Camilla Belich: Labour justice spokesperson on electoral commission concerns

Labour is concerned that the Electoral Commission is not doing enough to enrol voters ahead of this year's election following changes to the law made by the current Government, which mean that voters cannot enrol or update their enrolment on election day or during the advanced voting period.

This means that if the contact details associated with your enrolment are incorrect, your vote could be discounted. 

Labour justice spokesperson Camilla Belich told Andrew Dickens their concerns are that the changes will limit people's ability to participate in democracy. 

"We think that politicians should be making it easier for people to vote, not harder, and unfortunately the Government is doing the opposite," Belich said. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Meanwhile, Labor says the Electoral Commission's not doing enough to
enroll voters ahead of this year's election. Its concerns follow
changes to the laws made by the National leg Coalition,
which means that voters cannot enroll or update their enrollment
on election day or even during the advanced voting period.
So to talk about this, I'm joined by Labour's Justice

(00:20):
spokesperson Camella Bellot.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good afternoon, Camilla, Good afternoon to you too, Thanks for
having me.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
So what do you reckon the problem with this is.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well, we're really worried that people who just want to
go along on election day and cast their vote will
be prevented from doing that, and that the government will say, well,
maybe they should have done it in advance. But we
know that a lot of people don't think about voting
until around the election period anyway, and we're worried that
the school limits are their ability to participate in our democracy,

(00:50):
thus ironically affecting the government's mandates to govern. So we
think that politicians should be making it easier for people
to vote, not harder, andtnately the government is doing the opposite.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
But if you haven't got the wits and the wispon
to enroll by enrolling date, Why should you be allowed
to vote? Surely the people who suddenly remember to vote
on voting day have not actually engaged in the democratic process.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well, there might be some people who have just turned eighteen,
for example. There might be some people who have moved
house recently. And if you've just moved, I mean this
happens to people a lot. They move house, they forget
to update their details and maybe they contact the Electoral Commission,
they don't quite lodge the information, or they could even
be a mistake at the Electoral Commission's end, whatever the reason,

(01:35):
if they don't have the correct address associated with their
details on the electoral role, there's a chance they vote
won't be counted. And people will struggle to know this too.
So I'll turn up at the electoral booth and they
will feel good about participating in the democratic process, but
it'll only be after the election that their vote will
actually be will actually not be counted. And that's a

(01:57):
real shame because people won't have the opportunity to say, well,
maybe I did send that information and then provide that
to the electoral Commission, because the vote will be over
and the election will be decided and the government will
be in place, and we just think this is really
counterintuitive and the evidence shows it won't make it faster either.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
The Electoral Commission reckons that the about fifty five thousand
votes could be disallowed. Do you agree with that, Well.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
They're the experts. I mean, it could be even more
than that, but that's certainly an alarming number and I
think really should give the government pause for thought as
to whether this is really the right type of change
to be making to our electoral system.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
But the government also argues that this slows the countdown.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, they did say that at the beginning. They said
that that was the reason that they needed to make
this change. But subsequently the Electoral Commission was asked whether
these changes would actually speed up the count and they
said no, it wouldn't, So the whole basis for this change.
The Electoral commissions themselves, the ones who will actually be
implementing the change, have said that it won't speed up
the count. So I really think that the government reconsider this.

(03:00):
It is really alarming to think of the number of
people whose vite will be disenfranchised as a result of
this change.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
All right, thank you, so much for your time to
take another Bellichiers, the labour's justice supposswoman.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
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