Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report on the 2007 federal election and matters related thereto includes 53 recommendations, many of which are designed to restore and protect the franchise to those entitled to exercise it ,and to modernise electoral processes.

That 45 of the 53 recommendations were unanimous reflects the committee’s focus on finding ways that our democracy can work better and the cooperative way that the committee went about conducting the inquiry. Key recommendations on modernising the electoral system include: counting more of the votes cast before polling day on polling night, and facilitating electronic transactions between electors and the Australian Electoral Commission to modernise the way that the commission interacts with electors.

The committee has made a number of recommendations that reinstate several longstanding provisions that protect the franchise, such as restoring the seven-day enrolment period from the issue of the writs to the close of rolls for the election. Opposition members have opposed the recommendations on the basis that they weaken the integrity of the electoral roll and reward complacency. However, a careful analysis of the integrity argument put forward by opposition members reveals that it is without substance, with the Australian Electoral Commission telling the committee that in relation to false identities there has never been any evidence of widespread or organised enrolment fraud in Australia. Detailed examination by the Australian Electoral Commission reveals that relatively few cases of multiple voting are found to be deliberate attempts to vote on multiple occasions and are referred to the AFP. Only 64 cases of apparent multiple voting were referred to the Australian Federal Police arising from the 2004 election, and only 10 cases were referred following the 2007 election. These figures do not warrant disenfranchising potentially hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible electors.

In relation to prisoners, the committee has recommended that the Commonwealth Electoral Act be amended to reflect the High Court’s Roach decision that all persons serving a sentence of full-time imprisonment are ineligible to vote, reinstating the previous three-year disqualification that applied prior to 2006. The opposition members of the committee have suggested that the disqualification should be set at prisoners serving custodial sentences of one year or more, arguing that this would align the voting disqualification with the disqualification from being a member of parliament. However, a majority of the committee considers that the three-year threshold strikes a better balance.

A large number of submissions were received from Australian citizens living overseas who considered that they should be extended the franchise on the basis of their Australian citizenship alone. While such a franchise does exist in a number of countries such as Italy and New Zealand, the committee considers that citizenship should not be the sole qualification for the franchise. A 21-day rule regarding living at an address underpins representation in the 150-member House of Representatives, the basis for deciding which party or parties will form the government of the day. The committee has therefore endorsed the current arrangements relating to registration and updating enrolment, as they provide an appropriate and valid form of measuring a continued interest in Australian political affairs.

My personal remarks in the report relating to discontinuing the grandfathering arrangements that extend the franchise to up to 163,000 British subjects who may not be Australian citizens attracted significant comment in the media and to my electoral office. Most of the feedback was supportive of my proposal. Those who opposed discontinuing the grandfathering arrangements pointed to the broader notion of the franchise in some Western democracies, including that British subjects who were not citizens may be able to vote in UK national elections and that noncitizens enjoy the franchise in a number of countries, such as permanent residents in New Zealand.

I also received some comments from British subjects who were former veterans, having fought with distinction protecting Australia and our way of life. They were unhappy that, having made significant contributions and sacrifices for our country, they would be excluded from voting should they not take out Australian citizenship. While I understand that some of these views are strongly held, I consider that Australian citizenship should be one of the key elements underpinning the franchise in Australia. With the constitutional links now broken as a result of the Australia Act, High Court judgements that British subjects are ineligible to stand for parliament and the availability of dual citizenship, I do not believe that it is too much to ask that those deciding the future of our country should be Australian citizens.

I also believe that there should be an education program and that we should allow another 4½ years for this to take place so that it does not happen overnight. That will allow those people 30 years to take out Australian citizenship without losing their British citizenship. I think that is a fair compromise, because I think the alternative that someone who is not an Australian citizen can make the difference in an electorate and a difference as to who forms government is a far worse proposition for this country.

