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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2022-02-08 Daily Xml
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Bills

Electoral (Assisted Voting) Amendment Bill

Standing Orders Suspension

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (15:50): I move:

That standing orders be so far suspended as to enable me to introduce a bill forthwith.

Motion carried.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I note the absolute majority.

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (15:50): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Electoral Act 1985. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (15:51): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The bill before the chamber makes a very simple amendment to the Electoral Act. It allows for telephone voting during this pandemic. This bill is an exact copy of the provisions that passed in the Legislative Council as part of the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2021 towards the end of last year. That bill was introduced towards the end of last year and attracted some criticism in this chamber from non-government members for being introduced so late in an electoral cycle. It was drawn to our attention that it was like trying to change the rules in the last quarter of a football game.

There is one very important element to that bill, and we expect the government to have no criticism of it coming to the chamber at this time given that they introduced their own bill so late in the electoral cycle. Having stripped back everything else from the government's bill, there are no other changes that were in the previous bill.

There were matters on which members of this chamber and the government disagreed in the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, issues such as reducing the amount of time potential electors could have to get on the electoral roll. This bill before us has one function only, and that is to allow for the potential of telephone voting during this pandemic. It is very simple. It would allow for telephone-assisted voting for potentially thousands of people who are following directions to isolate but are too late to apply for and receive a postal vote.

South Australia has a proud history of extending voting rights to all citizens; however, for this election that could be at risk. There are people in South Australia who may be disproportionately affected by the potential of not being able to vote because they are following isolation directions. For example, people in regional areas, if it is true that there is a suggestion of just one or not many drive-through centres, could be disproportionately affected.

I am receiving daily communication and phone calls from Aboriginal communities, particularly the APY lands and the West Coast—Koonibba, Scotdesco and Yalata—about the very high incidence of Aboriginal people in those communities contracting COVID or facing isolation due to being close contacts for COVID. I think there was a report that at one stage recently 10 per cent of new cases were Aboriginal people—between five and 10 per cent higher than the non-Aboriginal population. So there are groups of people already disenfranchised from the political system who, if not given an opportunity for telephone voting, may face further disenfranchisement as a result of this bill failing to pass.

We have faith in the Electoral Commissioner and in the voters of South Australia, but we could have a situation where without this bill passing, despite the very best efforts of the Electoral Commission, we do not have an election result that reflects the will of a majority of the electors. We are a little over two years into a global pandemic. According to media reports, up to 20,000 eligible voters could be ordered to stay at home on election day, having missed the cut off for postal voting or without casting a pre-poll vote.

Even more people who are in aged care or in hospitals would, under normal circumstances, avail themselves of a vote by virtue of having their residence declared a designated institution, but that will not be an option this election. We saw in the publication of the Government Gazette on Thursday that it was made clear that the dozens and dozens of places usually declared institutions will not be this election, leaving thousands looking for a different way to vote.

Based on a report of the boundaries commission, under the new redistribution that will be the boundaries for seats at this election, the top 10 most marginal seats will be decided by a collective total of less than 8,000 votes. In recent times, we have seen the seat of Fisher decided by nine votes in the by-election of 2014. The Leader of the Government in this place and I will both remember that, having been scrutineers at the count in the Fisher by-election.

In the Queensland state election in 2020, the seat of Bundaberg was decided by the same margin. Only the Leader of the Government in this place will remember in 1968 Des Corcoran originally being declared the winner of the seat of Millicent by one single vote prior to disputed returns overturning that by-election. It is entirely possible that a number of seats in the next parliament could be decided by very small, even single digit, margins. It is in no-one's interest to bring about a result that could be casting doubt by the potential denying of tens of thousands of South Australians a vote.

This government had a long time to deal with these issues. The date of the election did not just creep up on the government. Since the Electoral Act was changed to allow for fixed-term elections on the third Saturday of March, the government has known since the very start of this pandemic that the state election would be on 19 March this year. As I said at the start, the government dragged their feet on introducing electoral legislation to parliament.

It was then debated in the other place. Despite in the other place the original bill that provided for telephone voting at the government's suggestion and provision in that form in that Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, the Attorney-General conceded many of the amendments that were proposed in the House of Assembly were very reasonable. The government adopted a number of opposition amendments that were actually moved and passed in this place. It is extraordinary that the government, despite having a bill of their own that would allow telephone voting and being on the Notice Paper in the House of Assembly for many weeks, would refuse to consider it in their rush to shut down parliament.

Some of the commentary is saying that now there is not enough time to pass the bill and administratively implement the changes necessary. Quite frankly, that is rubbish. The regulations to support telephone voting were finalised in September last year. How do I know that? I know that because the Attorney-General in exile, the member for Bragg, Vickie Chapman's office, in September last year emailed around the regulations.

The government has had the regulations, the administrative things necessary to support legislative change for telephone voting, since September last year. We are ready for this change. We are five months overdue ready for this change.

We were told this week that the federal government is intending to implement changes to allow for telephone voting for those affected by isolation orders during the pandemic. The federal election could be before our election. Under the commonwealth electoral provisions, the writs for a federal election need to be issued 33 days before polling day, making a 12 March federal election still a possibility. If the federal government can make provisions for telephone voting to occur even at a date possibly before this state election for the whole of the country, then we can do this in SA. I will also point out this is not something we are going to have to reinvent in South Australia. This is not something unknown around Australia, the idea of telephone voting.

'We have had vision-impaired electors using telephone voting—in Victoria, since 2010; in New South Wales, since 2011; in Queensland, since 2015; and in Western Australia, since 2017. I am sure we would have heard if there were major problems in relation to that.' What I have just read out are the words of the member for Bragg, the Attorney-General in exile, Vickie Chapman. They are not our words. They are the words of the person charged with the administration of the Electoral Act, the member for Bragg, Vickie Chapman, imploring this parliament to allow telephone voting. On this occasion—and it is not often—I agree with the member for Bragg, the Hon. Vickie Chapman: it is time for telephone voting.

I think it is beyond the comprehension of many South Australians why the government is not allowing telephone voting. Someone I know who does not particularly like politics summarised it very succinctly in terms of making sure we pass it in this chamber and then that the lower house come back for the minutes it will take to pass it in their chamber. That person said to me, 'Get off your backsides, do your job, make sure people are able to vote.'

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (16:01): I think it is very disappointing in the remaining days of the parliament that the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council should refer to the advice of the independent Electoral Commissioner, Mr Mick Sherry, as 'absolute rubbish'.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: No, I said—

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: No, that's what he said. The Leader of the Opposition said that if anyone says that, it is absolute rubbish. We have here the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow attorney-general, referring to the independent Electoral Commissioner and the advice that he provides, and he says—

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: Point of order, sir.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —that the independent Electoral Commissioner's advice is absolute rubbish. It is a disgrace.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Sit down, Treasurer.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: I am being misrepresented by the Treasurer. I said that anyone who says we do not have the administrative regulations ready is talking absolute rubbish, not the Electoral Commissioner. It is a deliberate misrepresentation and I take offence, sir.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: You may care to withdraw, Treasurer.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: No, I do not care to withdraw at all. It is my contribution to the second reading and I will make the contribution as I see fit within the standing orders.

