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

The second part of the bill that we are opposing specifically is removing the necessity for someone who is seeking a prepoll vote to sign a certificate as to the reason they are in fact entitled to seek a prepoll vote. We believe the legislation has turned a prepoll vote from being a declaration vote into an ordinary vote, and the real purpose of that was to allow those votes to be counted on the night so that we get a more accurate call on the night of who is likely to win the election instead of having to wait for a period of days or sometimes weeks for those declaration votes to be dealt with. So we do believe that it is sensible that the certificate that is presently required to be signed should continue to be signed. The reason is that we are philosophically opposed to the concept that the Australian Electoral Commissioner, together with the government, seems to be fostering: that you do not talk about 'polling day'; you talk about a 'polling period'.

We do not believe that that is the right course of action to follow. The practice has developed in recent times that political parties release their manifestoes, for want of a better term, later and later in the election period itself, which means that many people can vote prior to even hearing the outline of the policies that the leaders are giving in order to make a judgement. There is a lot of material that is available in the last few days leading up to the election day, and it does mean that the people who are voting earlier and earlier are not having the benefit of seeing that material.

For a similar reason, we are moving an amendment to change a provision in the bill which requires that you cannot make an application for a prepoll vote earlier than the fourth day after the close of nominations to the 11th day, which means, in effect, under the government's proposals, it would be 19 days of prepolling and, under our proposal, it would be 12 days of prepolling. We think that 12 days is quite adequate, together with the requirement still to state why it is that you cannot turn up on polling day. Also, as I did point out, as the Prime Minister has chosen on this occasion to announce that election day will be on 14 September 2013 and that happens to be, for the Jewish community, Yom Kippur, which is a very sacred day for them, obviously they will be unable to vote on that day. That is a very legitimate reason for using a prepoll vote.

So there is a need for the provision for prepoll, just as there is a need for postal votes. But with postal votes we have remained, again, very strong on the fact that there is a need for political material to be included with the ballot paper—that the person to whom the AEC is going to send the ballot paper should be entitled to receive political material, just as anyone who turns up on polling day will receive political material.

So we are moving amendments to the Commonwealth Electoral Act, to the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act, and to the Taxation Administration Act 1953. We believe that should those amendments be made then the bill would be in a much better form and the interests of electors would be served.

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