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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-08-25 Daily Xml
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Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 10 June.)

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (21:24): I rise to speak on the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021. I have got myself ready to speak on this a few times now. I have been through my notes, and hopefully I have made any appropriate corrections to what seems like an eternity ago. As I was listening to previous debates, it seemed like a re-run of Groundhog Day.

The Attorney moved a bill that was very similar to this bill late last year. One of the key concerns raised about that other bill was the changing of the rules governing elections so close to an election. Frankly, at this point I think it is actually astounding that the Attorney, after hearing the concerns of members in this chamber and the other in relation to that bill, has decided to bring another bill, largely unchanged, back in after these other changes were rejected.

The Attorney might have been forgiven if the Electoral Commission had only recently published their report, but this report was tabled by the Attorney on 28 February 2019 which, if I am correct, is more than two years ago. In fact, as of Tuesday this week, it was 909 days ago. For more than two years, the Attorney has sat on this report and in the last-minute shadow of an election she is trying to change the rules.

I am pleased that this bill does not contain optional preferential voting. This is a failed thought bubble from the Attorney-General, and indeed the government, which is aimed at killing off the possibility of any new independent candidates in a future election. In fact, it will make it difficult for many candidates in a marginal seat, where, as we know, often elections are won or lost. That is again democracy playing out.

Of course, thinking about these types of things always brings me back to my journey and that of many others in this place. I often talk about this journey to people in my community. My election was a by-election, so conditions and timing—very, very different, of course—but my election was a nine-vote victory. There were several counts and recounts and rethrows of preferences in order to get a final result, and things went up and down and whittled away and changed throughout that time.

Can I tell you, I have met the five people that it takes to win an election by nine votes hundreds of times. In fact, in the early days, whenever I went out for dinner somewhere close to my electorate or in my electorate, I would have people call me over to a table. Not understanding how nine votes works, the people would say, 'We are your nine people, there are nine here at the table, this is your nine votes'. But really, it is five, isn't it, because if they do not vote for you they vote against you, so that is the swing over.

It is so important that we are able to have that opportunity to say, 'Okay, I like this person. I really don't want this person to win, but if I can't have this person then I'm happy to have this person,' and put that in order and submit that electoral voting slip and make that your decision on the day in order to be able to dictate what happens at the end of the day. I think it is the best way for us to get a good array of candidates.

I have had many people argue with me why we should not have preferential voting. Often, if I can explain that if you have something like 15 or 20 people—and I cannot quite remember, but I think it was nine or 10 who were standing in my by-election—and you only had first-past-the-post, you could get someone up on 8 per cent of the vote. That is, if you had everyone else get less than that. Of course, it is a bit ridiculous, but you could have about 8 per cent of the vote to get you past the post in a populist decision based on nonsense policies that can never be delivered, and I think that would be a great shame. In the bill, we talk about—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

Ms COOK: Honestly, I am allowed to speak. We are on the bill, Attorney.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

Ms COOK: Yes, we are on the bill, and I am talking about the journey to get here. You can interject and say, 'Oh, we're on the bill now,' but honestly, the whole thing is about the bill, my friend—the whole thing. You do not need to interject. It is a bit of a waste of time.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: I haven't objected. Keep going.

Ms COOK: Thanks for your permission. Some highlights of this include reducing the amount of time to enrol to vote, allowing any class of voter prescribed in regulation to vote over the telephone and allowing the counting of pre-poll votes before the close of polls. These are all interesting things.

In terms of enrolling to vote, the first recommendation of the 2018 election report, which was handed down more than 830 days ago, was, 'That the Electoral Act (1985) (the Act) be amended to enable eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day.' I would have thought that you cannot miss it. It is recommendation No. 1 and further explanation takes up the entirety of page 15.

The rate of enrolment of young voters is declining. At the 2018 election, 38.9 per cent of 18 year olds were not enrolled, along with 25.4 per cent of voters between 18 and 24. I do not know if it is a deliberate tactic by the government because they do not think they can win the votes of young people.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: We already have.

Ms COOK: No, you haven't. Their policies are irrelevant to young people, and maybe that is the case, so we have a government that is not persuaded to try to support or encourage this enrolment. Not only have they decided to go against the recommendation of the Electoral Commission but they have gone in the other direction.

They are reducing the amount of time to enrol to vote—that is right, making it harder for young people to get enrolled to vote in future elections. I will reach out to all the enormous database of young people that I have to explain to them that it is very clear to me that the government is not encouraging you to do it at your own pace. You are getting restricted. You are getting shut down.

In the six days before the 2018 election, almost 25,000 South Australians enrolled to vote. That is enough voters to fill an entire seat. If you assume that this was evenly spread over the six days, that is more than 4,000 new enrolments a day. If the government has their way, this would conceivably see 16,000 South Australians miss out on the opportunity to vote. Those of you in seats with young people should be worried about this.

South Australia has a proud history of universal suffrage. Unfortunately, the Liberal Party has a shameful history of denying or seeking to diminish the votes of South Australians. The Playmander meant that South Australians who lived in country areas had votes that were worth double that of city residents. Alternatively, the ironically named 'fairness clause', which sought to emulate the Playmander but in a less obvious manner, actually achieved the exact opposite of what the Liberal Party said its intentions were.

Here we see yet another example of the Liberal Party of South Australia trying to disenfranchise voters, presumably for their own gain, because why would you do it if it were not for your own gain? It is shameful. In recent days we have heard reports about the Liberal Party taking a right wing American approach—I should have corrected that because it is actually in recent months—and seeking to actively recruit from highly conservative outside groups.

We have seen the damage this has done to the Liberal Party in other Australian jurisdictions, and we wish them well in their endeavours. Actually, we have watched how this has been playing out and obviously I am pretty pleased with the way you are going about it because it is taking up a lot of your time and creating a lot of internal angst—really perhaps you should leave it alone. But it is clear that the Americanisation and Republicanisation of the South Australian Liberal Party started before this recent hyperconservative recruitment drive.

Since the defeat of President Trump, American Republicans in many states have moved laws to suppress voters and make it harder for many people to participate in the democratic process. The Washington Post reported in March that no less than 43 states had proposed at least 250 laws to restrict access to voting. I do not think it is a positive way to express to your electorate that you are trying to encourage them to participate in the democratic process.

There are many fine attributes of the United States and its democracy. In fact, our own system, the Westminster system, is described as a 'washminster system'—in that we have a cross between the Westminster and the American democracies—but we should not seek to emulate the recent moves that erode democratic rights.

Australia and the United States both struggled for many decades to ensure proper voting rights for their citizens. Many Aboriginal Australians were denied the right to vote from the early days of Federation until the 1960s. By reducing the time to enrol, we risk disenfranchising many groups: young first-time voters, new Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and others. We should be looking to expand participation in our representative democracy and not go in the opposite direction.

In regard to assisted voting, this was used for sight-impaired electors in South Australia for the first time in 2018 using electronically assisted software called VoteAssist. The Electoral Commissioner said it was successful and welcomed by vision-impaired electors. The problem was that it was very costly and changes were made in parliament late enough that it needed to be rushed. As a result, it was only used by a small number—I believe about 100 voters.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

Ms COOK: Yes. I note that this provision was added to the act and commenced in June just before the last election, so June 2017. We are now in August and even if this new bill is rushed through this chamber and the other, it will commence much closer to the next election than these other changes that occurred prior to the last election in 2017.

I think everyone in this place supports the idea that voters, particularly voters with disability, have equity in access. There is no argument. Of course, as someone who goes on about this verbatim all the time, pestering my colleagues about issues around equity in access and true democracy in our community, we have to ensure that nobody faces a barrier to vote, but I think that in leaving it so late as well, we are now causing problems. We are now setting up some problems for the future.

Under the current postal system, many voters who were overseas struggled to have their votes counted on time. I suspect the 2022 election will have far fewer voters overseas who are attempting to submit their vote by post because many people have come home. It will be interesting to see, in fact, what the difference is this time. I am sure the expat polling booths are going to be nowhere near as high use as they have been in the past. It is a great shame, I guess.

The Electoral Commission also prefers telephone-assisted voting rather than the specifically designed computer terminals with VoteAssist software to reduce the cost of a wider rollout. They are noble ambitions but the problem is that the wording of the bill does not actually mention people with disability, with the exception of sight-impaired electors. There are many other people with disability for whom I wish to make sure that they are taken into consideration in regard to all changes.

Finally, I will speak to the concerns around the counting of pre-poll votes before the closing of the polls. Knowing how many votes have gone to which candidates before election day does have the potential, if those vote counts are leaked, to have a real impact on how voters vote. The government claims that protections will be put in place via regulation to stop the vote counting becoming public knowledge.

The problem with that is that we have no detail. I have debated other bills in this place about which I have concern about leaving very important details like this to regulation. I understand it makes it difficult to change if you embed it in the legislation; I acknowledge that. However, I do think we could have looked at this bill and put some of the guidelines in and made some changes that would give people a little bit of confidence.

The problem is that I am not sure the government will get it right. The government has made its fair share of mistakes, and it can easily change the rules without an opportunity to be reviewed by the parliament, and that is concerning. The opposition would be much more comfortable, I am sure, if the government had set out the protections in the bill so we could see what those protections are actually proposing. I will be listening in through committee, and I am sure we will have questions regarding that. Hopefully, they will be spelt out for us so that there is at least a documented record of that within parliament.

When the opposition was briefed on the bill, the Attorney-General's Department could not actually outline the protections at that point, but I hope that now they have had time to pull those together and are able to express them for us. Subsequent communications really only pointed to the safeguards New Zealand had in relation to the early counting of pre-poll votes. The one-line explanation that I understand was given was: 'In preparing regulations regard will be had to the safeguards set out in the New Zealand legislation.' I guess we will be watching that.

We are being asked to accept what is essentially New Zealand's model on this, except for the key safeguards that are protections already set out in the New Zealand legislation. If they can set it out, why can't we? I do have other reservations, such as the Electoral Commissioner having decision-making power for misleading information being stripped and given to SACAT or removing the function of the Electoral Commissioner to encourage people to vote on the day.

I will go back to where I started and say that this is being moved too close to the election. It is 909 days since the report. Any changes made now will not have time before the next election. I think this is a bit of trying to pick and choose which reform to bring on to benefit the government that is currently in power. I think it is something that needs to be done in the early parts of an election term, so that it can be bedded down, looked at and debated properly and so that time can be put in place for everybody to become accustomed to it.

