Bills

Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 25 August 2021.)

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (12:01): Mr Speaker, it is good to see you back and I wish you a speedy recovery. You are the second person in a matter of a week who has had a battle with a tree and come out on the losing end—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: He's still standing.

Mr HUGHES: Fortunately—unlike Trevor Wright in William Creek. He had to be flown out from William Creek. I drove all the way from Coober Pedy to see him and he had gone. That was a long trip by dirt road. So I wish you a speedy recovery.

The SPEAKER: I am just keeping my chin up, member for Giles.

Mr HUGHES: I was speaking on the bill last night, and I am sure everyone was there glued to the screen as we led up to the midnight hour.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

Mr HUGHES: I am sure they are. I want to emphasise that we are incredibly fortunate in this state, the other states and nationally, to have independent electoral commissions. When you look at the way we conduct elections in this state, nationally and in other states, compared with somewhere like the United States, you have to give us a massive tick of approval. The fact that we have electoral commissions that are free of overt and covert political involvement is an incredible positive.

Look at the United States: Trump was mentioned last night and the Republicans were mentioned last night. What you see there in a democracy is almost a dystopian approach to electoral matters and gross political interference, and it has to be said that it is essentially the Republican Party in the areas they control. The way they try to suppress the vote, and suppress the votes of minorities, is a disgrace. That comes on top of an inherent institutional bias in the United States that seriously advantages the Republicans at the expense of Democrats. So we can be proud of our electoral commissions and what we have done in this country to ensure a vote that is supported.

A lot has been said about the nature of the franchise, and we on this side want to see voting made as easy as possible. That is why, when the Electoral Commission of South Australia brought down its report, the number one recommendation was to make it easier for people to vote in this state, to remove that two-day requirement, and make it possible for people to turn up at the polling station and actually vote on the day without being previously enrolled, and that is a real step forward.

Of course, the commission, when advocating that, when making that its number one recommendation, pointed to the evidence in the other states, pointed to the evidence in New Zealand and pointed to the evidence in Canada that taking this particular approach does maximise the vote and does maximise participation. With great surprise, we see that number one recommendation from the commission being rejected in this bill.

Indeed, in this bill, the current status quo is made even worse. That two-day rule is going to be removed and replaced with a six-day rule, which is going to lock out a lot of people from voting, especially younger people who might not be as savvy about our voting systems. It is not just younger people; there are also other people, especially in communities like mine, in the APY lands and in other places.

This particular approach to make it harder for people to vote is something that we on this side cannot support, and the evidence is in. As I have indicated, the commission referred to the evidence in the other states where that capacity to turn up and vote on the day without being enrolled has had a very positive impact. In fact, thousands of additional votes are there to be had in those states that have this particular approach.

In this day and age, when we see around the world a move to a more authoritarian disposition and the undermining of democracies—including in that great democracy the United States, with the raft of their legislation that is now before state houses—we should be doing all we can to build on the proud traditions of this state, and they are proud traditions when it comes to the franchise.

We were one of the very early movers when it came to the female vote and the female right to stand for election. We have a proud history. As I said last night, that history was darkened by the Playmander, but Steele Hall and others on the other side put principle before their own self-interest to bring the voting system into the 20^th century and enshrine the important principle of one vote, one value.

We will be opposing what the government is proposing because it appears to be motivated by self-interest. It appears to be motivated by a lack of confidence in their capacity to win the vote amongst those people who currently might not be enrolled and might turn up on the day. We should be doing all that we can to make voting easier in our state and, unfortunately, the government has decided to go in the opposite direction.

Even if we get defeated here in the lower house, I cannot see the upper house going for the proposal to change it from two days to six days. I think the crossbenchers in the upper house will be of a mind—and I am not pre-empting what it is that they are going to do—to support what we believe is the way forward: that people should be able to turn up on the day and vote.

There are conditions around that. The Electoral Commission of South Australia and the commissioner have set out what those conditions are, and they are sensible conditions. But, clearly, in the mind of the Electoral Commission of South Australia and the commissioner is a desire to maximise the vote to maximise participation, especially amongst young people. In their report, they refer to the decline in the number of people who are voting, so at this juncture we should not be looking to make it harder for people to vote.

