Little Andrew: Electoral Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Electoral Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16737. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I rise like my Labour colleagues to oppose this Electoral Amendment Bill. I oppose it regrettably because we simply do not need to be in this position. Electoral law should not be the subject of widespread divergence and disagreement between the parties. The convention generally is that the parties agree on what the electoral law is because the voting public expect there to be a consensus on our voting law and on the way people participate in our democracy. But we are opposing it because of the obstinacy and arrogance of the Minister of Justice.You see we have a deliberative process when we pass legislation in this House. The last member who spoke Scott Simpson may not have realised that the reason we have a first reading a select committee consideration a second reading and a third reading is that at every step of the way there is scrutiny and consideration of the legislation. At any one of those steps any member can point out that the bill does not meet the public interest test or does not meet some other important consideration or requirement—political or otherwise. The Labour Opposition and other parties in the Opposition have drawn the conclusion having considered and studied the bill as it emerged from the Justice and Electoral Committee that it now has a provision that far from being the status quo is now directly contrary to the status quo is positively harmful to many voters in this country and will be an impediment to their properly exercising their democratic rights. This is the provision that says that there must now be verbal confirmation of a voter’s details.The only out to that the only exception as the Minister of Justice patronisingly said in the Committee stage is that voters can flap their arms around and make a gesture. Apparently that is the way you can avoid the statutory and mandatory requirement to provide verbal confirmation. It is an ugly provision in a piece of legislation that should have the support of all voters and indeed all members of this House. That is what is wrong with this provision. Members in the Government in their typically arrogant sort of way may think that that is fine that the vast majority of voters are not affected by it as Mr Simpson just said—the vast majority are not affected by it. Well that is true. The vast majority do not speak English as a second language. The vast majority do not have a speech impediment. The vast majority do not have other aspects to them that make it difficult for them to fluently and fluidly provide verbal confirmation. This is an unnecessary provision in a very important exercise that we undergo every 3 years. That is why we are so opposed to it. It is totally unnecessary.Let us just recall how the original bill came about. It was through the typical and conventional processes of the Electoral Commission reviewing the election and the Justice and Electoral Committee reviewing the election to come up with those improvements and those changes that are needed to ensure that the conduct of the next election is good and to help things run more smoothly or at least to modernise the election process. That was the genesis of the bill—indeed of most electoral amendment bills.The bill that was introduced to the House and that went to the select committee had a comprehensive provision relating to the use of the EasyVote card or the enrolment confirmation card because prior to that there was no statutory recognition of the EasyVote card. It had come about through administrative provision and that is fine. That is all right. It was there but the reality is that the EasyVote card had demonstrated that it was as its name suggested. It had made voting easier for a lot of people who hitherto had found it more difficult who had hitherto found it difficult to confirm their details and go through the administrative process of collecting their ballot papers before casting their votes. That was why even the Electoral Commission said that it was time to have statutory recognition of the EasyVote card. It was a good mechanism.So the select committee looked at it. It was the Government members who ummed and ahhed and wrung their hands because they were concerned about electoral fraud but the reality is that the EasyVote card makes electoral fraud impossible because once you have used it and had the page number and the line number ruled off if you try to use it again you are going to be caught out straight away. You will be caught out. And all this hocus - pocus from Government members about fraud is just that. It is nonsense—it is nonsense.Scott Simpson: Daljit Singh.ANDREW LITTLE: They talk about Daljit Singh but the reality about Daljit Singh is the system was so robust that he got picked up before anybody cast a vote. He got picked up when the EasyVote cards were being delivered to the address. It was never going to work. It was a dumb thing to do and he is now being called to account. He has been called to account and he is doing his chips as he should do. Anybody who rips off our electoral system should face the consequences should face the music and he has done and that is the right thing. It has nothing to do with the EasyVote card. The EasyVote card is an anti-fraud measure.This Government does not care about the fact that the card has other useful aspects to it as well which are that it makes it easier for that small proportion of voters who feel intimidated by having to go through the palaver of having to provide verbal confirmation of their details. For some people that is a difficult thing to do. For some people that is a difficult thing to do and that is why we are so opposed to the bill. Our job in this House when we are considering electoral law should be to consider every conceivable way we can to make casting your vote easier. We should be looking at means of electronic voting but we sort of kicked that for touch as well. Well this Government its members have now created an impediment in our electoral law. That is the disappointing thing about it. This Parliament under the control of this Government this National Government will go down in history as the first to take our electoral law backwards by making it harder for people to vote.I want to conclude by making one other point and that is this: this legislation was a lost opportunity when there has been so much public consensus for there to be changes in the removal of the thresholds—the one-seat dog-wagging threshold—and reducing the 5 percent party vote threshold to 4 percent. This was the opportunity to do that. This is the same Minister of Justice who cannot remember who paid for dinner and who cannot remember where the place was where she had dinner. Thirty kilometres or 80 kilometres away from the Shanghai airport—she could not remember that. She could not remember actually that it was her job to go to other parties and find out whether there was a consensus to do this. She did not talk to a single other party and then she declared that there was no consensus when the only party disagreeing with it was her party—the National Party.As we now have come to see it is on the record that it is the National Party that stands in the way of progressive developments and changes to our electoral law. It is the National Party that does not want to make it easier for people to vote. It is the National Party that does not want to make it easy for people to choose between the parties and the individuals they want elected to Parliament. National maintains the fiction in order to look after its political mates—the one-party machines that jack up this Government to give it the numbers it has to conduct itself in the way that it does. It is a shabby grubby little Government now smeared and tainted with improper conduct by yet one more senior Minister. Never mind that it has got other Ministers in its one-man-band parties who themselves have fallen into disgrace.This a shabby grubby little Government propped up now by a continued electoral law that this House could have changed had we had a Government that was actually interested in real leadership. We do not have that. We do not have a Government that is interested in leadership. We do not have a Government that cares about good-quality democracy. We have a shabby little Government desperate to do whatever it can to hold on to the reins of power and not give the public of this great country the right to have the people it wants in this House or the right for voters in this country to vote in a civilised and sensible sort of way.