With the national rate of enrolment of eligible young people at the 2007 election at 85 per cent, some seven percentage points below the overall eligible population, it is clear that specific efforts need to be made to encourage young people to enrol to vote. A key recommendation of the committee in this area is to facilitate electronic interactions by electors with the AEC, thereby allowing young electors who are more likely to use such a medium to update their enrolment in a timely manner.

Another recommendation, aimed at increasing youth participation, is lowering the age for provisional enrolment, from 17 years to 16 years. With some states having a school-leaving age of 17 and many students completing their studies before this age, it makes sense to allow young people to enrol at this age, when they may also be undertaking civics eduction. This approach has also been adopted in the United Kingdom where 16-year-olds can register to vote, despite not being able to vote until they are aged 18. I understand and am appreciative that the committee was unanimous on this point.

A complementary recommendation, to reduce the age of provisional enrolment to 16 years, is for the establishment of a schools bounty scheme that would pay schools a small amount for every completed enrolment form returned by the school. The opposition members of the committee have dissented from this recommendation, arguing that no incentive should be required as it is a legal requirement to enrol once you turn aged 18. Further, the opposition members considered that the introduction of a financial inducement to encourage enrolment, however far removed from the individual, represents a corruption of our democratic process.

Compulsory enrolment does impose an obligation on individuals, but it also imposes an obligation on the government to facilitate access to our democracy. Should a schools bounty system be adopted, schools can utilise the nominal funding received to enhance civics education activities, such as student councils and participation in youth parliaments and other youth oriented representative bodies. Clearly, such a program would not corrupt our democratic process. Instead, it would provide a genuine opportunity for schools to encourage greater participation in civics education and engagement in the democratic process.

In the 2007 election, around 90,000 electors made errors when numbering their House of Representatives ballot paper, resulting in their vote being ruled informal and being excluded from the count. Research by the Australian Electoral Commission, following the 2007 election, found that differences in informality rates across electoral divisions reflected possible confusion on the part of voters, due to differences between federal and state and territory voting systems; a large number of candidates, making it more difficult to number all candidates correctly; and linguistic and cultural barriers experienced by some electors from non-English speaking backgrounds.

It is of concern to me that divisions in south-west Sydney continue to record the highest levels of informality. In the divisions of Blaxland and Watson, for example, almost one in 10 votes were ruled informal. In my electorate of Banks, 6.36 per cent of votes cast were ruled informal. This compares to an average informality rate in New South Wales of 4.9 per cent and a national average of 3.9 per cent.

While supporting the retention of full preferential voting for House of Representatives elections, the committee has proposed that a savings provision that was included in the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which was used in all elections between 1984 and 1996, be re-instated. This would provide a safety net for electors who make a mistake in completing the numbering on a House of Representatives ballot paper by including ballot papers where there are non-consecutive numbering errors, up to the point at which the numbering errors began. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, up to 90,000 additional votes could have been included in the election count had such a savings provision for House of Representatives votes existed at the 2007 election.

It is noteworthy that a similar savings provision continues to apply for electors who make mistakes when completing a Senate ballot paper below the line. Under section 270(1) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, ballot papers on which at least 90 per cent of the preferences are expressed but some preferences are marked non-consecutively are admitted to the count. However, the preferences on the ballot paper will only be allocated and counted up until the consecutive number sequence is interrupted. So the provision is already there, but for the House of Representatives the provision was taken out. This is not in our report because at the time it was not drawn to my attention. But I am drawing it to the attention of the House now to show how it is absolute hypocrisy for the opposition to continue to oppose the reinstatement of the savings provision for the House of Representatives because it is currently there in similar form in the Senate under section 270(1) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act.

Opposition members have argued that to support full preferential voting and a savings provision seeks to have one’s cake and eat it too, and they suggest that the adoption of optional preferential voting at the federal level should be continued. Whilst optional preferential voting is likely to see a decline in informality, a change to optional preferential voting would fundamentally change the nature of representation in the House of Representatives. It could lead to first-past-the-post and raise the prospect that candidates are elected without majority or popular support.