I think that Jack Lang, a past Premier from New South Wales, once said, 'Always back a horse called self-interest,' and this one stinks of self-interest.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! It is getting late. The banter across the chamber will cease from all. Member for West Torrens, you have the call.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (21:44): Thank you for your protection from the Attorney-General's insults, sir. It is getting pretty petty, but we have come to expect that over the last 20 years. Since 2002, we have had the member for Bragg. It has been a lovely journey.

It has been my experience in this parliament over the last 24 years that, whenever one political party or another has attempted to change the electoral laws, it is dripping in self-interest, and I think this is no different. The legislation before us is a thinly veiled, blatant attempt by the government to make it difficult for people to enrol to vote, to access a ballot to cast their vote. I think that is reprehensible, and I think we are seeing this growing phenomena around the world where conservative parties believe that the people they represent are people to be feared, and that the easiest and fastest method to deal with that fear is to disenfranchise them.

This parliament is standing on the shoulders of some giants. I will give you an example: Steele Hall. Joan Hall was in parliament here yesterday. I have a lot of respect for Joan Hall. I think she is a lovely person. Her husband undid the Playford malapportionment in this state, the Playmander, as it was called at the time, knowing full well that it would cost him the premiership and cost him the election. Let us contemplate that for a moment, contemplate coming in here and passing legislation, knowing that you would lose.

The Labor Party and Liberal Party now are fighting over a smaller and smaller share of the vote. Neither political party has achieved over 50 per cent of the primary vote for nearly two decades. Don Dunstan received 53 per cent of the primary vote in this state and lost an election. Members opposite at the last election received a swing against them on primary votes from 44 per cent at the 2014 election down to about 36 per cent I think at the last election. Over two-thirds of South Australians voted for someone other than the Liberal Party; same for the Labor Party. That vote is shrinking, so every vote is ever so precious, and there are few to squander and many to gain.

All the legislation that the Attorney-General is moving is based on one premise: how does she maximise the vote for the Liberal Party? Steele Hall did not have that in his mind, Don Dunstan did not have that in his mind, John Bannon and Chris Sumner did not have that in their minds when they lost an election in 1989 on a two-party preferred basis and brought in the fairness clause in an attempt to have the party that achieved a majority of the two-party preferred vote—

Mr Brown: The late fairness clause.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The late fairness clause. Over time, that no longer served its purpose and became actually anti-democratic. But, again, there was this sense of, regardless of what we think of each other, the public's will is sovereign, it is the most important thing we have to implement, and winning and losing is just part of the deal. If you want to be in parliament you win some, you lose some and you respect it.

What we are seeing now in some democracies is a refusal to accept the outcome of an election, delegitimising elections, and in other jurisdictions making it harder to vote. In the United States, voting is on a Tuesday. Why? Working people have to work, and it is harder to get to a polling booth. You have seen the scenes on our TVs where there are queues for hours. What we are seeing here in South Australia is people wanting greater amenity when they vote. They want to vote by post, they want to vote early. We have seen, wherever there are pre-polling stations, a greater clamour for pre-polling—they want to get it over and done with and vote early. Hopefully if they are angry they will vote early; that will be the hope we have. Either way, people want to express their democratic rights.

There are some people who think it is undemocratic to compel people to vote. I disagree with them. We do not compel them to vote; we compel them to think about who they are going to vote for. Whether or not they complete a formal ballot is entirely up to them, but we do require them to turn up to a polling station and have their name crossed off and think about who they are going to vote for. The fine is still $20, I think; I do not think it has changed any time recently, and there is no proposal to increase that.

I think what the Attorney-General is seeking to do here is a form of disenfranchisement. I think it is the Attorney-General trying to make it more difficult for people who might not vote for her form of conservatism, make it harder for them to enrol to vote, harder to get a ballot. Why would we do that to our neighbours and friends? Why would we do that? Why would we not do everything we could to make it easier to access a ballot? That is the principle of democracy.

In the end, it is not as if the opposition are arguing for the violent overthrow of the government. We are Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. We believe in this system. We are not here to overturn it: we are here to participate in it. Disenfranchising people is undemocratic, and that is what this legislation does.

I have never been a supporter of a bill of rights because I think bills of rights impose one generation's views and morality on other generations, but I am starting to think that maybe we need one. Maybe we do need a set of constitutional rights, enshrined in a constitution by referendum, that cannot be undone: the right to access a ballot, the right to enrol early, to be given time to enrol, given time to access a postal ballot, doing everything we can as a state to ensure that no matter who you are voting for you get access to express your will.

The great thing about democracy as opposed to other systems of government is its equality. Rich people have money, but in terms of their vote they have only one. Poor people do not have money, but they still have the same vote as a billionaire. That is the beauty of our democracy, and that is what people in some parts of the conservative world support. Disenfranchise people from voting, make it harder for them to vote, and who do you disenfranchise? Generally it is working people; generally—and this is a broad generalisation and probably unfair—they vote for people who are centre or centre left, and you disenfranchise them on the basis of making it harder to get an application for a postal vote, making it harder to change their enrolment. I have to say, I think that is abhorrent.

In most democracies voting is voluntary. There are only a few jurisdictions in the world where it is compulsory, and that compulsion is something I support. The reason I support it is not because I think it changes the outcome of an election—I think the outcome of an election will be the same whether you have compulsion or otherwise—but because what compulsion does do is give us the ability to campaign from the centre, to win the broad, sweeping mandate of reasonable people paying attention who are interested in the future of their state.

However, democracy is not perfect and sometimes it is ugly and imperfect, and that imperfection generates a vast number of anomalies and outcomes. Those anomalies could be either extreme left or extreme right outcomes. When a moderate centre right party brings in legislation like this—which I think undermines the fairness in our democracies—what we are seeing is Trumpism at its extreme, a small portion of that creeping into the thinking of the government: how can we manipulate the electoral laws to benefit us because we have a majority in the house? That is the Playmander. That is gerrymandering.

Trying to change the rules at the very end of the game, months before an election, with only 14 days of parliament left for scrutiny is undemocratic. There is no question that the parliament has the power to do it. There is no question that it will be enforceable at the next election. But the question is: is it right? Is it right to change the rules on the public this close to an election? No, it is not.

The government have a number of amendments to the legislation—not ones we are debating now—so they would all fit this mould. Banning election posters, and let me be very clear about this, has nothing to do with amenity or pollution. That has nothing to do with it at all. The government have made a decision that they believe it will benefit them.

This bill has absolutely nothing to do with the intention of broadening our democratic principles but because the government think it will benefit them. I have grave concerns about this legislation and the motives of the Attorney-General and the motives of the government, so we will be voting against this legislation and doing all we can, using our democratic rights, to try to stop it. I fear we will be unsuccessful.

But again I say to the younger members of the Liberal Party, the ones who hope to have long, prosperous careers once this Premier is gone and this Deputy Premier is gone—remembering the Deputy Premier is in the twilight of her career, the peak of her career being in 2002—that you better hope you are in office forever because, if this type of partisanship enters our mainstream thinking about manipulating the electoral laws to suit one party or another, what is the natural consequence of that type of legislation?

Well, there is a reaction and ultimately one day, whether at this upcoming election or the following elections, there will be a reversal. What could be even worse is that the pendulum swings the other way even further. That is why we should not be doing this.

We have a level of independence in our electoral system. We have an independent electoral commissioner. That commissioner can direct the Premier or the opposition leader to apologise, to make corrections to statements, and the public have faith in them. We have institutions that people believe in. Where there are cracks in the institutions, these things do not happen quickly or suddenly; they happen over time and then they accelerate.

In the United States, for example, there has been a whittling down of trust and faith in democratic institutions to the point now where people believe that the President of the United States has been illegitimately elected. That is a tragedy for Western democracies and the Western world because the one great superpower left, which has at its core liberty and freedoms in its constitution, is now at war with itself because of hyperpartisanship.

How did that start? It started in very small measures, moved in the 1950s and 1960s when absolute power was wielded by politicians who were trying to get absolute power for themselves, changing electoral laws. Whether it was segregation, whether it was Jim Crow laws, whether it was voting suppression, these things had consequences.

Making it harder for people to enrol to vote is not Jim Crow or segregation. I am not saying it is, but what is the purpose of it? What is the purpose of making it more difficult to enrol to vote? Why the shorter window? What is the democratic principle behind that? I will tell you what it is: it is to restrict enrolment. It is very simple. That is what it is about. It is about nothing else, because the government has made a judgement that a certain cohort of people are more likely to vote for their opponents than for them, so make it harder for them to enrol. It is just an algorithm they are following.

We cannot allow that. We cannot allow that in a democracy. One vote, one value—it is a very simple principle. The secret ballot was invented in this state by Commissioner Boothby, and we named a federal jurisdiction after him. There used to be the point where people would vote in Western democracies by turning up to a public place, calling out their name and saying publicly, 'I vote for X,' or, 'I vote for Y.' You could be beaten or ostracised. Indeed, we were just talking the other day about the word 'ostracised', which is a Greek word. The ancient Athenians would choose every year to ostracise a member of parliament who they thought was most susceptible to corruption and throw them out of the system, so they were ostracised.

One vote one value has developed over a long period of time and I fear these changes empower people to make other changes that cascade to this place being used to draft antidemocratic laws. We are better to leave the system as it is. The government will say, 'You got rid of the fairness clause.' I submit to the parliament that the fairness clause was not about fairness, it was about attempting to turn a redundant two-party system that obviously had three or four parties in it, it was trying to manipulate an outcome that was not the basis of what was actually happening in the electorate.

Think of the absurdity of this: what if the Labor Party in 2014 only contested 24 seats and won those 24? How would we win the two-party preferred vote? It is impossible, we would not be able to, we would lose the two-party preferred vote. Yet the fairness clause would have instructed the commission to draw boundaries to ensure the party that won 23 seats in that election would be the government at the next one. That is why the fairness clause was redundant because it does not make any sense anymore. It only made sense when there were two parties. It makes no sense anymore to have that clause in place.

What the government is now doing is using that excuse of what was a common terminology around fairness to say, 'They changed that, so we are changing this. And we are not just going to change this, we are going to change a whole series of other democratic principles because we think it suits us.' I think this is undemocratic and the government should not do it. They should withdraw it and should not attempt to proceed with it. I think the upper house will hopefully give it the attention it deserves, which is to reject it.

