate. We are against the concept of an election period which equates election day with a period of up to 19 days if the amendments go through, and we feel that that is bad on two counts: 19 days is too long—it should be restricted to 12—and also to not have a requirement to sign a declaration as to how you are complying with the act in seeking a prepoll vote is again to denigrate election day in favour of an election period.

We then came to the opening of a ballot box prior to the closing of the poll on election day. I will deal with this more in my speech in the second reading debate on the bill itself, but there were enormous concerns shared by the committee as a whole—and I am grateful to the chairman of the committee for acknowledging that I did pursue the matter vociferously. To me it is unconscionable that votes which people have cast in good faith can be excluded from scrutiny because a box has been opened prematurely. We needed to have a saving clause, and I am very grateful that we reached agreement on many of those principles—where we disagreed was on the question of account. I will deal with that in the second reading debate.

At all times there has been a profound disagreement between the government and the opposition about the integrity of the roll. I cite very often the legal precedents which say that you cannot go behind the roll—once the roll is established, you may not challenge who has gone onto it. Therefore, you have to be able to vouch for the integrity of who goes onto it—and it seems to me, in a land where we value the right to vote, that the requirement that you as an individual when you reach 18 or become a citizen to fill out a form to become a citizen enrolled to vote is not very onerous. I think that philosophical divide will continue and, should we be successful in being elected at the next election, it is certainly a matter we will address.

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