Page 1240 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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voting. This is just absolute fluff and it is the sort of thing we come to expect from Ms MacDonald.
Ms MacDonald’s motion says that the Howard government’s enrolment changes are unnecessary and are likely to weaken the Australian electoral system. Mr Speaker, do you feel weakened? Do you see democracy in the country shaking? Like very few others in this world, we have had strong and continuous democracy in this country. These reforms will not damage that. They have the potential to strengthen that. Yes, you are right: other countries look at our electoral system. That is because we reform it and we keep ahead of the game to keep corruption out, and that is what these reforms will do.
We had Ms MacDonald speaking about the potential of negative impacts. The word “potential” was used a lot. There is a lot of fear and fluff out there; fear and loathing in Canberra, not in Las Vegas, Mr Speaker. The whole point is that they are unhappy with the changes. The changes went through a parliament, a democratically elected parliament, and were approved by that parliament. This is simply an endorsement of the electoral process. You might not like that, you might not like what they do, but let’s not get up here and make this sort of noise.
The amendments to the Commonwealth Electoral Act are sensible. People now have to provide identity when they enrol or when they update their enrolment. You need to provide identity in some cases, if you are young or young-looking, to get into a pub. It is more onerous to get into a pub or a nightclub than it used to be to get on the electoral roll. I think that we should value the right to be on the electoral roll, that we should safeguard it, that we should make it so, and that we should encourage people to get onto to the roll and encourage them to get onto it early.
Mr Corbell: Are there any significant problems with the roll? The parliamentary committee found no significant evidence.
MR SMYTH: I am surprised at the Attorney-General. Perhaps he should read the act. I thought people had an obligation to be on the roll. In fact, there might even be a penalty for not being on the roll. If you have changed your address within a certain time, you are meant to change it on the electoral roll. There may be a penalty for not doing that. That is probably a breach of the act. But we are not talking about that. No, we do not want to talk about that. We do not want to talk about the existing act and we do not want to talk about people’s noncompliance with it. We have got a bee in our bonnet because it may, it might, it could, it has the potential to or it is likely to disenfranchise somebody. That is the argument: it may, could, might, has the potential or is likely. It is as though the Labor Party have just opened up a thesaurus and said, “How do we object to this? We come up with all the words that could lead to something. We are not sure what, but we will say it anyway.”
People now have to provide identity when they enrol. That is not unreasonable. That is to prevent electoral fraud such as we saw in Queensland in 2000. Indeed, Premier Peter Beattie wanted to introduce similar amendments in Queensland, until the federal government introduced them federally. Members opposite are against those. They will work in Queensland, but they will not work for the country. Think about the Peter Beattie Labor Party approach, with memories of Mike Kaiser and the
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