It has also been mentioned that this bill has taken an incredibly long period of time to come before the house—13 days or 12 days of this parliament to sit and then we will be going into a virtually de facto election campaign, if it has not already started. So to get a bill before this house and the upper house and then do what is necessary to bed it down, the time restraints are enormous. I would have thought there would be people on the other side as well who would be keen to make as it easy as possible for people to vote.

As I said, Steele Hall reflecting the principles that he clearly held dearly, as did a number of other people on that side, did the right thing and did not look to get an electoral advantage; in fact they did the opposite. It was interesting to reflect on the figures the member for Elizabeth gave last night about the gerrymander and the impact it had over an extended period of time. I call upon some of the members opposite to think about this and think about how we need to make voting easier, not harder.

Time expired.

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (12:11): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, too, welcome you back and wish you a speedy recovery.

I rise to speak on the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021. In doing so, I state up-front, that this bill with a number of its clauses and the intentions of those clauses is not worthy or warrants support. Legislation that governs rules around voting, goes to the heart of our democracy and we should tread carefully.

The bill before us, we understand, is based on the election report that has been with the government for nearly 2½ years, a bill that changes the rules currently governing elections, a bill so similar to that already rejected in this house and the other place, with I acknowledge some exceptions, a few changes, but why I am highlighting this is not surprising. There are other times, both at a state and federal level, when there have been desperate attempts by the opposition or those opposite to change the rules.

The member for Reynell reflected on some of these with the former Prime Minister John Howard's changes to the Electoral Act 2006, the increased identity requirements and of course the early closure of the electoral rolls, along with other changes sought to increase the Coalition vote. Last night, and now today, here we are seven months out from the state election and the Marshall Liberal government has put this bill in front of us, a bill that is clearly about changing the rules and shoring up votes in their favour.

The election report on which this bill is based contains recommendations for change. But what do we see? We see the government comb through the recommendations and choose those electoral forms, those recommendations they believe will work in their favour:

Recommendation 1.

Enrolment up to and on polling day

That the Electoral Act (1985)…be amended to enable eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day. After claiming enrolment, these electors would be allowed to cast declaration votes which would not be admitted to the count until an enrolment investigation had been satisfactorily completed the week after polling day.

The report clearly states:

The declining rate of enrolment of younger electors and the increasing number of non-voters are a matter of concern…

It points out that one of the solutions to address falling participation rates, successfully implemented by the Electoral Commission of South Australia's counterparts in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria as well as in New Zealand, has been to allow enrolment on the day as a savings provision to enfranchise people who inadvertently missed the close of rolls.

We know that at the 2018 South Australian election, the Electoral Commission of South Australia was made aware from polling official feedback that there were many potential electors who would have benefited from this reform. The report reveals that records were kept of those who insisted on casting a vote, claiming there must have been an error with the roll. Of the 7,318 people who did so in 2018, just 153—2 per cent—had their House of Assembly vote counted, and 852—being 12 per cent—had their Legislative Council vote counted after investigation of their enrolment.

The report goes on to state that, given the success of late enrolment options elsewhere in Australasia, ECSA seeks legislative change to bring South Australia into line with other jurisdictions and to allow eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day. Although ECSA would continue to actively promote the close of rolls, enrolment on the day would be a savings provision to help ensure that as many South Australians as possible could participate in state elections. I point that out and I reiterate that point: it would ensure that as many South Australians as possible could participate in state elections.

The decision by the government to go against the recommendation of the Electoral Commission of South Australia, in reference to this particular recommendation, is one thing, but going a step further and reducing the time to enrol to vote and making it harder for young people, people with disability, our First Nations people and our new citizens to get enrolled to vote is wrong. We need to remove these barriers that are impacting on the ability to exercise the right to vote.

In reference to other sections that I think would be significant, we need to remove barriers impacting on the ability to exercise the right to vote and, seriously, you need to do a double take. The bill before us proposes to reduce the time period during which people can enrol to vote from six days to two days after the issuing of the writs. We already know that the rate of enrolment of young voters is declining: 38.9 per cent of 18 year olds were not enrolled at the 2018 election, along with 25.4 per cent of voters from 18 to 24.

