James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I briefly make this comment on the amendment, because it's the same amendment that was moved to the last electoral bill that we addressed. I really do commend the contribution from the member for Mackellar on some of these points, particularly in relation to the perverse outcomes of this concept of proactive ongoing disclosure and the fact that, in many cases, that would actually lead to a lower standard of public disclosure. If we have a regime that calls for disclosing a donation in real time, so within seven days of the donation et cetera, you could see people gaming the system. Clearly there would still be some disclosure threshold. Let's say it was Labor's proposition of $1,000; that kind of regime means someone could donate $500 every day of the year and not get picked up. Whereas, at the moment, if a major corporate, an individual or a union donates to a political party, we have to aggregate the total value of the donations over a financial year, and that is the threshold. Over a financial year, if you donate more than the $14½-odd thousand amount that the threshold, index linked, is at the moment, that's what triggers it. So there are a lot of misleading concepts in the amendment. But, as I say, it is basically the same amendment that was moved to the last electoral bill, and I commend the contributions that were made in addressing the points there.

Coming to the substance of the question on the second reading itself, obviously I am rising to support this bill, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) Bill 2021. I think the indication is that we all support this bill to provide some assurance over the Senate voting count process. The previous speaker outlined what those measures are, and I won't reprosecute those points. It does remind me, when we're thinking of looking at voting count machines et cetera, of the very famous 2000 presidential election in the United States. Some in this chamber, probably many in this chamber, have an interest in and follow closely the US political system, the US democracy. There was a particularly famous circumstance in November 2000 which ultimately saw then Governor George Bush become President George Bush, thanks to him winning the electoral college delegates from the state of Florida. But that was disputed for a period of time. There's a fairly entertaining movie made about it, pretty biased in favour of the Democratic angle, but, nonetheless, it's an enjoyable watch if you are interested in the conduct of elections, which I'm not suggesting is a huge proportion of the population, but those of us in this chamber probably are. Of course, the issues that were disputed in that circumstance related to the way in which their counting systems operate in the United States.

Some will be aware that, in the United States, they don't have the equivalent of our AEC. It's up to each state to run the voting process for selecting their delegates to the electoral college, much like they run all their other elections on the same day in the United States. So you go in with a substantial ballot paper and vote for everything from President to dog catcher, at times, and everything in between.

There is not necessarily the same voting process in different jurisdictions. If you vote in, say, the state of Florida, you'll probably be undertaking a different voting process than you might if you are voting in the state of Texas or New York or whatever it might be. But I certainly don't support that; I'm a very strong supporter of us having our own federal Australian Electoral Commission that oversees and conducts our general elections to this chamber, our by-elections and of course the election of senators.

This bill, at its heart, as the previous speaker said, is in some cases just legislating what is already current practice with the AEC, so it is putting a requirement on them that they already voluntarily undertake, essentially. But, to ensure that there's no ambiguity around that into the future, it does make sense to make that very clear and put it into legislation around preference flows and publications et cetera. As I say, it already happens, but we're ensuring in this bill that there wouldn't be a case in the future where, potentially, an electoral commissioner decides that they don't want to continue that practice, because of course they'll be required to do so now under the Electoral Act.

The other is the requirement to have a very clear standard of how we validate and confirm the automatic vote-counting tallying machines that the AEC currently use and ones that they potentially will use as technology develops into the future. I think this is an important area for us to anticipate future risk. I can't think of any example in the history of this parliament or our federation where there have been questions over the fair conduct of elections. As much as we have spirited campaigns and contests and sometimes we might not necessarily think that the conduct of candidates or advertisements or actions by volunteers et cetera was fair, I don't think we've ever heard the allegation that our Electoral Commission itself has ever conducted elections with anything short of the utmost integrity. I can't reflect on any contest I can recall where there was a suggestion that the way in which the votes were counted was either in dispute or, even worse, led to an outcome that wasn't what the people voted for. I can't, to my mind, think of any example where that has happened in the history of any election in this country, particularly federal elections. That's a source of great pride for all of us in this chamber who believe in the upmost supremacy and importance of the democratic process and the people making decisions as to who represent them. We've got that. There is no suggestion whatsoever that we haven't had that in the past, but this is a measure that anticipates future risk and makes sure that we will never have that situation in the future—in this case, specific to Senate voting.

