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

I rise to speak to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011. I do so in the knowledge that in 2006 the then government introduced amendments to ensure that a loophole that was identified as existing in the rules surrounding provisional voting was closed. We realised that the integrity of the electoral roll was at risk because the system was vulnerable to potential abuse by people who enrolled in marginal electorates, despite not living in them, and voted to influence a close result. Accordingly, we introduced legislation, which was passed, which required anyone wishing to make a provisional vote to provide evidence of identity, either at the time of voting or within seven days of the voting day, to show that the vote would be valid.

There are four basic reasons why one would cast a provisional vote. The first is that you are found not to be on the roll, the second is that somebody has already voted in your name, the third is that the electoral officer does not like the look of you, and the fourth is that you are on the confidential or secret roll because you are a person who for personal security reasons does not wish to be on a published roll. On 21 February 2011 the Electoral Commission presented a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. That submission contains a section dealing with the integrity of the electoral roll. It says:

3.7.1 Maintaining the integrity of the electoral roll is a key component of the AEC’s work. The AEC defines roll integrity as consisting of the following elements:

• Entitlement – the person meets all legislative qualifications for enrolment on the electoral roll, information provided by the individual is tested to detect and prevent enrolment fraud;
• Accuracy – the person is enrolled for the address at which they are entitled;
• Completeness – all persons who are entitled to enrolment are enrolled;
• Processing Correctness – information provided by persons and organisations is entered correctly and completely on the roll, addresses are correctly and completely described, classified and aligned; and
• Security – the electoral roll is protected from unauthorised access and tampering.

3.7.2 As part of standard AEC processing procedures, all enrolment applications are checked to determine if they have been completed in accordance with legislative requirements and that information on the enrolment form is accurate.

The number of people casting provisional votes has steadily grown over the years. In 1993, 112,344 provisional votes were taken, and virtually 60 per cent of those were rejected. In 2004, the year before the 2006 amendments were made, 180,878 provisional votes were taken, of which 50 per cent were rejected. In 2007, after the amendments were made to further protect the integrity of the roll, 167,682 provisional votes were taken and 85.56 per cent were rejected. In 2010, 203,488 provisional votes were taken, of which 81.65 per cent were rejected.

The interesting things are as follows. In 2007, between 75 and 80 per cent of people who wanted to cast a provisional vote presented with evidence of identity. In 2010, this number rose, and 96 per cent of those people presented evidence of identity. In that year, of the 81 per cent of votes that were rejected, only 28,000 were rejected on the basis of evidence of identity not having been provided. The other reasons that votes are rejected are entirely different than not presenting evidence of identity.

The Special Minister of State in his second reading speech said that the reason he wanted to get rid of the evidence of identity requirement was that the 2006 amendments treated provisional votes as different from other classes of declaration votes. They include postal votes, prepoll votes and absent votes as well as provisional votes. That argument does not hold water because the government itself, in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Pre-poll voting and other Measures) Bill 2010, treated prepoll declaration votes differently by saying that they no longer had to be placed in an envelope with a signature and be subject to preliminary scrutiny—they would be put straight into the count. So already the government has said that there is no need to have all classes of declaration votes treated in exactly the same manner. It was sensible to say that prepoll votes should be counted on the night and therefore not be subjected to preliminary scrutiny, as this class of vote previously was. We sometimes did not see that result for an inordinately long time, so this was sensible—just as our 2006 amendments to require people who wanted to make provisional votes to present with evidence of identity were sensible. The efficacy of these provisions resulted in the situation where, in 2010, 96 per cent of people who wanted to cast a provisional vote presented with evidence of identity—80 per cent on election day itself and a further 16 per cent in the allowable time after the casting of that vote.

The argument put forward by the Special Minister of State indeed does not hold water. It is more likely that there is a perceived advantage for the Labor Party if the integrity of the roll is not protected in the way we think it should be. I cite an article written by the member for Melbourne Ports where he asserts that all 166,000 votes that were rejected in the 2010 poll were rejected because they did not have evidence of identity and really all those people would have had a chance to vote Labor, which would have won four more seats. It is not an argument which can be supported.