As I have already made reference to, in reducing the time to enrol to vote, we risk disenfranchising not only our young first-time voters but new citizens, people with disability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as well as others. We, as a state, as this parliament, should be better than that. We should be looking to expand participation, not to reduce it, as the Electoral Commission pointed out.

In my former role as a senator and in this place, I have always encouraged young people to learn about our representative democracy, the role of government, legislation and how they can not only participate but how they can contribute to change. I encourage my schools to put a visit to our state parliament on their calendar and I welcome the opportunity to host them in this place. I visit classes, speaking to students about our system of government and how, as individuals and collectively, they can effect change when they see a genuine need in their school or in their community.

What this bill does to these young people on turning 18 and becoming eligible to vote is to cut them off. It turns them away. The Commissioner for Children and Young People, Helen Connolly, consulted with a group of young South Australians aged 15 to 22 years about their thoughts on the barriers to enrolment and voting for young people, and about how the proposed amendments might impact young people.

In addition to this, the commissioner has drawn on thousands of conversations with young people since 2017 and she makes the following recommendation: that the proposed amendment to section 48 to reduce the time period in which people can enrol to vote not be supported. The commissioner raises concerns that the reduced time frame would disproportionately impact the enrolment of younger voters who are already under-represented both in terms of enrolment votes and voter participation.

It is without doubt this proposed amendment to reduce the number of days from six to two goes in the complete opposite direction from the first recommendation in the report by the Electoral Commission. You only have to consider the fact that in the 2018 election there were 25,000 electors who enrolled to vote during the six-day period between the issue of writs and the closing of the electoral roll. If we take it that this was spread out over the six days, that is more than 4,000 enrolments a day—4,000 new enrolments, 4,000 new electors to our electoral roll.

If the government has their way with this bill and reduces the time period during which people can enrol to vote by four days, rather than increasing it as recommended by the Electoral Commission, it would be possible that 16,000 South Australians would be denied the opportunity to participate in the vote, to have a say in who will govern them in this state. Many of them would be young, first-time voters. Many of them would be our new citizens. Knowing this, one must ask why the government wants to implement such a reduction in people enrolling to vote.

The second recommendation by the Commissioner for Children and Young People is one that I have already raised. It results from her research and conversations with young people. The recommendation is that the act be amended to enable eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day. In support of this, the commissioner raises an issue that is close to my heart, one that I am passionate about as a member of parliament, a parent and as a former teacher, and that is the education of our young people. In a letter to the Hon. Kyam Maher in the other place, Ms Connolly says:

…this Bill alone can only go so far in terms of improving enrolment and participation rates, particularly for young voters. As highlighted throughout the Electoral Commission SA's 2018 State Election Report…there must be commitment to developing and implementing a comprehensive voter education program with a particular focus on first-time voters and young voters.

Such a program requires adequate funding and will benefit from collaboration with other State authorities, such as my office and the Department for Education. This seems particularly necessary given the reported lack of awareness amongst significant proportion of voters about voting options, including pre-poll voting options, and the Bill's proposed removal of the Electoral Commission's function to encourage the casting of votes on polling day.

Importantly, children and young people themselves consistently highlight the importance of education when asked what would make it easier for them to enrol to vote and to participate in elections.

The commissioner includes some wise words by a 14 year old: 'Better education for teens leading up to the coming of age and being able to vote.' That is what is required. This would help ensure that as many South Australians as possible can participate in state elections. It would raise awareness among others, young people and first-time voters, including new citizens. I hope the government genuinely takes on this recommendation with relation to education; it is so important.

So much of this bill before us is regressive reform rather than reform that benefits our democracy. We all know how important the role voting plays in a democracy is, and every step of the way we should ensure we protect that right, that opportunity. We already know that there is an under-representation of young people on the roll. The election report for the 2018 South Australian state election clearly highlights the declining rate of youth enrolment. We should do all that we can to address this decline.

Education and supporting the extension of time for eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day would go some way towards achieving a turnaround for our state's young people and seeing more of them add their names to our electoral roll.

