Page 1539 - Week 06 - Thursday, 2 July 2020
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I am also pleased to see the shift to a consistent definition of measuring 100 metres from a polling place. This is important, as canvassing within 100 metres of a polling place is not permitted. We support this amendment for clarification.
One of the amendments that I had planned to table would have allowed canvassing within six metres of a polling place, which is the same distance as allowed in federal elections. For these elections this distance is determined on the day by the AEC officials. The exact starting point does not matter so much because you are only measuring six metres away and it is very clear what they are doing in a practical sense to allow voters to get to the door without too much conflict from competing parties trying to be the closest to the door to dole out their how-to-vote cards. In light of the COVID-19 situation, I will not be tabling such an amendment. With the current rules about close personal contact, it is clearly not appropriate.
But, disappointingly, here in the ACT I have seen and heard many reports of people canvassing closer than 100 metres from the polling places. I have reported such issues myself to the ACT Electoral Commission. This happens election after election, with little or no consequence to parties breaching the rules. Sadly, I suspect that Elections ACT simply does not have the capacity to enforce its own legislation and stamp out this behaviour. It will tell the offending party to move quite a few hours after the offence, by which time thousands of people may have already voted. The offending party will move on when they are told to, but if it is pre-polling, on the next day they will often return to the same place within the 100-metre zone.
The other change to our electoral legislation of note today is allowing non-compliant electoral advertising signs to be removed immediately from public unleased land by authorised people; that is, ACT government services staff. Previously these provisions required prior notice to be given to the owners of the signs, which allowed non-compliant signs to stay in the public eye for much longer. It is a similar situation to the 100-metre rule.
As I mentioned, I will be tabling an amendment today. I understand that the Labor Party will be supporting this amendment and that the Liberals will be tabling a supportive amendment to my amendment. I will leave Mr Coe to speak to that. The Greens’ amendment to this bill will require the Electoral Commissioner to publish information about candidates for an ACT election on the Elections ACT website.
Currently the Elections ACT website lists candidates. This amendment will increase the amount of information available to members of the public about candidates by providing a central repository for viewing candidate profiles, including a short statement of up to 500 words, contact details, a photo and a link to a website. Each candidate can provide this information to the commissioner, who must then publish the candidate’s profiles in a random order.
This amendment was drafted by me some time ago, but in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic it takes on greater significance as it provides an additional non-physical way for the public to access information about candidates. I also note that the system has been successfully running in Tasmania for many state elections, as
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