Amendments to the Electoral Act

Extract from Hansard

Legislative Council
11 April 2001

Mike Elliott
Leader Australian Democrats
Member of the Legislative Council

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The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I rise to support the second reading of this bill and in so doing express some surprise that the government did not consult a little more on this matter before bringing it before parliament.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I do not know what they have done with the Labor Party. It seems to me that, when one is in a functioning democracy and you want to get a piece of legislation through fairly quickly, one would seek to ensure that all groups likely to have an interest would-

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I have to say that I do not think the changes here are actually creating problems; I have just said I will support the second reading. I have not identified any particular issues in relation to the existing clauses, but I will be listening carefully to the contributions of other members. All I am saying is that I am a little surprised that, in an area like electoral reform, particularly where the government is keen to move it along, there was not a little more consultation than there has been. I note that in the past the Democrats have introduced legislation on electoral reform, but I would also note that we never expected it to move particularly fast. It suffered the fate of most pieces of private members' legislation, spending an inordinate amount of time in the parliament and then lapsing at the end of the session.

I will address a few of the matters that are covered, in no particular order. The government has looked at the issue of declaration votes, and this is something that I would have liked to take a closer look at, along with the role of intermediaries. During an election period it is a common practice of both Liberal and Labor Parties to offer to assist people in their voting and, when people respond to this offer, it goes through their party office and they handle all the processes. I do not have any evidence that this has been abused so far, but it provides an opportunity for abuse if one chose to do so. I know for a fact that certain MPs have databases of their entire electorate, down to the extent of indicating that this person votes Liberal, this person votes Labor and this person is a member of certain parties.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: Yes. If political parties are maintaining those sorts of programs, down to the extent of knowing reasonably well who is voting for whom and they are acting as intermediaries and processing things, if they so choose they are in a position to move things along a little faster or a little slower.

I am surprised that something which is capable of being abused in this way should be allowed at all. There is no problem with political parties encouraging people to seek a postal ballot and perhaps even providing the appropriate forms, but actually working as a go-between (backwards and forwards) is capable of significant manipulation if an individual or a party chooses to do so. There is no evidence that this has happened at this stage, but what is the justification for allowing people to act as intermediaries as distinct from facilitators who tell people, `You are able to do this; here are the forms'?

So, at the end of the second reading debate I will ask the Attorney-General to address this question of why we should allow people to act as intermediaries at all, because it could be abused. The very fact that it could be abused means that it is only a matter of time before that will happen, and we will then try to shut the gate after the horse has bolted.

Regarding the voting forms, as I understand it, the government essentially is doing what has already been done under regulation not long ago: that is, seeking to ensure that the voting cards, particularly for the Legislative Council, do not become the sort of tablecloths that have been created in New South Wales, in particular. There is no question that, with the demise of the Liberal and Labor Parties, a rash of small parties and independents is emerging. We will see large numbers wanting to contest the next state election, and the ballot paper will be enormous.

One of the challenges for many people will be trying to work out who the dodgie candidates are. They have always been there at every election, but I suspect that there will be a lot more in this election. From what I have seen, I think the media is a wake-up to it. The last election was the first time that I had seen the media pay any real interest in it at all, but I suspect there will be a lot more interest this time. Just as an aside: because of the very large number of candidates that we will see, I think there will be a very large number of bodgie candidates amongst them that will be put up by other parties' candidates simply to try to harvest votes.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: It would not be very hard to name the candidates, either.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I would have to concur with that. The government also wants to increase from 150 to 300 the number of people necessary to be members before a party can be registered. I think that is reasonable, but I do not think it will make much difference to the number of parties that will run. You would only have to do a dollar membership and even the dodgiest of parties would be able to get 300 members; that would be remarkably easy. In fact, someone could write a cheque for $300 and get 300 one dollar memberships. So, at the end of the day it should not make a lot of difference. It is worth noting that people cannot be a member of more than one party. That will make it a little more difficult for one of the major parties to establish another party insofar as they cannot use their membership-

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: The point I make is that, under this legislation, you cannot count a member twice. However, I guess that even the Labor Party would have enough members over 300 to find a further 300 to form a second party. As I said, you can be a member of more than one party, but you need 300 signatories from one party to ensure that you can be registered. I suspect that, at the end of the day, this requirement will not do much more than be a confounded nuisance in terms of more forms to fill in for the existing parties. Anyone who is trying to launch a new party will not have to try very hard to reach 300. I suspect that it will not make a huge amount of difference.

In relation to how-to-vote cards, the government has picked up that some fairly dodgy practices are happening in terms of parties that put out a how-to-vote card telling voters how they might vote for one party but their second preferences then go to the party which puts out the how-to-vote card. Many people who pick it up think it comes from the party of the person receiving the No.1 vote. I do not think that what is being done here will make a significant difference.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: There have been cases where the brother and nephew of a candidate for one party was handing out how-to-vote cards for an Independent who happened to be providing all the preferences to the brother and uncle, with the candidate saying that she did not even know she had how-to-vote cards.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I do not think it would be too hard for this person the next time around to make sure that somewhere on his piece of paper he says that he actually issued it, but nothing in this amendment talks about the size of print or making it quite clear. You could put out virtually the same form, with a few extra words on it buried at the bottom where nobody sees it, and it would do exactly what previous how-to-vote cards have done. That did not happen in the seat I was talking about, but all sorts of strange practices happen. I do not think this amendment addresses the problem that it seeks to address.

There are two solutions: one can simply ban how-to-vote cards and put them in the booths only, and the only cards will be the official party how-to-vote cards and not all sorts of other bodgie things that are going on out there. The other option is to ban them altogether and ensure that the voters have thought about it before they go into the booth.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: How-to-vote cards are not used in some places. I understand that they are not used in Tasmania, where they have multi-member electorates also using what they call Robson rotation, which makes a how-to-vote card almost impossible because all the ballot papers are different. The Tasmanians manage to cope with that. South Australians, generally speaking, might match the intelligence of Tasmanians and would cope with not having how-to-vote cards. People in the past may have said, `Well, the Democrats don't like it because they might be struggling to cover booths.' Over the past couple of elections I have been at booths where we have outstaffed the Liberal and Labor Parties.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: Sometimes with existing members of both parties-they are so cheesed off. The time for how-to-vote cards to go is with us. They are open to all sorts of abuses, including the sort of abuse that the government claims to be attacking here and not making much difference in relation to it. They will have to put a few extra words on the same sheet of paper and not change the style or layout of it one iota.

In summary, having gone through this I am not opposing the second reading because it is really not changing anything in any substantive sense. It is a case where the legislation appears to do something but has made no substantial change at all. Theoretically it has addressed some serious issues, but it has done so in such a way that it will not change the status quo, and I am disappointed with that. Although I have not yet tabled amendments, I will be tabling a number of amendments to seek some real substantive change to the Electoral Act.