This bill also includes an expansion of pre-poll facilities, which allows people to cast an ordinary vote ahead of the election, and we currently have pre-poll with legitimate reasons for some people to vote in pre-poll and postal votes. Here, there are questions unanswered.

Another point of particular concern to me is the removal of the requirement for the Electoral Commissioner to advertise in newspapers. This is found in sections, 18, 41, 48, 49 and 77 of the act. Amendment of section 41(1)—Publication of notice of application, provides:

—delete 'in the Gazette and in a newspaper circulating generally in the State' and substitute:

(a) In the Gazette; and

(b) On a website determined by the Electoral Commissioner;

and

(c) In any other manner prescribed by the regulations.

Similar wording appears in amendment of section 48—Contents of writ, where it reads:

delete 'in a newspaper circulating throughout the State' and substitute:

on a website determined by the Electoral Commissioner and in any other manner prescribed by the regulations

This should be of concern to all of us here. It should also be of concern to those opposite and anyone in this place who has people in regional communities. This, I believe, will disenfranchise many. There are so many things that are important about this particular piece that need to be considered.

Most days of the week my office will receive contact from a resident who needs assistance with printing forms or accessing information that can only be found online. They come to me particularly frustrated because they do not have the necessary technology to do these things.

It may come as a surprise to some, to those opposite, that (a) many cannot afford to buy a computer, iPad or smartphone; (b) they cannot afford internet connection; (c) they do not have the necessary skills to access the information they need, and this often occurs with the more senior members of our community, not all but some, as I know there are many who do have those skills, and my father in his 80s is quite computer literate, mostly self-taught with a little help from his daughters; or (d) they do not have reliable internet access.

I hear their frustrations when they tell me they feel like they are being left behind, because they do not have a computer, internet access or the latest smart device. I note the tendency to remove print media advertising from committees, and I have raised my concerns that doing so significantly impacts on our regional newspapers and those living in regional South Australia who rely on these newspapers for their information, among others.

It is worth noting that Ms Connolly, too, raises removal of requirement to advertise in print media as an issue when she says:

This office is aware of the significant costs associated with publishing print notices in newspapers, as well as the need for services to be modernised in a changing media landscape. At the same time, however, this office is concerned that a digital first approach may leave some young people behind, particularly those living in regional areas or those without reliable and consistent access to digital devices and data.

The recently released My Digital Life report from the Commissioner for Children and Young People goes into further detail about the impact of digital poverty on children and young people, and I believe this is something we must listen to.

Ms Connolly continues, saying that she understands that the proposed amendment to remove the requirement for public notices in newspapers aligns with recommendation 5 of the ECSA report. However, in the absence of print notices in newspapers other steps need to be taken, whether in the regulations or by other means, to ensure critical information about polling booths and pre-polling to be widely known by all electors.

I think that those opposite should be reconsidering this particular clause. We need to ensure that people who do not have access to the internet, computers or even have those necessary skills are able to rely on the print media, whether that be our daily newspaper here in South Australia, The Advertiser, or the Sunday Mail, or whether it be all those regional newspapers that I know play a significant role in the lives of those people in the regions. It is where they turn to to get their information. Mr Deputy Speaker, I know that you know that this is the case.

Another issue that I have with this bill is that the Electoral Commissioner would no longer be required to encourage voting on election day. In the time allocated today, I have raised just a few of my concerns with the government's Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021, a bill based on a report that the government has had in its possession for near on 2½ years and is now attempting to get through this parliament in time for its changes to be implemented for the 2022 election in just seven months' time.

It is a bill that will ultimately exclude particular groups from voting by reducing the time to enrol down to two days and some of the other proposals. I have great concerns with some of the clauses in this bill and cannot see how it will benefit our society, our community and those groups that I have already highlighted today.

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (12:31): I rise, entirely unsurprisingly, to oppose this bill. There is much to dislike about this bill—its tardiness, its blatant attempt to game the system, its contradiction with the ECSA post-election report recommendations—but maybe the thing that most irks me about it is the intention to reduce the time to enrol, after the writs are issued, from six days to a measly two days.