On this side of the House we are very concerned that the integrity of the roll is always protected. We are concerned to see that amendments or changes that are made to voting procedures are done to enhance the integrity of the roll. I am concerned, for instance, with the proposition that has been put forward that for future federal elections we might go the way of, say, the New South Wales Labor government, which have changed the enrolment provisions to encompass automatic enrolment whereby people’s details will merely be taken from other agencies such as the Road Transport Authority, school rolls or whatever they decide can be dealt with.

Those people in New South Wales being put on the roll for the election next Saturday will simply have been written to twice to say that they have now been put on the roll and if they have not written back and said ‘No, you can’t put me on the roll’ they are automatically on. How then can you check the validity of someone and their address against their signature when there is no signature because they have been put on automatically? The problem with going to the provisional voting situation is that we have the requirement, if a vote is in question, under these new provisions going back to the old system that the electoral office checks the most up-to-date signature, which is most likely the application for enrolment. There does seem to be support for the government wanting to go this route. Should that happen and these amendments are cast then there will simply be no application for enrolment, which the electoral commission holds and against which any signature on the declaration vote can be compared. Again, it opens up the difficulty that is encompassed in trying to protect the integrity of the roll.

The submissions being put to the JSCEM are starting to come in. I know that there are submissions saying that the original dissenting report of the opposition to the JSCEM report of 2007 should be upheld. In that report it was said that:

According to the Electoral Commission, approximately 75 per cent of provisional voters showed evidence of identity when voting. Of the 33,900 provisional voters who failed to provide such identification on polling day, only one in five subsequently provided proof of identity by the cut-off date—that is, the close of business on the following Friday.

That was the 2007 report and, as I mentioned in my earlier remarks, in 2010 there was a 96 per cent compliance with providing evidence of identity. The rejection of the large number of provisional votes was for reasons other than failing to present evidence of identity. The case being made by the member for Melbourne Ports that this was somehow a rort imposed by the Liberal Party when we had control of the Senate simply is not borne out. In fact, it was introduced with the very best of motives—that is, to protect the integrity of the roll. It remains the position of the opposition that we wish to see the integrity of the roll protected in the very best possible way, and the best way in which that can be done is to maintain a system of having evidence of identity required to be presented by those seeking to make a provisional vote.

Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very glad to participate in this debate on theElectoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 because essentially it is a question of the value we place on universal franchise in this country. It is about the value that we place on participation in our democracy of all individuals who are eligible to do so. It is ultimately about confidence in our electoral system. It is about ensuring that we do not seek to make it harder for any individual to participate in our democratic processes, to participate in our elections, and that we do not make it prohibitive or something which ultimately results in individuals being disenfranchised.

As we have heard, a person can be asked to cast a provisional vote in circumstances where their name cannot be located readily on the roll, if the roll shows that the person has already voted, if polling officials have doubts about the identity of the voter, or if the voter is registered as a silent elector and their address does not appear on the roll. The Electoral Act and the referendum act, as they currently stand, require that a person who casts a provisional vote provide evidence of his or her identity by the first Friday following polling day. Under those acts, as they stand, a failure to provide that evidence of identity by that time will mean that the vote of that person does not proceed to preliminary scrutiny and is not counted. This is a curious requirement which was put in place by the Howard government in 2006. It meant that provisional votes would be and have been dealt with in a way which is inconsistent with the way in which other types of declaration votes are handled.

Voters who would otherwise be eligible to have an absentee vote, a postal vote or a prepoll vote are treated differently if they instead cast a provisional vote. If a voter who is otherwise eligible to vote does not provide evidence of their identity by the prescribed deadline, his or her vote will not be counted. This bill is about ensuring the franchise of voters and their confidence in the system of administration of voting in Australia. It will remove the requirement imposed by the Howard government for provisional voters to provide evidence of identity before their votes are admitted to preliminary scrutiny. If there is doubt about the entitlement of the voter to vote, the signature of that person on the provisional voting envelope will be compared to the signature of the elector on previously lodged enrolment records.

There might be a number of reasons why an elector does not provide evidence of identity by the deadline. There might be certain reasons which relate to their availability following an election date or a referendum date. A further possible explanation may be that an elector might ultimately not be determined to provide evidence of their identity after polling day if the result of an election is perceived by then to be known, so it does not necessarily indicate an attempt by electors to fraudulently vote. That is the first point of distinction between the position of the government and the position put by the member for Mackellar earlier. We are concerned with ensuring franchise and doing our best to ensure universality of franchise, while those opposite are largely concerned with procedural technicalities and their perception of some sort of irregularity with voting processes.

