Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I briefly commenced my contribution last week—and I will not detain the Senate for an extensive period of time today—and I had been touching upon what I believe to be a giant position of inconsistency being adopted by members of the government in relation to a number of aspects of this bill, particularly the way new enrollees are treated. I am reminded that on many occasions government members in this chamber have told us that this is a government which is friendly to the family, that this is a government which respects the bonds of family in the community and that this is a government which believes that those bonds should be encouraged. Yet, at the same time, this legislation contains provisions in relation to new enrollees which require, in some circumstances, that their applications for enrolment or variations to their enrolment be witnessed by any other person than someone who is related to them. Many young people who do not have a drivers licence will find themselves in a situation where they will need to enrol in the shortened time that the government now prescribes without recourse to people who have known them for all their lives or for a substantial period of their lives. Who would better know the identity of new enrollees than their relatives? Who would better know the person and that the details on the application were indeed factual than the relatives of the person seeking to be enrolled?

If an elector does not have a drivers licence or a prescribed identity document, they must have their enrolment application signed by two referees who are not related to the applicant and who have known the applicant for at least a month, and those people must provide their drivers licence number. There can only be one reason for that being prescribed—and no reason has been advanced by the government, I might say, as to why this provision is to be included as a result of this legislation—in regard to those seeking to enrol or to change their enrolment. The reason is that it is designed to make things more difficult. It cannot be because that gives greater certainty about the identity of the person seeking to be enrolled. How can it? How could it be that the relatives of a person would not be the best persons to attest to the accuracy of the application the elector is providing to the Electoral Commission in which they are seeking to enrol and exercise their democratic rights, perhaps for the first time, or to change their enrolment?

In relation to the issue of changing their enrolment, who indeed would be more likely to be seeking to alter their enrolment than a young person who may be in rental accommodation and moving from place to place, as is the wont of students, particularly those who are students at university for the first time and who may have to move away from home and may not have a strong network of friends and acquaintances to assist them to enrol? Who would be better placed to assist with such an application—for a young person seeking to enrol or alter their enrolment details due to a change of their place of residence—even remotely, than a relative? I cannot think of any person who would be better placed. Yet this piece of legislation seeks to, and will, rule out those people from attesting to the identity of the person registering for the electoral roll to be able to exercise their democratic right to vote for members of this parliament.

In addition, when one considers this in the context of remote Aboriginal communities, given that some of those communities are very small and that a number of them contain, substantially, people who have a familial relationship—perhaps extended, but a relationship nevertheless—I have no doubt that some young people without a drivers licence will find it extremely difficult to find a person who satisfies the test—that is, a person who is not a relative, who holds a drivers licence and who can be reached easily for the purposes of testing that the young person is who they claim to be on their application. In remote communities, how do you find someone who is not a relative, who has known the young person for at least a month and who has a drivers licence? In some cases I suspect that will be an impossibility. So the provisions of this bill, far from enhancing democracy, will actually deny young Australians in remote communities the opportunity to exercise a vote, let alone make it easier. As well, the three-day limit will place great time pressures on those young people to enrol to vote for the first time if an election is called and they have not sought to enrol earlier.

One has to say that the motivation for this must be to deny some people the opportunity to exercise their democratic rights, rights that I think all Australians believe are fundamental rights of members of our community. Some people, it might be said, take those rights quite lightly, but I do not think that this parliament should take any action which could be seen as a justification for members of the community taking lightly their rights and obligations in relation to exercising their democratic rights. Too many sacrifices have been made by Australians over the years for our democratic rights to be weakened in this way, for the rights of Australians to be subjugated to the political will of this government—to deny people the right to vote where it is thought that they might not vote for the government.

It also ought be said that a class of people who might find themselves in difficulty as a result of these provisions are those who rent their accommodation rather than live in a home they have purchased. I do not know of anything that justifies treating renters as lesser people in terms of their democratic rights, but that is what this bill will do. You see, if people rent their homes then they are more likely to change their place of residence more frequently. In changing their place of residence more frequently, they are more likely to move from one electorate to another. Then, upon the calling of an election, they will find themselves in the position of having to prove their identity when they turn up at the polling booth to exercise their democratic rights.

Another provision in this bill is clearly designed to make it more difficult for people to exercise a provisional vote, and we all know that there are quite a number of provisional votes made in every federal election. It has been said, and I think it is a valid suggestion, that the provisions of this legislation will actually impose a greater workload on the AEC in administering provisional voters’ rights. Now, I have never heard the AEC complain about the workload that they face in administering the current system of provisional voting—not once, and I have had some dealings with the Electoral Commission in relation to elections held in the state of Tasmania. I have not heard them complain once. I think that the Australian Electoral Commission take great pride in the fact that they administer what has been, at least up until now, one of the most democratic and well-respected electoral systems in the world.

It has been said in this debate, and I echo the statement, that Australian electoral officials are sought out for elections in all parts of the world, particularly the Third World, I might say, to assist in the conduct of those elections. And, in those areas where democracy has more recently been introduced, their assistance has proved to be invaluable. The AEC have never complained about the provisions that the government is changing. They have never highlighted that the system could be strengthened by reducing the time allowed for enrolment after the calling of elections, nor have they sought to change the identification provisions in the way that this bill suggests. Their views are clearly being swept aside by this government in its pursuit of political advantage via these changes.

Indeed, the coalition-dominated Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, following the 2004 election, did not suggest there were weaknesses in our system in relation to the enrolment period and the identification of those seeking to enrol—changes to which the government now seeks to give effect through this bill. The government’s own members, in reviewing the last election, did not find it to be a problem. I always thought the government’s view on matters of law was ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The only way that this election system is ‘broke’ insofar as the government is concerned is that it may not necessarily deliver to the government the advantage that it would like it to deliver.

So let us see these changes in the light in which they should be seen. These changes are purely party partisan. They are designed not to enhance the democratic rights of Australians, they are designed not to give effect to the general principles of democracy that people of a certain age ought to have access to the right to vote; they are designed to limit the opportunity for people to exercise their democratic right in this country. When members opposite talk about their respect for the family and then say in legislation that a relative cannot verify that their relative is the person that they claim to be for the purpose of enrolling for an election, that smacks to me of an absolute double standard and reveals in its entirety the motivation for this change—that is, political advantage.

I will not detain the Senate any further on this matter. There have been some excellent contributions in this debate, and I think the opposition has clearly won the argument. The fact that coalition members have chosen not to stand up in this place and debate the principles that lie behind this bill indicates that they do not want to be on the record justifying this sort of sham legislation which will undermine our democracy, not strengthen it. Frankly, I can understand why they would not want to put their words on the record supporting this legislation, because it is shameful.