As I doorknocked and made calls and attended events and visited shopping centres and railway stations ahead of the last election, the days passed one by one and the deadline to enrol arrived and then was passed. Most days after that deadline to enrol expired, I crossed paths with people who had not enrolled or had not enrolled at the correct address, and every one of them who could no longer enrol to vote was aggrieved at the loss of their capacity to exercise that democratic right. Each one of them, when faced with the realisation that they would not be able to vote, was disappointed.

On one hand, you could examine that and say, 'Well, I think it's actually a good thing that people in our community are aware of the power of their vote and that they value it, even if they realise how they feel about that much too late.' The most frequent response I got from people when I encountered them was that they were not aware that there was an election or indeed that it was happening so soon, or that they did not realise enrolment was necessary so far ahead of the election.

In fact, many thought that they could enrol or update their enrolment up to or on election day. Of course, that would make sense. That is not a silly approach to have at all. In so many other aspects of our lives, we can and do register an interest up until a critical date. You would think that in a community that so highly prizes voting—and indeed here in Australia we make it compulsory, we value it so highly—every effort would be put in to ensure that everyone had every opportunity to enrol and to cast their vote.

I also had many constituents who believed that pre-poll voting centres perform the role of enabling enrolment and updating their details, and again that is not a silly assumption. In this age, given modern technology and the capacity to enter very large volumes of information and have it processed at a very fast speed compared to the manual processes that were once employed, it is again not beyond the bounds of one's understanding to conceive that enrolment up until election day, or at least very shortly before, would be achievable. We have obviously just gone through the process of the national census, and although it has had its problems in the past this time technologically it seemed to go quite well.

Obviously, that is a process where many more millions of people are entering large volumes of information, and that is being dealt with in a relatively short period of time. It does seem to me that in a much smaller pool of participants we should be able to get these things right using modern technology and actually be using technology to increase the opportunity for people to be engaged in the process. Of course, the primary way to engage is to enrol to vote and to be able to exercise your franchise.

Who does this move to reduce the enrolment window most affect? Of course, one group—and we have heard quite a few addresses about this—is young people. I reckon all of us could check the electoral rolls and see that very few 18 to 19 year olds are currently on the roll. In fact, I thank the commissioner for providing some information about that, and I might just quote her now. In her letter to parliamentarians she said:

We know that over one third of eligible 18 year olds (38.9%) and one quarter of eligible 18 to 24 year olds (25.4%) were not on the electoral roll at the time of the 2018 state election. Participation was also lowest among this age group, with only 76% of enrolled 18-24 year olds casting a vote, and younger voters reported the lowest levels of confidence about completing their ballot papers.

One would hope as we approach the next election that we will see those figures change and we will see more young people who have recently turned 18 or are even into their 19^th or 20^th years actually enrol to vote, but it is probably not the first thing most young people do when they turn 18. Maybe having a beer, maybe watching an R-rated movie, or at least not having to hide it from your parents, might outrank the rush to enrol to vote when you turn 18.

Of course, for me and, I imagine, for many people here, I relished the chance to fill out my enrolment declaration the second I was allowed, but I think we would agree that my interest and maybe the interest of those in this place in government systems and democracies may not be the norm certainly for a 17 or 18 year old.

But the vast majority of young people I meet are happy to vote or even enthusiastic about it. Contrary to popular opinion that the younger generation is entirely disengaged or apathetic or ignorant of politics, I find quite the opposite, at least in my electorate. I find that young people are tuned into issues such as climate change and education, gender equality, health, Aboriginal affairs and international affairs to name just a few.

When I give school tours to primary and secondary students and young leaders, I am constantly impressed at their level of knowledge and also their inquisitiveness, because to me a questioning mind is always more important than a rote recollection of facts. The capacity to ask why and how is critical to good government, constant improvement and accountability. I think we often underestimate the political and societal awareness of young people, or maybe we just fail to see it in the forums in which they are expressing these views, which might be different from the way that people like me in our 30s or beyond might communicate and share ideas.

I did read with great interest the Commissioner for Children and Young People's observations. Although they may seem a little different from what I am expressing here about the engagement of young people, I think we are hitting that same point of the urge to be able to engage in democratic processes. She writes:

Children and young people want to understand the systems they live in, know how to engage in the world around them, and acquire the skills they need to transition into adulthood. They recognise that their understanding of civics, and particularly their ability to participate in the state and federal elections, is central to being active citizens in Australia's democracy.

Young people have unique experiences, ideas and passions, and they want to be active members in their communities and in the democratic process that affect their lives. However, significant numbers of young people report making it through their years of schooling without being taught about South Australia's electoral process.

She goes on to describe how young people describe a lack of education or little education as one of many barriers to enrolment and to voting, which I actually think is incredibly sad. As I said, the young people I speak to do have views and do have opinions, but there are, clearly from what the commissioner is saying, barriers to their actually enrolling and then expressing those views and opinions.

It therefore seems bizarre to me that we would be limiting the period in which they could enrol and in which they could have some opportunity to be informed about how to get on the roll and be enabled to express their views and opinions through how they cast their vote at the ballot box. We are obviously depriving them of their democratic right by doing that or at least shortening the opportunity for it and, of course, I think that is a really negative result.

I was also interested to hear some of the direct quotes that the commissioner put in her letter from young people. I might just read one or two of them out. On the issue of the time period or reduction of the time period, one young person said, 'Giving people less time to enrol to vote will be detrimental to the numbers of young people who turn out to vote as I think many of us will miss the cut-off dates.'

Another young person says, 'Young people who are "on the fence" about voting may miss their chance. Young people with disabilities or other commitments could miss out too.' Another says it would mean that young people are more stressed about enrolling to vote. And another says, 'Honestly young people will be taken off guard and have less time to formulate opinions and make decisions.' Those are words directly from young people themselves.

The other group that this seriously affects in my view is new migrants. In Badcoe, there are a number of non-citizens and at each citizenship ceremony I have the great joy of meeting our newest citizens, which I thoroughly enjoy. Many, of course, enrol to vote on that very day that they become citizens. I see them busily filling out their enrolment forms before they head off for lunches and celebrations with their families.

But for others it is maybe not top of mind, and it is something they think they might get around to at some point in the future. So for some people, learning of a election for the very first time in their new home country and understanding that they need to enrol within two days of the issue of writs may be a bit much to comprehend.

I fear that those new voters run the risk of missing out on understanding that there is an election, about how they need to go about getting on the roll, about the fact that they even need to be on a roll. I have certainly had people express to me that they did not even realise that was a process. They thought that as soon as they were citizens they would be automatically added to the roll. The government has all of their information, and this enrolling to vote is a new concept to them. I fear that they may also end up missing out in this change.

So it is staggering to me that this measure is even being contemplated, considering that the ECSA election report of the 2018 election recommended the exact opposite. In fact, it was ECSA's top recommendation: the number one suggestion to us as a parliament was that the enrolment should be allowed up to and including polling day. I will quote from that. Recommendation 1 states:

That the Electoral Act (1985)…be amended to enable eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day. After claiming enrolment, these electors would be allowed to cast declaration votes which would not be admitted to the count until an enrolment investigation had been satisfactorily completed in the week after polling day.

That seems like a pretty reasonable suggestion and not particularly controversial at all. Yes, there is probably a bit of work that needs to be done to give practical effect to this recommendation, but instead of doing this work to achieve the recommendation of ECSA this government has decided to do a 180 and walk in the opposite direction. I am baffled as to what the logic is of depriving people of a right or a greater opportunity of accessing a right, rather than empowering them to receive the franchise, especially when it is the exact opposite of what the body that we entrust to make recommendations and to carry out our elections is recommending to us.

There are so many people who have fought so hard in this country over many decades to receive the right to vote, some of them are named in the tapestries around here and have their portraits around this place. Yet with this move, it would be instantly made more difficult for some of those cohorts that we should be most trying to engage, those being young people, who we want, as soon as they become adults, to bring into our democratic processes, ensure they understand them, understand their rights and their powers to influence public debate and the decisions that their government makes; and new migrants, who have come from different systems of government, with different understandings, maybe who have not been able to vote at all in the past, or who have had quite different governmental systems from those that we enjoy here in Australia.

They are the voices we should be most trying to empower, and the least we can do in order to achieve that is to make sure that they are aware that they can enrol and that they need to do that in order to exercise their vote. There are also a number of measures in the bill designed to devalue election day itself and essentially have an election fortnight or month. The bill includes a move to even just remove the function of the Electoral Commissioner to encourage voting at a polling booth on election day, which was a fairly fundamental function until now.

