Page 1233 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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electoral integrity which few other countries in the world can match. In fact, I would say in this regard we are the envy of the world.
When we look at exactly what changes these new laws will make, the Howard government’s motivation becomes clear. It wants to disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters for its own partisan self-interest. Perhaps the most significant change, and the one that will have the most far-reaching consequences, is the earlier closure of the roll.
As Australia does not have fixed date elections at a federal level, the Prime Minister is able to call an election without any warning. This means that if a resident is not enrolled the day the writs are issued, they have to be in a position to enrol that day or they will miss out. In other words, they need to be in the position where they can drop everything and go and enrol. This is completely unreasonable.
Closing the electoral roll for most new enrolees on the day the writs are issued and only giving existing enrolees three days to correct their details is likely to disenfranchise many young people who are unaware that an election may be called. Obviously, all of us in this place are political junkies. We know that a federal election is going to occur this year. But the majority of people out there in society do not pay attention. They do not really care until the election is actually called. That is the fact of the matter.
Both Senator Abetz and Mr Nairn suggest that the Liberal Party has no partisan interest in preventing young people from voting because the 2004 Australian Electoral Study, or the AES, showed that 41 per cent of young people under 25 voted Liberal and only 32 per cent voted Labor. However, both members failed to mention that the AES also showed a big jump in the percentage of young people voting Green. As we know, 17 per cent, and the major proportion of Green preferences, flow back to Labor. The government has clearly calculated that the majority of those who will be disadvantaged by the enrolment provisions of the act will be potential non-Liberal voters.
For more than 150 years Australia has been an innovator in progressive reform and democratic processes, and in electoral reform we have always been a world leader. Many other countries have looked to us when they were designing or reforming their electoral processes, and that is only right as we have a history of free and fair elections and a system that has supported that. However, our open electoral system is now greatly diminished because of these changes.
As I said earlier, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2005 is all about making it harder to vote but easier to donate to political parties. The act has increased the declarable limit for disclosure of political donations from $1,500 to $10,000. This is a huge jump in the limit required before donation details must be made public. This means massive sums of money will go into party coffers without the public knowing. Estimates showed that more than 80 per cent of all donations would disappear from public view. If the law had been in effect in the 2003-04 financial year, over $12 million across all major parties would have vanished from public scrutiny.
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