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: The shadow attorney-general has referred to comments made by the independent Electoral Commissioner as rubbish—

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: Point of order, sir: I wish to raise it again, it is—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —and it is a disgrace. It is a smear.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: —completely unparliamentary.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: You do not have the chance to speak. I am speaking.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order, Treasurer! Please sit.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: The Treasurer is just not telling the truth.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Do you have a point of order?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: The point of order is that the Treasurer is completely misrepresenting what another member has said. I said nothing of the sort. I spoke about—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Maher, sit down. Treasurer, move on, please.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Mr Deputy President, just remind the honourable member that if he wants to take a point of order on having been misrepresented, he has the opportunity after I have contributed or at some later stage to claim that he has been misrepresented.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: I will do it now.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Well, just standing up and screaming does not mean you have the right under the standing orders to do so.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: Like you were on ABC this morning, screaming your way through an interview?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: We have the shadow attorney-general, as I said, referring to the advice that the independent Electoral Commissioner has given as being rubbish. It is a disgrace. It is a smear of the independent Electoral Commissioner. To have a situation—

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Maher, you will have your opportunity to sum up.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —where someone who wants to hold himself out to potentially be the senior law officer in this state—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —to actually be referring to the advice of the independent Electoral Commissioner as rubbish—

The Hon. J.E. Hanson interjecting:

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Hanson, if you are going to interject, do it from your seat and then it will be out of order.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —is a disgrace and he should really withdraw that reflection on the advice of the independent Electoral Commissioner. The advice of the independent Electoral Commissioner to the office of the Hon. Josh Teague—when asked about the issue which is the subject of this particular debate, which is whether or not, if a bill is passed in this parliament this week, telephone voting could be established—was, 'Due to the proximity of the 2022 state election, it is not feasible to establish a telephone voting centre,' full stop, end of story.

We can play games, we can have political stunts, we can have cardboard cut-outs or people sitting in another chamber. We can require the parliament to vote on the bill, we can jam it through without people having had the opportunity to debate it in the normal course of events. We can do all those things, but the reality is that, if the bill passes this week, nothing is going to happen because the assembly is not going to be sitting.

Even if the assembly did sit and the bill was to pass, the independent Electoral Commissioner' decision on this is final. He is the one who runs the election. Unless the shadow attorney-general is going to say that the Labor Party's position is that they are going to dictate to the independent Electoral Commissioner how he runs an electoral process, well then heaven help the people of South Australia if the people responsible for what goes on within the Australian Labor Party are to be given control and direction over the independent Electoral Commission.

Whatever criticisms we might have of electoral processes or whatever it is, for better or for worse, it is better than anything else we are going to see around the world. We have an independent Electoral Commission process in Australia and in South Australia. We have an independent Electoral Commissioner, Mr Sherry. He is the one. He is not partisan. He has given the advice that even if this bill passes this week, which it is not going to—well, it is not going to pass the parliament, it will pass the Legislative Council because the numbers are there, so I am told—the reality is we are not going to have telephone voting.

I responded that way to the question from the Hon. Ms Bonaros in question time to say that we need to look at the other issues—and we are—in terms of how we can maximise the opportunities for South Australians who want to vote, to be able to vote on election day. We had the chance to resolve this issue in this chamber back in November, three or four months ago, but the Hon. Mr Maher and his colleagues played games in this particular chamber and moved a whole series of amendments to the bill.

I remind honourable members that one of those amendments was one of the great proposed rorts of our time from the Labor Party and, given their history, that is a fair accolade to give them. This is the party where dead people voted for years in relation to affiliated unions, within the AWU and the like, just to increase their conventional delegate votes. They dug people up to make sure that they could vote for certain people.

The reality was that what we had was a series of amendments to the bill. For example, everyone knows that if you move to a new house or apartment or accommodation or residence in South Australia, under our electoral laws you have to be able to demonstrate that you have lived there for a month to qualify for eligibility in the new seat. If you move from the safe seat of Napier to the marginal seat of Adelaide, you are buying an apartment in Adelaide, you have to live there for a month before you can qualify to vote in the marginal seat.

What the Labor Party moved and successfully had passed in this chamber was that as long as you said you intend to move to the marginal seat of Adelaide from the safe seat of Napier, you were going to be able to vote in the marginal seat of Adelaide. One of the great proposed rorts of all time which was added to this particular legislation and they got it through. That is why the bill went nowhere in the House of Assembly, because not only government members but enough crossbench members said, 'Give us a break. You expect us to vote for that sort of rort, proposed by the Australian Labor Party, just to get telephone voting through?'

The Labor Party were quite open. The Hon. Mr Maher was the chief proponent of this. He said, 'Irrespective of COVID and all those things, we want more people voting on election day,' even though the public health advice was, 'Don't have everybody voting on election day. Spread the votes out over a longer period of time because of public health safety reasons, because of the pandemic.'

But the Australian Labor Party's position was, 'No, what we want to do is force more people to vote on election day,' contrary to the public health advice, and what did they do? They successfully reduced pre-poll voting periods from 10 days, or 12 days or whatever it was, down to seven. It is down to seven days. If the Electoral Commission does what it normally does and we cannot dictate to them—that is, they do not work on long weekends—there would only have been four pre-poll voting days prior to the election.

Even if they changed all their past practices and they worked on the Saturday, Sunday and holiday Monday, there would only have been seven pre-poll days, because the Labor Party's view was to force everyone to come together on polling day even though the public health advice argued against it. They got that amendment through as well. They played games in this particular chamber. They could have just accepted things like the telephone voting provisions and the other, where there was the capacity for some sort of agreement between the various sides, but they played games.

They jammed through amendments which were completely unacceptable to most thinking people in the community, and when it went down to the House of Assembly there were enough government members and crossbench members who said, 'Give us a break. We're not going to jam that particular bill through with all those rorts and changes that the Labor Party and the Legislative Council majority have put into the particular bill.'

That is why the bill went nowhere. In November, if we had been able to process the telephone voting then there was at least a prospect that the independent Electoral Commissioner would have been able to do what they were obviously contemplating, and that was to have some version of telephone voting up and going for this particular election.

We are going through the charade today. As I said, we acknowledge that we do not have the numbers in this particular chamber to prevent the first stage of the charade, and so we are not going to delay the house by having everyone speaking and excessively long contributions during the committee stage of the debate and the like.

We will allow the Labor Party and those who want to support them to go through the charade in the full knowledge that the independent commissioner has said it is not going to be done anyway, and in full knowledge that the House of Assembly is not going to be meeting and this bill will just end in the never-never somewhere, having passed the Legislative Council but not having been debated at all prior to the election.

Another point I think it is important to note is to at least put some sort of rationality into the debate about impacts. The advice that I have been provided with for today's debate is as follows. Presently, pursuant to the regulations recently introduced, in the case where a person is in directed isolation or quarantine in the lead-up to the election they can apply for a postal vote at any time up until 5pm on the Thursday before the election, that is Thursday 17 March.

A lot of people are saying there are 20,000 people or 30,000 people—or pick a number; no-one can actually guarantee one way or another whether it is right or wrong, because it depends on the passage of the pandemic. As I said in question time, encouragingly the numbers in the pandemic are trending downwards significantly from the peak of 5,600 daily cases. The advice is that right through until 5 o'clock on the Thursday before the election someone who is in quarantine or directed isolation will be able to apply for a postal vote; that is what I am told.

The advice I have is that the group of electors we are obviously contemplating are those electors who are directed to isolate or quarantine after 5 o'clock on the Thursday night. We are talking about after 5 o'clock on Thursday night, Friday and potentially Saturday. It depends what time on Saturday, but you can start voting at 8 o'clock on Saturday morning. If you get directed into isolation at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, you could have voted in the morning anyway. So we are essentially talking about seven hours on Thursday night and 24 hours on the Friday.

I know there has been an estimate given by somebody that there could be 20,000 people impacted. For that to occur, I assume, on reading that, we would have to have a maximum of 20,000 cases somewhere, or cases and close contacts, because we are talking about those who might be going into isolation. You would have to be talking about 20,000 of those between 5 o'clock on Thursday and midnight on Friday night, or 8 o'clock on Saturday morning.

As I said in question time, we are down to 1,100 or 1,200 cases a day—that is in terms of cases. There is obviously a number, which I do not know that anyone is able to accurately estimate, and that is people who go into isolation because they happen to be a close contact. Clearly, the fewer cases you have, the fewer close contacts we are going to have.

