Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I present an advisory report of the committee on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Bill 2012.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Mr President, the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Bill 2012 introduces a suite of measures in response to seven recommendations of the committee’s report into the 2010 federal election: Report on the conduct of the election and related matters. The bill:

In referring the bill, the Selection Committee wished the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to further scrutinise its amendments and ensure consideration was given to any unintended consequences. During the committee's inquiry, issues arose regarding the exclusion of ballots, the new pre-poll voting arrangements and the ability of the Australian Electoral Commission to use taxpayer information to update the electoral roll.

The bill provides that prematurely opened ballots must be excluded from the count. At the 2010 federal election, ballot boxes were opened prematurely due to an official error in two pre-poll voting centres. Due to the legislative ambiguity regarding the appropriate response to these breaches, the Australian Electoral Commission sought legal advice. The advice was that it would be prudent for these ballots to be excluded. The commission subsequently recommended to the committee that the appropriate action be clarified in the Electoral Act and that the votes should be reinstated if the incident proved to be an official error.

The bill does not contain a vote-savings provision and the committee did not support one in its 2010 federal election report. Having carefully considered the evidence in this inquiry, however, the committee took the view that votes should be reinstated if a ballot box is handled unlawfully by any person but no tampering of ballot papers has occurred. The committee's view is that this balances voter enfranchisement and electoral integrity. The committee recommends that the vote-savings procedures proposed by the Electoral Commission to this inquiry be incorporated in the bill.

The committee heard also that the Electoral Act lacks clarity on whether the penalties faced by an electoral official who deliberately and unlawfully interferes with a ballot box or ballot papers are the same as the penalties facing a member of the public for this offence. The committee recommends that the bill be amended to clarify this in the legislation.

The removal of the requirement for a pre-poll ordinary voter to complete a certificate will provide efficiencies in polling place management and align the Commonwealth with a number of state and territory jurisdictions. Moving the commencement of pre-poll voting back by one day will allow sufficient time to print the many millions of ballot papers required for a federal election. Moving the deadline for postal vote applications forward by one day will reduce the chance that postal ballots will be received too late. Increasing the fixed periods of time to inquire into further objections to a proposed electoral boundary redistribution will provide the Electoral Commission with valuable additional time to conduct these inquiries. Allowing the Electoral Commission to use certain taxpayer information to update the roll of electors is a logical extension of existing continuous roll update processes and direct enrolment using third-party information. The committee is satisfied that this will not undermine roll integrity. These provisions of the bill were recommended in the 2010 federal election report of the committee and continue to be supported by the committee.

On behalf of the committee I thank the organisations and individuals who assisted the committee during the inquiry through submissions or participating at the public hearing in Canberra. I also thank my colleagues on the committee for their work and contribution to this report, and the secretariat for their work on this inquiry. I commend the report to the Senate.