The committee does not see that the savings provision and full preferential voting are incompatible. The continued operation of the Senate savings provision for below-the-line votes with sequential numbering errors indicates a general acceptance of the need to include protection for voters who make genuine mistakes in numbering their ballot papers.

While the committee has also recommended reinstating penalty provisions to deter the advocacy of Langer-style voting, opposition members have claimed that it is naive to pretend that some of the issues associated with advocating Langer-style voting will not return. There may be implementation issues associated with reintroducing the savings provision. However, in the committee’s view, these concerns should not be a deterrent to giving up to 90,000 more electors who try to cast a valid vote the opportunity for their vote to be counted at an election.

I want to draw the attention of members of the House, the Senate and the public to table C.10 in our report—the table goes from page 385 to page 389. The table has a breakdown, electorate by electorate, on how some of these provisions impact, or could impact, in relation to voting for those House of Representatives seats. What we see is that changes to the provisional voting system from 2004 to 2007—this is on page 389—meant that 53,629 fewer voters were included in the count. Non-sequential numbering in 2004, which I just talked about, meant that 91,354 people had their votes knocked out. These are not small numbers. And in relation to British electors there are 162, 928 as of 30 September, 2008. I think the provision is that eight electorates have 2,500 and more; 62 electorates have 1,000 or more. That is the best table in the whole report. It shows the interaction and the impact of the particular provisions I have told you about.

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the majority report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. I say at the outset how much I enjoyed the experience of working with this committee, particularly the good relationship that there is between members. I mention in particular the chair Daryl Melham, and the deputy chair Scott Morrison. I want to thank the secretariat: the secretary Steven Boyd and inquiry secretary Kai Swoboda, technical adviser Terry Rushton, research officer Margaret Atkin and administration officers Renee van der Hoek and Natasha Petrovic—and I apologise to any of those whose surnames I might have mispronounced inadvertently. Their work is reflected in the excellence of this report that we are discussing today. I also thank all the people who made submissions or gave evidence to the committee, in particular the AEC who gave a great deal of their time to help our consideration of the 2007 election.

As the previous speaker, the chairman of the committee, mentioned, there has been dissent by members of the coalition on eight of the report’s 53 recommendations. They have objected to recommendations 1, 2 and 3, which are to do with ‘enabling the franchise’—in other words, enabling people to vote. The majority view is that people should not be impeded in exercising their obligation to vote. Our system should be about every person eligible to vote being encouraged, not discouraged, and being enabled to exercise, not prevented from exercising, that obligation.

Recommendation 1 relates to the time the rolls close after the calling of the election. The existing legislation allows for writs to be issued on the day the election is announced, meaning that the rolls could close to new enrolments that night. That is not what happened in the 2007 election. The Prime Minister chose to wait a few days so that people had a better chance to enrol than they might otherwise have had. The former government gave themselves the opportunity to close the rolls on the day the election was announced but did not have the courage to use that opportunity. I suspect that they knew, as we all knew—and there was plenty of publicity about it at the time—that to do so was morally wrong.

I quote from the dissenting report relating to this provision. The coalition members say:

… these changes … greatly assisted the AEC in identifying and discounting fraudulent enrolments.

I have no recollection of the AEC giving us that evidence and I note that the minority report does not cite any evidence. They go on to say that the provision ‘permits calculated fraudulent enrolments to take place’. Again, there is no citation. Whilst I am no calculated fraud, I would suspect that anybody who was calculating a fraudulent exercise against the integrity of our roll would not leave it until the last minute to do so, so I suspect that that is not valid. In their submission they say:

… the number of people missing the close of rolls deadline in 2007 was 100,370 compared to 168,394 in 2004.

This is as if to present the early closure of the rolls as a good thing. One hundred thousand people is more than a full electorate quota. More than one full electorate of people did not get the opportunity to vote because they missed the close of rolls. Too many people have been excluded by the large number of existing rules. Existing rules have to be changed to allow people to be included. Those of us who are elected members, those who work for us and those who work for our parties live and breathe politics and electoral requirements 24/7. The majority of the citizens in this country do not. In fact, it is unfortunate but people in this country feel voting to be something of an imposition. It is easy for us to understand, or it should be easy for us to understand, why enrolment lapses occur.