So at the time when we had 5,600 cases a day, or the like, there were obviously many more people who were prospectively close contacts. If we get the numbers down, as we have, to 1,100 or 1,200 and if they go even lower than that over the next four to five weeks, then there will be fewer close contacts. No-one can guarantee the passage of the pandemic. What we are seeing at the moment is encouraging and we hope we are going to see that continue.

As I said to the Hon. Ms Bonaros, whether it is 1,000, 2,000 or whether it is 20,000, clearly it is in everyone's interest. The government has given the commitment to do all that it can. It will not be through the lack of resources. As the Treasurer, I have assured the Electoral Commission that if they need additional resources to provide for drive-through booths or special booths where people are kitted out in full PPE, or whatever it might happen to be, so that people who are in this particular position of isolation are able to vote or not, the government will provide whatever resources the commission says they need to ensure that the majority of people who want to vote are able to vote.

There are a range of other options that are being actively canvassed at the moment—not just those particular options are being canvassed, but a range of options. There is no intention, contrary to some of the claims from the Australian Labor Party on social media, that Steven Marshall does not want people in isolation to vote. That particular claim is a load of rubbish. The Premier and the government, and I am sure the opposition and the crossbench, all have a shared objective and that is that for those people who do want to vote we should do all we can to allow them to vote, even in the midst of a pandemic.

As I said, in terms of quantifying the group of people we are talking about, the advice I have been given on behalf of the government and speaking on this debate today is that we are talking about that group of people broadly who, from late Thursday afternoon through to the Saturday, might be directed into isolation or quarantine during that particular period. That is the group that we should be most concerned about.

I accept there are other issues, whether it be aged care or whether it be the APY lands. The APY lands and the like have been issues for a period of time and clearly the Electoral Commission is looking at what it is they need to do to try to ensure that those who wish to vote are going to be able to vote in those particular areas as well.

So, as I said, we are not going to unnecessarily delay the first part of this charade. Those who want to be actors in the charade: go your hardest. The bill can pass this particular chamber, but it ain't going anywhere.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (16:18): SA-Best is going to support this bill, even though we need to acknowledge what it is. You have to call it for what it is—it is a rather symbolic stunt, I guess we must say. I am astounded that it has only come about that we are discussing it in the past week or so. It came about only after I and my Chief of Staff, Sean Whittington, attended a briefing at the state Electoral Commission with the commissioner, Mr Sherry, who made a point to express his dismay at what happened in parliament and the fact that the bill was actually just sitting on the House of Assembly Notice Paper after it had been passed in November in this place.

You only have to go back to November. There were calls even then that parliament needed to continue sitting. We said it in this place and they were saying it in the other place, that we needed to continue sitting in December, and if necessary even in January. Well, the Premier was not having any of that. He pulled up stumps and that was it. That bill was left languishing there. It could easily have been passed if the Premier and the others in the House of Assembly decided to try to get it through.

I am sure they would have been having earnest discussions. Certainly, the commissioner himself would have been having earnest discussions with the Premier at the time. By the time we pulled up stumps last year, I do not think the COVID powwow was going on; I think the Transition Committee had been disbanded sometime in December. Nonetheless, it is disingenuous to suggest that it was all the fault of the opposition and the crossbenchers that it sat there, when there has been ample time and ample opportunity for the House of Assembly to return, consider the amendments that were passed here and bring it back to the Legislative Council.

The Electoral Commissioner would not have been under the enormous pressure that he has been put under now in regard to ensuring that every South Australian—and there are more than 1.2 million people who are on the electoral roll and are entitled to vote—has the ability to exercise their democratic right to vote.

The Treasurer just gets up and says of infections, 'Oh, well, the numbers could be going down.' They actually went up today, Treasurer. Even yesterday, Dr McGowan at the Budget and Finance Committee told us that there is at least 20 per cent under-reporting of COVID cases. I was reading where the health department in Queensland had to undertake a project to survey how many people had symptoms and did not know that they actually had it, and it was an alarming figure. What is to say that is not happening here? Of course it is happening here.

Even more disconcerting was that when the matter was raised last week, and we spoke about it, the State Coordinator and police commissioner was posed some questions on ABC radio and it seemed to be the first time he realised that there was an issue with voting. What is going on here? Why does it take up until now, late January/February, for the people running the state to realise, hang on, there could be a problem on election day? Where was the planning for that? Where was it discussed?

When we were in here going through the bill, it was before the borders opened and before Omicron developed. Nonetheless, there should have been planning put in place that in the event that you do open the borders there could be a spike in infections. It has happened everywhere else around the world—everywhere. I do not know why South Australia would have thought it would have been different from places like the UK, Denmark, countries in Europe, the United States, the Netherlands, where there was this massive spike in infections again.

I was on radio on Sunday night discussing COVID with some of the listeners, and a call came in from a listener in Tokyo. He was telling me that currently in Japan they are going through their fifth wave. This is only after some months ago that it looked like they were on top of it. So we are not really on top of COVID. It is easy for the Premier to have his press conferences and say in a reassuring tone that figures are down, the numbers of deaths are down, trying to put a good spin on these things and that the figure is perhaps nowhere near what the modelling suggested.

We have never seen that modelling. We do not know what that modelling was. It could have been in the tens of thousands. Last year, when somebody suggested that the infection rate in Australia could peak at 200,000 in a day, we had the Prime Minister come out and pooh-pooh all that. He said, 'Hang on, that is in the most extreme situation that it could reach that number of figures.' I am just wondering whether the Premier himself was conflating that and also saying, 'Well, that may have been the Doherty modelling in South Australia, that it could have hit 40,000.' But was that in the most extreme way?

Nonetheless, we did hit high figures, and even a thousand or 1,200 is still very high. You may recall that a year ago they got spooked by two or three cases in the community and locked down the entire state. Things have changed quite considerably obviously, because we were told last year that we needed to live with the virus. It is quite clear that we cannot live with the virus without being spooked, second-guessing and making things up as we go along because simply the appropriate planning was not there.

It is still quite possible, perhaps, for the government to consider online voting. I do not know why that did not come into consideration at all. We are able to get apps in a very quick, short space of time to QR code and so on. We have had apps for vaccination come up pretty quickly, and I am sure there are apps in the works or that have been developed for online voting, where the government could easily have gone back to the creators and said, 'Let's have a look and let's consider and see if this is quite possible.' They could have even done that before this dilemma had arisen in the event, if anyone had foreseen, that there could be problems on voting day. They could have thought, 'Well, if we do have these issues, what can we do to get around it?'

There is a problem in aged care, and this is a problem that has been created by the decision to open up borders on 23 November and allow COVID to come into the state. We see a high number of residents being forced to be in lock-up, locked up in their own rooms. We have seen aged-care operators having to lock down and not allow residents to see their families or other visitors permitted to be there. The Electoral Commissioner said that this problem was something they needed to overcome because none of their staff could now go into aged-care facilities to assist and advise on the appropriate way to conduct a ballot. They cannot do that now.

They have to create a video that will be shown to some of the residents in there. If you have been in a nursing home, as I have, sometimes videos are not exactly as effective as you would like to think and certainly do not replace the human contact people will need because they will obviously have questions afterwards about what happens if they make a mistake and how they correct it and whatever. That right has also been denied to aged-care residents.

Another suggestion—and I do not know if it was from the Premier or somebody else—was that you could have staff in there who could assist them in making a vote. Quite frankly, if I had a mum or dad in a nursing home, or a grandfather or whoever, I would not want a staff member telling them how to vote or who to vote for or whatever. I do not want them to be influenced by a staff member. That is just another problem that has been created from this mess of a refusal to bring back parliament at an opportune time to deal with this bill.

