Page 1096 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 April 1994
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The cost of electoral office staff administering the process, of checking someone's ID before they vote, would not be considerable; it would be minimal. However, making sure that people do not vote illegally would be of far greater benefit to Canberrans. What do we need to have happen before we plug the potential? Do we have to have widespread vote fraud proven? I wonder how much of it goes on. Certainly some of it goes on. How much is found out? There are concerns in this area, and I urge all members to vote for the amendments.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.14): Madam Speaker, the Government will be opposing Mr Stevenson's three amendments. The intention of all three amendments is to require voters to produce identification before they are issued with a vote. If these amendments were passed, I consider that they would involve enormous difficulties, not just for the voters but also for electoral officials. I believe that Mr Stevenson has dealt with those issues fairly lightly. The amendments, for instance, do not specify what level of identification is required. I heard Mr Stevenson refer to a driver's licence, an electricity bill, and so on; but this is legislation, and I think that we need to be a lot more specific than that. The amendments do not give the electoral officials any discretion to question the validity of identification documents. I would suggest that if you are getting down to the level of electricity bills it is all too easy. You do not even have to forge them; you just have to swap them, and it is a very easy thing to do.
Madam Speaker, there is no provision in Mr Stevenson's amendments for voters who do not have any form of identification to vote. I can see an enormous inconsistency looming here. The Assembly voted earlier in this debate to allow a vote to itinerant people who do not have an address in the ACT. There is a great inconsistency, I believe, in allowing people who do not have an address to have a vote and then demanding that those people produce identification. I think we are in danger of looking pretty silly in that regard.
The amendments moved by Mr Stevenson also would have the potential to create a great deal of confusion on polling day. We would see many voters turned away from polling places for having no identification, and voting would take a great deal longer because of the extra time that would be needed to check identification and to explain to those voters without any that they cannot vote. Voting would become a very inconvenient process, and I think we would see voter turnout reduced. Administration of the scheme would be very difficult. I know that Mr Stevenson asserts that it would not, but I believe that it would. At a minimum, you would need guidelines on vetting identification documents, and also guidelines on how to deal with disputes in polling places, and disputes would inevitably occur.
I take Mr Stevenson's point that his amendments are aimed at reducing the opportunity for fraudulent voting; but all of the types of identification documents mentioned by him are easily obtained or forged, and the mere possession of such a document in no way, in my mind, rules out a vote being fraudulent. I believe that people could easily produce those documents. If they were of a mind to vote fraudulently they would make a point of producing probably even better identification than the rest of us who were not bent on fraudulent voting. I believe that the amendments would be more likely to hinder the innocent than to prevent the guilty from operating, and that is a real problem.
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