Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I will be brief. I welcome this report. I think it highlights a number of inadequacies in our current electoral laws. I do wish to comment briefly on recommendation 3:

The committee recommends that the Australian Electoral Commission should, at the next federal election, record all polling booth offences that are reported, the actions that were taken and provide an appraisal of the adequacy of the powers under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to deal with polling place offences.

I would have thought that the appropriate way to deal with this is to look at what we know with a view to amending the Electoral Act in order to ensure that those offences do not occur in the first place or, if they do occur, there are stronger provisions in place by way of both penalty and enforcement so that the AEC can do its job to deal with these rorts. Maybe I misunderstood the wording of the recommendation, but I would have thought that, if there is evidence of quite unacceptable behaviour in the past that compromises the integrity of our electoral process, we ought to be drafting those laws now rather than looking at amending them after the next election—I think that is pretty axiomatic.

I agree with the comments made by Senator Bob Brown: we do need truth-in-advertising legislation. There is real scope for stronger laws in relation to that. If corporations in this country engaging in trade or commerce made the sorts of representations that have been made in the course of election advertising, they would be in trouble—they would be in breach of the Trade Practices Act and could find themselves facing prosecution under the Fair Trading Act. There is real scope for some further reforms with, I hope, bipartisan support so that there is greater rigour in scrutinising the claims made in election advertising in this country.