Page 1538 - Week 06 - Thursday, 2 July 2020
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This process has been something of a moving feast since the first of two electoral bills, the Electoral Amendment Bill 2018, was tabled in November 2018. That bill dealt primarily with donations; in particular, banning donations to political parties from property developers. That was a parliamentary agreement item. I subsequently had amendments to that bill drafted.
Today we are debating not the 2018 bill but, rather, one that was tabled 10 months later, in September last year, the Electoral Legislation Amendment Bill 2019. I also had amendments drafted for this bill. To confuse matters further, I will be tabling only one of these amendments today. This is because, after some discussion with my Assembly colleagues, it has been agreed that today’s bill will be a clean bill, one that can be passed with a minimum of fuss, and which we all agree on, unless something else changes in the immediate future. I note that when I prepared for this debate there were fewer amendments than there are now.
Labor has agreed, I understand, that the 2018 bill will be brought on for debate later in July. I will be tabling my other amendments to this bill. This has apparently been dubbed “the messy bill”, as there are a number of items on which the Greens have not yet reached agreement with the other parties, some of which we totally appreciate we will never reach agreement about. We all have different interests; this is life. However, I hope that this time allows us to discuss the outstanding issues with both other parties and agree, or agree to disagree, and then, hopefully, have a relatively straightforward and comprehensible debate.
The bill that we are debating today makes six substantive changes to the Electoral Act 1992. I am not going to talk about all of them. Mr Coe has already talked about the number of digits for fractional transfers, which I think we can support.
Mr Coe also mentioned allowing people to enrol to vote at a polling place up to and including election day. I think this is a good amendment and I commend the government for this work. Currently, section 80 of the Electoral Act deals with the closing of the electoral roll and stipulates that it be closed 29 days before polling day; that is, a month out from an election, people cannot have their names added to the roll or a change of address recorded.
The Greens are pleased that the amendment today completely removes section 80 from the Electoral Act. This will be particularly helpful to young people and people who have recently moved to Canberra, or have moved from their old location, who have yet to enrol to vote. It will also be of assistance to many people who, despite what I imagine will be yet another prolific display of corflutes around the town, simply have no idea that there is an ACT election on until it is right under their nose. Given the additional difficulties relating to COVID-19, with fewer people leaving their homes and people generally getting out less, it is quite possible that quite a few people will simply not be aware. I know that right now they are not aware that there is an election in a few months, but even by mid-October they will not be aware. Certainly, requiring them to have enrolled by the end of September will be problematical, so I am very pleased with this amendment.
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