Paul Goldsmith: Justice Minister on the Government's planned overhaul of electoral laws

The Government says its overhaul of electoral laws - will bring swifter and simpler election processing.

It plans to end same-day enrolments - with a cut off 13 days before election day. 

The Justice Minister says late enrolling contributed to vote counting ballooning to three weeks. 

Paul Goldsmith says it could have grown to four weeks, without change.

"More and more people have been enrolling on election day - or just before - and that all has to be sorted out before they can do the vote counting, so we're just having to get the system sustainable because we're proud of our electoral system and we want it to work well."

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon. The government is changing the rules around voting.
Free food, free drinks, free entertainment. Near voting booths are
going to be banned and same day enrollments are gone,
which means that you can't vote unless you remember to
enroll before voting starts. Paul Goldsmith as the Justice Minister,
High Paul, hi, he very well, thank you. These rules
around treating. That's to avoid a repeat of the monyetto
wom Ati situation, right, well.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
That sort of thing. Yes, I mean, obviously it's important
that we have rules that are robust and worked and
so we're just amping them up a bit.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
And why are you changing the rules around voting on
election day and in advanced voting.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Well, look, fundamentally, recall that we had to wait three
weeks to get an out the final outcome of the
election last time. It always used to take two weeks.
It's gone to three. And the advice I was getting
was if we didn't do anything, we're hitting going to
struggle to even make three might be onto four. And
it's putting a lot of pressure on the system. And

(00:54):
what's happened over the last few years is the people,
more and more people have been enrolling on election day
or just before, and that all has to be sorted
out before they can do the vote counting. And so
we're just having to get the system sustainable because we
want you know, we're proud of our electoral system. We
want it to work.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Well, how many people would do this? Is Labor correct
to say it's about one hundred and ten thousand people?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, yeah, about one hundred thousand people enrolled on election
day and you can you could never used to be
able to do that. It was only you know, a
couple of five years ago that Labor introduced election day enrollments.
So look, we're perfectly confident that people with a clear
message no, you've got to get enrolled earlier, we'll be
able to do it. But we need to send that
clear message.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Is that about one hundred thousand is that election day
and advanced voting or just election day, no election day,
So jeesus, could be a lot bigger than that if
you count the two weeks of advanced voting as well.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, yeah, there's a sort of a probably two or
three hundred thousand people that have got into the habit
of doing that, and so we've just got to change the.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Way, for do we not run the risk that two
to three one hundred thousand people forget or expect the
same kind of behavior asast time and just do not
get the chance to vote.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well, I mean that's the mean one of the core
roles of the electoral commissioners to encourage people to get enrolled,
and that they've got plenty of millions of dollars to
do that, and they will. I mean the Aussie's you know,
they close their role twenty six days before the election,
and you know, so if the Aussies can manage it,
I'm sure we can.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Why don't we just get more people counting the votes
to get through it faster?

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well, it already costs nearly three hundred million dollars over
three years.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So you come on, that's not all the counting people
with Well how much do the counting people cost?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Well, there's a lot of them, and that's a broader issue.
We need to, you know, get some better technology in
terms of vote counting.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Are you sure this is a good idea, Well, it
doesn't sound like a good idea.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Oh think it's a perfectly good idea. In the UK,
it's twelve days before election day, there's many countries do this.
You send a clear signal if you want to engage,
if you want to vote, you make sure you're enrolled.
It's actually legal. You are required to enroll within one
month of any change of circumstances, and we're also changing
the rules so that they can automatically update enrollment so
it's easier for people. It's all just about trying to

(03:09):
get the system as efficient as we can so we
can get an outcome sooner rather than later.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay, thank you appreciate it. Paul Goldsmith, Justice Minister. For
more from Heather Duplassy, Allen Drive, listen live to news talks.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio