Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 14 October 2021.)

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (17:58): I rise to speak on this bill. This is not the first time that I and many members of this chamber have spoken on a bill that goes to many of the issues covered in the bill that we have before us. We are in the last handful of days of sitting before the election. In fact, after we complete today, I think there might only be five scheduled days left unless it is the will of the chamber to come back for more sittings after that, which is of course always possible. But, with five scheduled regular days of sitting to go, we are seeing the government trying to change how the election will operate and the rules that govern our election.

A bill very similar to this was rejected in this place quite some time ago, and here we are again with some similar provisions being prosecuted again in this bill. Some of these changes stem from recommendations the Electoral Commissioner has made. Some of the changes do not stem from recommendations the Electoral Commissioner has made, and there are very important changes and recommendations the Electoral Commissioner made that are nowhere to be found in this bill.

We are concerned, as was discussed with the change to the regime regulating corflutes. We are literally, in time, in the last quarter—if this was a football game—before the election, and the government, with only five sitting days to go after this, is seeking to change the rules governing that election. The government has had, since the Electoral Commissioner handed down its report, 971 days. The report was handed down on 28 February, so as of today it is 971 days since the Electoral Commissioner handed down the report, and we as legislators have only been asked this week—today with second readings and, by the time this is perhaps voted on on Thursday, with three days after that to go to make what are substantial changes.

I am going to talk today primarily about one of the changes that we find most objectionable in this bill. What the government is seeking to do in this bill is to make it harder for people to enrol to vote. It reduces the time that you have to get on the electoral roll. I will reflect back: on 28 February 2019, 971 days ago today, the Electoral Commissioner handed down recommendations for suggested legislative change that is up to this parliament to decide whether or not to implement.

The very first recommendation on page 15 of the Electoral Commissioner's recommendations was to change the law to allow enrolments up to and on the day of an election. This occurs in other jurisdictions—off the top of my head I think principally Northern Territory and Queensland—where someone who claims an entitlement to be enrolled to vote, but is not on the electoral roll, can cast a declaration vote up until the polls close on the day of the election, have that declaration vote put aside and have it adjudicated whether they properly had a claim to be enrolled to vote and, if so, that vote to be included in the count.

That recommendation—the very first recommendation from the South Australian Electoral Commissioner, in its report 971 days ago—does not appear in this legislation—the number one recommendation. Instead, and completely in the opposite direction from what the Electoral Commissioner recommended, what we are seeing proposed in this bill is a reduction in the time that you have to get on the electoral roll.

So not only has the number one, the first, recommendation, been completely ignored by this Attorney-General and this government but they have gone completely the opposite way. They have looked at the Electoral Commissioner's first recommendation from 971 days ago and decided, actually, we are going to do completely the opposite: we are not going to enfranchise as many people as possible to exercise their democratic right to vote, we are going to make it more difficult for people to vote, we are going to reduce the time you have to enrol.

This of and in itself, this per se, is reason enough, probably, to oppose the whole bill—because of this one completely and utterly anti-democratic item. That does not even take into account, as I outlined before, that the government is, 971 days after it was handed down, only now, with a few sitting days left to go, seeking to change the rules. Not only are they seeking to change the rules, but they are seeking to change the rules to disenfranchise South Australians who may want to exercise their democratic rights.

This is of huge concern to many of us in the Labor Party. We firmly believe that a thriving and vibrant democracy requires as many people as possible to participate, as many people who may feel the impact of decisions of government or to decide who their government is. The Electoral Commissioner recommended to increase that franchise by allowing enrolment up to and on the day of the election; this bill goes in completely the opposite direction.

We have other concerns with the way the government has chosen to interpret some of the other recommendations of the Electoral Commissioner. Putting things like classes of people who can vote by telephone in regulations rather than in the legislation is a concern of ours. There are things that the Electoral Commissioner has recommended that may help with the conduct of an election, but we think they are so fatally compromised by just how late it has been left, and moreover by how undemocratic it is and how contrary to the recommendation about voter enfranchisement by the time that you have to enrol, that it in many ways fatally compromises the rest of this bill.

In an ideal world, what we would have seen is this bill come in for proper consideration on any of the 971 days since the commissioner's report was handed down. The government put in some of these measures but put them in a bill that included optional preferential voting in the lower house. That was the modus operandi from the Attorney-General: to take some elements of what the Electoral Commissioner has proposed and then put in a pet favourite thing that the Attorney-General thinks will have some sort of partisan political advantage come the next election.

That is what happened last time, with the optional preferential voting tacked onto other things that were from recommendations. This chamber categorically rejected that, rejected the Attorney-General, under the cloak of some sort of respectability of having Electoral Commissioner's recommendations, then trying to sneak in other things that the Attorney thought were to the Liberal Party's electoral advantage.

Here we are; it is groundhog day all over again. We have some elements of what the Electoral Commissioner has suggested, but they are trying to sneak in, once again, things that they think will be to their electoral advantage. Obviously, the Attorney-General thinks that the fewer people who are not on the roll who vote the better it is for the Liberal Party.

The only reason that you would put in a recommendation that is completely contrary, the opposite to what the Electoral Commissioner thinks, is if you thought it was in your best political interests. Certainly, we are not prepared to entertain that whatsoever. We will listen with interest to other contributions, but to disenfranchise voters in the way that the Attorney has proposed in here is something we just will not stand for.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.