Recommendation 2 goes to the provision of identification by provisional voters. According to the coalition members of the committee, proof of identity is:

… an important deterrent that acts to prevent citizens from failing to maintain their enrolment or who may seek to engage in multiple voting.

Pardon? I really do beg their pardon on this one. Firstly, there is no evidence—historical or since the introduction of the POI requirements before the 2007 election—that there has ever been any systematic fraudulent multiple voting. There is no evidence—quite the contrary. I refer anybody who is listening to or reading this debate to pages 16 to 22 of the report, which are titled ‘Multiple voting myth’. It is beyond me why the coalition continues to flog this dead horse.

Secondly, as for a deterrent to prevent failure to maintain enrolment details, give me a break. People are not obsessed with the processes as we are. In fact, knowing that all you have to do to get a vote is turn up on the day with your drivers licence, fill out a provisional form and send it away is going to do quite the opposite. People will even allow their voting to lapse. If we tell them that that is what they have to do, that is what they will do.

The authors of the dissenting report then go on to acknowledge that some voters are removed by Electoral Commission administrative error and suggest a ludicrous remedy. They suggest that if, subsequent to casting a provisional vote, the AEC determines that the person’s absence from the roll is its error, that vote should be allowed to go forward and the voter not have to turn up on a later date with his proof of identity. The question here is: how is the voter going to know that the AEC has determined that it is its error that he or she was not on the roll and decide that they do not have to turn up with their proof of identity?

Just under 34,000 people were unable to provide their proof of identity on polling day. About 7,000 subsequently provided that information, as they were requested to do, within the week. Twenty-seven thousand votes cast were not counted. Again, far too many people who ought to have been able to lodge a valid vote were not counted. The safety net of the automatic inclusion of provisional votes in certain circumstances—and the chairman of the committee covered this quite well just moments ago—is rejected by the minority report. There are some 90,000 votes elsewhere, maybe, but, through this, 75,000 are perhaps those that count. One hundred and seventy-five thousand votes—100,000 too late to enrol and 75,000 provisionals not counted—are far too many Australian citizens denied the right to vote.

The dissenting report concentrated largely on those provisions that make it easier for people to exercise their obligation to vote. Notably, it did not oppose recommendations 5 and 6, which make it easier for votes cast by post by people in remote parts of Australia to be included—in other words, a lessening of the provisions in that regard, which means that rural and remote Australians can have a relaxation for their votes.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Double standards.

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Double standards indeed. Nor did the dissenting report oppose recommendation 4, which eases the requirements for provision of proof of identity when you are re-enrolling if removed from the roll. It seems odd that it is okay for the AEC to reinstate enrolment by checking the details they already hold but it is not okay for them to include a vote in the count by checking the details they already hold. That is rather strange.

The tone of this part of the dissenting report is simply this: it is more important to be fastidious about enrolment than it is to have your vote count. I would say quite the opposite: the most important thing about voting is that the vote should count. A person who turns up on the day to cast a vote ought to be able to have that vote count.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Hawke interjecting

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You needed to sit through the committee evidence to understand that what you have just said is a load of craptrap.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Claptrap.

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that is it. Did I say something different? I might have meant something quite different!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope you were saying that; otherwise, we might have to discount it as unparliamentary!

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. The committee chairman covered the youth enrolment procedure, where we have recommended that the schools and universities be paid a bounty, if you like, a sum of money, to ensure that young people are enrolled. That simply shifts the costs. The AEC can continue the processes that they run now—large advertising processes, material into the schools and visits to the schools—to encourage youth enrolments. That is probably going to cost more and be less effective than inviting the institutions to ensure that eligible students are enrolled.

The bottom line here is this: we have compulsory enrolment with the object of compulsory voting in this country. If we are going to compel citizens in this regard then the corollary is that the government is compelled to ensure that citizens can perform that compulsory act without undue difficulty.

