Page 962 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 April 1994
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New section 57 is to be amended to remove the possibility that any person could obtain personal electoral roll information in printed or electronic form for a purpose related to an election or monitoring the accuracy of the electoral roll.
What, may I ask, is wrong with a person other than a MLA getting hold of information for a purpose related to an election? What is wrong with a person getting access to the information for the purpose of monitoring the accuracy of the electoral roll?
Imagine that you are a friend of independent candidate X and you wish to assist candidate X in his campaign. Candidate X says, "I want to write to people and tell them what a great person I am. Can you help me by typing some letters for me?". That person, by using the roll for that purpose, is using it for a purpose related to an election. That seems to me to be quite appropriate. What is wrong with that? It may be that the Government will prescribe such purposes and say that those purposes are appropriate purposes for which a person other than an MLA or a party officer can use a roll. But, if that is the case, why make this amendment? Why should not an individual, an ordinary person on the street, be able to use the roll for a purpose related to an election or for monitoring the accuracy of information contained in the roll? Once again, Madam Speaker, the Government seems to be putting political parties and existing MLAs in a different position from other lesser mortals, for no good reason, it seems to me. I can see no reason for it.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.29): To reply to Mr Humphries's queries, Madam Speaker, it is a fact that under the proposed amendment people cannot buy the roll and take it away; but they certainly can come in and look at it. They can come in and check out any information that they want. The problem that arises if people are able to buy it and to take it away is that they may then turn it into a mailing list or use it for some improper purpose. It is a protection to the rest of the community against that kind of improper purpose, a matter which Mr Moore has raised once already in this debate. People will be able to look at it, but they will not be able to take it away.
MR HUMPHRIES (5.30): Madam Speaker, I must say that it greatly concerns me to hear the Chief Minister say that. Once again, a member of a political party that is registered can obtain access to that roll, take it home and type his letters or put them on some kind of database quite freely; but an individual who is not associated with a political party cannot do that. Are we assuming that members of political parties do not misuse these documents, but other people do? With great respect, I think that is a gravely unsubstantiated assumption. No, Madam Speaker, my concerns are confirmed by this.
If the Government does not believe that people should have access to these rolls it should say so expressly, not make it obligatory for the commissioner to hand over the documents if there is a prescribed purpose but not allow a person, in effect, to get the access they need to that information by refusing them the right to take it home with them and use the information there. Either we make the roll available or we do not. If there are appropriate safeguards to be put in place, fine; let us incorporate those into the Act. I do not think that saying that MLAs have certain rights and other people do not have those rights is an appropriate structure for this. I think there has to be good reason for assuming that ordinary people are less honest than MLAs or officers of political parties.
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