Special Minister of State Ben Morton concedes more work needs to be done to convince Australians that IDs are needed to vote in elections, however, he's blamed the federal opposition for spreading misinformation over the government's proposed electoral changes.
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Backed by Pauline Hanson's One Nation and despite evidence from the Australian Electoral Commission that voter fraud in Australia was "vanishingly small," the government is pursuing voter ID requirements for in-person voting as a way to "safeguard and strengthen" the integrity of Australian elections.
Labor and the Greens said the shift to voter IDs was racist, an attack on Australian democracy and an exercise in American "Trumpism".
Mr Morton has accused Labor of stirring up trouble.
"There is a scare campaign here from Labor on this issue which makes one question why they have reacted so poorly to it," the minister told The Canberra Times.
"The Labor Party moved a motion to prevent debate on this bill, before they even read the details of it. Now, there's a hypocrisy in that which is astounding. Look, we will have to do more work to convince people of it in the face of lies from the Labor Party."
Despite safeguards such as declaration voting built into the legislation, there was a particular concern the voting requirement would further disenfranchise the homeless, people on lower incomes, young people and people in remote communities, particularly First Nations people.
Under the laws, proof of identification from groups such as land councils and native title groups would be accepted at polling stations.
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The Morrison government regards the proposed laws as "light touch" and points to comparable nations also requiring IDs for voting such as Canada, France, Iceland, Sweden, the UK and most states in the US.
"There will not one person turned away from a polling booth," Mr Morton insisted.
"The forms of ID that will be acceptable are broad. If there is absolutely no ID available to an individual, another person is able to attest to their identity at the booth and failing that a declaration vote can be used.
"This has been a recommendation of the joint standing committee [on electoral matters] after the last three elections. It is an issue which has long been discussed and debated in Australia. It does enhance the integrity of our voting system."
The government-dominated joint standing committee and Senate estimates have heard evidence after each election about alleged voter fraud in Australia.
Australia's electoral commissioner Tom Rogers recently told estimates the figure for multiple voting among the estimated 16 million Australian eligible voters was "vanishingly small" and most cases involved people over 80 or who had English as a second language.
"The Labor Party is focusing purely on the issue of multiple voting, but there is also the issue of voter impersonation as well, that this will deal with," Mr Morton said.
"But also, it will deal with issues of perceived integrity issues in our voting system as well. And if that can abolish and remove perceptions of a lack of integrity in our voting system, well that only serves to make our voting system better."
Asked why Australia was on guard against something that might happen when the nation already had a world-class voting system, Mr Morton was unapologetic.
"I think we can do better," he said.
"I think that we are behind Sweden, Iceland, France, Canada, the UK in implementing these laws. I see that they will not provide inconvenience to voters.
"Only yesterday I was emailed by a person that works at each election, saying that they quite often ask for ID when marking off the roll because it makes it easier for them to have the person's name written in front of them and that requiring this is actually going to make the process of the marking of the role easier and more accurate as well."
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