Another important aspect of that legislation we did pass was in relation to pre-polling, and I acknowledge that the Hon. Tammy Franks will address that in her bill. The Treasurer has been bleating about the fact that the number of pre-polling days is not as long as they would have wished and also because of issues that would have arisen out of social distancing and everything else. Quite frankly, I do not think that even washes. The longer you extend pre-polling, the more it is going to diminish voting day in itself. That was the indication, and that was what we were quite concerned about.

At the time, we were told we were going to have to live with the virus: 'Here you go. It's going to happen.' We were prepared to do that. At the same time, we can now expect that pre-polling will be far greater because of the COVID scare. It is out in the community, and we can see now that people are afraid to go out. We are going to see more people lined up at pre-polling. Quite clearly, there is that issue of how that is going to be managed and whether there will be enough staff to manage that.

So we are going to have that issue with pre-polling, and it could be that up to 50 per cent of the votes are cast in pre-polling booths. The legislation would have addressed the fact that we do not want to have to wait seven days, as applies for declaration votes. They would have been considered as ordinary votes, as the legislation that we pass here, and the Electoral Commission would be able to count them on polling day.

All those votes, and who knows how many—tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands—would have been included in the vote on the night, and it would have assisted in getting a result a lot sooner than is probably going to happen now. It could be days or it could be weeks or a month or two before we know the result of the South Australian election all because of this mess that has been created. I would have thought that that would have been even then a good reason for the House of Assembly to return so that we could manage the situation with pre-polling and have those votes counted.

The problem with the APY lands has been mentioned. They are in total lockdown, so how are they going to be able to vote? They do not have a post office there, I understand, so that is going to be a difficulty as well. We are hearing all these new ideas coming out now. Here we are, just over a month out from an election and we are hearing these solutions of, 'Maybe we will convert Victoria Park into a massive polling station and people who have COVID can drive through and cast their votes that way.'

Again, that is putting pressure on the Electoral Commission because they need to have the appropriate equipment at hand to ascertain that these people are eligible to vote. We know that they do have an app they can access even on polling day to try to circumvent the delays involved in having to manually check through the electoral roll data to see if those people are enrolled to vote there. The technology is there, we know it is there, and we do know that technology is also there for online voting.

Going back to the local government bill, when we were looking at that, I think I remember bringing it up then that perhaps we should have used the City of Adelaide elections later this year as a bit of a trial for online voting. I think that is something we do need to consider when parliament resumes after the election. We are now going to have to seriously look at having online voting and having a trial of it, starting with the local government elections, perhaps in the City of Adelaide and elsewhere, to see how that works. We have to see whether we can utilise this new technology, this technology that we know is already there, to be able to ensure that people do have their right to vote recognised so that they are not disenfranchised.

In closing, I would like to reiterate the fact that the forthcoming election will pose problems that probably were not foreseen, and will pose even more problems when the voting period does emerge. Whether we have seven, 10 or 14 days of pre-polling—I do not think it makes a difference—we will see this massive rush of people who will want to go and vote. That will mean that there is a likelihood of infections happening while people are waiting in line or at pre-polling booths.

That is what is likely to happen. People will be pre-polling in the week leading up to the election, which could mean that people could come down not just after Thursday, in those hours after the closing, but they will probably come down that week and will have to isolate. They may not be able to file for a postal vote in time or not realise it until it is too late.

These are issues that could have been avoided. They could have been avoided last year if the Premier had not pulled up stumps and decided to take his bat and ball and go away and not consider one of the most important, fundamental rights of every citizen in a democratic society, and that is the right to exercise their vote.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (16:37): I rise today in support of the Electoral (Assisted Voting) Amendment Bill 2022 and urge the government to get on board and support this as a matter of urgency. This bill is about ensuring that people who test positive for COVID, too close to the election to receive a postal vote, are not deprived of their right to vote. That means it is about democracy and it is about integrity.

We are less than six weeks out from the state election, and still the government is yet to address this incredibly important issue. As the Hon. Mr Pangallo said, it is almost unbelievable that it has not been addressed sooner. Here we are on the eve of an election, and it is clear that the state government has not given due consideration to the effects COVID will have on this year's state election.

According to the SA Health dashboard today, there are 14,635 active COVID-19 cases in South Australia. I think it is probably a fair assumption or guess to say that at least double that would be close contacts and therefore in isolation. There are some seats in South Australia where the margin between winning and losing is less than 1,000 votes. There are some seats in South Australia where it is far less than that.

The reality is that a handful of seats may decide who governs the state for the next four years, and possibly a handful of voters in that handful of seats, yet the government is happy for potentially thousands of voters to be left out. If the state does not provide the ability for everyone who is eligible to vote, clearly this may play a role in the outcome of who forms the state's next government.

Free and fair elections are a foundation of our democracy, and it is vital that we continue to provide this to every eligible person. As a parliament we need to send a message to the state that it does not matter your circumstances, you will get a direct vote and a direct say in who runs this state for the next four years. This should be non-negotiable. However, the message that the state government is sending is that of course you can have a say, so long as you do not get sick; that of course your democratic rights will be upheld, so long as you do not get sick; and that everyone's vote matters, except those who get sick.

Democracy that excludes some people is not a democracy at all. We have heard that there may be proposals for the option of a single drive-through polling booth based in the Adelaide CBD. Would that be good enough? Would that be good enough for residents in the outer suburbs who, while sick, would need to drive into the city? Would it be good enough for regional residents who, while sick, may have to travel a round trip of 10 or 12 hours or more to cast a vote? Would this be good enough for someone who actually does not have a car? What would their options be? There should not be a differential on democracy, where city residents are prioritised over everyone else. We need everyone to have access.

During this term of parliament, we have seen a regular pattern of a state government that is so out of touch with regional residents that I wonder whether that may be reflective of a recent poll taken in the seat of Mount Gambier where the Liberal Party primary vote has dropped nearly 5 per cent since the 2018 state election.

In terms of regional residents, I can assure the Treasurer that regional residents have no confidence whatsoever that Australia Post services will ensure that they can vote with a postal vote in the allotted time. Postal services have been problematic, shall we say, for some time and relying on the postal service for a postal vote if you come down with COVID at the last minute is clearly not going to be what is needed for regional people. The Marshall Liberal government needs to ensure that all residents across South Australia have other options to vote in the state election if they come down with COVID in the last days of the election. These options must be safe and they must be accessible.

It is fair to say that throughout this pandemic our frontline workers have been one of the main reasons why we as a community have stayed relatively safe. Doctors and nurses, police, and emergency service workers have all done an absolutely wonderful job and deserve our gratitude, but so too do the unsung heroes, such as supermarket workers, transport workers or the people working to continue to provide the goods that we all need—people like Liz and Robert in Mount Gambier.

Robert works in a sawmill and Liz works in retail. They have continued to work throughout this pandemic. Even right at the beginning, when everything was so uncertain, when people were scared to go out of their houses, they continued to work because they and their jobs and their colleagues meant that the rest of us could continue to get the products that we needed. They also deserve thanks. They worked without fanfare, without thanks. It is those workers and all frontline workers who are most likely to come into contact with COVID and potentially be subject to quarantine requirements and potentially miss out on a vote. Why should they be told that they will not be able to vote in the election because they have continued to do their jobs, to do their jobs for the rest of us?

Of course, this could have been addressed last year but the Marshall Liberal government shut down the House of Assembly until May. When the Marshall Liberal government made the decision to reopen the borders on 23 November last year, the Premier kept telling us that the government was prepared. But, instead, we have seen crisis after crisis. We have seen elective surgery cancelled, the hospitality industry crushed from the restrictions and, of course, we all know about ambulance ramping: it is the worst in history. These are just a few of the issues that every South Australian is suffering from as a result of this government's mismanagement. They claimed they were ready when they clearly were not. They certainly were not ready to deal with an election, although we all knew it was coming.

