Page 1238 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
to expose any significant fraud arising from the delay in the close of the roll, or indeed in the enrolment process generally.
Instead, supporters of moves to tighten the enrolment process have pointed to the potential to fraudulently enrol in the absence of any evidence of actual fraud in numbers sufficient to affect an election. So because they cannot demonstrate any evidence of any significant fraud, they have instead said that it is possible that there would be fraud—despite the fact there is no evidence to support that claim—and therefore these changes must be made.
Clearly, this is not a tenable argument by those opposite. Thankfully, this early closing of the federal roll will not directly affect ACT elections. In the ACT our own Electoral Act provides for the close of the roll, and we have fixed term elections. Our roll close date is known well in advance. In fact, we know today that the roll will close for the next ACT election on 19 September 2008.
However, the state of the electoral roll for ACT elections is very significantly connected to the health of the national electoral roll. If many thousands of people miss out on enrolling for the 2007 federal election, they may also miss out on being correctly enrolled for the 2008 ACT election. While the ACT Electoral Commission will conduct an advertising campaign in 2008, this will not reach those people interstate that may have left the ACT but have remained on the ACT roll because they did not update their federal enrolment. A related issue of great concern is the changes that have been made to applications for electoral enrolment which were introduced on 16 April this year. For some people the process of enrolling has just got a whole lot harder.
The three-tiered system which I mentioned earlier applies to all eligible electors. Previously the process was simple. A witness verifying a person’s signature and identity was required by all those who wished to enrol to vote. Now new measures are in force. You have to have a driver’s licence. You must state the number when you apply to enrol. If you do not have a driver’s licence you must show some other specified documentary proof of identity to a list of eligible witnesses. If you have no documentary proof, two people who have known you for more than a month must sign the roll. This enrolment model relies on people being able to produce up-to-date identity documents before a specified authority.
For many people this process has made the act of enrolling much more difficult than the previous scheme. There is also a discriminatory element here that disadvantages those significant numbers of people who do not have a driver’s licence or other identity documents. It is likely that this enrolment model will place obstacles in the way of enrolment for several classes of people, obviously young people, people who move between places of residence frequently, Indigenous people, people who do not own property, people who do not own a vehicle and obviously people at a national level in remote areas.
Why should these people be denied the right to vote? It is almost as though those opposite want to go back to the days when, to vote, you had to own property; to be elected to parliament you had to be a property owner. It harks back to the old-fashioned, antiquated and autocratic views which conservative parties in Australia
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .