Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Integrity of Elections) Bill 2021 amends the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to provide for the routine auditing of the electronic component of Australian federal elections and for the provision of voter identification.

This bill does not cover referendums.

The restrictions around COVID have people at boiling point. Small business closures, job losses, unaccountable bureaucrats and politics have reduced many people to desperation.

The next election will be a powder keg.

It is essential to ensure that, whatever the result, the public can accept it and move on. Suspicion of the outcome can be easily fuelled and turned into violence by those who seek to manipulate the result for their own ends.

It is essential that the level of trust in the result must be commensurate with the current heightened level of risk.

New South Wales and Western Australia have provisions in their electoral acts to audit state elections.

New South Wales conducts an audit before each 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 next time. Western Australia audits after every election.

There is no audit function currently specified in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. This bill creates a function for the Auditor-General to audit the operation of the AEC twice in each election cycle:

a) in the lead up to the election; and

b) from when polling opens to the declaration of the poll.

The audit provided for in this bill covers electronic measures, and tests whether the use of authorised technology 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 and preference allocations produced a result that accurately reflects the will of the people expressed in that election.

Secondly, this bill authorises the Australian Signals Directorate to audit and monitor computer systems for unauthorised access internally and externally. This is targeting both unauthorised access from within the system and unauthorised external access by malicious entities.

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.

It should also be noted that this bill does not look backward to previous elections, but rather forward to ensure confidence in the next and subsequent elections.

The Auditor-General, through the Australian National Audit Office, has conducted an audit of the 2016 Federal Election, which is the last known election audit for which details have been published. A copy of that audit is available online.

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 for that program. This bill brings legislation into line with current practice.

The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 does not have audit provisions.

In February, I started asking questions of the Australian Electoral Commission regarding their audit function. To be honest, I expected to hear that auditing was under control given the reputation the Australian Electoral Commission has.

That's not what I found.

In May Senate estimates I asked the Australian Electoral Commission simple questions regarding their auditing. On no occasion then or since have these questions been answered:

It is disturbing that such an audit could happen behind closed doors without direction or without structure. It is more disturbing still that this program has no legal basis in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.

We should not have to rely on the admirable conscientiousness of the Australian Signals Directorate. We should be able to rely on the completeness of our legislation. It must be fixed.

Then I looked at other issues around election integrity. First up was a simple question: is the electronic data file containing each vote ever compared back to the paper ballot after the vote has been adjudicated?

That answer is no. At no time is the electronic record of a vote checked back against the paper ballot once the ballot is adjudicated. Some disputed votes are held back and adjudicated later in the counting process, then filed away. There is no routine check beyond that point unless an issue arises around the electronic record.

Failing to conduct a routine check of the electronic record back to the paper ballot after that ballot is adjudicated is not an acceptable practice.

My second question was on the accuracy of the voter rolls. The Australian Electoral Commission used to check the accuracy of their rolls by conducting residency checks.

Before this system was discontinued in 1995, those checks revealed a significant number of false registrations: people who had left the country, people who had died and people who had moved. Most of the incidences of multiple voting stem from voting in their old location and their new location: double voting.

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Integrity of Elections) Bill 2021 tasks ANAO with conducting an audit of the electronic record, which includes the voter rolls.

Recommendation 21 of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2019 Federal Election called for voter identification to be introduced. This same finding was made in 2016 and 2013.

Schedule 2 of this bill is drafted to give effect to the committee recommendation as it relates to elections, but not referendums.

Recommendation 21 in part: "The Committee recommends that, as per its recommendation in the 2016 report, the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 be amended to require that:

The AEC noted in their submission to the JSCEM inquiry that: "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]."

The bill is drafted to add voter identification to the existing exchange that occurs with the voting officer at the time of voting, which asks if the person has voted already and so on. These provisions are re-stated in this bill for clarity.

The Commonwealth Electoral Act (Integrity of Elections Bill) 2021 is about protecting confidence in our elections.

The cyber integrity of the election and the use of voter identification is integral to that confidence.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.