Personally, I like election day; I always have. As a reporter and one who has covered many elections across Australia in my career, as well as elections overseas, I always found it a delight and a commendation of our Australian system to see who were the first people to line up in the queue when it came to voting in an Australian election, those people who were most eager to vote, who got up early and came down and wanted to be first in line. Invariably, they were new migrants and a few young people.

New arrivals to our country were eager to cast a vote for the first time in their lives. Many were from war-torn nations around the world, casting their vote and exercising the right that maybe they did not think they would ever have in their lives. They were excited, eager and even amazed at their new-found right in their new nation. Some I spoke to in those queues had waited many, many years in our country for the chance to write on that little slip of paper and to cast a vote. Honestly, the huge smiles that I saw on people's faces—they had not even voted yet; they were just lining up to be able to go in and vote—have stayed with me over the years.

There are also young people in those queues. Yes, some young people may be a little more eager than others to vote for the first time, but I have always found in those queues that there are a few young people—mostly young women, I have to say—who are keen to take that next step into adulthood and to exercise their democratic right at the ballot box for the first time. That is really exciting to me, and I hope it is to other people in this place as well.

My opposition to this step to devalue election day is, of course, not purely about my own excitement about election days; it is about the impact of devaluing election day. As a person who deeply believes in the power of information and the power of public debate and the contest of ideas, cutting short an election day is abhorrent to me. It is like walking out of a movie halfway through. It is like reading half a book and then writing a review afterwards, even though you have only read half the book.

Clearly, it will be half-baked and ill informed, and maybe if one had read the remaining pages they might have changed their mind—or they might not have—but once that vote is cast a person cannot go back and cast it again later in light of new information. They cannot hear a new policy and change their mind and they cannot discover a fact they did not know before and come back and ask for a do-over.

Once a person votes they are declaring their position and then opting out of the pubic debate and their right to exercise their ultimate tool in that debate: their vote. That might be fine and they might be immoveable in their political views. Of course we know that many people are quite fixed and vote the same way election after election, and that is fine. It is good if people have a firm view and they have come to that position and are quite determined that they are going to vote in that way.

But there are many people—I understand it is somewhere between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of people—who do not know how they are going to vote until the election campaign starts and even right up until the day of the election. So I think it is a dangerous move to devalue election day because it de-incentivises engagement and it means that some people will cast a vote at a time of convenience, rather than at a time when they are fully informed and exposed to all the policies of the respective parties or candidates.

I do worry about this, particularly in the context of our current era of social media. What is happening now is really the much wider disintegration of messaging. Whereas a person may in the past have been able to open a newspaper or watch the TV news in the evening and have a fairly comprehensive idea of what the different policies were about different candidates or what different parties were putting forward, and they could consume that newspaper each day in the election campaign or watch the news each night, we know that that simply does not happen anymore.

We know that the circulations for newspapers are well down on what they used to be. We know that people are not watching the television news as much as they used to. We know that audience is ending up in social media instead and that so many more people are getting their messages through social media. I am certainly not anti social media, but I think you have to recognise what it actually means in terms of informing people.

We all know that there are algorithms that exist in social media and that each of our Facebook feeds gives us news and information that is similar to things that we have previously clicked on and previously liked. It means that, try as we might to get across the many different policies and ideas that are put forward by the many different candidates, those Facebook algorithms are going to reflect back to us the things we have liked in the past. They are not going to give us an unbiased or broad view of what is being put forward in an election campaign.

I think that is a real challenge for the voting public in terms of how they inform themselves of the different ideas that are being put forward and assess for themselves, rather than through the filter of what Facebook might want them to see, the policies that they find most valuable and the things that they want to vote for. Indeed, there is the risk that they will not even know about policies that are quite relevant to them or that they might be quite interested in or might want to compare and contrast against what others are serving up in an election environment. I think that is very dangerous. Needless to say, I, along with my colleagues, will be voting against the bill.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (12:51): I rise to make a contribution to the debate on this very important bill. It is a very important bill by virtue of the rights it seeks to take away from our citizens. I think that we take our democracy for granted at times. At times, we assume that we do not have to actually be here to protect or strengthen our democracy and that it will just be around for us when we need it.

