Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I present the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Integrity of Elections) Bill 2021, which amends the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. This bill provides for the routine auditing of the electronic component of Australian federal elections and for the provision of voter identification. It should be noted that this bill does not look backward to previous elections but, rather, forward to ensure confidence in the next election and future elections thereafter.

During COVID the actions of unelected bureaucrats and incompetent politicians have wiped out small businesses and jobs, disrupted lives and reduced many people to desperation. The next election will be a powder keg. It's essential, for that reason, to ensure that Australians can accept the result and move on. Suspicion of the outcome can be easily fuelled, especially on social media, and turned into violence by those who seek to manipulate the result for their own ends. The level of the trust in the result must be commensurate with the current heightened level of risk.

When I started researching election integrity, it was to show our elections are secure. That's not what I found. The Australian National Audit Office, the ANAO, conducted three audits of the 2013 federal election. Their report came out in 2016. This is what ANAO said about the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC:

… the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (the Committee) wrote to the Auditor-General in February 2014 seeking a performance audit focusing on the adequacy of the Australian Electoral Commission's (AEC) implementation of recommendations arising from earlier Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) audit reports.

The Auditor-General decided to conduct three related performance audits. All three reports found that the Australian Electoral Commission had not adequately and effectively implemented the earlier Australian National Audit Office recommendations. The reports concluded that, in order to protect the integrity of Australia's electoral system and rebuild confidence in the Australian Electoral Commission, these recommendations should be implemented.

The report went on to say:

The ANAO plans to undertake a follow-up audit following the next federal election—

in 2016—

to examine the adequacy and effectiveness of the AEC's implementation of the ten recommendations made across the three ANAO follow-up audit reports.

Those recommendations included that the Australian Electoral Commission must:

Let me say that again: 'a fundamental overhaul' to ensure election integrity.

The follow-up audit to test how well the Australian Electoral Commission implemented this fundamental review into election integrity never occurred. Perhaps someone should do a bill to bring on that audit. Hang on, I did! Were the Australian National Audit Office happy about this direction? Apparently they were not. In their submission to this bill, the Australian National Audit Office said my bill was not necessary, as they had the power to audit the Australian Electoral Commission at any time. If that's the case, then they should just get on with it.

New South Wales and Western Australia have provisions in their electoral acts to audit state elections. New South Wales conducts an audit before its election to ensure systems are fit for purpose and then audits again after each election to ensure integrity and to see what can be improved for the next time. Western Australia audits after every election. There is no audit function currently specified in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918—none.

My bill creates a function for the Auditor-General to audit the operation of the Australian Electoral Commission twice in each election cycle—first, in the lead-up to the election, and then, immediately after the election, from polling day to the declaration of the poll.

The audit provided for in this bill covers electronic measures and tests the following:

… whether the use of authorised technology

(a) produces the same result as would be obtained without the use of authorised technology.

Put simply, this is asking the Auditor-General to ensure that the use of computerised voter rolls, tallying, preference allocations and related matters produces a result that accurately reflects the will of the people, including the tallying of preferences electronically. The Australian National Audit Office felt that that was too high a bar to meet. Can you believe that? I consider ensuring that the will of the people is accurately reflected in the result is a bare minimum for any election audit. This bill does not specify what will be audited. The decision regarding the operation of the audit is best left to the agencies conducting the audit.

Secondly, this bill authorises the Australian Signals Directorate to audit and monitor computer systems for unauthorised access internally and externally. This would target both unauthorised access from within the system and unauthorised external access by malicious entities. The Australian Signals Directorate is currently conducting a cyber-uplift program at the Australian Electoral Commission. While the program is most welcome, there is no basis in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 or the Intelligence Services Act 2001 for that program.

My bill brings legislation into line with current practice. In May Senate estimates I asked the Australian Electoral Commission simple questions regarding their auditing. I was assured that audits are occurring. On no occasion then or since have the following fundamental questions been answered: Who conducted the audit? When was the audit conducted? What was audited? What was the result? Have any changes been made as a result of the audit?

It's disturbing that such an audit could happen behind closed doors, without direction or structure. It's more disturbing that this program has no legal basis in the Commonwealth Electoral Act. We should not have to rely on the admirable conscientiousness of the Australian Signals Directorate, who I applaud. We should be able to rely on the completeness of our legislation.

I looked at other issues around election integrity. First up was a simple question: at the Senate scanning centre, is the electronic data file containing each vote ever compared back to the paper ballot after the vote has been adjudicated? It was a simple question. The answer was 'no, never'. At no time is the electronic record of a vote checked back against the paper ballot once the ballot is electronically adjudicated. Some disputed votes are held back and adjudicated later in the accounting process, then filed away. There's no routine sampling beyond that point. That's not acceptable.

The third part of my bill relates to voter ID. Most of the recommendations in the Australian National Audit Office report that were never followed up went to failures in the integrity of voter rolls. It's too late to go back now and audit those rolls before the next election by way of recommencing residency checks, as the Australian National Audit Office recommended. It's not too late for a quick fix, which is voter ID. Asking for simple identification will act as an audit on the rolls in real time and ensure that every vote cast is legitimate. This is not my idea. Recommendation 21 of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2019 federal election called for voter identification to be introduced. The House of Representatives and the Senate called for the identification to be introduced. This same finding was made in 2016 and 2013—three times. Schedule 2 of my bill is drafted to give effect to the committee recommendations as literally as possible. Voters must present a form of acceptable identification to be issued with an ordinary prepoll or election day vote. Authorised identification must be suitably broad so as to not actively prevent electors from casting an ordinary ballot.

This bill allows a wide range of acceptable voter ID. The Australian Electoral Commission is empowered in this bill to make further regulations to ensure voters are not disenfranchised. We want fair elections. The Australian Electoral Commission noted in their submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry:

… multiple voting is frequently the subject of media commentary and social media speculation. Such a degree of focus is entirely understandable: there can hardly be a more emblematic component of trust in electoral results than ensuring eligible voters only exercise the franchise [appropriately].

Multiple voting is a red herring in this debate. My bill is not concerned with multiple voting; it is concerned with ensuring every vote cast was made according to the law. The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Integrity of Elections) Bill 2021 is about protecting confidence in our elections. The cyberintegrity of our election and the use of voter identification is essential to that confidence. I want to thank the finance and public administration committee for their inquiry and the secretariat for its work in compiling the submissions. We have learnt quite a few good points from that and we'll be amending this legislation.