Page 379 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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electors provided to candidates will not contain the year of birth and gender of electors in order to protect their privacy, allowing the Electoral Commissioner to provide an extract of the certified list of electors to candidates in electronic form on request, removing the requirement for a person to sign as a witness when a voter casts a postal vote, and providing flexibility to the Electoral Commissioner to determine where the word “declaration” is to be printed in relation to the words “ballot paper” on declaration ballot papers.
Further, this bill implements the important reform of lowering the age at which individuals can provisionally enrol to vote, from 17 years old to 16 years old. This change will bring the ACT into line with recent changes to the equivalent commonwealth provisions. As anyone who has enrolled on the commonwealth electoral roll is automatically taken to be enrolled to vote for ACT purposes, lowering the age of enrolment will not substantially affect the operation of the territory’s enrolment scheme.
Sixteen-year olds who are enrolled to vote on the commonwealth roll are already taken to be enrolled on the ACT roll, despite the higher age specified in the territory’s legislation. This amendment, though, is important because it is designed to address an inconsistency between the territory’s electoral legislation and the commonwealth’s Electoral Act. It also has the important effect of further encouraging young people to ensure they are enrolled and give them the opportunity to be enrolled on the electoral roll before they turn 18 for their first election. The bill also makes a series of consequential amendments to accommodate the changes I have just mentioned.
The bill also includes clauses that limit the number of candidates that can be nominated in one electorate. The government was keen to progress these clauses in conjunction with the casual vacancies bill. However, I am sorry to say that these clauses will not be progressed. This is despite the fact that there is a clear majority on the floor of this Assembly for these changes.
These clauses would have imposed a restriction that prevents a political party nominating more candidates for one electorate than the number of members of the Legislative Assembly to be elected in that electorate. Members will be aware that these amendments are consequential on the Electoral (Casual Vacancies) Amendment Bill 2011.
The provisions in the casual vacancies bill were designed to address the difficulty that arises when the party of a vacating member has no eligible members left to contest that vacancy. This would result in the filling of the vacancy by a member of another party or an independent, thereby subverting the will of the electorate expressed at the time of the election. In short, the casual vacancies bill would allow the Legislative Assembly, in these very limited circumstances and in these circumstances only, to nominate a candidate.
However, the government will not press forward with these amendments at this time. It is understandable that a party may wish to nominate more candidates in an electorate than the number of vacancies if to fail to do so may mean that the party would lose a seat in the Legislative Assembly. If a party expects to win seats in the
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