Walker Holly: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16478. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green):I am very pleased that this debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill was carried over until today so I can have a chance to make a substantive contribution and to reinforce the contribution of my colleague Metiria Turei when this debate started last week. I want to thank the Hon Maryan Street for her contribution just now in defence of my Supplementary Order Paper 420 which seeks to reinstate the clauses of the bill that were deleted by the Justice and Electoral Committee relating to the use of the EasyVote card. There are three key things I want to say here. The first is that the Green Party is generally in support of the provisions in this bill and we have undertaken over many years—and including in this process—to work constructively towards sensible modernisation of our electoral law and to do so wherever possible by consensus.I sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee which undertook the review of and inquiry into the 2011 general election which gave rise to the process that has become this Electoral Amendment Bill currently before the Committee. That select committee undertook an inquiry into the election. It heard from a range of submitters about all aspects of the 2011 general election and by consensus we worked on that committee to come up with a number of recommendations to put to the Government where we thought there needed to be changes in time for this year’s general election 2014. One of those changes that we recommended after hearing evidence from the Electoral Commission was that the EasyVote card should be allowed to be used as a confirmation that a voter has cast their vote. That was recommended to us by the Electoral Commission. It outlined to us how that would streamline its processes on polling day how that would speed up the process for its staff and how it would make for a smoother and better experience for voters. And the select committee by consensus adopted that recommendation when we were hearing evidence in the inquiry. Therefore the Government responded to those recommendations.Amongst many other things in this bill that we support one of the recommendations was that that be written into law and that is what was in the first draft of this bill which we passed in this House at its first reading. The bill was then referred back to the same select committee to consider the details of the bill itself. Unfortunately I was on parental leave while the select committee considered this bill. If I had been here I think I would have argued very strongly against the select committee’s decision to delete the clauses relating to the EasyVote card. I was not present for those discussions so I cannot speak specifically to the concerns raised but my understanding—and certainly it is reflected in the select committee’s report—is that members were concerned about electoral fraud and that “We consider that the proposed provision for a new process known operationally as EasyVote Express would in effect lower the threshold for casting a vote increasing the potential for fraud and harming the integrity of the voting process.”What I think has happened is that some very well-intentioned members of that select committee have under a misapprehension become concerned that the provisions in the bill that my Supplementary Order Paper reinstates would in effect make fraud more prolific with the EasyVote card and would make it easier to access one or easier to use it. I am not sure exactly where the concern stems from but there seems to be a concern that somehow it would make it easier for people to pretend to be someone they are not when they go to cast their vote and that that might increase the risk of electoral fraud. That is a legitimate concern and it is a concern that I understand and I share. Certainly we should be concerned to minimise the instances of electoral fraud wherever possible. But that concern has in my view manifested itself in a very harmful and unhelpful mechanism whereby the select committee seems to have agreed to delete all of these clauses related to the EasyVote card and I would put it to the Committee and to the Minister of Justice that we are really throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.If we go back to first principles we look at what an EasyVote card is and what it is for. It is simply a card that contains the name and address of the voter and the page number and line in the electoral roll where their name can be found. It makes it easier for the staff at the polling place to find them on the electoral roll and issue their ballot paper more quickly. It is not an ID card. It is no different in any mechanical sense from turning up at the polling booth with no ID at all and simply saying your name and your address. It just makes it quicker and easier for the polling booth staff to look up your name. It does not make it any easier to record a fraudulent vote. For example if somebody took it upon themselves to vote in someone else’s name they could go along to any polling place and do that by giving that person’s name and address. There would be no difference whether they had their EasyVote card in their hand or not. The EasyVote card neither increases nor decreases the risk of electoral fraud taking place. I think that is something that is really important for this Committee to understand when considering the amendments on the floor today.I think that the Justice and Electoral Committee has been labouring under a misapprehension and has got it wrong here. As a consequence we are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We are throwing out the ability for the Electoral Commission to make a change that would make it much easier for it to run things on election day. What it would like to see is not a mass expansion of the use of the EasyVote card it is not making electoral fraud any easier; it is simply adding a scannable code to the EasyVote card that would allow Electoral Commission staff to scan the card after the voter has handed it in as a record that that voter has voted. In fact it would make it easier to catch out instances of fraud because instead of waiting until the electoral roll could be manually collated and could have people’s names drawn off with a ruler it would electronically record whether someone had voted yet or not. So if someone attempted to vote twice or someone else attempted to vote in their name it would show up much more quickly under the proposals before the Committee than under the status quo. So the Electoral Commission had a very sensible idea to have scannable cards in order to collate the roll electronically to make it much easier to tell whether someone has voted twice and to make it happen much more quickly and the select committee has essentially thrown that out.As Maryan Street pointed out in her contribution just now to the Committee the fact that the number of parties in the House have now identified this as a problem and are suggesting reinstating these clauses should not be controversial for the Minister of Justice because all we are seeking to do is reinstate exactly what she initially proposed in the bill. The select committee members thought about it. They made a recommendation. A number of parties in the House now consider that recommendation to be wrong and they are asking that we simply revert to what the Minister had in the bill in the first place. It should not be controversial for the Government to adopt the changes that a number of the Supplementary Order Papers on the floor of the Committee are recommending.I really implore the Minister and Government members to take this seriously and to listen and let common sense prevail because actually we could have consensus across the House as it is always best to do on electoral matters if they were willing to return to the bill as originally drafted. I think that that would be a significant improvement on what would pass if we allowed the bill to pass without these amendments.The Electoral Commission was a long way down the path of its planning for the 2014 election and it was planning that election on the basis that it would be able to use the EasyVote card with a scannable code on it to electronically collate the roll. If we do not allow it to do that I put it to the Committee that that is a missed opportunity to streamline electoral processes and it is based on a misapprehension—an understandable fear about electoral fraud but fundamentally a misapprehension—because there is nothing in the proposal that would make it any different from a user perspective to use the EasyVote card to cast the vote. It would not change that. It would not change the risk of electoral fraud one bit. So all we are doing is throwing out what would essentially be a really useful streamlined mechanism for the Electoral Commission based on an unfounded fear about electoral fraud. I think that would be a real shame. So I really implore members across the Committee especially Government members and especially the Minister in the chair to consider this seriously and to consider reverting to the bill as was originally drafted which is what my Supplementary Order Paper 420 would achieve.The other concern we have is around the inadvertent disenfranchisement of disabled voters by another change that was made by the select committee. These are the changes referred to by Maryan Street in her Supplementary Order Paper 416 and by my colleague Mojo Mathers and that is the idea of asking a voter to verbally confirm their identity at the polling booth. This again was a late addition to the select committee and it was born out of concerns about electoral fraud. But it appears that very little consideration has been given to the impact that this would have on voters with speech impediments with hearing impediments and on voters for whom English is a second language. We consider that for many people it would make it difficult or impossible for them to comply with the new requirement. The flippant response that seems to have been written into the bill is that they can confirm their identity with a gesture if they are not able to do it verbally. I put it to the Committee that that is very disrespectful for people in that position.