| Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters

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Preliminary pages

Chair’s foreword

The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Bill 2012 introduces a suite of measures in response to seven recommendations of the committee’s report The 2010 Federal Election: Report on the conduct of the election and related matters.

The amendments in the Bill set out the procedures to be followed when a ballot-box is opened prematurely; remove the requirement for an applicant for a pre-poll ordinary vote  to complete and sign a certificate; provide that pre-poll voting cannot commence earlier than four days after the date fixed for declaration of nominations; bring forward the deadline for applications for postal votes by one day; provide for further fixed periods of time to complete inquiries into objections against a proposed redistribution of electoral boundaries; and allow the Commissioner of Taxation and other taxation officers to provide some forms of taxpayer information to the Australian Electoral Commission to maintain the veracity of the roll of electors.

The Bill also makes a number of related minor and technical amendments

In referring the Bill, the Selection Committee wished the Electoral Matters Committee to further scrutinise its amendments and ensure consideration was given to any unintended consequences. During the committee’s inquiry, issues arose regarding the exclusion of ballots, the new pre-poll voting arrangements, and the ability of the AEC to use taxpayer information to update the electoral roll.

The Bill provides that prematurely opened ballots must be excluded from the count. At the 2010 federal election, ballot boxes were opened prematurely due to an official error in two pre-poll voting centres. Due to the legislative ambiguity regarding the appropriate response to these breaches, the Australian Electoral Commission sought legal advice. The advice was that it would be prudent for these ballots to be excluded. The Commission subsequently recommended to the committee that the appropriate action be clarified in the Electoral Act and that votes should be reinstated if the incident proved to be an official error.

The Bill does not contain a vote savings provision and the committee did not support one in its 2010 federal election report. Having carefully considered the evidence in this inquiry however, the committee took the view that votes should be reinstated if a ballot box is handled unlawfully by any person but no tampering of ballot papers has occurred. The committee’s view is that this balances voter enfranchisement and electoral integrity. The committee recommends that the vote savings procedures proposed by the Electoral Commission to this inquiry be incorporated in the Bill.

The committee heard also that the Electoral Act lacks clarity on whether the penalties faced by an electoral official who deliberately and unlawfully interferes with a ballot box or ballot papers are the same as the penalties facing a member of the public for this offence. The committee recommends that the Bill be amended to clarify this in the legislation.

The removal of the requirement for a pre-poll ordinary voter to complete a certificate will provide efficiencies in polling place management and align the Commonwealth with a number of state and territory jurisdictions. Moving the commencement of pre-poll voting back by one day will allow sufficient time to print the many millions of ballot papers required for a federal election. Moving the deadline for postal vote applications forward by one day will reduce the chance that postal ballots will be received too late. Increasing the fixed periods of time to inquire into further objections to a proposed electoral boundary redistribution will provide the Electoral Commission with valuable additional time to conduct these inquiries. Allowing the Electoral Commission to use certain taxpayer information to update the roll of electors is a logical extension of existing continuous roll update processes, and direct enrolment using third party information. The committee is satisfied that this will not undermine roll integrity.

These provisions of the Bill were recommended in the 2010 federal election report of the committee and continue to be supported by the committee.

On behalf of the committee I thank the organisations and individuals who assisted the committee during the inquiry through submissions and by participating in the public hearing. I also thank my colleagues on the committee for their work and contribution to this report, and the secretariat for their work on this inquiry.

Daryl Melham MP

Chair

Membership of the Committee

Committee Secretariat

Terms of reference

On 29 November 2012 the Selection Committee requested the Committee to inquire into and report on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Bill 2012.

Under Standing Order 222(e), reports of the Selection Committee are treated as having been adopted by the House when they are presented.

List of abbreviations

Recommendation

2 Issues in the Bill

Recommendation 1 (paragraph 2.42)

That the House of Representatives and the Senate pass the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Bill 2012 after introducing:

• a vote savings measure to the procedures to be followed if ballot boxes are opened prematurely. This vote savings measure should incorporate the elements proposed by the AEC to this inquiry and provide that ballot papers that have not been tampered with in any way must be reinstated to the count but otherwise excluded. This savings measure should apply at any stage of the scrutiny to a ballot box that has been unlawfully handled by any person; and
  

• an amendment to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 explicitly stipulating that any electoral official who deliberately and unlawfully interferes with a ballot box or ballot papers be subject to the same penalty as any other person who commits this offence.

  
  
  

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