Our party had a platform of abolishing the upper house because we thought elected governments had the right to introduce their mandates. I am now a strong supporter of the house of review. Think of the genius of it, the genius of the delayed election and the staggered elections of the upper houses, whether it is in the United States Senate, which our Senate is modelled on, or the Australian Senate or the Legislative Council—22 members with half elected every eight years.

One party wins an election, tries to make a massive change and the minority are represented in the upper house, protected through previous mandates. It is a genius system of government that has served us well and has given us incremental change since federation and has built one of the great miracles of the Western world, this country. When you tinker with it to try to benefit one side over another, whether it is Labor or Liberal, you erode the ability for us to continue to provide that miracle to the Australian people. So do not do it. Like my mother used to say, 'Just don't do it.'

This is a mistake and the government may very well rue the day that they started playing with this sort of stuff because there will be people less reasonable than me in the Labor Party in future generations who may have the winner-takes-all attitude of the government and may start making all sorts of changes to our democratic institutions and our laws. If they have a majority in the parliament, they can do it, and there is no constitutional protection for anyone.

I say to the Attorney-General: be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. If you politicise electoral laws the way in which the Attorney-General is attempting to do now, as with other legislation before, you will rue the consequences. The beneficiaries will be the elite and the powerful. People will suffer, as will our institutions. When our institutions suffer we become ungovernable, and we start having the division and the problems that we see in the United States and other countries where democracy is in retreat and totalitarianism and authoritarianism is on the march, and we cannot allow that. So leave this legislation alone—do not pass it.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (22:04): I rise today in opposition to the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021. This bill is heading in the wrong direction. When we do reform, when we consider reform, it should be for the progression of democracy; it should not be to reduce it. A high turnout to vote gives credibility to the outcome. It shows high democratic health. That is what we should be seeking. That is what we should be aiming for.

As I rise to speak in opposition to this bill as the member for Ramsay, the shadow minister for multicultural affairs and as a former minister for youth, I express my concerns about the capacity of the proposed changes to disenfranchise or remove the rights of eligible citizens to cast a vote at the next election. I believe this bill will reduce the opportunity to vote, for young people, for culturally and linguistically diverse communities and for those people who find themselves itinerant or of no fixed address. Like many who have spoken before me, I am astounded. I am astounded at the timing of this bill, astounded at the focus of the bill and at the fact that this bill is the exact opposite to recommendations handed down by the Electoral Commission in the review of 2018 election.

I particularly want to concentrate on a section of this bill, where we had a report saying that eligible electors should be able to enrol up to and even on polling day. Yet this bill proposes to reduce it from six days, after the issue of the writs, to two days to enrol after the announcement of the writ. You have to ask yourself why. Why is this government reducing people's ability to exercise their vote? Why is this government giving less and less time for people to be on the roll? Let's remind ourselves that, in 2018, almost 25,000 South Australians enrolled to vote in the six days before polling day. That is one seat—one seat, with our 47 seats here—in the house.

We know that people enrol after the writs are issued; 25,000 people did it at the last election. We know that people move house, that people move state. People come onto the electoral roll because they have turned 18 or they have become a citizen. I want them to vote. I want them to be embraced by the full level of democracy that we have here in South Australia because democracy is precious. Democracy needs to be nourished and supported, and this bill does the exact opposite.

Let's talk about young people. For many people, it is rare that they are thinking about enrolling to vote just after their 18th birthday. It is probably not one of the first things on their mind. There might be a few other things they want to do when they turn 18. So I guess it was not surprising when 38.9 per cent of 18 year olds were not enrolled at the 2018 election.

Remember that we have set election dates in South Australia, so we think everyone knows when the election is. We know when it is: we have about 200 days to go. But the vast majority of South Australians are not thinking about when the next election is. It is certainly shown to us by this result that 38.9 per cent of 18 year olds had not even enrolled, nor had more than 25 per cent of voters in South Australia who are between 18 and 24.

When we reduce the time in which people can enrol after the writs are used from six days to two days, this will reduce the ability for young people to get on the roll. When we think about this reform and when we think about what is proposed, we look at what other jurisdictions are doing, and guess what? They have gone completely in the opposite direction.

Let me talk a little bit about New Zealand, Victoria and New South Wales. They have made changes in recent years; they have made reform to address falling participation. They, of course, have announced when there will be a date for the closure of rolls, and they have continued to do that, but they enable people to enrol after the close of rolls. They consider it a savings provision.

What this means in New South Wales, Victoria and New Zealand is if you turn up to vote, you vote. It encourages participation. We do not even know in South Australia how many people turned up to vote in 2018 and were turned away, because we do not capture that data. We are not even capturing how many people were disenfranchised at our last election, and yet we are proposing to reduce it even further. This is not democracy. This is not us leading democracy reform and health. This is about us playing around with people's ability to tell us where they see the future should go for our state.

Recommendation 1 of the Electoral Commission of South Australia's election report talks about 'Enrolment up to and on polling day'. The recommendation is:

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 to make sense to me. That seems to be positive reform. This recommendation quotes the changes that were made in New South Wales and New Zealand. It also talks about Queensland and Victoria.

Within this, it talks about the success of this reform and it measures that success. We have seen a significant increase in voters who have made use of this provision in New South Wales, from 20,960 people in 2011 to 41,978 in 2015; and in Victoria, from 34,546 in 2010 to 50,653 in 2014. In New Zealand, where late enrolment has been in place longer, there has been an even more significant rise in enrolments after the close of rolls, from 35,363 in 2005 to 130,757 in 2017. This is seen as success, this is seen as a positive way forward, and this is what the Electoral Commission of South Australia sought legislative change for, to bring South Australia into line with other jurisdictions to have access to this. So I am not sure if the Attorney read the same report that we all saw or she just chose to ignore it or actually there is another rationale here: to have fewer people vote.

What I think would be more important is not to just accept this recommendation that was made in the report but for us to seriously take on the educational role of encouraging people to vote and enrol early. Tell them about how to vote. Tell them why we make decisions and why we have democracy. What would have been really great in this bill is to have an encouragement to have an education program for new voters, but we see none of that. What we see is us going the opposite way.

The Commissioner for Children and Young People has written to our shadow attorney-general raising these concerns and expressing the fact that young people particularly want information about the electoral process: how to enrol to vote and how to cast a vote. As she says, 'Democracy works best when citizens actively engage with and participate in decision-making.'

What we should be talking about in this reform are the barriers to people enrolling to vote—the practical barriers, the cultural barriers and the attitudinal barriers. Let's remind ourselves that 25,000 people enrolled in that six-day period. There is work to be done here. There is work through education and there is work through understanding the democratic process. Young people want to participate. They are interested and I think at this next election we should think about what we have all faced, but particularly young people—the challenge of COVID, and what they thought, leaving school and becoming adults, their life might look like.

We have seen social events cancelled. We have seen sporting events cancelled. We have seen community events cancelled. The hospitality and retail industries particularly have had a dramatic impact where often young people might start their first job. Others would be looking to travel and that has been stopped as well. So I think they are going to want to have a say about how this economy looks post COVID—what the plans are and what the future is—as we approach the new normal. It is more imperative than ever before that young people are encouraged to enrol to vote and to vote, yet this bill takes us in the entire different direction.

I have had the opportunity to attend many, many citizenship ceremonies. In fact, my husband got his citizenship back in June and it was one of the proudest days of his life. What we see at those citizenship ceremonies are not only people pledging their loyalty to Australia but people knowing that they have the opportunity to vote and that their vote will be counted, and for many people who become citizens of our country, it is the first time they vote—the first time they vote.

They know that there is compulsory voting here. They know that their vote will be counted. They know that they trust in the system of how those votes will be tallied, but let's make sure they know when the election is on. Let's make sure they have actually voted. As excited as they were to receive citizenship, not everyone goes and fills out their form straightaway.

These are our proud new Australians. We want to encourage them to make sure that their voice is heard. Once again, where is the educational package here in this reform of electoral voting in South Australia to encourage people of our diverse communities, to understand the voting process, to understand that we now have set election dates for our state election every four years, to understand the difference between voting in a federal election and a state election?

I am often asked this question by not only my constituents but many of the groups I connect with and spend time with because they are not always clear about what they are going to be asked and how they actually fill out the ballot form. There is a lot of work for us to do as a nation to make sure people understand our democracy and feel confident in how they participate.

By closing that window from six days to two days, we say to people not on the roll, 'It's too late. If you have not thought about it, your vote is not important to us. If you have moved and not changed your address, if you have moved from interstate and come to South Australia, if you are a new citizen or if you are a young person voting for the first time and you have not put the enrolment in, it's too late. You can't vote in South Australia.' That is simply not the way we should be going ahead. That is simply not what we should be looking for for progression in democracy.

It is interesting, as we look around the world, that we see more and more countries fighting for democracy. This has been a big theme that I have heard over the last 12 months. People from Hong Kong, from Burma, from Cambodia and from Russia come and talk to me about democracy movements in their own country because they see democracy here in Australia and they want that for their brothers and sisters overseas.

They see that it is one of the best forms of government—the best form of government—because your voice is heard, your voice is counted. It is very difficult for those people who are fighting for democracy in their home countries. How do we explain to them that if they miss out on being on the roll, they cannot vote here. This goes to the complete opposite of what we encourage—the full franchise of voting in South Australia.

We are running out of room for the next election, so the question has to be: why now? Why is this Liberal government bringing this bill to us now when they had an opportunity over the last two years to bring the bill forward for debate? What are they seeking to achieve? We are opposing this bill because it does the exact opposite of what we on this side of the house endeavour to do: have everyone's voice heard and encourage people to participate because that is the best thing for democracy in South Australia and Australia and the future.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (22:24): I rise tonight to oppose this bill in the strongest possible way. The right to vote is the most sacred and fundamental right we enjoy in South Australia and Australia. Think of those who went before us who fought wars so that we could vote and live in the sort of country that we do and the sort of society that we do. Look at the tapestry behind me and look at the great work that the women's suffrage movement did in 1894 to secure the right for women not only to vote in elections—one of the first jurisdictions in the world—but also to stand for election. These women would be looking down on our Attorney-General, our Deputy Premier, in dismay that she would want to take away from people the right to vote in elections.

This is absolutely disgraceful. I have been reading a lot in the US papers over the past few months about what is happening in Texas, where more than 50 Democrat members of the House of Representatives got on planes and flew up to Washington DC so that there was no quorum in the state House of Representatives in Texas, because of the repressive moves that the Republicans in Texas are trying to introduce to stymie people's rights and abilities to vote.