There are a couple of other issues that have been raised, but I want to go to this ludicrous suggestion that we should consider the introduction of optional preferential voting. I have had some experience of this. I was elected to the Queensland parliament under compulsory preferential voting and unelected from the Queensland parliament under the process of optional preferential voting. But it is my view that optional preferential voting is the worst of all possible voting systems, with the possible exception of plurality, which we know as ‘first past the post’. What we know today as compulsory or full preferential voting was invented in Australia, and internationally it is known as the ‘Australian ballot.’ The purpose of the Australian ballot was to ensure that a person elected enjoyed the preferential support of greater than 50 per cent of electors. On the one voting occasion it duplicates the run-off system in vogue in many parts of the world. As an elected member of this parliament I take great comfort from the fact that I have the demonstrated support of more than 50 per cent of the voters of Longman, that more people preferred me rather than my opponent as their representative.

By contrast, an examination of the 2001 Queensland state election, won by a landslide by Premier Beattie, shows that 16 or 17 of the government MPs did not have that demonstrated support. After the distribution of preferences that had been allocated by voters, the total votes for those MPs was fewer than 50 per cent of the formal votes cast in their electorates. In effect, by exhausting their votes, voters are saying to the successful candidate that more than half of them prefer the other main candidate or that nobody represents them. This is a distortion. Optional preferential voting distorts the proposition that we should be electing parliamentarians and governments that enjoy majority support of electors. It certainly does not distort it to the degree that plurality or first past the post does. But evidence in my home state shows that, in each election since the introduction of optional preferential voting, an increasing number of voters are opting to ‘plump’ or to simply indicate a first preference, and in that regard optional preferential voting is slowly morphing, inevitably, into first-past-the-post voting. I do not see any large clamouring for first-past-the-post voting.

In the few remaining moments allocated to me, I wish to say something about the use of technology in relation to our electoral system. I do not want to sound like I am an iconoclast, but I think it is time—sometime this century, preferably sooner—that we start to make greater use of online provisions in people’s dealings with the AEC. I undertake some online banking with one of Australia’s major banks and I am happy that my money is secure via that process because of the account number, password, secret questions and SMS provisions. I think these provisions are an excellent way of looking towards introducing online transactions, at least in a small way initially and later on to a full online voting system.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Report on the conduct of the 2007 federal election and matters related thereto is important. I want to begin by expressing my admiration for my colleague the honourable member for Banks and his judicious chairing of this committee. This excellent, extensive and, some people would say, exhaustive report on electoral matters which we are now considering is a reflection of his and the government’s leadership on this particular issue. I want to thank all other members of the committee, including the member for Longman, who just spoke, and of course the committee secretariat for their expertise and dedication in facilitating our work in so many different ways.

Australia’s electoral system is virtuous, particularly when compared with systems operating in many other countries, including our great democratic ally, the United States. The US has a system of redistricting, organised by the congress, which would never be tolerated in Australia, but it leads to all kinds of distortions, even in their great democratic system. I believe we have one of the fairest, most transparent and most efficient electoral systems.

The member for Longman pointed out the vacuous, non-empirical nature of the minority response to this report, and I do not want to dignify it by examining its non-evidence based prejudices. Instead, I focus on the combination in Australia of bicameralism, compulsory voting, preferential voting for the House of Representatives and proportional representation in the Senate, a system which is unique in the world. It combines the best of British Westminster heritage with the best of American federal representation, with added features of our own. Compulsory voting encourages civic participation and means that all Australians share the responsibility for choosing their government. The member for Longman pointed out the pitfalls of adopting optional preferential voting. Single member seats in the House of Representatives ensure that we usually have stable majority governments. Preferential voting gives all voters the ability to influence the results of their electorate. Proportional representation in the Senate gives minority parties a voice without undermining stable government. All Australians should take pride in our electoral system.

