Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will get on to who they vote for in a moment, Senator Abetz. But first let me say that, currently, 18- to 24-year-olds have the lowest enrolment rate of any age group eligible to vote. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, only about 60 per cent of 18-year-olds are enrolled to vote. But this changes after an election is called. Unsurprisingly, young people who are voting for the first time do not know all the rules and are focused on trying to get a job, trying to get into university, trying to find somewhere to live or whatever else it may be. It is hardly surprising that enrolling to vote is not at the top of their to-do list.

The provisions in this bill unfairly target young people and restrict their capacity to express their political choice. In the seven days before the close of rolls before the last election, 423,000 people enrolled for the first time or changed their details—79,000 of them were first-time voters, many of whom would have been young people. With the laws that we had at the last election, 150,000 people missed out on getting onto the electoral roll because the cut-off date had already passed. More people will be disadvantaged under this legislation.

The government claim that they need to do this because of the pressures on the Australian Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission does not agree. As others have said, the Electoral Commission said in their submission to the committee looking at this legislation that it would be a backward step to repeal the provision which guarantees electors seven days in which to correct their enrolment. There is no burden on the Election Commission according to them and, even if there was a burden, the way to relieve it is not to take away people’s right to vote; it is to ensure that the Electoral Commission have the resources to do their job properly. Instead of spending the money on tax cuts and slashing services at the same time, the government could put those resources into the Australian Electoral Commission if they need it. But here the commission are saying to us that they are doing all right. In fact, they are saying that it would be a backward step for the government to go ahead with this legislation.

The reality is that the government fear young people getting themselves onto the electoral roll because they know that young people do not agree with the policies of this government. Rather than removing the right of young people to vote, the government could consider doing something for young people. Continual increases to HECS debts for young people—we see people with $200,000 HECS debts as a result of their degrees—the illegal invasion of Iraq and the backing of the fossil fuel industry are things that young people care about for the future. These are the sorts of things the government could do if they genuinely wanted to get the vote of young people. Instead, they make changes to electoral laws to ensure that young people do not get the opportunity to vote, because they know that young people do not vote for the Liberal Party.

Young people are not the only people targeted by this bill. Many first-time voters enrolling to vote after an election has been called are new migrants—people who have just become citizens of Australia. According to the last census, 86,289 people became citizens of Australia in the year 2001-02. If this bill had been in force after an election had been called, many of them would have been prevented from enrolling and having their say in the democracy of their new country.

Another group of people disadvantaged by this legislation is homeless people. The requirement for a voter’s details to be tied to an address rather than an electorate has an impact on homeless people. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters said that 80,000 homeless people, who may have been eligible to vote in the 2001 election, did not do so because of registration requirements that were in place then. They have been further restricted since then and they will be restricted again under this legislation.

But perhaps the most appalling and draconian proposal in this legislation is to take away the right to vote from all prisoners. It is an ongoing campaign by the Liberal Party to remove the rights of one section of people within our community. When I first came to parliament, prisoners serving sentences of five years or more were prevented from voting in federal elections. The Greens opposed that law when it was brought in, because it prevented 11,000 citizens from voting in elections. Then there were changes two years ago to remove the right to vote from a further 7,000 citizens in our democracy, and this piece of legislation will take away the right to vote from another 10,000 citizens in our democracy.

The government do not believe that prisoners should have the right to vote. In 1998 they sought to do what they are doing today—that is, taking away the right to vote from all prisoners. I pay tribute to the campaign in 1998 run by Justice Action, for whom I worked before I came into this parliament. People like Brett Collins, Kilty O’Gorman and Stacey Scheff were all trying to ensure that prisoners, regardless of their crime, were treated as citizens and that they had their rights respected both in prison and under electoral laws. The Greens will continue to be proud to stand up to ensure that these citizens get the right to vote.

It is a fundamental right for all citizens. It is outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a signatory, which says that every citizen is entitled to vote. We know what Minister Abetz thinks about international agreements—that they should be ignored, like in the migration legislation that is being debated at the moment. But Australia sign onto those things because they think they are important, and yet we have before us a piece of legislation that completely dismisses commitments that we have made in the past to accept that all citizens get a vote.

The European Court of Human Rights found that provisions such as those contained in this bill impose:

... a blanket restriction on all convicted prisoners. It applies automatically to all such prisoners, irrespective of the length of their sentence and irrespective of the nature or gravity of their offence. As pointed out in the Canadian courts, the actual effect on an individual prisoner’s right to vote will depend, somewhat arbitrarily, on the period during which he happens to serve his sentence. A prisoner sentenced to a week’s imprisonment for a minor infraction may lose the right to vote if detained over election day whereas a prisoner serving several years for a more serious crime may, by chance, avoid missing an election.

That is a comment from seven judges in the European Court of Human Rights. The Canadian judgment to which they referred had the Chief Justice saying:

Denying penitentiary inmates the right to vote is more likely to send messages that undermine respect for the law and democracy than messages that enhance those values.

