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Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Page: 1594

Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (17:53): The Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Maintaining Address) Bill 2011, as we know, arises from the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2010 federal election. This is one of the very healthy recommendations to come from that report that, fortunately, have been adopted. Overall that inquiry was a missed opportunity with regard to a number of critical issues to do with electoral funding and protecting our democratic system, and I do look forward to coming back to some of those issues, but right now we have before us a piece of legislation that can increase the integrity of our roll.

So it was very interesting to listen to the previous speaker, Senator Scott Ryan, because he was certainly trying to whip up a crisis around this and was making out that Labor and the Greens were working to contrive a crisis, to use his sensational language. As is so often the case with this senator, he has not provided all the information. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.