Page 1537 - Week 06 - Thursday, 2 July 2020
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measure takes us in a contrary direction here in Australia and gives us the opportunity to ensure that people are able to participate as much as possible.
I know that other members want to speak today, so I am going to leave my remarks at that point and let the debate continue.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (4.26): I thank Mr Rattenbury for taking the floor. The Canberra Liberals are mostly supportive of this bill. However, we have some concerns, particularly with the issue that Mr Rattenbury has just praised, allowing people to sign up to vote just before the election. We have some additional concerns of a practical nature with the legislation and will therefore be proposing some minor amendments that I think will be received well if people have the opportunity to look into them.
The bill makes several major changes, including allowing people to enrol to vote until the close of the poll on election day. We agree that people should be given every opportunity to exercise their democratic rights. However, there are serious issues and implications to consider in allowing enrolment until the close of polls. These changes come on top of necessary amendments to accommodate the new challenges presented by COVID-19. This is quite a significant change that needs to be implemented in addition to all the new health and social distancing requirements, along with an extended pre-poll period.
I think that the proposed new measure could be exploited by those who seek to fraudulently undermine the democratic nature of our systems. We have seen serious issues with branch stacking in other parts of the country, and we have to be very careful that these same forces do not seek to do anything similar in the lead-up to an ACT election. We do not want to see any stacking of voters in electorates or issues with individuals voting multiple times. We have to be very mindful of this concern. The nature of our Hare-Clark system is that elections can come down to a handful of votes, especially given that this legislation also introduces the rounding down of vote transfer values to six decimal places. We should be very careful about opening ourselves up to potential voter fraud.
Other changes within the bill are sensible and necessary. In practice, non-compliant electoral signage from public lands is already removed by ACT officials; this bill simply introduces some clarity regarding the removal of those signs. We are also happy to correct the drafting error that implies that the full home address of individual donors needs to be publicly published. And we have no issues with changes to the defined polling area.
The Canberra Liberals remain committed to fairness, transparency and integrity in our democratic processes. We are happy to review and revisit the changes made by this bill as necessary to ensure that we get the right legislation. I will speak to some of the other issues as and when they come up in the amendments.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (4.28): The Greens will be supporting this bill and tabling one amendment. I understand that amendment will then be amended. Life is beautiful!
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