I thought that was kind of what you would expect in some of the southern states in America, particularly in the aftermath of Donald Trump and his claims that an election was stolen. His big mantra was 'Let's make America hate again.' He is a divisive character, a terrible president and will be judged accordingly. You read it and you think how could America have gone so far off track and how could they disenfranchise, or try to disenfranchise, so many people who vote?

Elections are won, elections are lost. Sometimes if you lose one it might take a little while to get over it, but you do not carry on like Donald Trump and Giuliani and all those characters he had around him carried on. You do not go out and incite the sort of violence that we saw at the Capitol in January this year.

I cannot think of a single South Australian who has asked for this reform, so who are you playing to, deputy leader? Who are you playing to, Attorney-General, except your own party, your own political future? You are trying to distort the political and democratic process of this state. You are no better than Donald Trump and the people who carry on in America trying to change rules; you are trying to change the democratic rights of people of this state.

I said at the outset that the right to vote is the most sacred and fundamental right that we have in South Australia and that we have in Australia. You had a report handed down in February 2019. That was a year before COVID hit South Australia, a full year before COVID hit South Australia. That was 2½ years ago, and now, with just 13 sitting days left in this four-year term of parliament, you are bringing this undemocratic filth in here and expecting to get it through the parliament. This is on the same day—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mawson, I am not bringing anything to parliament.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Sorry, the Attorney-General is bringing this filth in here. I am very sorry, because you are a very good man. You have done a great job filling the role of Speaker for the past two days, and I thank you very much for the way you conduct this house. This has got me so angry that people would come and do this, not for the betterment of South Australia, not for the betterment of the democratic process in South Australia, but for their own good. That is all this is about. You are doing this because you think it is going to help you win elections. That is a disgrace.

This report that was handed down a year before COVID hit South Australia, 2½ years ago, did not ask for the things that you want to do to the people of South Australia, the voters of South Australia. In fact, it said that the act should be amended to enable eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day. Instead, you want to restrict that. In the final six days before the rolls were cut off, we had 25,000 people enrol. Under this plan, there will be 16,000 people who want to vote—these people are putting their hand up to vote in an election—and will not get that right.

I was talking to a mate in the UK on Tuesday night, and he was lamenting the lack of leadership, the lack of capable people putting their hands up for leadership roles and to enter politics in the UK. One of the things he said was that the Australian system is such a good system because it has compulsory voting.

Again, we look to the women for whom this tapestry was done to celebrate the centenary of women's suffrage in 1894. You look at the great leaps forward that we have had in this state and in this nation—we have been world leaders—and you want to take us back. You want to be more like Trump than these women who led the suffrage movement in South Australia. You will be remembered for this, just as Donald Trump will be remembered for inciting hate across America and for claiming that an election was rigged. You will be remembered for this. There is no doubt about that. Not one person in South Australia has asked for these reforms that you are bringing in here.

We are here tonight debating this legislation that no-one has asked for, yet there are people all around South Australia who do not want the poison, toxic PFAS dumped in their electorates, and you would not entertain debating that in here today. That just shows where you put your values and who you want to protect. You do not want to protect the citizens of this state that each and every one of us is elected to protect. You just want to protect your own political futures.

You want to give yourself every edge that you think you can squeeze out of changing the democratic process that we enjoy so much in South Australia. It is a disgrace, and we will be telling everyone that we possibly can from now until the next election on 19 March 2022 that the Liberals are all about themselves and they are certainly not about protecting the people who they are elected to protect.

There are some people who are under-represented in here. They are the young people. Obviously, you have to be 18 to come in here to vote, but I would say we would step up a few years before we get to the person closest to 18.

I was really interested to read a letter from the Commissioner for Children and Young People in South Australia, Helen Connolly. She gives voice to these people. I want to read some of the words that she has written on behalf of these young people. To inform her response to the bill, she asked a group of young South Australians, aged 15 to 22 years, their thoughts on the barriers to enrolment and voting for young people and how the proposed amendments that are being put forward by this government, by this Attorney-General tonight, will affect those people across South Australia. She says:

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.

Is that not something we should all be aspiring to in here? We actually have kids who are stating that they want to be involved in this process and yet these terrible measures that are being proposed by the Attorney-General and Deputy Premier will stymie all that. The commissioner says:

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. This includes a lack of information about how to enrol to vote, let alone how to cast a valid vote once they are enrolled.

Young people describe a lack of education or 'little education' as one of many barriers to enrolment and to voting. Many young people make a distinction between an 'uninformed vote' and an 'informed vote', and they are worried that their civics knowledge is insufficient. They identify several other barriers to voting, including a lack of experience and motivation, inaccessible places to vote, income, family attitudes, and feeling excluded from decision-making.

Many young people do not feel that the adults or institutions around them respect their feelings or opinions. While they understand the importance of voting, they describe how it is difficult for young people to 'care about politics and voting' if young people themselves do not feel like adults in positions of power care for them.

Hello, are we listening over there? These are the young people. This is what they are saying. I want to put this on the record in here. I want to put this on the video to send to the people in my electorate because I think what she is saying here on behalf of these young people is very important. It is going to resonate with a lot of people I speak to when I am out and about in my electorate. A 17 year old said:

A lack of knowledge about the workings of our political system and a lack of knowledge about the candidates' and parties' values causes many young people to feel disengaged in politics.

The commissioner said:

It should not be surprising then that some young people, as with the broader population, are becoming increasingly disillusioned by or disengaged from mainstream politics.

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 amongst 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.

The consequences of a growing lack of trust when combined with a growing list of civics proficiency is worrying for the future of our democracy and the ideals and values it represents.

However, this is not inevitable. Democracy works best when citizens actively engage with and participate in decision-making to uphold agreed ideals and values. Where this is not happening, this is a reflection on us as adults and how our political institutions and educational institutions are falling short in catering to young people's needs.

This is from a 13 year old, and remember that they do not have a voice in here because you have to be 18 to vote and you have to be 18 to run for parliament. Here is the voice of a 13 year old:

If we had a say in what the government did, it would make many of us trust them and their desisions (decisions) more.

A 14 year old said:

We can see that some of the descisions (decisions) made today by adults have very effectively screwed us over, and that is a big factor. Kids want to be included. The government & world leaders hold our future, yet exclude us from shaping it. If we are to trust others, they should trust us and include us in what may very well shape our lives. Trust is a two-way street.

Wise words from a 14 year old. The commissioner continues:

One young person reported how they 'do their best' to 'let other young people know that it is their right to be able to vote'. When it comes to something as significant as enrolment and voting, it should not be left up to individual young people to share this critical information with each other.

It is up to us as adult leaders, community representatives and decision makers to ensure systems are designed in a way that enables every person to be informed so that they can exercise the fundamental democratic right to vote, regardless of age and circumstance.

That is from the Commissioner for Children and Young People, and I think she makes a compelling case. I think that the Attorney-General has brought this bill in here for her own political means and not for the betterment of South Australia, not like the women behind me featured in the tapestry that brought the right for women to vote back in 1894. No, these people came in here with good hearts and with good intentions of building our society, of building our democracy, and what we see here is the complete opposite of that by the Attorney-General.

I want to quote a couple of other young people who are mentioned in the commissioner's letter. A 14 year old said that 'better education for teens leading up to the coming of age and being able to vote' is something important. A 15 year old said:

Voting laws—bring the age to vote down. But before this is done, people need to be educated on the political topics they will be voting about.

Then a few more points are made in the commissioner's report. She says:

It is concerning that this amendment has the potential to be particularly disenfranchising for young people and could leave South Australia behind other jurisdictions in Australia and internationally in terms of ensuring that all people of voting age, particularly young and new voters, are able to vote.

That is a shocking statement when we look back to 1894, when we were world leaders in making sure that we gave more people than anywhere else in the world, as a percentage of our population, the right to vote. Listen again to what the commissioner says, that this 'could leave South Australia behind other jurisdictions in Australia and internationally in terms of ensuring that all people of voting age, particularly young and new voters, are able to vote'. Who can support that? I look the opposition members in the eye and say, 'Are you really going to support this?'

When we go out and go to the school groups and the young people in your electorates, we are going to be telling them exactly what the Deputy Premier and the Liberal Party of South Australia are trying to do to them. We should be helping these kids. We should be encouraging them to get on the electoral roll and get out and vote. Instead, you are shortening the time period. If you give a kid an instruction to do something, it is not going to get done on the first day, I can tell you. It is not going to get done on the second day, but, under these rules, by the time people do get around to doing it, it will be, 'Oh, it's too late.'

Yet one of the very recommendations in the report that was handed down was that eligible electors could be enrolled up to and on polling day. That seems like a pretty fair system. How you can spend 2½ years sitting on this report and then bring it into this place when we only have 13 days of sitting, after we have been sitting for four years—how you can do that and try to force this through the parliament—is beyond comprehension. It is beyond any sort of decency. It is a terrible thing to do to the people of South Australia.

I want to thank Helen Connolly, the Commissioner for Children and Young People, because I think she has done a tremendous job in the time that she has been in the role, since back in 2017 when she was appointed I think by then Premier Jay Weatherill. I want to thank her for writing to us and giving us the voices of young people, because it backs up what we are hearing from the young people in our own electorate.

We do not want to go the way of America. What a terrible place that has turned out to be in the past five or six years. I wish them all the best in repairing it. When you see 50 members of the Texan Democrats get on planes and go to DC so that there is no quorum in the House of Representatives in Texas, where they are trying to push through unreasonable, unfair voting rules, you have to ask yourself, 'That's really weird, and why are they doing it?' Why are they doing it? Because they are trying to appeal to their base.

Why are the Attorney-General and the Liberal Party trying to do it here? They are trying to shonk the system. They are trying to make it easier for them to win elections and disenfranchise, as we said, the 25,000 people who joined the electoral roll to vote in the six days leading up to the cut-off point before the 2018 election. In the time that I have available to me, I have one more thing from Helen Connolly's letter:

In particular, I am concerned that this goes against the Electoral Commission's function, to 'ensure that the public is adequately informed of their democratic rights and obligations under this Act'…This is particularly important in light of findings from the 2018 report about awareness of voting options.

33% of electors were unaware of postal voting,

55% were unaware they could vote at a polling booth outside their own electoral district, and

56% were unaware about pre-poll voting.

If this gets through, we will not have a tapestry done to honour the Deputy Premier and Attorney-General and her Liberal cohorts who are trying to undermine democracy in this place. I hope there is a statue of the Deputy Premier built somewhere that is surrounded by a massive flock of pigeons.

Ms MICHAELS (Enfield) (22:44): I rise to also speak on the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021. As I sat down to contemplate this piece of legislation, I was struck by something that was raised by the member for Mawson just now and by the member for Kaurna in his second reading speech. He noted that this is the result of the Electoral Commission's report, which was tabled by the Attorney on 28 February 2019. That date is fairly important to me as it was my very first week sitting in this place and the day after my maiden speech.

Mr Odenwalder: Ages ago.

Ms MICHAELS: Ages ago. As the newest member in this house, along with the member for Cheltenham, I cannot say that I am terribly shocked by the slow pace of things happening in this place, but it is very concerning that it has taken the Attorney so long to introduce this bill into this house and, as the member for Mawson said, a bill that has amendments that are not even consistent with that report. However, given how those on the other side of the chamber have governed to date, I guess I should not be shocked by the slow pace and the inconsistency.

Considering that only in recent sitting weeks we have dealt with other reforms to fix the government's bungled attempts, for example in fixing land tax reform, there has been a raft of bungles that have been brought about by this government in the 3½ years they have been in power. So, I guess I should not be surprised by the delay in preparing this bill and introducing it at the 11th hour before an election.

As I mentioned, as the newest member in this house it is not difficult for me to recall the many challenges faced by the voters of Enfield in the 2019 by-election, whether it was young people, the elderly or those living with disability, and now this government is seeking to make things even harder for them, as I guess some sort of play to tip the scales in favour of the Marshall Liberal government winning at the next election, and that in itself is disappointing.

We all know that many voters are disengaged from our political system. The recent conscience votes that have occurred in this house have prompted many of my constituents to re-engage with the democratic process, and I encourage that. We have had the euthanasia debate, the abortion debate and, before that, the sex worker bill, and that has inspired thousands of my local constituents to contact my office and make me aware of their views on these important and difficult issues.

These have been positive steps in my electorate, and sharing with my constituents what is happening in this place is always an important part of my role as their local member of parliament. The extent to which people are disengaged from politics in general, however, and more specifically state politics, has become glaringly obvious to me in the weeks leading up to the by-election and in the months after the by-election.

I knocked on doors and made calls and spoke to thousands of people in the weeks leading up to the by-election. The electorate was covered with corflutes of the seven candidates. The entire electorate was letterboxed multiple times by me, let alone the other candidates. However, come that wonderful day, when the residents of Enfield were able to stand safe and free from harm at their local polling station, no matter their political views, and despite the early morning rain, the most important part of democracy was offered to those 26,000-plus voters of Enfield. Yet only just above 20,000 voters actually turned out to vote, and some of them, in my crossing paths with them and encouraging them to vote, were actually annoyed that they even had to go and vote, so that is the level of disengagement with state politics.

But we had 6,000 people in the seat of Enfield who chose not to vote or who were so disengaged they did not even know a by-election was happening. As I mentioned, in the weeks and months that followed, as the Electoral Commission sent out please explain notices to those 6,000 people, many visited my office seeking assistance. The votes that we are granted have such a powerful effect on how a state is governed and what direction it will take and what future our children will have in this state. We can ask the member for Hurtle Vale when she is in the chamber about what could have occurred had the nine people voted differently for her at her by-election when she came into this place.

I was saddened that so many people chose not to take part in our democracy on that day. Now we have those on the other side of this chamber seeking to take that right away from so many more by making it more difficult for them to vote. This government wants to disenfranchise our youth and our new citizens. Young people are one of the groups most difficult to engage with, and that was highlighted in the member for Mawson's speech just now. No doubt many members in this place have tried to engage with young people in their electorates, with varying levels of success. It seems that the Premier and the Marshall Liberal government are sick of trying, and now just want to make it harder for them, to effectively stop them from voting altogether. That is shameful act, and one I am greatly disappointed in.

Look at where we stand. We have the wonderful tapestries hanging in this place celebrating the struggle of those amazing women who fought to ensure that women had not just the right to vote but also the right to stand for parliament, and just across the way we have the portrait of Joyce Steele hanging in honour as the first woman to sit in this chamber. I wonder what she and others would have thought if they had had the opportunity to review this bill, which seeks to make it harder to exercise that powerful right to vote each of us have at election time.

It is a right I have exercised each time since the 1993 state election. Sadly, at the time of the federal election in 1993 I was still too young to vote, but thankfully the Hon. Paul Keating won without my vote. I then got to vote in the state election.

The very report this bill is based on recommends 'that the Electoral Act be amended to enable eligible electors to enrol up to and on polling day'. Yet despite sitting on this report more than two years, the Attorney seems to have misread that recommendation. Instead of extending the time for a young person to enrol to vote, the Attorney seems to have, perhaps accidentally, (although I do not think so) reduced the amount of time a young person has to enrol to vote before an election.

Was this a mistake, or was it an attempt to gain an advantage for the Marshall Liberal government by taking away the right to vote from young people, or at least making it harder for them to do so? The disenfranchisement of our young people and new citizens is most egregious, and the reason why I cannot and will not support this bill.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (22:51): I rise to make my contribution on this bill and explain why I share the view on this side of parliament that we ought to oppose it.

I had been aware this bill was coming but had not looked into it in any detail initially, preferring to start from the question of what the principles are with which one ought to approach a piece of legislation like this piece of legislation that, because it deals with voting, inevitably it goes to the very heart and nature of our democracy, the structure of our democracy and the rules that govern it.

Probably all my life, but particularly in the last couple of years, I have taken a great interest in reading about early times in the development of democracy, through ancient Athens, through Rome, and then through the various versions in Western Europe. To say that, I do not in any way disregard the various forms of democracy and decision-making that existed in a great many different cultures, not least in the original First Peoples of this nation. The principles of Westminster democracy have their approach primarily through that Western European tradition.

What is very evident when contemplating the history of the last few thousand years is that democracy is precious and fragile. It is not an inevitability and, having had it, it is not certain that one will retain it. I think that when you grow up in a terrific place like Australia, with a sense of being part of a stable and secure democracy, you can make the mistake of thinking that it will always be this way. The member for Mawson, in referring to Donald Trump, touches on some disturbing trends that we have seen very recently in other Western democracies, where the very foundations and institutions that support it have suffered serious assault and have called into question the integrity of their systems.

I say that not to exaggerate the concerns we have with this bill, but to recognise that we have to take any change to the rules that govern our democracy seriously. We have to question them, as I said, from the principles of what it is we expect if we are to have a secure and coherent democracy.

I might just touch, as we are late of hour anyway, on an interesting lesson in one of the books I was reading. It is a terrific book. I had first read it a very long time ago, in year 11, and I then re-read it in the last year. It is a book called The Greeks, by Kitto, which is largely, not exclusively but largely, about the Athenian Greeks of ancient and classical times. It extols the virtues of sixthcentury Athens and questions what went wrong that led to the end of that democracy—of course, it was not a full franchise; we can take that as read, but it was a democracy as understood then—and what led to the decline that saw the end of that version of democracy, as they headed into the fifth century Before the Common Era.

Kitto marked a change in the attitude of those who had a bit more, who had a bit more access to power, who were born of more wealthy families, that they started to become more interested in personal wealth rather than shared wealth, communal wealth and that the houses of those who had more became more grand, whereas in the height of Athenian democracy they tended to live largely in very similar houses and the expenditure on beautiful things was on shared beautiful things, shared places, shared art.

Increasingly, they turned to caring about their private domain, and I fear that we are seeing an element of that in our Western democracy now, where rather than sharing and having the communal good—that every public school is of the highest order—those with wealth have started to creep away from that and are more interested in whether their house is the grandest, whether they have the best holiday house, whether they are paying the highest fees for their children to go to a private school.

I do not mean to digress too far, but it is interesting to see the signs that happened then; there are elements of that now, which makes me focus all the more on maintaining our democracy, so I wrote down a list of the principles I thought would be commonly understood to be necessary for a democracy and against which we ought to test this piece of legislation.

The first question, of course, is of the franchise, and I may extol the virtues of classical Athenian democracy but I recognise the limits to the franchise. We are reminded, as several speakers have said, of the struggle in our own nation to have full franchise. But there is a question of who is eligible to vote: who is able to be recognised fully as able to vote and eligible to exercise that right? While we now regard ourselves as effectively having full franchise, it is relatively recent when it comes to the other place, and there is a live debate about whether the age of 18 is the appropriate one. The debate over full franchise is not over.

The second question, though, that comes right alongside that is what I have termed the practical franchise. So having accepted that this group of people have a right to vote, how easy is it for them to take that up? How many barriers are there of a practical nature, of a logistical nature, between being accorded the right to vote and being able to exercise that right? That is where I have some concerns with this legislation.

There is then the question of the person actually going along and voting. How easy is that to do? How practical is it to do? Are they aware that there is an election on? I know that the banning of corflutes has been removed now from this legislation, or this is a version that does not include that. I am an incumbent. I do not need corflutes to be known in the way an opponent of mine might need corflutes to be known, but I believe that one of the purposes served by having corflutes is to make sure that people know there is an election on, making sure of that level of information to make it practically real that someone will be able to cast their vote matters. Voting also needs to be accessible. It needs to not be hard to get to a polling booth. It needs to be not hard to vote.

We then get to principles I adhere to but are up for debate. I believe that every vote should be cast. I believe in compulsory voting. I think it is one of the reasons that we have a more secure democracy than many other Western nations, because by virtue of every vote being compulsory—although we do not always, of course, see everyone exercising their obligation to turn up to the polling booth—our political parties are not trying to just activate their base. They are recognising that they need to speak to more people, the true majority, and that I think does have a moderating effect on our politics.

It is also important that every vote is counted, that is why I am an adherent and a fan of preferential voting, of allowing every vote to go through, so that if your first preference is not going to win you still have a capacity to exercise a choice between the other candidates. I think that is essential so that we do not just get that first past the post and people exhausting their vote after one vote.

It is essential that the way in which we manage the vote is fair and able to be contested. Again, I am a big fan of a piece of paper that can be written on by pencil and that can be stored and taken out and re-examined, if necessary. Electronic voting scares me because it does not have that same chain of security where we are able to count it again, to have the scrutineers, to do the recount, to store it and to bring it back out again. I think that is important.

An eighth principle is that any changes to the system ought to be free of party political interest. It is so important and precious that we have an independent Electoral Commission and we should listen to the independent Electoral Commission. We should not have what America has primarily, which is that whichever party wins is able to start drawing lines on maps and is able to control the way in which the vote is counted.

Finally, I think we need to have any changes that we do make to a system known clearly and understood by all, that we make a considered decision about it, that it is public, it is contested, it is debated and, as we are reasonably late tonight as the representatives of the people, that there is the possibility of full consultation and engagement before we make changes to this very precious system.

They were the principles that I drew up without having carefully interrogated the bill, which I now have had the opportunity to do. I turn to the concerns that I have with this bill. The first, of course, as has been mentioned by several other speakers, is the extraordinary length of time between the government receiving the independent Electoral Commissioner's report and our debating these changes—February 2019 to today.

What that means is that we are now very close to an election. We are now at the time when the rules really ought to be understood and clear. We ought not be making late changes just before an election. However, that period of time has not been used having a wide, deep and fulsome public consultation and discussion. We have not had a roadshow out into the community looking at the recommendations made by the Electoral Commissioner, having the alternatives presented by the government, where they do not want to support those recommendations, and having a full debate.

We have not been spending the last couple of years doing that. What we have had is a failed attempt at some changes, which included the corflute changes and messing around with the preferential voting system, and then suddenly—13 days is it now of sitting before the election—we are being expected to make some, I think, pretty significant changes.

The first of those significant changes that I am not happy with is the question of when people can enrol to vote, so that comes to that practical franchise. People have the right to vote but how practically are they able to make sure that they are recognised on the electoral roll, which is our version of expression of the franchise. The recommendation made by the Electoral Commissioner, as has been canvassed, was up to and including the day of voting. That is, in my view, a very good idea and is entirely consistent with my view of how important corflutes are.

Lots of people just cannot wait for 19 March. They are hanging out for it, they know when it is, it is in the calendar. A lot of people know it is coming but have not really paid attention to having to make some decisions on that day. The corflutes tell them, 'Oh, right, the election's coming. I had better make sure I've enrolled to vote.' Then suddenly they are told it is too late: 'You can't. You've missed your chance.' 'But the election isn't yet.' 'No, too late. You have to wait for the next time.' Why is it too late?

In the proposal not only to ignore the Electoral Commissioner's recommendation to be able to enrol right up to the day and then cast your vote but to reduce the time from six days after the issuing of writs to two days, we know that we will lose people. They will primarily be young people by virtue it being young people who are not on the roll, who have become eligible since the last election. We know that there will be young people who would like to vote, who will be turned away from being able to do that. What possible justification is there for that? Why on earth would a government want to mess with the practical franchise? Why would that fundamental tenet of democracy be ignored?

I would hate to think that it is because they know that young people tend not to vote conservatively. I would hope that is not the base political motive in making such a proposition, but I have not heard any other justification. We have had canvassed by others, so I will not over it, the recognition of the number of people who enrolled in those six days—some 4,000 a day—so we can count a good estimate of the number of people who will not be able to enrol. We know that we have under-representation of young voters already on the electoral roll.

I cannot help thinking that we will have a lot less under-representation if we did listen to the Electoral Commissioner's advice and allow enrolment all the way up to the day, the day when they see all that bunting out, they see those enthusiastic volunteers and they are driving by and they say, 'Right, I've got to vote.' They come out, line up and are told, 'No, you're not on the list.' 'What do you mean I'm not on the list? I'm 19 years old. Why can't I vote?' 'Well, you should have got yourself organised earlier.' Why? They have a franchise. They have the right to vote. We ought not be standing in that way.

That is the most significant objection I have. There are three others, though, that I would briefly like to go through. One is this question of assisted voting. I think we recognise the importance of being able to ensure that people with disabilities—visual impairment in particular was mentioned—are able to have a form of assisted voting. The difficulty with the changes that sit in this piece of legislation is that there is that magic capacity that governments often give themselves to create a regulation to create another class of people.

While the bill purports to have assisted voting for people with disabilities, it creates this opportunity for the government of the day to create a regulation to create another class. This assisted voting comes to my question of whether every vote is able to be accessible for people and be freely cast and contestable. It disturbs me that we have this risk presented by the vagueness of this piece of legislation.

The next question I have—the third of my objections—is the early count of pre-poll. We all know how frustrating it is not to know who has won on the night. We know that as pre-polls become more and more prevalent there is more and more expectation that people do not in fact have an election day; they have an election fortnight. I do not like that, and I will come to that in a minute. I think we should reach a judgement, as close as possible, with the same set of facts. There is a very real risk, when you have people voting over an extended period of time, that facts come to light that would change someone's vote, and it means that you do not have everyone having the same view on the same day.

We do have pre-poll, and there are legitimate reasons for some people to vote in pre-poll and in postal votes. But if we are going to have pre-poll it is annoying that we sometimes have to wait a couple of weeks for all of that to be counted, but the risk of having an early count is that it will become known and therefore influence people who are voting later. The last thing you want is to have people voting here changing the minds of people voting here. It exacerbates the problem of pre-poll in not having everyone reach a decision at the same time with the same set of facts. Some people risk knowing how the vote is going already and are being influenced by that.

How will that be protected? Regulation—so we do not actually know. How will we be certain that any early count of the pre-poll would certainly not be known? In this parliament, making this decision we do not know because it is captured by regulation. There is a vague reference, as I understand it, in early speeches to whatever New Zealand does. Well, I love New Zealand. New Zealand does some beautiful things. Its electoral system is pretty wild and exciting, but I do think we should be making decisions with full possession of the facts here.

The final concern that I have is that the Electoral Commissioner would no longer be required to encourage voting on election day. As I said, I object to anything that puts further pressure on the principle of everyone reaching the same decision on the same day with the same set of facts. While I accept that there are reasons for early voting, and particularly for postal voting, I do not accept that that means we should give up and say there is an election fortnight, and that the Electoral Commissioner no longer has an obligation to try to do everything the Electoral Commissioner can to encourage voting on the same day. That sneaks into this piece of legislation: let's smear it out over the fortnight and run a risk that maybe people will know how the trend is going.

Most importantly, and I come back to this initial objection that I have, is the idea of choosing to disenfranchise people by making a change in this parliament to say, 'You turn up and you're a day late—the election hasn't yet happened—but you can't vote. You're not eligible.' Well, that is not what democracy is founded on and we must not be so complacent as to assume that we can sneak these in and retain the quality of our democracy.

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (23:11): I, too, rise to speak on the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021. It is interesting that in the previous debate in this place several hours ago now, the Minister for Energy berated members on this side of the house for having the temerity to practise politics in this house, in a house of parliament. This is a house where politics is practised every day.

There was also a suggestion from members opposite that members on this side of the house were bullying people in making the suggestion that the way they voted on a particular measure would be used politically. This is what democracy is all about, and this is what this bill essentially is about. This bill, in fact in large part, is entirely political. The Minister for Energy again waxed lyrical about how we should approach every piece of legislation on its merits, not bring politics into it and treat all these things as practical measures, which we could or could not take, but this bill in very large part is almost entirely political.

It is worth noting from the outset as others have that this bill is pretty much a regurgitation of a bill which the Attorney introduced last year and one which, of course, history has shown was roundly rejected by the parliament as a whole. The main thrust of this bill, as was the case with the last bill, has only one clear intention and that is to change the rules of our electoral system to favour the Liberal Party in South Australia. It is an entirely political exercise. The clauses in this bill are entirely political. I will go through some of those changes, but it is worth reflecting on what has been left out in the second iteration of electoral reform from the Attorney-General.

First, it no longer includes optional preferential voting. Of course, that is a good thing. The last bill did include optional preferential voting, and again this was roundly rejected. This was such an obvious power grab by the Attorney-General and by the government that the Legislative Council quite rightly rejected it. They rejected it because we know that, in our current electoral system, many seats, the seats that decide elections, are won often on very few votes. The member for Hurtle Vale can attest to that, and others may attest to that in the coming election. I happily have never been in that situation.

Indeed, I remember a time handing out in the lovely town of Watervale, which some people may know. Riesling lovers may know Watervale. The Attorney-General is nodding. It is a beautiful town. I have not visited it for a long time, but on this occasion I was handing out for the Labor candidate, whoever that was at the time, diligently all day. From memory, 200 or 300 people passed through that booth throughout that day. Every single one of them, to a man and a woman, was extremely pleasant and encouraging, shaking my hand and wishing me the best of luck and wishing my candidate the best of luck and, to the best of my memory, I think the Labor Party achieved 14 votes in that election.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Liberal voters are always polite.

Mr ODENWALDER: Indeed, they are. They are polite. But they are not the seats that win elections. The seats that win elections are those seats that hang on very few votes. I think that Hurtle Vale, if I remember rightly, was nine votes and there are other examples of seats. The seat of Bright, I do remember, several elections ago, was similarly close. These are the seats that win elections and this is what optional preferential voting, I believe, was ultimately designed to disrupt. It seems that even the Attorney-General has now reflected on this measure and accepted that it is a bridge too far.

It also of course omits any reference to the banning or the limiting of corflutes. It is worth noting that, first of all, there is a bill—and I will not reflect on that bill in any great detail because that would be unparliamentary—by another member that does seek to limit and ban corflutes in most circumstances. I will not go over the reasons why that is a bad thing. The member for Port Adelaide just traversed that territory exceedingly well.

It is worth noting that the Attorney-General today introduced another bill that seeks to limit and partially ban the use of corflutes. As the member for Port Adelaide said, this clearly disadvantages non-incumbent candidates and new Independent candidates too. Again, it was a purely political exercise and it will be again.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: It was yesterday.

Mr ODENWALDER: It was yesterday. I stand corrected; it was yesterday.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: It has been a long day today.

Mr ODENWALDER: It has been a long today, yes. It is nearly the day before yesterday. It was again, and will be again, a purely political exercise, and despite being omitted from this bill, the fight for unfairness is not over for this Attorney-General. I do not seek to tell the Attorney-General how to do her job, but I would be surprised if in the next 13 days we do not see a partial resurrection of the idea of optional preferential voting, but that remains to be seen.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

Mr ODENWALDER: We are counting, do not worry. This bill does depart a little from the previous bill, but it keeps the intent intact and the intent of a very large proportion of this bill is to serve to advantage the Liberal Party in future elections.

Of course, as previous members have gone over, one of its major aims is to reduce the time available to new electors—that is, mostly young people—to enrol to vote from six days after the writs are issued to two days after the writs are issued. Clearly, this further disadvantages young people who are new to the electoral system and is clearly unfair.

Of course, electoral reform is an evolving process and from time to time this place will consider changes, usually on the advice of the independent Electoral Commission, so it is worth noting again, as others have, that the Electoral Commission, in its 2018 state Election Report, recommended almost the exact opposite of what the Attorney-General now seeks to achieve. I am not aware of any amendment before the house at the moment that exactly duplicates what the Electoral Commissioner was suggesting in the report of 2018, but its first recommendation was very clear and that is:

That the Electoral Act…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.

The Electoral Commissioner gave some very good reasons why this should be the case and, in doing so, outlined in reverse the arguments against the measures that this bill seeks to introduce. The report states:

The declining rate of enrolment of younger electors and the increasing numbers of non-voters are a matter of concern not isolated to South Australia. Indeed, there has been longstanding unease about both trends among electoral commissions and commentators in Australia, New Zealand and further afield.

One of the solutions to address falling participation rates successfully implemented by ECSA's counterparts in New South Wales (NSW), New Zealand (NZ), Queensland and Victoria (as well as most Canadian jurisdictions) has been to allow people to enrol after the close of rolls. Although the commissions of these jurisdictions continue to have and to advertise a close of rolls, they allow enrolment on the day as a 'savings provision' to enfranchise people who inadvertently miss the close of rolls.

The Attorney-General's clear intention is to do the exact opposite; it is to disenfranchise people who, for one reason or another—and, again the member for Port Adelaide outlined these reasons very well—have not enrolled to vote. They may simply be unaware, they are young people who have never voted before or they may not, as we do, take much of an interest in what happens in this place. In any case, the decision to do exactly the opposite of what the Electoral Commissioner has suggested is, as I said, an entirely political exercise.

As others have noted, this report is now some 2½ years old. This is a hallmark of this government: reports are prepared by independent bodies, by experts, suggesting things that the government should do and, in some cases, suggesting time lines, suggesting some urgency in which they should be done, and the government then simply does nothing.

I saw this in my own portfolio area—and a very important portfolio area—of road safety, where, following some particularly horrific road death and road trauma statistics in 2017 regarding motorcyclists, the Motorcycle Reference Group was convened, a report was prepared for government for the then minister, the member for Kaurna, which outlined some changes which should be made to motorcycle licensing and the motorcycle licensing regime to bring it somewhere closer to the licensing regime imposed upon the drivers and novice drivers of cars.

I will not go over the detail of that, but suffice to say the new government, upon its election, received this report. Presumably, it sat on the now Minister for Transport's shelf gathering dust for 2½ years, so much so that the road safety stakeholders in the community approached me and the Leader of the Opposition in desperation. They knew that these measures were urgent. They knew they needed to be done and they knew that this government simply was not going to do them. So it was up to us on this side of the house to take action and to implement some of the recommendations of that expert report.

This is nothing new. This is a hallmark of this government: reports are prepared by experts, the government says thank you, sits on them, ignores them and, in this case, decides to implement them with only 13 sitting days left and some five months out from the next state election.

The Attorney-General is the top law officer in the state. Her job is to protect our legal system and her job is also to protect our electoral system and keep it fair. What this measure does, though, is absolutely subverts that aim—it is patently unfair. I am sure the Attorney-General will call everything we are saying on this side about this measure an overreaction, but we do know that the rate of enrolment of young voters is declining in this state and elsewhere. We know that 38.9 per cent of 18 year olds were not enrolled at the 2018 election, along with 25.4 per cent of voters between 18 and 24.

We also know that in the six days before the 2018 election almost 25,000 South Australians enrolled to vote. Again, as others have observed, this is more than enough in fact to fill a quota to fill one state electoral district. Again, I think the intent is clear: it is to disenfranchise a certain group of people, young people who, as others have observed, generally or more than other cohorts do not vote conservative, are more likely to vote Labor or perhaps even, perversely, the Greens. It is an attempt to game the system and to permanently increase the Liberal vote.

Others in the course of this debate have mentioned the Playmander, which of course was used in the past by the Attorney-General's predecessors to achieve similar outcomes to the one the Attorney-General hopes to achieve with her so-called reforms in this bill. The Playmander delivered government to the Liberals for at least three decades, despite the fact that for at least 20 of those years Labor achieved a much higher statewide vote than the party of Playford.

The mechanism is very different, but the effect is the same: the disenfranchising of Labor and new and Independent voters for the direct benefit of the Liberal Party. Unlike many others on this side of the house, I do have a bit of time for Playford, not as much time as he had, but I do have some time for Playford, in that he was partly responsible for a lot of things that have played a very great role in my life.

In his role as a designer, as an instigator of the South Australian Housing Trust, he indirectly built several of the houses I have lived in over the course of my life. His name lent itself to my high school. He attracted General Motors here and they established Holden, where my dad worked and where many of my friends and family have worked until, sadly, its closure several years ago. So I do have some time for Thomas Playford, but I do not want to see—

Mr Brown: Sir Thomas Playford.

Mr ODENWALDER: Sir Thomas Playford. I stand corrected by the member for Playford. I do have some time for Sir Thomas Playford, although, as I said, not as much time as he did. The Playmander worked and the Attorney-General, as a student of history and a student of politics—and indeed as a practitioner of politics, which must grate on the Minister for Energy—very well understands that messing with the electoral system in such a blatant way works.

We saw, as I said, over the course of 20-odd years, despite getting, in many cases, a much higher statewide vote than the Liberal Party, or the Liberal and Country League as they were called then—is that right, member for Playford?

Mr Brown: Yes.

Mr ODENWALDER: They were called that for all that time?

Mr Brown: Yes.

Mr ODENWALDER: I could digress, but I will not. For instance, in the 1947 election Labor received over 48 per cent of the vote, gaining 13 seats, whereas the Liberal and Country Party received just over 40 per cent of the vote and won 23 seats. Again, in 1950, 48 per cent of the vote went to Labor, which netted them 12 seats, and 40 per cent of the vote went to the Liberal and Country Party, meaning they held 23 seats.

In 1953, more than 50 per cent, nearly 51 per cent, of the statewide vote was won by the Labor Party, which give them a grand total of 14 seats, compared to the 21 seats that the 36 per cent of the statewide vote that the Liberal and Country Party achieved won them. In 1956, again nearly 48 per cent of the statewide vote got the Labor Party 15 seats, while 36 per cent of the statewide vote got the Liberal and Country Party 21 seats. This continued until the late sixties and early seventies, when more democratic heads in the Liberal and Country Party, or in the Liberal Party, recognised that they could not keep up this undemocratic charade forever.

What we are seeing here, sadly, is a deliberate attempt to replicate the success of Sir Thomas Playford, who, as I said, I have a lot of time for. The aim is clear and that is what Jenny Tilby Stock in her essay 'The "Playmander": Its origins, operation and effect on South Australia' called 'the indefinite exclusion from office of the Labor Party', and in the modern context the Greens, minor parties and Independents. It is undemocratic, and we on this side of the house value democracy. Winston Churchill famously said:

Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

What this bill does is it moves our democracy here in South Australia further from a democracy which at least strives to be perfect and all-wise. What large parts of this bill and the intent that lies behind it show is that the Liberal Party have learnt from the best of their own people, they have learnt from the success of Sir Thomas Playford and they have also learnt from the best, or perhaps the worst, of what we have seen from people like Trump's Republicans, who find every trick in the book to game the system in favour of their own candidates in order to bring about, again, the indefinite exclusion from office of the Labor Party.

Mr GEE (Taylor) (23:30): I rise to speak on the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021. I will be opposing this bill. There is good legislation and there is bad legislation. Many good electoral reforms could be made by this government, but they are not in this bill. This is simply bad legislation. What is worse is that now we are less than seven months out from an election and the Attorney wants to change how it is conducted. It is quite extraordinary really. We will be even closer to the election if and when this bill gets implemented. How ironic it would be if the Liberal Party lost the next election on electoral reform. Maybe this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

This government so far has managed to offend almost every group in our community. We have those paying land tax, religious groups, conservatives, healthcare professionals, retail workers, our state emergency heroes, our farmers, our regional workers, the tourism industry, the construction industry and almost every other group I could name. As much as Labor would welcome these votes, Labor will do what Labor always does, and that is fight for a better future for all—a quality education for our kids and grandkids, good jobs for our community and quality health care for all. We on this side do not play political games but carefully listen to our community and support democracy. Let me tell you, this legislation will be bad for democracy.

Young people will lose under this bill. The first recommendation of the 2018 election report was to extend enrolment up to and including polling day. How hard would that be? It would not be difficult to implement in our digital age, but, no, the Attorney and the Premier want to reduce the opportunity to enrol. It is hard to believe, but it is true: that is what this bill does. It is typical of those opposite. Their party, the Liberal Party, recently tried to prevent new applicants joining the party and at the same time we had their parliamentary MPs trying to restrict community members enrolling to vote with this bill.

At the last election, 25.4 per cent of those aged between 19 and 25 years old were unenrolled. Also, nearly 40 per cent of 18 year olds were not enrolled to vote. If that trend continues, compulsory voting would just be a nonsense. Is that the real agenda—forget the young and focus on seniors in the blue ribbon seats? The young folks are leaving those rural areas. Young people are becoming more disengaged than ever before.

The changes in this bill further reduce the ability for enrolment once an election is announced. We are not seeing a political commitment from our young people these days, yet I believe politics and our democracy depend on our young people. They really are the future, and their outlook is different from that of most of us. It is hard to imagine what this place will look like 20 years from now.

While we hope for the opposite, the recent trend towards apathy and right-wing politics is making the world a less honourable, less generous, less tolerant and less respectful place, and this bill does not correct that. It winds back our democracy. We should be standing against attempts to curtail voting rates, not supporting them.

This government does not value our young people. They claim there is a record investment in schools, but most of the funds are going into infrastructure, not improved learning in the classroom. Our young people in care are suffering due to overstretched workers and funding cuts, and our children's and grandchildren's future is being hurt by the continuous cuts to TAFE.

It is disappointing that the South Australian Liberal Party would try to remove individual rights around voting or other aspects of life. We have already heard that in the United States at this time the electoral system is under threat with over 250 laws currently being drafted or considered to curtail electoral rights. With only 60 per cent of our 18 year olds enrolled, governments have a responsibility to introduce reforms that increase participation, unlike the bill before us now which does the opposite.

We currently have a large crossbench and the parliament has had several very effective crossbench members in the past: namely, the unforgettable Peter Lewis; the intelligent Karlene Maywald; and a true gentleman, Bob Such; the current member for Frome, Geoff Brock; and the member for Florey, Frances Bedford.

This chamber and the state has benefited from these MPs. Whether they have been elected as crossbench members or joined it for other reasons, we have seen over the years an increase and dissatisfaction with major parties and more support for smaller parties and Independents. I believe many South Australians think we should be encouraging and giving the opportunity for everybody to be elected to this place, not only major party candidates.

At Federation, Indigenous people in South Australia were denied the right to vote and did not regain that right for more than 60 years—60 years is an average lifetime for many people. The bill is again seeking to deny eligible citizens the right to vote. The bill will affect first-time voters, new migrants, Indigenous Australians and those Australians who have become disengaged.

I support assisted voting, especially for those people who struggle with their sight or other disability that requires them to need assistance, and this must be legislated in the bill. Something as fundamental as electoral matters, especially when one person is aiding another, should not be prescribed by regulation. I would advocate for those who are semiliterate to ensure that they can participate but not through regulation. The bill does not specifically mention those with a disability or those trying to vote overseas. It is likely that there will be less overseas voters this election, unless they are stuck overseas because this Liberal government is incapable of organising a quarantine facility aside from hotel quarantining.

This government would rather focus on spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an unpopular basketball stadium while our health system buckles from underfunding. The other issue with this provision is that these regulations could be brought in at any time and so would incur a large cost on taxpayers. Regulations can be disallowed but the government has already shown us in this term that they are more than willing to reintroduce almost identical regulations the next day if the first set is disallowed.

I know that those in power will set the table in their favour as well as using regulation which would escape the appropriate scrutiny of this place. Parliament generally rises about three months prior to the scheduled election; however, when we rise on 18 November it is unlikely that we will return before the 2022 election, potentially giving the state government four months to introduce regulations that would apply to the 2022 election, and the parliament may not sit again until May to consider a disallowance motion. If the Liberals want to allow anyone with a disability or overseas electors to be able to access assisted voting, then that is what this bill should say.

Earlier I spoke about young people, and now I am going to speak about aspects of the bill that will reflect the older members of our community. The first is the digitalisation of advertising of polling places and digitisation of copies of the electoral roll, but only when it comes to public accessing of the roll. We know that many seniors, and surprisingly some younger members in our community, do not have access to a computer or are not computer literate and they are potentially going to be prevented from voting because they cannot access the locations of the polling places. While I appreciate this arises out of the recommendation by the Electoral Commission, a good government would ensure both hard copy and electronic copy options were available.

Furthermore, not only will the days to enrol after the writs are issued be reduced from six days to two, as I alluded to earlier, additionally the terms of the writ calling or deferring an election will no longer have to be published by the Electoral Commissioner in the newspaper circulating throughout the state. This is just more cost cutting by the state government. It may only be four days, but that can see thousands of people enrol, and seats can be won or lost by a tiny margin. Just ask my friend the member for Hurtle Vale or the member for King. This will affect young people, new migrants, the homeless and other communities marginalised by this Liberal government.

I will move on to pre-poll voting, electoral postal vote applications and the early counting of pre-poll votes. We will start with this bill removing the Electoral Commissioner's function of encouraging voting at a polling booth on election day. I personally find this a very disappointing aspect of the bill. There is something special about election days. The baseline is that we have an election day on which the vast majority of votes should be cast to enable a fair contest, with all parties and candidates able to campaign until the blackout with as equal an opportunity as is possible with two major parties. It is appropriate to have pre-poll voting for those who are working or have other commitments on the day, but not because people want to get it out of the way or want to avoid the queue or for any other non-legitimate reason.

People in nations across the world die for the right to vote. They risk their life to vote for an opposition candidate, spend time in prison for speaking out against the government or vote in an election where the winner is predetermined. This is Australia, and everyone is required to exercise their franchise. They can choose to vote for a major party, a smaller party or an Independent, in a safe place, and are able to go on with their life once they have taken a few minutes to vote. Therefore, as many people as possible should be encouraged to vote on election day.

I understand that electors will be able to apply for a declaration or postal ballot online. This raises two questions for me, the first being: has electronic declaration voting been considered so that people applying online for a declaration ballot can register online and vote online? This is rather than applying online, receiving a ballot paper and then posting it back. The second question is: will paper application forms for postal ballots continue to always be available as there are many voters applying for declaration ballots who could not complete the online process? This is important as my team have many people whom they assist to change their electoral details as paper forms are now scarce. Recently, my office assisted many residents to order hard copy census forms as they were unable to complete the process online.

Finally, I get to the proposal in this bill to allow the scrutiny of postal votes before election day. I am unsure why the Electoral Commission has suggested this proposal when it is a threat to our democracy. Every vote should remain secret and not be processed in any way until after 6pm on election night. As I mentioned earlier, we should value our democracy as sacred and not take any actions that will diminish the free, fair and safe elections that we have in South Australia. This provision must be opposed. Every member should oppose this.

In summary, the government have once again had the opportunity to deliver reform for the South Australian community but have not got there. I ask that all members consider voting against this bill. Sadly, during this current term of government, while we have rightly seen long overdue social reform we have also seen privatisations, people literally dying while waiting for ambulances, redundancies of our nurses and doctors, and homelessness services defunded.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (23:43): I also rise to express my opposition to the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. A lot of ground has been canvassed tonight, all the way from Athenian democracy right up to the contemporary world, in terms of what is going on in the United States. I think I am someone who always has a degree of perspective. I actually do not think there is a Trumpian revolution going on on the other side. I do not think that at this stage they have taken on board the worst elements of the Republican push in the United States to actively suppress the vote amongst a whole range of groups in the United States.

I do note, though, that there are reasonably close connections between Republicans and Liberals at a federal level, and I would hope that at a state level we would always resist the worst elements of what is going on in the United States at the moment. Even though I do not believe there is a Trumpian revolution going on on the other side, you could argue, given some of the provisions proposed here, that there is a little bit of a thin end of the wedge. I will get on to some of that later.

A whole range of people have canvassed some of the positive elements of South Australian history when it comes to the franchise, that we were amongst the leaders in the world when it came to women getting the vote back in 1894, and also the right to stand. We should be incredibly proud of what happened back then and that collective effort put in, especially by women, to secure the vote. Many countries took many years to match what had been done here in South Australia in the closing stages of the 19th century.

We have a proud history. People have mentioned that darker period when it came to voting in South Australia, the Playmander and what happened there, to especially disadvantage the Labor Party and urban communities in this state. It was pointed out by the member for West Torrens that Steele Hall and others did put principle ahead of self-interest to overturn the gerrymander that had existed in this state for such a long period of time, to the advantage of the conservative parties at the time.

We now come to the current day and to this particular bill. It is probably worthwhile refreshing our memories on what the key proposals in this bill include. I will not, in the time available to me, go through each of these in detail, but I will focus on one or two elements. The key proposals in the bill are: the reduction in the time to enrol to vote after writs are issued from six days to two (that is an issue that I will speak about at more length); the expansion of pre-poll voting, by allowing people to vote in their own division before election day without having to cast a declaration vote; and removing a function of the Electoral Commissioner to encourage voting at a polling booth on election day.

The member for Port Adelaide made some strong points on the importance of people being exposed to all of the facts when it is drawn out over a period of time; the dynamics of the election period are such that things can change and change very significantly in the last week—not always but on occasions.

It allows for the electronic lodgements of documents with the Electoral Commissioner modernising requirements around the Electoral Commissioner advertising the election, removing the automatic unenrolment of itinerant electors if they leave South Australia for a period longer than one month or do not vote at a general election, removing compulsory voting for itinerant voters, allowing for postal vote applications to be lodged digitally and creating an offence for providing false or misleading information under the act. This is an area that probably needs more attention than it gets in this bill in a period of social media. I speak from experience, given the sustained campaign in the year in the lead-up to the last election that I had to put up with in my electorate.

It is allowing injunctive relief to be sought for noncompliance around electoral advertisements, commentaries and other materials, and allowing the early counting of pre-poll votes. Some concerns have been expressed about that, given the lack of real clarity about ensuring full confidentiality when it comes to pre-poll votes and the potential impact, if it is not done in a very rigorous way, of influencing the outcome of an election, influencing voters.

It is also to remove the requirements to physically print electoral rolls, the issue I would be most concerned about, especially given the nature of my electorate. I have the APY lands in my electorate, and we make an effort to encourage people to enrol and vote. There is still a significant number of people in the APY lands who do not vote; indeed, there are significant numbers of people elsewhere in the electorate who do not vote, for a range of reasons. The whole thing about the universal franchise and one vote, one value is that we should make it easy for people to vote. We should not make it harder for people to vote, and some of the features of this bill actually do make it harder for people to vote. The number one recommendation was clearly wanting us to go in a direction that would make it easier for people to vote.

To refresh people's memories, that recommendation was that the Electoral Act 1985 be amended to enable eligible voters (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 the polling day. The commissioner, in his report, backs up that argument and he backs it up incredibly well with real-world examples from interstate and overseas. It is a recommendation that I know all of us on this side fully support because it is making it easier for people to cast their vote, and that is what we should be doing, especially given the decline in voting amongst some sections of our population, especially young people. There are a range of reasons for that, but one of the things we can do is make it easy for people to vote.

It is probably worth going on at length about what the commissioner had to say when talking about enrolment on the day. He said that the declining rate of enrolment of younger voters and the increasing numbers of non-voters are matters of concern not isolated to South Australia. Indeed, there has been a longstanding unease about both trends among electoral commissioners and commissions in Australia, New Zealand and further afield.

He goes on to talk about the states that have gone in the opposite direction to what is being proposed here by the government and talks about New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland and Victoria. He also refers to most of the jurisdictions in Canada and how they have all gone in a direction to make it easier to vote. It is interesting when you look at the figures presented. He presents the figures about this state and the likely impact and what has happened in past elections, while acknowledging that some of the data is a bit sketchy when it comes to South Australia. He provides the figures about what a difference it did make in Queensland and Victoria, in New Zealand and elsewhere.

A significant number of additional people were counted in the vote, and surely that is what we all want to see. We want to see more people participate in our democratic system. It is a system that we do not people to lose an attachment to because in the world at the moment there are an increasing number of countries and jurisdictions that are moving in a more authoritarian direction. So the more people we can get involved with voting and the more—I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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