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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3263 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

The bill would not suffer, either, by providing that no member of this Assembly may have greater access to the voting machines than any other voter would have; that is, in a polling booth on election day. We owe it to the voters to ensure that the staff of the Electoral Commission will have proper protection from Assembly members or candidates, or others, wishing "to have a look" at the machines and how they work. The only time members should have a look is at a demonstration supervised by commission staff before the first election at which the system will be in use. They should have no access other than what the general public has after that. I am quite serious about that, Mr Speaker. It is in our best interests that members have no more intimate contact with the system than the voters.

Mr Speaker, I have no qualms about the probity of present and future electoral commissioners in discharging their functions under this bill, but I do have concerns about giving any government unfettered, unrestrained and, most importantly, unreviewable power to tinker with the matters for which this bill does not yet provide-and it does not provide for a great deal, in my view.

While I believe that members should have no greater access to the electronic voting equipment than the voters, I am nevertheless convinced that the bill needs strengthening to interpose this Assembly between the new voting system which the bill will allow and the arrangements made to operate that system. We should not pass this bill until the government provides for that.

Members are entitled, even obliged, to be satisfied that the Electoral Commissioner has provided hardware and software that together guarantee the integrity of the voting process and provide the basis for perpetual security arrangements capable not only of keeping unauthorised persons out, but also of ringing alarm bells if by some unforeseeable mishap somebody unauthorised does manage to get in. It is not just a simple matter.

Mr Speaker, let me recap on what I think the government has to implement before the territory conducts any election using electronic voting. The machines must be demonstrated to be user friendly, first and foremost. People approaching a voting machine must be able to see easily how to operate it to record their vote. The system must be transparent to scrutineers in the event that a recount becomes necessary. The system must have a fail-safe capability under which one central server on standby can also serve as a check on the active server.

The government must demonstrate that the savings resulting from the electronic arrangements will exceed the cost of creating, installing, operating and storing them. The government must take the bill back and redraft it to provide this Assembly with a review and approval power over the detailed arrangements prior to their first application.

Mr Speaker, I am almost prepared to suggest that perhaps this bill should go to a committee of the Assembly for examination, but I know that there is a time scale on it and to send it to a committee of the Assembly would delay it for anything up to six months. I am a bit reluctant to do that, but I want to be satisfied that the government will undertake to review the system along the lines that I have outlined and make sure that it is a system which can be held accountable and which provides a mechanism that the

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