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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Wednesday, 31 March 2004) . . Page.. 1455 ..

not just making that blanket assumption that it is the fault of young people that they are not on the roll.

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MS DUNDAS: I now turn to the second paragraph of Mr Hargreaves’s motion. I again wish to congratulate him for turning his mind to possible ways of improving the number of opportunities to remind young people to enrol to vote. However, I am not convinced that his suggestions are the most effective means of doing so. As has already been tabled in this place, the Electoral Commissioner has written to all members to outline the current strategies the commission uses to ensure that young people have adequate opportunities to enrol to vote. The commission uses a variety of data to be able to specifically target young people who have not yet enrolled, including data from Road User Services, the ACT Secondary Schools Board, ActewAGL and the ACT rental bond board. Data is also received from Centrelink and the citizenship authorities. So the commission has the ability to crosscheck potential voters against the electoral roll and target individuals who are not already currently enrolled. It does appear to be the most efficient and effective method of ensuring that the electoral roll is up to date. So I am not sure that the suggestions Mr Hargreaves put forward are the most useful. For example, most people receiving their year 12 results are well past 17, the age when they first become eligible to enrol to vote. It would be more useful to target students turning 17 while they are still at school rather than at a period when they may be considering moving out of home, pursuing study outside the ACT or indeed taking a well-earned break. When you are receiving your year 12 results, you are thinking about your future, about all the opportunities that are being put forward before you, not about enrolling to vote. If we target young people in the classroom at school we will make more of a difference.

Equally, drivers licence applications are filled in by a whole range of people, many of whom are already enrolled to vote. And, contrary to popular opinion, many young people do not immediately apply for a licence at the first opportunity just because they can. With the ever-increasing costs of education, many young people delay learning to drive until they are in a financial position to afford to run a car.

Thirdly, I was not aware that proof of age cards were sent through the mail at all, which is a worrying aspect of Mr Hargreaves’s motion. I would be somewhat concerned if we were sending a high-level identification document through the mail. I understood that proof of age cards were picked up in person in a similar way to a drivers licence; that you rocked up to a shopfront. My amendment seeks to clarify those issues. It is intended to express the idea that the Assembly is interested in ensuring that the Electoral Commission has the resources to expand on its educational and enrolment programs where necessary—I repeat “where necessary”.

I draw the Assembly’s attention to the fact that additional education and enrolment activities would need to be resourced. Therefore, if they cannot be met within current budgets, there would need to be some funding for them to occur.

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