This great report will reverse the damage that the previous government did to the integrity, openness and fairness of our electoral system with its unnecessary, partisan, short-sighted and foolish changes to the Electoral Act before the last federal election—changes to the Electoral Act that had never been made before any other election because they were not needed. The system was fair and the changes at the last federal election were a political manoeuvre designed to try and give them a little extra edge when they thought they were going to lose it. The changes were based on an assertion which was completely and demonstrably false that there was significant false enrolment or other electoral fraud which made it necessary to bring in measures to make it more difficult for Australians to enrol to vote. Everyone knew this was a false assertion. I knew it, the Australian Electoral Commission knew it, respected election analysts such as Professors Brian Costa and Malcolm Mackerras knew it, and I am pretty sure the former government knew it. It was a cynical falsehood put out by the former government to provide a fig leaf of justification for their self-interested manipulation of the electoral system for their partisan advantage.

Let me go through again, like a parrot, the history of so called Australian electoral fraud. In the period 1990 to 2001, there were six electoral events, including a referendum, with 12 million votes cast at each of them. Altogether, 72 million votes were cast during this period. In that period the Australian Electoral Commission showed that there were 72 proven cases of electoral fraud—one case per million votes cast. That was the basis on which 100,000 Australians were disenfranchised at the last election by these terrible changes to the Electoral Act—a completely bodgie manoeuvre.

The report we are debating today confirms and documents the falsity of that claim and documents the harmful effects of the changes that the Howard government made. The report quotes the AEC’s submission:

It can be clearly stated in relation to false identities that there has never been any evidence of widespread or organised electoral fraud in Australia.

The report shows that the Howard government changes had the effect of disenfranchising tens of thousands of Australian citizens at the 2007 election, which is exactly what I predicted and other members of the then opposition said would happen when these changes were debated in the House. More than 27,000 provisional voters were rejected because they did not comply with the new tightened requirements. The number of formal provisional votes fell from 112,000 in 2004 to 42,000 in 2007. This decrease was entirely due to the changes made by the previous government. On the basis of past experience, we believe at least 50,000 people would have been enrolled in the traditional seven-day period of grace after the calling of an election, but they were prevented from doing so. Many more were disenfranchised by being taken off the rolls by the AEC when they changed address and then were deterred from re-enrolling by the more onerous enrolment procedures.

In 2004, 77,000 people were added to the rolls after the close of the rolls, because they had been incorrectly removed. In 2007 only 1,400 were able to do so. My estimate is that 100,000 Australians were thus prevented from enrolling or voting by the changes made by the previous government, about 700 per federal electorate. I believe the majority, possibly quite a large majority, of those disenfranchised people came from social groups more likely to vote Labor: first-time voters, new citizens, Indigenous Australians, people with poor or low literacy skills, itinerant workers and homeless people. That was, of course, the belief of the former government which led them to the lengths of disenfranchising their fellow Australians.

It might be thought that 700 votes per federal electorate, each constituency with between 90,000 and 100,000 voters, is not a significant proportion. Need we be reminded, however, that in 2007 the honourable member for McEwen was elected by a margin of 12 votes, the honourable member for Bowman by 64 votes, the honourable member for Swan by 164 votes and the honourable member for Dickson by 217 votes. I believe that all four of these members won their seats only because of the deliberate disenfranchisement of likely Labor voters by the former government. As it turned out that was not enough to save the previous government from defeat but if the election had been closer it might have been—and that was the very plan. I might say that I find it completely incomprehensible that newspapers like the Courier Mail focus on the undemocratic role of donations and lobbying in Queensland but they are not willing to look at the bodgie results produced by the electoral changes at the last federal election in their state, particularly in two seats in their state.