We do live in a world now where there are increasing threats of interference in our democracy, and I made some comments in a previous electoral bill debate around that and, in particular, foreign actors seeking to influence our democracy. In the previous bill, that was related to donations from foreign sources. Of course, in this case, it could be the potential for sabotage of or interference in the way in which the actual count process is conducted and occurs. What this bill puts in place is a legislated framework to have another layer of assurity and confidence for all of us that the way in which the actual count itself is occurring is robust. It requires the Australian Signals Directorate to engage with the AEC, advising them on ways in which they can get an audit process around the accounting systems they currently use or may use into the future to make sure that there's a robustness and an accuracy there, but also, clearly, to make sure there's not an ability for someone to seek to interfere with our democracy by hacking into the system or undertaking some kind of cyberattack on the system, or by doing something to either frustrate the process or engineer an outcome different to that which the people of this country have voted for.

In supporting this legislation, I think it's very worthy that we take this opportunity to put in place a legislated process to assure that that is what will need to happen into the future.

We have to anticipate that technology will continue to provide new opportunities for the AEC to consider to help make the electoral count as efficient as possible. We're going to have to constantly balance the opportunity for efficiency against the higher risk the efficient system might have of being abused or influenced. This is going to be the challenge. Obviously, the voting system we have at federal elections is not availing itself of the absolute best technology that we could choose to use, because we accept that there's very high risk in things like electronic voting and allowing people to participate in the process in a much more digital way. We still require, and no-one's proposing to change the need for, a very physical process in casting our ballots: paper and pencil in a ballot box, then counted by hand by officials from the AEC, with the option for all candidates to scrutinise the counting of ballots in a contest that they are a participant in.

If you brought someone from the first federal election that we held, in 1901, to the 2022 election, it wouldn't be that different for them to vote in 2022 to how it was back then. Whilst perhaps that's a good thing, there will be opportunities as technology develops to further consider whether we can make the experience for people more efficient, without introducing any risk around whether or not that system can be manipulated to achieve an outcome that wasn't what the people voting intended. I've got no doubt that the AEC will continue to look for ways to undertake a more efficient count.

I think we can be honest: the Senate count is enormously complex, particularly for the people it affects the most, those people who are candidates and are waiting for the outcome. We all know that Senate results can take many weeks, and sometimes it is a very uncertain outcome until the keyboard strike of 'enter' spits out who those six people are who have been elected from a state. I'm sure we would be happy to see anything the AEC could do to safely improve the process of counting and get us a more rapid result, as long as we all had confidence that that wasn't risking the outcome becoming distorted.

This bill is going to mean that into the future there's a framework in place for the AEC to assist with the count on the existing machinery that they use, but, just as importantly, it puts them in a position to have a framework for other technological advances they might seek to pursue and use in the interests of getting a more rapid outcome. This is a good thing, as I say, as long as it isn't at the expense of any risk of the assurity, confidence and integrity around people's vote meaning what they want it to mean; people getting the outcome that they vote for rather than the risk of anything different. I think this is very sensible.

I think that it's something the AEC are probably happy to have some clearer legislative direction on. When it comes to running elections, it's very important that we have as little ambiguity as possible. I think that being prescriptive is a virtue. I don't usually say that when it comes to government and legislation, but, when it comes to our elections, I think it's very important that it's very clear in the Electoral Act the way in which we want to have the processes undertaken by our very hardworking and impartial electoral commission. We do not want to have them in a situation where they're having to unnecessarily make decisions because there's something unclear in the act. I'm sure that in the case of this bill before the House it is something that is going to have broad support. As I say, it merely improves and enhances the integrity and assurances around the Senate voting processes. I can't see why any of us wouldn't be happy to see those sorts of measures become that little bit more robust within the act.

On that basis, I support these changes. I think that we should continue to look for other opportunities to strengthen the integrity around our voting system. As a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I am very encouraging of the AEC looking for, pursuing and bringing forward proposals to be considered within our democracy to improve its efficiency, but never at the expense of its integrity. I'm sure that's something that we would all consider to be a fundamental principle when it comes to the democracy of this nation. With those words, I commend the bill to the House.

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