All the state government needs to do is turn up for a day of work this week in the lower house to pass this critical piece of legislation. That is all that is needed. It is about democracy and integrity, which I would hope is important to all of us here, and I urge all those who do value democracy and integrity to support this bill.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (16:44): I am going to go on a very different tangent from what I was planning because the performance that we just saw from the Treasurer was quite astounding. You stand over there and you point your finger at us. Look closer to home. You said in your speech that we should all give every opportunity to every person to vote. You could have. You are in government. How about you perhaps act like you are in government. You have the power and you have the numbers to bring back the parliament, if you so choose. You are a government. Any normal government should have the numbers, but not your government because you cannot even keep your own party together.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. T.T. Ngo): The Hon. Emily Bourke, could you address the Chair, please.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: It is a very simple thing do to, to do your job. It is a simple thing to show leadership. It is a simple thing to do the right thing by the community. That is why you have been elected and that is why you became the government—but not for long.

It is really no surprise that we are having this debate 38 days out from an election. In December, we saw there were numbers of around 900 COVID cases. On 16 January, we saw 3,450 cases. There was no surprise. This was not a secret. We could see that the numbers were increasing and they were increasing fast. At any point, you could have brought the parliament back, but you have decided not to. You have decided to stand over there and take the easy option and point the finger at the opposition, and that is disrespectful to every South Australian.

You laugh about it. You shrug your shoulders through your debate and you say, 'Oh well, it's only the last day. It's only the last few hours of the election period. They're not important, those people. They can figure it out. Their voices aren't needed to be counted. If you get sick on the Friday and you cannot get there on the Saturday, I don't care. Your voice doesn't matter.' That is what you are essentially saying to every South Australian.

You have stood here in the parliament today, shrugged your shoulders and said, 'It doesn't matter. Figure it out yourself. Get to a COVID station, get tested and maybe even get to go and vote as well, if you're lucky.' That is the dismissive attitude that you are showing the South Australian people and no wonder it is time for you to go.

The government has claimed that it is prepared. You are far from prepared. You only have to go out into the community and hear the stories time and time again of the hurt and the pain that you have caused. You need to take responsibility and you need to start showing leadership.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (16:47): I rise to speak in firm support of this bill. Anyone with a lick of common sense could have foreseen that if you are to have a state election in the midst of a global pandemic, there might be some people who would be sick or isolating on the day of that election and they might not be able to make it to a polling booth. Before 23 November, the commissioner, who is currently the State Coordinator, said that 23 November will be the day we let COVID into this state.

I know that people will also be voting early in greater numbers than ever before, and I do not just know that because I have a hunch. We have seen in every election in this country and across the world, under the pandemic, people are voting early. Of course, we do not want them to vote more than once.

We know that if you are going to catch COVID or become a close contact, whatever it is that ends up with you in isolation, for the good of the public health response it means that even with the best intentions, even if you allow more people to go and vote early, there will be people who do not have a postal vote, who have not voted early and who will be in isolation come the day of the poll.

We have a very proud tradition in South Australia, and in Australia, of people having access to the franchise. That is why we do not hold elections on a weekday when they are at work. It is why we actually have democracy sausages and celebrate the fact that we allow people to get to that polling booth over reasonably long hours. It is why we do not have too few polling booths for them to access that vote. It is why we do not have long lines normally, like in some countries where they will close the polling booths on those voters and deny them their franchise.

All South Australians deserve the same right to vote if they are on the roll and to have their voice heard. We do know, as other members have said, that sometimes elections come down to the line. The then electorate of Fisher came down to some eight votes. Martin Cameron would often tell me the story of the one-vote election, where he learned that you just have to keep campaigning no matter what because sometimes elections do come down to one vote.

But should elections come down to a number of votes in close contests on the poll this March that are able to be influenced by the number of people in that electorate who are confined, who are isolating, who are quarantining, or who are sick, I think we will see the Court of Disputed Returns get a real run for the money. I hope we do not see elections having to be re-run in those seats. That would be a sad day for our democracy because all of this was entirely foreseeable.

The bill is an exact copy, I believe, of the provisions that were passed in this place in the Legislative Council last year as part of the Electoral (Electronic Documents and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It was good enough for us last year. It was good enough for this council to pass these measures last year. Of course, it was the House of Assembly who rose, who suspended their sitting, and did not consider that bill to ensure that this election could be run in a way that anticipated the challenges of the COVID pandemic.

What I find quite concerning, other than the fact that the House of Assembly rose before that bill could be considered, is that this simple bill—which would allow for telephone-assisted voting for anyone with a disability and any class of voter outlined in the directions, which under the Emergency Management Act could be made—was in anticipation of the pandemic, but it has been the lax attitude of the Marshall government, not just to the pandemic but to this parliament, that has seen us do what the Treasurer calls a stunt.

I know the Hon. Frank Pangallo said that he raised to the public the issues of voting after the Electoral Commission's (ECSA's) briefings to all political parties and Independents contesting the election, which I gather were very feisty briefings, very critical of the parliament not passing the legislation that had been put before this place at the behest of the Electoral Commission of South Australia through their advice, which was not heeded and was not respected.

I have to say that, last year when parliament rose, I went down to my staff and said, 'So how are people going to vote on election day if we have COVID?' I have been saying that for quite a while. Sadly, that was many months ago. We are now 39 days from that election day. Worse still, we are 11 days from the issuing of the writs, when we go into caretaker government. So we have 11 days of the Marshall Liberal government being able to act as a government on this before we move into that caretaker period, when of course the rules will change and a more bipartisan approach will be taken.

What we have heard on the radio this morning from the Treasurer was that he has some sort of advice that he believes the member for Croydon, the Leader of the Opposition in the other place, also has in writing. I invite the Treasurer to provide that advice to this council for our consideration. I am certainly a little bemused that the Electoral Commission would give such feisty briefings in the last two weeks to all who received them, urging legislative reform, yet such a letter would exist.

If that technological issue is such a challenge, if we cannot get the systems up and running that already currently exist for some to vote at these elections, you would imagine that there might be some more simple paper-based solutions. Perhaps that is what we could be considering right now to give the full force of the parliament in a not just bipartisan but cross-party solution to this COVID challenge.

It is a challenge, as I say, that has been faced in many elections already in this country alone. Queensland has seen more people pre-poll and postal vote than ever before, and New South Wales currently has four by-elections. Indeed, they have arranged for postal voting packs to be sent out to all people on the electoral roll as a COVID-19 safety measure. This is information I take from the New South Wales Electoral Commission website.

Additionally, those postal ballots must be completed on or before election day, but they must be received by the New South Wales commission by Friday 25 February 2022. I note, in fact, that the election day is 12 February 2022. They have made a provision there in New South Wales not only that everyone gets access to a postal vote but that they can still turn up and vote on the day. To make it easier, to cut the lines and to basically abide by public health advice and not have people travelling about needlessly, they have made it as easy as possible for those people in the four New South Wales electorates to vote.

They have also looked at the postal voting challenges, at the timeliness of Australia Post, and they have allowed them more time to get those postal votes in. Why on earth are we not here, with the government, saying, 'Well here's a solution. You can have a postal vote and we will get it to you,—I would prefer with your free RATs if you were a close contact, as you would receive from the NHS if you were in the UK—'We will put this in your letterbox and you can get that into the post. We will assist you to do that somehow and, as long as you get that done by the end of the day on election day when you have been put into isolation, we will ensure that that postal vote is counted as part of our electoral processes and that our democracy is respected.'

These are simple solutions, certainly a little simpler than a drive-by polling booth, which one imagines cannot be replicated right across the state, which one imagines would be enormously labour intensive. As I have noted before, one simply has to imagine what might have been discussed in the COVID-Ready Committee because of course the COVID-Ready Committee—which has apparently, according to the Treasurer on radio this morning, discussed this matter—does not have agendas, does not have minutes, and so we do not actually know what possibilities they have considered.

Certainly, anything to do with the election should have been done in a bipartisan or, preferably, cross-party way. We do know, as members of the crossbench, as members of the opposition, that certainly the government had not considered discussing any of these solutions with us—fellow members of parliament, duly elected, who would come to the table and work in a cross-party fashion had the Marshall Liberal government simply either picked up the phone or had the courtesy to have these conversations with us before now.

Here we are: we know that perhaps 20,000 people could be isolating or live in places where they might find it difficult to vote in just 39 days' time. Indeed we know, as I say, that sometimes elections do come right down to the line and that those votes may well change the course of the result of the election. If they do, those who have been affected, who can prove that the number of people who were denied a vote is more than the number of people they needed to change their votes to be elected or not to be elected, will be quite within their rights to take these things to the Court of Disputed Returns—yet again, more chaos from the Marshall government due to a lack of planning.

A failure to plan has been a plan to fail. This situation can be fixed today. Of course the House of Assembly could resume tomorrow. You know that you have 25 members already who have signed to call for the House of Assembly to be recalled tomorrow. It would only take a handful of Marshall Liberal government MPs to stop their leafleting and letterboxing and to turn up next door to the other place, turn up to work. We know that the Prime Minister does not hold a hose and we know that the Prime Minister is fond of saying, 'It's not my job,' but, seriously, the one job of a parliamentarian is actually to turn up to parliament to pass legislation that is pressing.

This is pressing. It may not be the exact solution. It was certainly the solution three months ago when we had the opportunity last time—before we lost an Attorney-General and found a new one and then still had another—but it really is the least that this government could do to ensure confidence in our democracy. Some people will find themselves in the Squid Game that we find ourselves in of COVID, where meeting somebody on one day could see you in isolation the next day or the next week. We do not know who it is ever going to be, and we are not able to plan that by pre-polling or postal voting, because we are actually denying people currently the ability to pre-poll or postal vote unless they fulfil the exact criteria, and those criteria are narrow.

At the moment, I note that the Hon. Rob Lucas—who was happy to go on radio this morning, but has yet to table the correspondence he spoke of—in his speech earlier about postal voting suggested that the relevant period of concern is Thursday 17 March until Saturday 19 March, the actual polling day. He certainly belittled how many cases this might possibly be.

You can still submit your postal vote on the 17th and presumably have it stand. That is technically true, but when that postal vote actually has to be received at ECSA by the 17th, if you filled it out and posted it in country SA, that last safe day to post your application for it to be received by the appropriate day would potentially be 10 days of possible disenfranchisement, which is actually quite a longer period and a larger number. I think the Treasurer in his defence of the indefensible opened up a whole new can of worms of a further problem with the system we currently have.

It is extraordinary that we are here in parliament arguing that everyone should have a vote come 19 March. I cannot see how it is defensible to argue that it is the luck of the draw. Do not catch COVID. Do not come into close contact with somebody who has had COVID. Do not find yourself in isolation. Certainly, it is pretty disappointing that this government is happy to deny those people a vote, not that they know who they are at this point in that Squid Game approach that we have.

It is pretty disappointing that the government could not do its job and continue to sit last year and get this particular piece of legislation, which had passed the council, passed in the House of Assembly, where they actually do control the numbers, where they had the numbers to pass that legislation and they simply either forgot or chose not to do so. Certainly, I have learnt in politics not to think it is a conspiracy, that it is usually simply a stuff-up. Who knows whether it was deliberate or accidental that they forgot to pass this important legislation?

The Electoral Commissioner is now left with a much more difficult job, but the South Australian people have been let down yet again on what is the fundamental part of our democracy: ensuring their vote. I am sure they would in some part probably like to vote all of us out. They do not have that option. Sadly, the option they are currently being given is just going to lead to more chaos, whether it is the chaos of the Court of Disputed Returns or whether it is the chaos of still not knowing, 39 days before that poll, 11 days before we see caretaker government in place, what on earth the solutions are that the Marshall government is going to put up to address this issue. I look forward to the committee stage of this debate. I look forward to the COVID-Ready Committee considerations being shared with this council. With that, I support the bill.

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (17:04): Just a few brief words, Mr Acting Deputy President. When the government opened up the borders, they did that based on modelling. The modelling showed the apocalyptic sort of numbers we could expect. They actually opened up the borders based on those numbers. Many at the time thought, 'Well, the modelling numbers are only as good as the information fed in.' The reality was that their numbers would not be as bad as that and that the Premier, the Hon. Mr Marshall, would spend months slapping himself on the back because the numbers were not as bad as what occurred. This is what is happening now: every COVID briefing the Premier spends slapping himself on the back because not as many died or got infections as the modelling says.

What is happening at the moment now is that, based on that modelling, this government should have known that there were going to be a significant number of people with infections or with social contacting arrangements around the election time. We were assured in this parliament by the health minister, the Hon. Mr Stephen Wade, that they were fully prepared for the opening of the borders. Well, we all know that was not the case. They were not prepared. They were actually quite ill-prepared.

The number one responsibility of any government is to keep the people safe. That is one of the leading responsibilities a government has. This government have failed. It has probably been one of the greatest failures of public policy in the history of this state, the way this government have handled COVID. Getting past all that, this government would have known, based on that modelling, that there were going to be a significant number of people who would not be able to attend the ballot box on the day of the election.

What we have now is that there are going to be problems with the very principle that parliament allowed to get through back in the seventies, the very basis of 'one vote, one value.' There is the issue of the number of seats that had probably under a couple of hundred votes—I know King is lucky to have 100-odd votes, Newland may have only about 70 or 80 votes, Adelaide has around 150 votes, there is only 2 per cent in Elder—and I imagine there are nursing homes where there are far more people in nursing homes than the votes required to win those seats, so there is going to be a big question mark on the results of those elections if people are denied the right to perform their vote.

Obviously, the government understood, really, the problems that were going to occur. That is why they refused to come and attend parliament prior to the election. For a December sitting to decide, near an election, not to return to parliament in five months is probably one of the most disgraceful acts of government, especially during a pandemic. It is one of the most disgraceful acts of any government that I have known in my lifetime.

I support this legislation. I think it is common sense, I think it is responsible and I think this Liberal government has an obligation to come back to this parliament—even if it is only for a few hours—and support this legislation. I do not accept the fact that we do not have time to actually implement the technology that is required, purely for the fact that this government opened up the borders.

The modelling showed there were going to be far greater numbers infected and die than has occurred, and thank God for that, and that is certainly a good thing, but to say they were caught unaware with the Omicron and they were not aware of this, that and the other, as has occurred with numerous different issues which have gone wrong under this pandemic in this state over the last few months, I think is just unacceptable. I support the legislation and look forward to, hopefully, a good and proper debate in the lower house tomorrow. I urge everyone to support the bill.

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (17:09): Everyone has had a pretty good debate about this, and I think that it has really identified a number of the issues which are in place. The best way to categorise a lot of that into what I would like to say is to look at what we might be saying after the election. What if we were to look back on the election and ask, 'How on earth did this chaos happen? How on earth did a government that got less then 50 per cent of the vote get into government? How on earth did we have 20,000 or 30,000 people unable to vote on election day? How did that happen? How disenfranchised did our state become out of this election? How on earth did we get a chaotic Legislative Council, with some people elected, major parties losing people, people elected for the "I really like sheep" party coming in and forming part of what we have here in the Legislative Council? How did it happen?'

