Page 1232 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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as a whole he did not support five recommendations, including recommendation No 4, which concerns the early closure of the rolls.
The Howard government ignored these objections and in June 2006 the Electoral Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2005 was passed by the Senate. Only government MPs supported the bill, with everyone else in the parliament—Labor, the Democrats, the Greens, Family First and the house’s three independents voting against it. There is no doubt that this act will disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters in our community.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission, in the first week of the 2004 election campaign, 423,000 people enrolled to vote for the first time or changed their details. Of these, almost 79,000 first-time voters enrolled in the seven days after the election was called. This act will disenfranchise most of those 79,000 people, a high proportion of whom would be young people and new migrants. A large number of the rest of the 423,000 people will also miss out because they will not have the opportunity to change their details. People who have moved house more often and the homeless will be particularly affected.
For the past decade the Howard government has tried to remove the right of all prisoners to vote but has been prevented by the Senate. However, since taking control of the Senate, the government rammed through the act, and the new law has also removed the right of all prisoners to vote. I know that there are some within our community who would say, “What is the big deal? If you have gone to prison, you should not have the right to vote.” I am sorry, but I do not agree with that. There are strong reasons why we should be making sure that we keep those who are incarcerated involved in society as much as possible so that when they do re-enter society they become fully participating members of society and do not end up back in prison.
The Howard government’s enrolment changes are completely unnecessary and will significantly weaken Australia’s electoral system. What then is the Howard government’s agenda in amending the Commonwealth Electoral Act? The former Special Minister of State, Senator Eric Abetz, said these new laws were necessary as a measure to improve the integrity of Australia’s electoral system by reducing the opportunities for electoral fraud. However, Senator Abetz has openly admitted that there is not, and has never been, any evidence to show that any election outcome in the history of our country has been affected by fraud.
The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters had previously conducted an investigation into the integrity of the electoral roll in 2001. The AEC testified that it had compiled a list of all cases of enrolment fraud for the decade 1990 to 2001. Seventy-one—or about one per 200,000—cases of fraud were revealed. Between 1990 and 2001 there were five federal elections and a referendum at each of which about 12 million people voted. So if you total that up, it comes to about 72 million votes. The 71 known cases of false enrolment therefore amounted to less than one vote per million.
Senator Abetz and the current Special Minister of State, Gary Nairn, claim these new measures are necessary to prevent electoral fraud, but our country has a level of
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