The former government liked to talk about electoral fraud. As this report documents, it was a bogus claim. But if there was ever a clear case of electoral fraud in Australia, if there was ever a case of Australian voters been defrauded of their right to vote, cynically and deliberately, it was the changes made to the electoral laws by the previous government. The report recommends that the changes made to the Electoral Act by the previous government should be reversed. That is the policy we took to the last election and that is the policy to which we remain committed. The former Special Minister for State, Senator Faulkner, set in train a process of consultation leading up to the green paper setting out a timetable for legislation. The current minister, Senator Ludwig, is continuing with that process. We have seen the first stage of the government’s response to the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2009, which is currently, again, before the Senate. Now, again, we have this brouhaha in Queensland about lobbyists and donations et cetera, but it is the Liberal Party, the coalition in the Senate, that has already blocked changes that would make donations to political parties more open and transparent, and we hear nothing from the Courier Mail. I ask the editorial staff of the Courier Mail, will you please read the debates in parliament about the donations bill? Would you please pay attention to what is actually happening in this area?

The government remains committed to reversing the Howard government’s unfair and unnecessary changes to the Electoral Act, which closed the rolls immediately after the issuing of the writs and, as I repeatedly pointed out, which particularly affects younger people—deliberately so—and which required photo ID for people wishing to enrol, change their enrolment details or cast a provisional vote. The thing that I find the most outrageous and egregious about these changes is that the previous government was elected at all elections between 1996 and 2001 on the previous system. They did not claim that it was undemocratic then. The coalition were quite properly elected. Yet they invalidated the very system under which they were elected three times to try and benefit themselves at the 2007 election. All of those provisional voters who were allowed to vote in 1996, 1998 and 2001 were disenfranchised in 2007. It really is an anti-democratic outrage. The evidence set out in this report reinforces the argument that I and many others made for the repeal of those changes. I welcome the government’s continuing commitment to do this and I look forward to that commitment being translated into legislation as soon as possible.

I am going to take up my full amount of time by re-emphasising some of the other figures on the so-called ‘integrity of the roll’ issue. Let me go through some of the figures that were revealed to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters by the Electoral Commissioner. There were 17,000 apparent multiple votes at the 2001 election, for instance; 15,000 of those, or 88 per cent, were an indication from responses that no further action was required. These were tracked down, and they did not need to be pursued. There were 920 people whom the AEC got no responses from. Letters were undelivered or people were not able to be found.

So, at the 2001 election the AEC narrowed this down to a further 896 examples of what was thought to be multiple voting. People like the member for Sturt have railed about the integrity of the electoral roll at previous elections. Of those 896 multiple voters, 739, or 82 per cent, were elderly people who completely innocently, as a matter of confusion or because of poor comprehension, voted twice—at a mobile polling booth and then on the day. We know the kind of circumstances where this can happen without any kind of electoral fraud or malevolence by these elderly voters. This accounted for 82 per cent of the cases of multiple voting at the 2001 election, and it was roughly the same proportion at the 2004 and 2007 elections. There were only 138 cases referred to the AFP, of which five were accepted for investigation.

So out of 13.6 million Australian voters we have only five proven cases of electoral fraud, which the DPP decided, at the 2001 election. We have 1.2 million Australians unenrolled. That is a much more serious issue. At the last election 90-plus per cent of Australians voted, but the proportion is dropping over the years. As members of parliament all know, the AEC is almost trained to take people off the electoral roll. But we need to have a more modern process where we use all kinds of devices, such as the internet, particularly with young people, so they are able to send their re-enrolment details back in. People do not fill out handwritten snail mail these days and send it back to the extent that old-timers like the people sitting in this room do. We have to make some kind of provision for the changing nature of communications. A very good way would be to follow the lead of Mr Killesteyn—the new, savvy Electoral Commissioner—and try some of these electronic means of increasing enrolment.

In a compulsory voting system, we have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that the franchise is as wide as possible—not to restrict it, not to exclude voters because of possible perceptions of how they might vote at a federal election, and certainly not to do it in this blatantly bodgie kind of way where we used the system at three elections and then changed it at the last election. I am very, very pleased with this excellent, extensive, exhaustive report that the member for Banks has led the charge on. I think one of the great effects of this new government being elected will be to widen the democratic franchise to increase democratic prospects in Australia, I am very proud to add my name to support it and its recommendations.

Debate (on motion by Mr Hawke) adjourned.