The AEC has indicated that some 200,000 provisional votes were cast at the 2010 general election. Of these, over 28,000 provisional votes were rejected because the voter did not provide evidence of identity by the first Friday following polling day. Further examination by the AEC of those provisional voting envelopes found over 12,000 instances where the name of the voter was ultimately found on the certified list. That is rather an alarming figure in the context of those voters who obviously did not get to cast their vote at first instance. We also know that the acceptance rate of provisional voting went from around 50 per cent in the 2004 election to around 14 per cent in the 2007 election. I take a different view from the member for Mackellar on these figures. I consider this to be particularly concerning in the context of disenfranchisement.

One wonders why the coalition has maintained its opposition to the amendments proposed by this bill. The amendments give consistency to the treatment of provisional, absentee, postal and prepoll means of voting. They are aimed at better ensuring that all eligible Australian voters are able to cast a vote and participate fully in our democracy. So why then is this, which is apparently fairly reasonable, opposed by the coalition? Let us look at the likely identity of many provisional voters. Many of these people will be younger Australians moving house between elections—and we know how attractive the coalition has shown itself to be to young people at the ballot box. The people who the Howard government requirement was most likely to disenfranchise were people who rent or move residence regularly, people who do not have a driver’s licence and, in particular, young people. So one wonders whether it was in fact the intention of the Howard government in its amendments in 2006 to make it more difficult for those categories of person to cast a vote.

Our changes mean that it will not be more difficult to cast a provisional vote than any other type of declaration vote. The Howard government’s tinkering with the Electoral Act in 2006 meant that more people casting provisional votes were disenfranchised than ever before, and we have to question who the people were who were more likely to be disenfranchised. The amendments proposed to this bill address the particularly urgent matter of otherwise valid votes being excluded from further scrutiny. The bill will implement the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report into the conduct of the 2007 federal election, and we know that this measure was also one of this government’s 2007 election commitments. We also know that the amendments proposed in this bill were supported by the AEC, which, in its submission to the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2010 federal election and related matters, recommended that the requirement for production of evidence of identity by provisional voters should be repealed. In the context of that support, and bearing in mind the categories of people who are most likely to be and who have been detrimentally affected by the existing regime, I certainly commend the bill to the House and am pleased to be able to lend my voice to support on this significant issue.

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

My interest in democracy and democratic practices in Australia long predated my role as a parliamentarian, which I have had since 1998. Unfortunately I am not involved with the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters anymore, but no-one has argued longer, harder and in more detail on this issue than I have about these malevolent changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act made by the previous Liberal government in 2006. The 2006 legislation was brought in by the then Liberal government with the worst possible intentions, as the previous speaker, the member for La Trobe, suggested. At the time, the purported reasons for the change were that the legislation was designed to improve the integrity of the electoral roll. However, the actual reason for the 2006 changes was exactly the opposite. Simply put, the real intent of the 2006 changes that this legislation will partially invalidate was that they were expected to assist the Liberal Party in the 2007 and subsequent elections.

The particular change that this legislation will repeal is the onerous requirement whereby one group of declaration voters—those casting a provisional vote—must provide some form of identification for their vote to count, usually photo identification. Provisional votes are sought when a voter arrives at a polling booth on election day and gives their name to the official but finds that they are not on the roll. The AEC provisionally issues a vote, the voter fills it out and it is put in an envelope with their name and address on it. Under Liberal government changes brought in in 2006, the voter must provide valid ID, like a drivers licence, on the spot or present to an AEC office with a valid ID within a week. Later in the week the Australian Electoral Commission checks the voter’s details and agrees that they should, indeed, be on the roll. Their ballot paper is then counted if their vote is considered valid under this existing system.

Previously, what was the system under which the Liberal Party won the 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004 elections? It was the quite logical system of matching signatures. If an Australian voter turned up at a polling booth and signed the outside of his envelope to say that he was that person, then the highly responsible officials of the Electoral Commission took this back to the AEC, matched it with the voter’s existing signature and they were then included on the roll. The ethos of the Australian Electoral Commission and Australian democracy ought to be to include as many valid votes as possible—not to find excuses to exclude them because they belong to inconvenient categories of people who might vote for a different political party.

