Senator NASH (New South Wales) (9.49 pm)—We live in a democracy where all people of voting age who are eligible to vote have a right to vote. They have a right to vote free from deception. They have a right to vote in an electoral system which delivers the highest levels of confidence in the integ-rity of that electoral system to deliver the highest levels of accuracy. Australians live in a democracy where people expect the system of elections to be free from influence by those of unscrupulous intent. There have been musings in the past on the need to tighten up and change aspects of the management of our electoral process, and the government has attempted to do this but it has been forced to alter and water down such proposals, mainly as a result of the opposi-tion and minor parties in this place.
Some might suggest that the Australian Labor Party is a definite benefactor of a less strengthened electoral system. Indeed, actions that occurred in the federal electorate of Richmond during the 2004 election spring to mind. The level of electoral deception exercised by people attempting to remove the then sitting Nationals member, Larry Anthony, was an absolute disgrace. The release today of the report by the Joint Stand-ing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2004 federal election has been proof positive that deceptive and misleading conduct caused the electoral loss of sitting member, Larry Anthony. The report states at paragraph 5.60:
... had the Liberals for Forests not engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct to present themselves as the Liberal Party of Australia and direct more than enough of those votes via preferences to the Australian Labor Party, the Na-tional’s Mr Anthony would have retained the seat.
In the next paragraph, 5.6.1, it continues:
As a consequence, the Committee holds that Ms Elliot was elected as a result of preferences on the basis of deceptions by Liberals for Forests.
The voters of Richmond deserved better. The presence of Liberals for Forests was de-signed purely to deceive voters.
The Greens candidate for Richmond—and I emphasise that it was the Greens candidate for Richmond—Susanna Flower did not mince words in her description of the Liber-als for Forests’ presence in Richmond. She told the committee’s public hearing in Tweed Heads that Liberals for Forests:
... was a bogus party, set up to steer votes away from the National Party ... to deceive them.
Liberals for Forests’ how-to-vote cards were designed to deceive unsuspecting voters and to look identical to Liberal how-to-vote cards, with ‘Liberals’ emblazoned in large letters and ‘for Forests’ in very small type. A member of the public with no party affiliation whatsoever, a Mrs B Smith, told the inquiry in Tweed Heads:
There were thousands of local people deliberately and fraudulently misled by this party and voted for them understanding they were casting a Liberal vote.
Liberals for Forests booth workers wore blue T-shirts with ‘Liberals’ again written in very large letters. The tactics employed by Liberals for Forests were clearly designed to deceive people by making it unclear whether voters were voting for the Liberal Party of Australia or the ill-intentioned Liberals for Forests.
During its public hearings at Tweed Heads, the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters heard that, throughout election day, Liberals for Forests booth workers were saying to voters, ‘Vote Liberal.’ The words ‘for Forests’ were never heard—it was simply ‘Vote Liberal.’ In a marginal seat such as Richmond, where the coalition candidate was from The Nationals, such claims were very deceptive for a coalition voter. Immediately following the election, and prior to the declaration of the poll, it was estimated that more than 100 voters from Richmond contacted the then sitting member’s office to complain that they had been misled by the Liberals for Forests. And I would like to point out here that only 151 votes would have changed the outcome of the result in Richmond.
These misled voters believed the how-to-vote card was telling them how to vote for the coalition, but in fact they were deceived into voting for Labor. It is no surprise that the committee inquiry report found that the Liberals for Forests how-to-vote card was a direct cause of the defeat of Larry Anthony in the seat of Richmond. The committee’s findings of deceptive and misleading conduct in Richmond expose serious breaches of the most fundamental democratic rights we have. The conduct of Liberals for Forests has undermined people’s right to a fair vote. Such blatant deception has denied the voters in Richmond the opportunity to exercise their democratic right to vote and get the intended result of that vote.
This misleading and deceptive conduct by the Liberals for Forests should be condemned by all Australians, no matter what their political allegiance—and yet not a word has been heard from the Australian Labor Party. When the electoral matters committee travelled to Tweed Heads for public hearings, the Greens candidate for Richmond who I mentioned earlier, Susanna Flower, and her campaign manager both fronted the inquiry to give evidence. The Nationals’ Richmond Electorate Council Chair gave evidence, and the public gave evidence. Even Liberals for Forests made submissions to the inquiry. But the apparent major benefactor of the deception, the Australian Labor Party, refused to appear. Not surprisingly, the committee asked the ALP member for Richmond, Justine Elliot, to appear before the hearing in Tweed Heads, because she was a candidate and benefited from Liberals for Forests preferences. The member for Richmond declined to appear. She was also invited to send a representative in her absence, but also declined this offer.
Following the hearing, the chair wrote to the member for Richmond and asked her to appear at a hearing of the committee in Canberra during parliamentary sittings at a time of her convenience. The member for Richmond did not even have the decency to reply to the chair’s correspondence. The member for Richmond made absolutely no effort to address the committee’s concerns in relation to the Liberals for Forests deception allegations. Such inaction begs the most obvious of questions: what are the Labor member for Richmond and the Australian Labor Party scared of? What are they trying to hide? Se-rious questions remain unanswered over the ALP’s involvement in the Liberals for For-ests’ deceptive and misleading conduct. I am sure the committee would have liked to have been given an opportunity to reach a defini-tive conclusion as to whether the member for Richmond and local ALP officials were aware of, or involved in any way with, the planned deception by Liberals for Forests.
The member for Richmond’s refusal to appear before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, or to answer correspondence requesting her to appear, has meant that her involvement cannot be proved or disproved. A dark shadow of doubt has been cast over the Labor member for Richmond’s credibility and integrity as a member of the Australian parliament. The voters of the far North Coast have been denied democracy in a most disgraceful act of electoral deception—one of the most dis-graceful I have ever seen—and, by her very inaction, the involvement of the member for Richmond cannot be ruled out.
I call on the member for Richmond, Justine Elliot, to reveal to the voters of Richmond her knowledge of the deceptive and misleading actions that assisted her election to the other place. The member for Richmond has in no way been cleared of involvement in the Liberals for Forests’ de-ception of the voters of Richmond. The vot-ers of Richmond deserve an explanation. The member for Richmond must place on record, once and for all, her involvement in this conduct. The Labor member for Rich-mond’s silence on the deceptive and mis-leading conduct of Liberals for Forests shows her contempt for the people of her electorate, and those constituents in the fed-eral electorate of Richmond deserve better.
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