Senator BARTLETT (4:01 PM) —As one of the two Democrat senators on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I also rise to speak to this important report and commend it in its entirety as a worthwhile resource and document in itself as well as obviously setting out the position and views of the opposition and Democrat members of the committee on a range of different issues. I would probably start by urging the government to consider this report promptly, along with the AEC report to which Senator Faulkner just referred, and to act and respond very quickly.

The Prime Minister is on record a couple of times now as saying that the next federal election will be at the end of next year, presumably meaning sometime in the second half of the year. I think it is quite important that any proposed changes to the laws under which that election will be held are made clearly and well and truly in advance. People will then be clear about what the rules are and, in particular, the AEC, being the body that oversees the election, will have time to adapt and make any changes that may be required as a consequence of changes to the law. Unfortunately, on a few occasions in previous years, we have had changes to the act going through very shortly before an election has been held. This obviously has put the Electoral Commission, in particular, in a very difficult position. Also, it has made it more difficult to get information out to the public about any changes that may have been made that are important to them. Certainly, my initial response or comment on this report is to urge the government to respond quickly and to bring forward legislation quickly so that the issues can be considered by the Senate—not just issues raised in this report but also those raised in the Australian Electoral Commission funding and disclosure report which was debated at some length in this chamber last Thursday.

Both my colleague Senator Murray and I have put in a minority report of 20-odd pages. We have focused our attention not so much on indicating which recommendations in the majority report we do or do not agree with but more on putting forward additional suggestions on the part of the Democrats, some of which I believe are important and do need emphasising. The issue of access to the roll is one that is quite topical in terms of both inappropriate access and use of the roll, as planned by the government just recently, and issues such as whether or not to enable the roll, in some form or another, to be accessed through the Net are also important. I think that issues relating to the use of the Internet as part of our electoral process need further consideration and discussion.

But, if we are looking at the fundamental principle of trying to make our electoral system as accessible as possible, as user friendly as possible, particularly to younger people, who most statistics indicate are less likely to be enrolled in or engaged with our political system, we do need to explore options for the use of the Internet. Obviously, as part of that, we have to ensure that security is adequately addressed and that privacy implications are adequately addressed. The Democrats certainly would not support any changes that did not meet those core criteria. But, as long as those core criteria are met, we can look at and consider issues such as accessing the roll through the Net in the not too distant future—I believe it already can be done through the Net in New Zealand—and also issues such as voting through the Net. I think that is a little further down the track but, nonetheless, it is an issue that I think we need to start exploring now.

The Democrat members on the committee have outlined our views in terms of caretaker conventions for government advertising and our views that general government advertising conventions be legislated. This is obviously relevant in terms of the recent advertising campaign for the tax package, the infamous Joe Cocker advertisements. Clearly, it was an unjustifiable and inappropriate use of taxpayers' funds to attempt to sell a tax package in that way—and those advertisements certainly do not do that in any effective way.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator BARTLETT —That is a clear-cut position of the Democrats, all Democrats. Whether or not we supported the tax package, we certainly did not support those particular advertisements. It is also relevant in terms of the advertising campaign before the last federal election, again on the GST and related tax proposals. That again all Democrats are on record as strongly opposing. I think the important issue is that it is one thing to go around saying that an advertising campaign is disgraceful and appalling but another to put in place legislative mechanisms to prevent such a misuse of taxpayers' funds occurring in the future. Certainly the Democrats have tried to address that in our comments.

Then there are issues that the Democrats have spoken about many times in this chamber and, indeed, in the chamber in Old Parliament House—even back to the days of Senator Michael Macklin, my predecessor from Queensland—in terms of reform of how-to-vote card laws and truth in political advertising, a change that was made by the Senate and the parliament once but was then repealed before we had a chance to test it in an election. That issue is something that the Democrats have campaigned on long and hard for many years, and we continue to highlight it here.

Other aspects around funding and disclosure are considered at some length. My colleague Senator Murray has moved amendments to legislation on this, as well as on registration of political parties and party constitutions, a number of times and will continue to do so. I note that the fairly mild recommendation in the majority report on this is one which Labor members of the committee have indicated their opposition to. I think that is a bit unfortunate. The main body of the report has a recommendation that the definition of a member of a political party be expanded to include a few very benign requirements such as: they have actually paid a membership fee, they remain a valid member and have been formally accepted as a member according to the party's rules, and they are not a member of more than one party at the same time. That is relevant because to be a registered political party and to be able to run as a candidate for a political party at a federal election, you have to be registered under the law as set out in the act and administered by the AEC.

At the moment, we have quite a large number of political parties registered that I think any objective observer would acknowledge are not genuine political parties. The extreme outcome of this is what we saw in the New South Wales state election and the upper house ballot paper where a huge number of parties were clearly front parties and not genuine parties. People had been listed as members of those parties without them even being aware that that was case; they had signed a petition and their names were now being put forward to the State Electoral Commission as indication of their membership of a party. Those sorts of practices are clearly fraudulent and mislead people about the validity of a political party. The Democrats strongly support putting in place mechanisms to prevent that sort of activity. I am a bit surprised that opposition members do not support that. Indeed, we believe that it should go further than what is recommended in the report, which we have outlined in our minority report. When you look at the requirements in place to govern the operation of companies and even the operation of incorporated associations and compare them to political parties that receive significant amounts of public funding—something the Democrats do support—then we believe it is appropriate that a body potentially able to receive significant amounts of public funding should at least have some minimum standards that they have to address to be recognised as a political party and therefore be eligible to represent themselves as such and receive funding as such in an election. That is an area that we certainly hope the government gives proper consideration to and looks at taking on board.

I would like to thank the secretariat and the other members of the committee. It was a fairly long process. We travelled to many parts of the country. Indeed, the hearings that were conducted in the Northern Territory, Alice Springs and in the fairly remote area of Maningrida were a real eye-opener to me in terms of the different challenges that face both the Electoral Commission and us as legislators in trying to ensure that we have an electoral system that enables all people to participate wherever possible and to actually have a say in who gets to represent them in this place and who gets to be part of both the government and the parliament. It is crucial that we have as user-friendly an electoral system as possible for people from all parts of the community. That should be a focus of any proposed changes to electoral law and in any consideration and review of them. I think this report does that fairly comprehensively. It does not go as far in some directions as the Democrats would like and it does go down a few paths that we have some concerns about, but obviously we will have to wait and see what the government comes back with in terms of proposed amendments to the legislation, in responses to the recommendation contained here and in the AEC's report. We will consider those when they are raised.