• Peter Brent

17 July 2008Labor members want to repeal the Howard government's electoral law changes. Coalition members want to retain them. It's time for a circuit-breaker, writes PETER BRENT

THE Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters was initiated by the Hawke Labor government in 1983 and, to the surprise of many, retained by the Howard government after 1996. “Joint” refers to the fact that its members come from both houses of parliament, and “standing” to its somewhat permanent status.

After every federal election the JSCEM holds an inquiry into “all aspects of” that election “and matters related thereto,” taking submissions and interviewing witnesses. The open-ended wording means anyone can raise practically anything about federal elections. The JSCEM also conducts specific inquiries from time to time. See all 169 submissions to the current inquiry here.

In 25 years the JSCEM (initially the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform) has conducted some 33 inquiries, of which ten (including the current one) were on elections. By contrast, from Federation until 1983 federal parliament held only two wide-ranging electoral inquiries - in 1904 and 1926-27; it also appointed a 1914 royal commission into electoral law and administration. (Those first eight decades also saw several committees on relatively trivial electoral matters.)

So parliament’s interest in continually fine-tuning the way we run elections is relatively recent. It is also a Good Thing.

The current JSCEM was appointed early this year and is chaired by Labor’s Daryl Melham, with Scott Morrison (Liberal) as deputy. Four Labor, two Liberals, one National and one Green (Bob Brown) make up the rest of the committee, which gives the government half. If the committee is tied on a vote the chairman has the casting vote, which means the government ultimately controls the committee; this has usually been the case with the JSCEM. Every inquiry results in a report, with recommendations, and dissenting reports from those who were outvoted.

Last month I sat in the audience of the only hearing of the current inquiry into the 2007 election so far. The witnesses were the Australian Electoral Commissioner and several of his underlings, explaining their written submission. (The next hearing is in Sydney, with ABC election guru Antony Green the first witness. The dates are here.)

The parliamentarians were bipartisan bonhomie personified. (Brown was absent, otherwise it might have been tripartisan.) Chairman Melham from time to time walked over and, hand on shoulder, whispered in opposition members’ ears. Some laughter, and not all of the jokes were bad. (For example, this from Melham on why not to abolish the National Tally Room: “I want to preserve Kerry [O’Brien]. He survived eleven and a half years under the Tories; I do not want us doing him in.”)

Flippancy was less evident among the eight invitees, hunched over their documents. Behind them were a dozen or so more AEC staff, some of who from time to time passed bits of paper forward.

Sometimes the questioning was aggressive, in part because the commissioner and his colleagues became conduits for partisan arguments. So determined were members to remain civil to each other, they shouted instead at the witnesses on such hoary, divided issues as closing the rolls, disclosure of political donations and provisional votes.

When dealing with AEC recommendations that neither side agreed with (such as abolishing or outsourcing the national tally room and taking the parties out of the postal vote application process) the lecturing was even more intense (and the reasoning sometimes bizarre). AEC staffers took it all in their stride.

But an elephant lingered in the room throughout, mentioned from time to time, mainly by opposition members.

In March the Special Minister of State, John Faulkner, “kick-start[ed] a green paper process to reform and modernise our electoral processes.” Comprising two parts - political finance, and electoral administration more generally - it will be presented later this year.

The AEC is obviously holding some of its fire for the green paper, and this understandably irked Liberal committee members. Indeed, it is reasonable to say the minister is by-passing the JSCEM to an extent, which may be why the shadow minister, Michael Ronaldson (a JSCEM member), has described the green paper (with just a touch of hyperbole) as “shaping up as the most partisan and politically biased document this Parliament has ever seen.”

But it must be said that the JSCEM hearing exhibited a kind of “Groundhog Day” quality: conducted along well-worn partisan lines along issues that should long be pass©. Labor members want to repeal the Howard government’s electoral law changes, Coalition members want to retain them, but in reality this argument should be transcended.

For example, the question should not be: should the electoral rolls be closed on the day election writs are issued or a week later? It should be: is it time to move to a new, non-paper based, enrolment system? (Answer: yes.) And on the important issue of political donations: in some parts of the world disclosure is instantaneous (uploaded to a website); here the Coalition is resisting a limp amendment to make the disclosure delay six months instead of 12.

In reality, federal governments have long cherry-picked JSCEM recommendations, and then (until 2005) needed to modify them to get them through the Senate.

Committee members last month came across as smart people who took their jobs seriously. But our system of running elections desperately needs modernising, and possibly the JSCEM, with entrenched party positions, is not the right vehicle.

In which case, a “kick-start” is just what is needed. •

Peter Brent is editor of mumble.com.au

Photo: Linda & Colin McKie/iStockphoto.com