Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Ronaldson for that very nice rap at the end. I do rise to take note of the government response tabled today. However, I note that the response is not entirely the response that I was expecting to see. As you would appreciate I have had only a few brief short minutes during Senator Ronaldson’s remarks to consider the response.

Today’s order of business stated the government was going to respond to the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the conduct of the 2007 federal election, and matters related thereto. It was reasonable, therefore, to assume the government was going to provide its response to this substantive report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2007 federal election. Instead, I find the response relates purely to the federal election electronic voting trials and is therefore a much more limited response than the one that had been anticipated to be forthcoming from the government today when reviewing that order of business.

In the response that is provided I acknowledge that the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters provided a unanimous report in relation to electronic voting trials. Electronic voting trials were conducted at the last election for people who suffer vision impairment, as well as for Defence Force personnel serving overseas. However, those trials were found to be inordinately expensive on a per-vote basis and, regrettably, were not deemed to be able to be continued in the future. The committee provided that recommendation and I note that the government supported those recommendations in its response.

In relation to this matter, I and other members of the committee have met with representatives of the vision-impaired community since the JSCEM report was handed down. We hear their plea for the government to continue to find ways and to work hard through the Australian Electoral Commission to find means by which vision-impaired Australians can achieve the right to privacy when casting their vote. It is vitally important that we use every means possible to achieve that within reasonable allocation of resources. The committee found, and the government has accepted, that at the last election the allocation of those resources were not reasonable and the government needs to go back to basics. I urge the Australian Electoral Commission to heed the concerns of the blind and vision-impaired community and come up with new ways to support and assist them in progressing to a means by which they can enjoy the same rights as all other Australians in providing a secret ballot, without the aid of others, at election time.

However, the fact that this is a very limited response by the government does mean that its response to the substantive report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters remains outstanding. The coalition awaits that report and that response with great interest. We expect the government will look closely at the minority report that the coalition senators provided to that inquiry. We hope the government will recognise that there are a number of very important issues—some of which Senator Ronaldson raised before—that the government should heed, issues that go to the integrity of the electoral roll and ensuring that that integrity is not undermined through partisan changes to the Australian Electoral Act. We need to ensure that we have reasonable proof of identity provisions that guarantee that it is not easier to get onto the electoral roll than it is to take out a video from the video store.

It is important to ensure that we do not undermine the responsibility side of the equation. Voting is a right. It is a passionate right. It is a right that all Australians should enjoy. But there is a responsibility of Australians to ensure their enrolment is up to date, that they undertake the enrolment that is required. The opposition will watch closely for when the full government response to this report is handed down. We hope the government will heed our warnings on a number of the recommendations that the majority of government members’ opinion made during the JSCEM report. We urge the government over the ensuing weeks or months, until they provide a response, to be very mindful of the concerns we raised, which have the potential to go very much to the absolute heart of our democracy and the effectiveness and trust we have in our electoral system.