The whole basis of respect for the rule of law rests on the participation of citizens through the democratic selection of their representatives who then make the law that they are asked to abide by. How can prisoners be subjected to this feudal concept of ‘civil death’? How can they be expected to have respect for the law if they are banned from participating in its formation? How does this bill reconcile with the importance of rehabilitation that is at the heart of any enlightened prison system? It was recognised in the past by Justice Nagle, whose 1978 royal commission helped to transform the corrupt and repressive New South Wales prison system for the better. He said:

A citizen’s right to vote should depend only on his ability to make a rational choice. Loss of voting rights is an archaic leftover from the concepts of ‘attainder’ and `civiliter mortuus’ and has no place within a penal system whose reform policies aim to encourage the prisoner’s identification with, rather than his alienation from, the community at large. All prisoners should be entitled to vote at State and Federal elections. Necessary facilities should be provided for them to exercise their franchise.

The government disagree with this commonsense principle of democracy. They maintain a fantasy that by removing a prisoner’s right to vote they will somehow deter people from committing a crime. Surely losing the right to vote would not be the first thing in somebody’s mind that would stop them if they intended to commit a crime. What kind of a deterrent does the government believe that it is? With the length of sentences increased at every election, people’s freedoms removed and people being removed from their families, their friends and their jobs and locked up often for 20 hours or more a day in a cell, surely the right to vote is not at the front of the mind of a would-be law breaker.

The government’s argument on this is ridiculous and does not stand up at all. It is further evidence, I suggest, that the real purpose of this section of the bill, like many other parts of the bill, is more about removing the rights of a group of people less likely to vote for the government than attempting to deter crime. So where next? Will the government move to permanently disenfranchise those convicted of a crime, not just those in prison? Will they follow the direction in the United States where one-third of black men living in Florida were prevented from voting in the crucial poll that led to the appointment of George W Bush as President of the United States?

One group of people that we know will be targeted by this legislation is Indigenous Australians. Need I remind senators of the shameless statistic that Indigenous persons are 16 times more likely to be in prison than non-Indigenous Australians? It is a reflection of the racism that still pervades our criminal justice system and the history of ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples in this country. This bill is another attack on the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and should be seen in the same light as the scrapping of ATSIC. The scrapping of ATSIC, supported by the government and the opposition, took away the right of Indigenous people to vote for their own representatives for their national voice. Now the government is proposing to go further by stealing the right to vote in federal elections from large numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who make up a disproportionate percentage of our prison population in this country. It is a discriminatory and racist policy from this government.

But it does not end there. Not content with removing the right to vote from disadvantaged members of our community, the government also wishes to avoid accountability through raising the required disclosure limit on political donations. The Greens have campaigned strongly against corporate donations that contribute to the ‘cash for policy’ approach that we see from so many political parties. Greens campaigners have exposed the way that developers and big business have sought to buy influence by donating to political parties. In this bill the government seeks to hide such influence from public view by raising the disclosure threshold to $10,000—an enormous leap from the $1,500 threshold that currently exists and a shameless exercise in preventing the public from following the money trail.

Senator Mason, the only senator to come in and seek to defend this legislation, sought to justify this grab for cash from the Liberal Party by saying, ‘Other countries do it.’ It was like a little boy trying to justify stealing toys in the sandpit: ‘The other kids are doing it so we can do it.’ That is the justification we got from the government. I have heard the government in here before making all sorts of arguments about electoral rorts being carried out in other countries. I have heard Senator Mason, Senator Brandis and probably even Senator Abetz talking about the electoral rorts they have seen in countries like Iraq under Saddam Hussein. I do not question that those rorts occurred, but it is hardly a justification for invading a country. And using those kinds of examples—that other countries do it—to say it is all right to rort our electoral laws here is preposterous.

Simply because other countries rort their electoral laws is not a justification for this government to do so. But that is what we heard from the only government senator who was prepared to come in here and argue on this piece of legislation. Look at a country like Indonesia. In 1969 West Papua became a part of Indonesia in an election in which the Indonesian government got to choose who could vote. Australia should not be following that example, of choosing who gets to vote, but that is what this legislation is about here today. In the Canberra Times yesterday we saw it described this way:

There’s a paradigm shift here. Suddenly, to vote is not a right of the people from which government derives its legitimacy; it is a privilege to be conferred at Canberra’s discretion. That is the very opposite of democracy.

Here we have a government which likes to stake its legitimacy on the people who vote for it deciding who gets to vote for whether or not it can be elected. That is the opposite of a democracy—a government choosing who gets to vote to put it in place. That is exactly what this piece of legislation does.

The Greens support real electoral reform that gives power to individuals and to people to vote and does not take it away like this legislation does. That is why we support electoral reforms like bringing proportional representation into the House of Representatives, like giving 16-year-olds the option to vote and like putting in place fixed terms for federal elections so people get to know when the election is, rather than the Prime Minister just using it to his advantage. (Time expired)