Page 1231 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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(d) the importance of a strong electoral system which has as many eligible voters enrolled as possible in order to maintain trust in the electoral system by the electorate; and
(2) requests the Chief Minister write to the Federal Minister, Gary Nairn MP, expressing the concern of this Assembly at the negative impact these changes will have.
It is fitting that we are debating this motion today, as this week is Enrol to Vote week, an initiative of the Australian Electoral Commission. Enrol to Vote week is aimed at getting 17 and 18-year-old Australian students on the electoral roll before this year’s federal election. This is the first year the initiative has been held. It is now necessary because the Howard government’s enrolment changes mean that if a person is not on the rolls when the writs for the federal election are issued they may lose their democratic right to vote.
The Howard government’s electoral changes, which were delayed several times, took effect on 16 April this year and are all about making it harder for Australians to vote but easier for corporations and the wealthy to donate to political parties in secret. These changes came about by the Howard government enacting the most far-reaching changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act since the reforms of the 1980s. The Howard government changes which, as we know, include the early closure of the electoral roll and looser requirements for the disclosure of party finances have been part of the government’s agenda for many years. They were finally able to ram them through when the government gained control of the Senate.
In December 2005, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005 was introduced into the House of Representatives. This bill was the result of the government supported recommendations of the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the 2004 federal election. During 2005, the committee held an inquiry into the 2004 elections, taking submissions, holding hearings and listening to witnesses all over Australia.
In late 2005, the coalition majority on the committee brought down their majority report. They recommended a series of radical changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act, including to close the electoral rolls on the day the election writs were issued, rather than after five working days, as has been the law since 1984; to require all applicants for enrolment, re-enrolment or who wish to change their enrolment details to verify their identity with photographic or documentary identification; to require those wishing to cast a provisional vote to produce photographic identification; and to reduce the level of transparency of donations to political parties by raising the disclosure threshold to $10,000 and raising the tax deductibility threshold.
The Labor members of the committee wrote a minority report opposing every one of the recommendations, arguing that they would make it more difficult for Australians to enrol and cast their ballot. They also argued that it would be easier for individuals and corporations to make secret donations to political parties. Some might say, of course, that the Labor opposition would say that, but I note that Senator Andrew Murray was a member of this committee, and while he supported the report
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