You would look back and you would ask, 'Well, when did it start? Did anyone see this as a problem?' Actually, yes they did. In fact, both the major parties got together last year and they said, 'Oh, geez, there's a bit of an electoral problem due to the pandemic. We had better adjust a bit of the act around how we're going to do voting, because this could be a problem.' So it was identified. If you were writing your article, you would say, 'Well, everyone knew.' Boring as it may be, and I accept that many voters were not sitting there in November or September last year saying, 'Geez, how am I going to vote on election day?', but I guarantee that after the election they might.

What else do we know? We know that there was a bill. It was voted on. It went through this house with very similar measures to those we have here today. Was there a level of understanding of what we were going to put through, what we were going to do about it? Yes, there absolutely was. It passed successfully through here and then hit the lower house, and then for some reason—that actually creates a bit of drama, does it not?—the Premier decided, 'No, I'm not going to pass that.' In fact, the Premier decided, 'I'm going to call off parliament early so that that can't happen.' Does that not that have some significance? If you were looking at it after the election, would it not have some significance?

As we know, we also now have a Treasurer who is sitting there saying, 'I'm going to create a lot of straw men around this. I'm going to say that it's the Labor Party who was at fault for this'—even though it is his government that got rid of parliament early—'I am going to say that somehow there is a history of the Labor Party having some voting problems,' which really requires all the tinfoil hats that we could possibly muster to believe that that is any way the case.

We have to believe that in some way, once again, for the Marshall government, it is not their fault; it is someone else who is to blame. I know some other members have gone to this, and they have said that the government taking a hands-off-the-wheel approach to governing has brought it again to the electoral reform act. They have said, 'How many people could it possibly disenfranchise?' We know that the Treasurer has already commented. He said, 'Oh, look, it's just a couple of days. How many people could there be?' We know it is probably likely to be about 10 days, which, if we look at the current rate of infections, could be 10,000 people.

I know that the Treasurer is on his way; he is off into the sunset. Maybe he does not care all that much about 10,000 votes going to the side, but I do. I care a great deal about that. Anyone who actually believed in what this chamber is about and indeed what this building is about and, I think, what the South Australian people are about would care that 10,000 people lost their ability to turn up on election day and cast their vote, hopefully, I would say, against this Marshall government.

Frankly, they could do whatever they wanted on election day. They could toss their ballot away if they wanted to, but they have to have that choice. They should not have that choice taken away from them by people who, like the Treasurer, say, 'Oh, look, it's just not that bad. It won't be that many people', not knowing who that is going to be, where they are going to live and who that may end up electing. We do not know. It may occur in every single marginal electorate across this state. We know that nine votes can decide an election, let alone 10,000 or half that number, 5,000. When you start looking at the numbers of chaos that this could create, why would you not sharpen your mind to actually say, 'You know what? We should do something about it.'

So looking backwards after the election, once again we would sit there and we would say, 'Gee, did parliament try to do anything?' even though we have a government saying, 'No, we're not going to do anything about it,' we have a premier saying, 'No, I won't recall parliament. I'm not going to do anything about this,' and we now have a Treasurer saying, 'Well, the Electoral Commissioner has also said that it would be hard to implement it.' Did anyone try to do anything about it would be the article that you would write.

Here we are—something that the Treasurer also called into question—doing something about it, saying this is a problem and doing exactly what the South Australian people elected us for. As a parliament, as the crossbench, as the Greens, as the Labor Party, we are here telling the government, 'You must be held to account for this. You can't just sit there and say, "Look, it's all a charade, it's all a game, it doesn't matter."' Yes, it does matter. It really does matter. That is what parliament is.

I would have thought the Treasurer would have known this after spending half his life here, but it appears this critical lesson seems to have evaded him, which is that the parliament is here to call to account issues even if you do not carry the day. Even if you do not get it the first time, you might get there eventually.

Parliament after parliament—and sure enough we have had enough social bills this year and last to establish just how much being persistent about legislation can eventually carry the day for you.

The Hon. R.A. Simms: That's why the Greens are here, that's it.

The Hon. J.E. HANSON: That is why the Labor Party is here. We hope that what we will have is a bill that we get through here that actually says what we should be doing, even if this government say they are not going to. It is really quite simple: it is to say that if you are stuck at home, get on the phone. Not to the Premier because he will not pick it up, but you can get on the phone to the Electoral Commission and you can vote against the Premier, and you can tell the Electoral Commission how you would like to vote because we have passed laws that say you cannot leave the house and you should not leave the house.

The primary reason we should do that, if nothing else, is to reinforce people's belief in democracy. We sat here and we passed laws saying you cannot do this, you will not do that, and those laws were incredibly severe. They said you could not leave your house—that is how severe they were. Now, someone deserves to have the right to say they did not like those laws. Someone deserves the right to say, 'I want to change the government,' or, 'I want to change how this state is running.'

If there are thousands of those people, even if you do not go to some of the examples we have used where you say 20,000, if there are 2,000 or 3,000 of those people that is a lot of people. That is a lot of people, and all we are saying here is that they deserve the right to have their say, and that is through a very small amendment to an act.

I would hope, much like the Hon. Mr Wortley, that we might see the government in the next 24 hours change their mind about recalling the lower house. The Treasurer in fact laughs at me from his seat as I say that. It is something that I think betrays the level of arrogance that we saw, not only in his speech today but from the Premier about this issue: 'I am not going to recall parliament, it is not needed.'

What could be more fundamental about recalling parliament than voting at an election? That is why we are here. That is why they accept that we can pass laws. It is because they vote us in and they say, 'Here you are, you get this enormous power to say: if you get COVID you will stay at home. If you are next to someone who got COVID, you are a special case and you must also stay at home, even though you are not sick.' What amazing, incredible power we have. To then say, 'If you do get COVID or if you are a close contact you have to stay home and you are going to miss out on the right to vote,' imagine if when passing those laws we had said that?

I go back to my article, written after the election. Imagine if that is what is in that article. We have a government that gets elected on the back of thousands of people who were disenfranchised in their vote. Do you reckon those thousands of people might stand out on those steps? They might say, 'I didn't vote for this. I had my right taken off me.' I think they might. And do you know what? They would be right. I might even stand with them.

That is not what we are here for, that is not what we are about, not when the answer could be so simple as for the Premier to say, 'I am going to recall the lower house, I am going to deal with this bill,' which the Treasurer has already conceded is going to pass here because it is the right thing to do, 'I'm going to recall it for 20 minutes, 40 minutes—however long it takes—just to run a piece of legislation through the lower house.' It is as fundamental as saying, 'You can pick up the phone and cast your vote,' and we can have a proper election where everybody gets the chance to do that.

What is wrong with that? Why would you not do that? What is wrong with you? Where are your priorities? Are they in hiding that vote? Are they in creating straw men, as we saw the Treasurer making where apparently it is all someone else's fault? No. It is in the person who is making that decision, who is saying, 'This bill will not pass, and I will make sure it does not because I will not convene parliament so that it does not.' That is Premier Steven Marshall, who 100 per cent has the power to change this whole debate to make this a non-issue, to give everybody a vote. He has that power. Why does he not exercise it? It is a valid question that we may be asking ourselves after election day.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (17:21): I thank honourable members for their contributions: the Hon. Frank Pangallo, the Hon. Clare Scriven, the Hon. Emily Bourke, the Hon. Tammy Franks and the Hon. Justin Hanson. I was not going to, but I will just make a few brief remarks about the contribution from the Leader of the Government: the Treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas.

Other people have mentioned it, and it is a truly extraordinary thing that the Hon. Rob Lucas talked about today—to downplay and to concede that, as the Hon. Justin Hanson said, it might only be a few thousand people who are going to miss out. To make that concession and say, 'We do not need to act because it might only be a few thousand people who will not get to vote' is just extraordinary, and then to talk about and make the concession that, yes, there are problems in areas such as the APY lands where Aboriginal people might not get to vote—'But so what? We are not going to act.'