Of course, this whole issue of provisional voting and the so-called integrity of the roll is completely the wrong issue. The real issue for Australian democracy ought to be the fact that there are 2.5 million Australians who did not cast a vote at the last election. That is the scandal of the electoral system at the moment, not the fact that the so-called integrity of the roll is invalid in any way. At the 2007 election 27,544 citizens voted provisionally but had their votes rejected because of the new requirements. Similarly, at the extremely closely fought election of 2010, 28,011 citizens voted but were later disqualified because of the Liberal changes. Further, the AEC has noted that the admission rate for Senate provisional votes fell from 62.23 per cent in 2004 to 25 per cent in 2007, concluding that if the 2004 admission rate had prevailed in 2007 an additional 62,000 Australians would have been counted in the Senate voting. Sixty-two thousand of our fellow citizens were excluded from voting by these bodgie changes, which we promised to get rid of at both elections. I am very proud to be associated with this legislation, to re-enfranchise my fellow Australians.

Why do people not present photo ID when they vote, you might ask. Mostly, because they do not have a drivers licence. ‘Okay,’ you might ask, ‘but provisional voters still have the opportunity to provide the AEC with their ID within a week after the election. Why don’t they do that?’ Just think of how people think—ordinary Australian citizens who are not as involved in politics as we are in this House, on both sides. The election result is already decided. Who would take time off from work, go and find an AEC office and fill out a form to cast a vote that no-one would pay any attention to? People are busy working, and how many know where their Australian Electoral Commission office is? I bet you the Deputy Speaker’s Electoral Commission office is miles and miles from many of his voters. My inner city electorate is forced to share an office with the electorate of Melbourne, and it takes you an hour to drive around Casselden Place to find an existing parking space. This is another attempt to make things difficult for people that should be made easier. In some regional electorates the AEC and the post office are many hours away, as I said. Not only do they have to prove their identity with a drivers licence or other prescribed document, there are other requirements for ID, including proving the validity of their signatures. Basically, it is a lot of paperwork that people are not willing to bother with after an election.

These Liberal changes to the provisional voting method resulted in many voters being disqualified who were admitted in the past. You might say that votes being disqualified would reflect the wider voting pattern across the nation, so that in the big scheme of things the disqualification of 30,000 votes or so really would not affect the overall result. This is not so. The types of people who make provisional votes fit into a particular demographic type, very capably outlined by the member for La Trobe in her speech. Of course, this is why the legislation was introduced, against all of the advice from the Australian Electoral Commission and the psephological experts, including Professor Colin Hughes and Malcolm Mackerras—a person who the Liberal Party often quotes as a great electoral expert. All of these people testified and argued against this; it was quite clear that this was being done for political purposes. The average number of provisional votes in the 10 most Indigenous seats in this country is 1.76 per cent of the total vote, and the national average is 1.23; in other words, it is half a per cent higher in areas with large Indigenous populations.

Without a licence, provisional voters need to provide a passport or a birth certificate in order to vote. No-one expects to have to present their birth certificate when they vote. For most Australians there is no need to prove ID at a polling booth at all. It will not surprise anyone with passing knowledge of Australian politics if I point out that the particular demographics described vote largely for Labor, Greens or left-of-centre parties. I argue that this is the reason that the previous government made these terrible changes to provisional voting.

In my view, if the number of provisional votes in the 2004 election were compared to the number in the 2007 election, enough Labor voters were disenfranchised to allow the coalition to win at least four seats—Bowman, Dickson, McEwen and Swan—that otherwise would have been won by the previous Labor government in 2007. It did not affect the election result, fortunately, because Labor won by a sufficiently large margin for those four seats not to be germane to the result. But that was not the plan of the people who put this nefarious legislation into practice.

Professor Brian Costar of Swinburne University of Technology, one of Australia’s most respected political scientists, told the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters:

I think a case can be made that it changed the result … We know that provisional voters, because of their choice, are not a mirror image of the electorate as a whole. They tend to be more Labor and Green than they are Liberal, National, or anything else.