Well, when you look overseas, that could not be further from the truth. Over the last 10 years, we have seen a decline in democracy across the world—a decline in liberal democracies and a decline in citizen participation in various nations. These are not just nations that we normally associate with what you might call either Third World republics or despotic countries but also the biggest democracy in the world, in a Western sense, namely, the United States.

There are an increasing number of reports coming out of America about individual states that are creating laws about the voting franchise to ensure that it minimises the opportunity for certain people to participate in the elections. In America, unfortunately some political parties have the view that, if you do not like the way people are voting, the best thing to do is not to change your policies or improve what you are doing but to make sure that those people who do not like what you are doing do not get a chance to vote.

It truly has been a campaign in America to minimise the franchise of African Americans, who generally speaking on most occasions would vote for the Democratic Party. In those states where Republicans hold the reins, and because of the unique way in which the American political system operates, and even though they have a federal election, the electoral rules for the federal elections are actually controlled by individual states. So they have electoral boundaries that are drawn in a way that minimises the impact or the effect of particular voter populations.

In fact, the Playmander has its origins in America, where I think it was called 'the salamander'. I cannot remember the member's name, but certainly the electorate was drawn in the shape of a salamander to make sure that a certain voting outcome was achieved in a particular state. I cannot remember which state—it was probably Alabama or Louisiana or one of those more progressive states in the United States that have a good record in democracy.

The point I am trying to make here is that laws drawn to reduce the voting franchise are, by their very nature, anti-democratic. They undermine one of the most fundamental rights in our democracy, in our society, and that is the right to vote. In my view, voting is not just a right but a responsibility. It is important that we all participate in that process to make sure that people make their contribution towards protecting and strengthening our democracy.

If it is a responsibility of ours to make sure we do participate in the democratic process, then it is incumbent on governments of any persuasion to make sure that we make it as easy as possible for people to participate. The reality is that people comply with laws and do the right thing when you make it as easy as possible for them to do so. These proposed changes to the law will make it harder for people to do the right thing, for people to participate and they will make it much more difficult for people to do the right thing, which is to participate in the electoral process. I am not suggesting that the electoral process is the start and end of our political process, but it is certainly an important part in order to engage people in that process.

This proposed provision to close off the electoral roll sooner can only have one effect: to reduce the number of people who will be eligible to vote on election day. That is simply the only impact it can have. It will have the impact of disenfranchising a whole range of people in our community from participating. Some of the effects have been covered by the other speakers very well, but it is important to emphasise that, if passed by this parliament, this bill will have the impact of reducing the capacity of people in my electorate to participate in the electoral process.

Who are some of these people? Certainly young people are generally more mobile, and therefore we need to make sure they are on the electoral roll. People going on to the electoral roll for the first time are very important. We have heard a number of speakers talk about the declining number of younger people enrolling, which is sad to hear because the young people I speak with are fully engaged in community life and civic life and are keen to exercise their political rights. We need to make sure we make it easier.

For a number of years, and I assume it still happens, the Electoral Commission participated in a program of going into schools, speaking to year 11s and 12s, and getting young people to start enrolling. Even though their enrolment does not become active until they are 18, at 17 they can put their names on the roll ready to vote, and it is a very good thing to do that. That is an example of doing the right thing and making sure we maximise the capacity of people to participate in our electoral process.

We have First Nations people, and I have a significant First Nations community in my electorate. This bill would have the effect of discriminating against that group of people by closing off the rolls early. By doing that, we are setting the electoral pendulum back prior to the referendum of 1966-67. We are going back to the days where we said, if you were a First Nations person, you should not be participating in our political process. That is the effect of this bill.

We have mentioned people with disabilities and other vulnerable people in our community—older people and people who, for a whole range of reasons, would need the extra time to make sure they could participate. Another group I would like to mention is new citizens. If we want new citizens to fully integrate into our community, engaging them in the political process is extremely important because, when they exercise their right to vote, they feel a greater sense of belonging to this country, their new country. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.