Mate, do you even listen to yourself sometimes? Go back and have a look at what you said today and really reflect on your attitude. I know you are fond of telling us, Treasurer, that times change around you but your views hold fast. If you go back and reflect seriously on the views you have expressed today, you might even be concerned about the way you expressed yourself today. Other comments made by the Hon. Rob Lucas are a blemish on an otherwise blemished 40 years in parliament. The Hon. Rob Lucas regularly misrepresents what people say in this chamber. He does so cowardly under parliamentary privilege in a way he would never step outside to do.

I was not going to say anything, but in my comments about the administrative procedures in place for telephone voting I clearly referred to regulations that were circulated by the Attorney-General—the member for Bragg, the Hon. Vickie Chapman—back in September. In his usual cowardly manner, the Hon. Rob Lucas sought to mischaracterise that as having a go at the Electoral Commissioner. It is not us who do that.

The Hon. Rob Lucas will remember back in 2014 that Isobel Redmond, no less than the leader of the Liberal Party, called the Electoral Commissioner at the time 'utterly corrupt'. That is what former Liberal leader Isobel Redmond did. It is not us who do this: it is the Hon. Rob Lucas mischaracterising, as he is wont to do. It is something that I think a lot of people just accept, take what the Hon. Rob Lucas says with a grain of salt, whether it is other members of parliament or journalists: 'But it's only Rob Lucas. You know what he's like. That's what he does'. It is what he does, and I guess in the dying days of his political career, why would he change the habit of a lifetime, misrepresenting what others say?

He misrepresented completely the motivations for different things that other members have said in this chamber. He went further—it was not just misrepresentations, there were bald-faced lies from the Hon. Rob Lucas about amendments that were successful in this chamber, and for once I will put them down to gross, incompetently ignorant views rather than deliberate malice, which I would usually credit the Hon. Rob Lucas with.

Having said that, I will once again state that we can do something about the issue of people missing out on voting. We can make an attempt to rectify the situation where Rob Lucas says, 'Well, it's only a few thousand people. It's only Aboriginal people on the APY lands who are going to miss out'. I for one will not stand by and not do everything I can to make every effort to have those people vote.

As I said, we are told that the federal government is looking at moving on these exact issues, looking to allow telephone voting for an election that could still be a week before our election. I have to say that if you are compared unfavourably to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton in terms of your defence and ability to protect democratic processes, then I would not want to be the one who is compared unfavourably to the Prime Minister who 'doesn't hold a hose'.

With those comments, I endorse and recommend these changes to the Legislative Council. Hopefully, we will see a change of heart and the government might pass this legislation. All it takes is one minister. We have the environment minister, the Hon. David Speirs, publicly canvassing how disappointed he was that his colleagues—people like the Hon. Rob Lucas and others—did not see his leadership qualities when he lost the ballot for the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party. Well, this is the time for someone like the Hon. David Speirs to shine. As a minister, he can recall parliament, he can be a champion of those who will not get to vote, he can do this: he can show those leadership qualities that the Hon. Rob Lucas and his colleagues did not see in him, and we would ask him to do that.

As a final reflection on why we are here in this situation today, it is because the Hon. Rob Lucas and his colleagues in the lower house decided to shut down parliament. They did not want the scrutiny. They left other things, not just this, unfinished. There were bills to increase the penalty on dangerous child sex offenders that they did not complete, that they left unfinished in the lower house.

You have members like the member for King, Paul Luethen; the member for Elder, Carolyn Power; and the member for Adelaide, Rachel Sanderson, shutting down parliament, which has not only the consequence of not allowing for telephone voting but also the consequence of, in the future, seeing any dangerous paedophile who is charged and convicted before we can come and finish those bits of legislation getting lighter sentences. This has real-world consequences: this is just one of them we are seeking to address today.

Bill read a second time.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clause 1.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: My question is to the Treasurer in terms of the Marshall government's plans to ensure that there is full enfranchisement on polling day for the state election of 2022. What measures does the Marshall government have that they have discussed or recommended to ensure that those who are in isolation, quarantine or the like, whether they have COVID or whether they are a close contact, are able to vote?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: This bill is not my bill. I have indicated the government's position earlier and I do not intend to expand on the comments.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: The Treasurer this morning on ABC radio, in response to discussion on this bill, said that these matters had been discussed at the COVID-Ready Committee. On what dates were these matters discussed at the COVID-Ready Committee, who was part of those discussions and what was discussed?

The CHAIR: The Treasurer does not wish to contribute. Are there any further contributions at clause 1?

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: Does the Treasurer have anything to say about what the Marshall government's plans are moving forward to ensure that people are able to vote on 19 March if they are in isolation?

The CHAIR: The Hon. Ms Franks, I think the Treasurer has indicated he is not making any further comment. The Hon. Mr Maher, do you have something?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: I have a very quick question to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer discuss with the opposition and other members of both chambers of this parliament the plans that the Treasurer foreshadowed in his radio interview this morning about how this election will be conducted so that all members of this place can now have a say and input into those?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Chair, I have indicated that I have nothing further to add. If the opposition believe that this bill solves all the problems, let them go through with their charade.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: The Treasurer indicated that the Electoral Commissioner opposes these measures because they will not be able to be implemented in a timely way, despite the fact that these measures are the measures that the Electoral Commissioner previously asked for. He also indicated on the radio this morning that both his party and the Labor Party were privy to correspondence indicating this position. Can he table that correspondence and can he attest whether this correspondence actually exists?

The CHAIR: The Hon. Ms Franks, I have an indication from the Treasurer that he is not going to make any further comment.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: I will follow up with a question. The correspondence that you referred to, the written advice from the Electoral Commissioner, Treasurer, were you telling the truth on the radio this morning?

The CHAIR: The Treasurer has indicated he has nothing further to add.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: I will try a new tack, Chair. Does the mover of this bill or any member of the Labor opposition have any correspondence from the Electoral Commissioner saying that he is unable to implement these measures in the time frame that will now be required?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: I thank the honourable member for her question. I can indicate as shadow attorney-general and as the spokesperson from the Labor Party who is responsible for the Electoral Act that I am certainly not aware of any correspondence or written advice, or verbal advice even, from the Electoral Commissioner. I will check my records, but I almost certainly would remember receiving such a letter, and I have absolutely no recollection or record of such a letter whatsoever.

I again invite the Treasurer to substantiate the things he said on radio, otherwise I think his silence will damn him in terms of what he says on radio and what he is not prepared to come in here and say with all the conventions of misleading parliament. I would invite him to repeat what he said on radio in parliament and see if he misleads parliament or not. Over to you, Treasurer.

The CHAIR: The Treasurer has already indicated he is not making any further comment. I am going to put that clause 1 stand as printed.

Clause passed.

Remaining clauses (2 to 6) and title passed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (17:34): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (17:34): I will speak briefly at the third reading to reiterate the comments I made during my second reading contribution. From the government's viewpoint, this whole exercise is just a charade. We are not going to stand in the way of the start of the charade. I think the Hon. Mr Pangallo summarised it very well. I need to get the Hansard, but I think the two words he used were 'symbolic stunt'.

I think he aptly described what we are going through here. It is a charade from our viewpoint. We are not going to delay the proceedings by calling 'divide'. We understand the opposition members and crossbench members are supporting this particular passage of the bill, this part of the charade. Good luck to them, but as I said at the end of the second reading, it ain't going anywhere.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (17:35): I have a very short third reading contribution to make in the spirit of the Treasurer's note that this is a charade, indeed, three words: farce, failure to plan, don't need any further clues because this government has none.

Bill read a third time and passed.

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