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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3266 ..

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (11.48): Mr Speaker, I thank members for their participation in this debate. It is an important issue. I am particularly grateful to those members who took the time to get a briefing from the commissioner. I understand that all the Labor members and Ms Tucker and Mr Rugendyke actually had a briefing. I think it clarified a lot of what has been said today.

In particular, some of the fears that Mr Kaine has raised would have been allayed, I believe, had he taken up the opportunity of receiving a briefing. I think we all agree with Mr Kaine that the system must be user friendly, that it must be transparent, that it must be fail-safe and that it must have integrity. Nobody doubts that we would design a system that would not have that as its basis. We will still have a choice. There is to be a trial. There will be paper ballots for those voters who wish to use them instead of the electronic means.

I would like to say that there will be no Internet or dial-in ability. It is proposed that in, for instance, a school hall there will be several computers which will be networked inside the school hall. They will not be connected to an external network. Disks will be used to save the information and those disks will be transported back to the commission. There will be no ability for a hacker to break into a network because there will not be a network, unless they are skilful enough to do it inside a polling booth which is open and can somehow hack into the screen there.

There will be a reference group. Ms Tucker talks about having a reference group. The government has already made that commitment to a reference group and that reference group will have on it representatives of the community as well as the parties and others who are interested to make sure that we do get this right. We have all looked with some amusement at what has happened recently in America. That is certainly not the intention of the government here; so the reference group will become a very important link.

Fundamentally, this amendment will not affect the operation of the Electoral Act 1992, which leaves the details of election operations to the Electoral Commissioner. I am not sure that it is appropriate for us to oversee what it is that the commissioner is up to. That act actually establishes his independence so that elections can be run with confidence, free of political interference. The government will retain the integrity and remains dedicated to the integrity of the act to ensure the independence of the commissioner.

There is more that I could say, Mr Speaker. This bill is an endeavour to make voting better and to make voting more efficient. Something like 41/2 million Australians put in a Tattslotto entry each weekend. We understand the technologies and we understand the systems. Australians like using technology and innovation. If we can improve the system so that we do not have the triennial wait of days, weeks or months before we get a decision, that people can have greater confidence in how the vote has been taken and counted and that, in the instance where a member resigns and there is a replacement to be called upon, the replacement can be brought forward quickly, we should do so.

This bill is about adding to the system, not taking away or deleting from the system. I thank members for their support for the bill. Ms Tucker has indicated to the government that she does have some amendments that are not ready. Once the bill is agreed to in principle, further consideration of it will be adjourned. Again, I thank members for their participation in this debate.

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