I expect that the rejection of the 28,000 voters in the 2010 election may have affected the results in a number of electorates as well. In light of the result of the 2010 election, every Australian now knows that the fate of one electorate can decide the fate of a government. So, if the 2007 result of changing the result because of these provisional voting changes had been effected at the 2010 election, these malevolent, nefarious, bodgie changes which are now being invalidated by this legislation would have won the Liberal National Party office on these antidemocratic manoeuvrings.

Australia, despite being a young country, is in fact an old and strong democracy, especially when we look at it in a global context. Even before Federation Australia was known for its progressive electoral policies, including, as the member for Mackellar knows, giving women the right to vote before many other countries—in fact, leading the world in that—and introducing the secret ballot, which for many years was known throughout the world as the Australian ballot because it was not done in other countries. However, the Liberals’ 2006 changes to the provisional voting procedures are an example of regressive rather than progressive electoral policy. This bill will restore the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to its pre-2006 statutes with the law, custom and practice established over almost a century. I would have thought that was the conservative practice with which the member for Mackellar would identify instead of regressive changes designed to affect the result at two elections. The voter’s signature provided on the declaration envelope in which the provisional votes are contained would be compared with the signature of the elector which exists in its original or subsequent enrolment forms which were held by the AEC. It was good enough for the Liberal Party in 1996. It was good enough for the Liberal Party in 1998. It was good enough for the Liberal Party in 2001. It was good enough—

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

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop interjecting

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

Are you arguing, Member for Mackellar, that all of those elections were somehow fraudulent? Are you saying that they were not won on a proper basis? We, of course, conceded the fact that they were won by your side of politics. And the system of comparing signatures, which we had had for nearly a century, was the system at the time. Come on. We know why these changes were made in 2006. It is blindingly obvious to everyone now.

Perhaps the most powerful endorsement of this legislation comes from the key institution responsible for safeguarding the integrity of our elections: the Australian Electoral Commission. In its submissions to the inquiries of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2007 and 2010 federal elections, the AEC—the neutral body responsible for our electoral legislation—commented that the requirement of evidence of identity for provisional voters should be repealed. A knife-edge federal election and the strong support of Australia’s key election body—I cannot think of any better reasons for repealing this unjust and politically motivated legislation brought in by the Liberals in 2006.

There are many things that this government is doing in the areas of early closure of the rolls in this area of provisional voting. They are completely the wrong issues. They are the issues that were focused on by the conservatives in order to divert from the fact that in a compulsory voting system we have 2.5 million Australians who for a variety of reasons did not participate in the last Australian election. This is a pattern that has been obvious for a long period of time. The Australian Electoral Commission, working neutrally, will do as much as it can if it is given the powers by this parliament to enrol as many people as possible. Surely this is the ethos that should inform all democrats in this parliament. As many Australians should be empowered to vote as possible, and getting people off the roll is exactly the wrong attitude. Disenfranchising Australians is the wrong attitude, and this is what we are addressing with this legislation. I am very proud to be associated with this bill.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When you go into a bank to transact, you produce an identification document. When you check in for a flight, you produce an identification document. In so many other situations in modern life, you are asked—and you do so without complaint—to produce an identification document. When you go into a bar or a club, at least until you reach the advanced age which characterises most of us in this place, you are frequently asked for an identification document and you produce it. When you go into a video store, you are often required to produce an identification document. None of these requirements are considered to be unduly onerous. None of these are considered to be unreasonable. None of these are considered to be some kind of outrageous imposition on the civil liberties on the persons from whom those identification documents are requested. Instead they are understood to be part of the normal, sensible, efficient operation of a modern society. Yet for some reason the Labor Party is remarkably squeamish about the requirement that, in certain circumstances, if you wish to cast a provisional vote you are required, under the law as it presently stands until such time as the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Provisional Voting) Bill 2011 is passed, to produce documents to verify your identity.

I wish to make three brief points. We must take every necessary step to protect the integrity of our voting system in this country. That is the first point I wish to make. The second point is that the costs of requiring identification from those seeking to cast a provisional vote are modest. The benefits of the system are significant. Third, it is with some regret that I must also add that there are good reasons to doubt Labor’s motives for proposing the changes inherent in the bill before the parliament this evening.

Let me turn first to the proposition that we must take all reasonable steps to protect the integrity of our electoral system. All of us in this place are united by our pride—

Debate interrupted.