Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on the matter of elections and electoral reform. Following the 2013 federal election the government requested the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report on Senate voting methodologies. Specifically, the report was presented in May 2014 and followed a very substantial process of deliberation both by committee members and within my own party. Some of the public discussion and debate around this issue seems to have forgotten the fact that within my own party very substantial internal debate and discussion took place before we settled unanimously on the recommendations of the joint standing committee that were presented to the government and the parliament in May 2014.

Specifically, the bill currently before the Senate, which my party will continue to vote against, reflects very substantially the recommendations of that report. Indeed, I said publicly several weeks ago that it appeared that the government would legislate consistent with about 70 per cent of those recommendations. I discovered when I saw the legislation that I reckon the figure would be close to 85 per cent of the recommendations. Following amendments that have happened following the recent report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I guess that we now have about 95 per cent compliance with the original recommendations currently embodied in the existing bill that is in the Senate, which I hope will pass very soon. That will then go to the House of Representatives for further amendments and those amendments will be substantial improvements again to bring that bill up to about 95 per cent compliance with the original Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters recommendations. These recommendations are important not just because the report in 2014 was unanimous and attended to serious flaws and behaviours that had grown around Senate elections. It attended to pop-up parties, voter deception and trickery. The important part of the recommendations was to deliver to voters control over their vote, which has, in recent years, been usurped by manipulators.

I am very proud of the democratic heritage of our country. I proudly comment to schoolkids and to colleagues in this place that our country was founded on the sanctity of the ballot. The ballot is the thing. The ballot created our Federation. A fair and free ballot is one of the things that defines the nature of Australian democracy and the nature of the contest that we openly, freely and vigorously engage in every three years, so to have a balloting process that is fair and transparent and a voting process that reflects the will of voters is critically important.

The bill that the House of Representatives will deal with will reflect an amended bill that was pretty darned good, and the amendments that will be put in the House of Representatives will improve that bill even further. I regret I will not vote for that bill. I will not vote for that bill because my party will not vote for that bill. I think that is sad—I have lamented on that matter before—because there is a central importance placed on the integrity of the ballot. The ballot did found our nation—colonies of free people who freely determined to vote to form a Commonwealth. It is an act that inspired not just great patriotism but also great poetry. It is an act that continues to inspire our nation.

I encourage our parliament to vote for the amendments to the Senate voting legislation, to vote in favour of making our Senate voting system more democratic, to vote in favour of giving Australians—all of them—a free and fair vote and to ensure that how we mark our Senate ballot paper is reflected in how that Senate ballot paper is counted. This I believe to be important, and I believe this is reflected not just in the current bill but in the amendment that will be considered by the House in coming days.