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Speaker 1: Good afternoon. The government is changing the rules around voting.

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Speaker 1: Free food, free drinks, free entertainment. Near voting booths are

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Speaker 1: going to be banned and same day enrollments are gone,

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Speaker 1: which means that you can't vote unless you remember to

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Speaker 1: enroll before voting starts. Paul Goldsmith as the Justice Minister,

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Speaker 1: High Paul, hi, he very well, thank you. These rules

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Speaker 1: around treating. That's to avoid a repeat of the monyetto

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Speaker 1: wom Ati situation, right, well.

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Speaker 2: That sort of thing. Yes, I mean, obviously it's important

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Speaker 2: that we have rules that are robust and worked and

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Speaker 2: so we're just amping them up a bit.

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Speaker 1: And why are you changing the rules around voting on

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Speaker 1: election day and in advanced voting.

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Speaker 2: Well, look, fundamentally, recall that we had to wait three

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Speaker 2: weeks to get an out the final outcome of the

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Speaker 2: election last time. It always used to take two weeks.

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Speaker 2: It's gone to three. And the advice I was getting

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Speaker 2: was if we didn't do anything, we're hitting going to

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Speaker 2: struggle to even make three might be onto four. And

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Speaker 2: it's putting a lot of pressure on the system. And

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Speaker 2: what's happened over the last few years is the people,

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Speaker 2: more and more people have been enrolling on election day

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Speaker 2: or just before, and that all has to be sorted

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Speaker 2: out before they can do the vote counting. And so

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Speaker 2: we're just having to get the system sustainable because we

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Speaker 2: want you know, we're proud of our electoral system. We

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Speaker 2: want it to work.

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Speaker 1: Well, how many people would do this? Is Labor correct

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Speaker 1: to say it's about one hundred and ten thousand people?

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, about one hundred thousand people enrolled on election

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Speaker 2: day and you can you could never used to be

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Speaker 2: able to do that. It was only you know, a

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Speaker 2: couple of five years ago that Labor introduced election day enrollments.

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Speaker 2: So look, we're perfectly confident that people with a clear

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Speaker 2: message no, you've got to get enrolled earlier, we'll be

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Speaker 2: able to do it. But we need to send that

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Speaker 2: clear message.

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Speaker 1: Is that about one hundred thousand is that election day

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Speaker 1: and advanced voting or just election day, no election day,

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Speaker 1: So jeesus, could be a lot bigger than that if

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Speaker 1: you count the two weeks of advanced voting as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a sort of a probably two or

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Speaker 2: three hundred thousand people that have got into the habit

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Speaker 2: of doing that, and so we've just got to change the.

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Speaker 1: Way, for do we not run the risk that two

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Speaker 1: to three one hundred thousand people forget or expect the

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Speaker 1: same kind of behavior asast time and just do not

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Speaker 1: get the chance to vote.

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean that's the mean one of the core

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Speaker 2: roles of the electoral commissioners to encourage people to get enrolled,

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Speaker 2: and that they've got plenty of millions of dollars to

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Speaker 2: do that, and they will. I mean the Aussie's you know,

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Speaker 2: they close their role twenty six days before the election,

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Speaker 2: and you know, so if the Aussies can manage it,

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Speaker 2: I'm sure we can.

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Speaker 1: Why don't we just get more people counting the votes

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Speaker 1: to get through it faster?

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Speaker 2: Well, it already costs nearly three hundred million dollars over

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Speaker 2: three years.

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Speaker 1: So you come on, that's not all the counting people

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Speaker 1: with Well how much do the counting people cost?

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Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of them, and that's a broader issue.

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Speaker 2: We need to, you know, get some better technology in

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Speaker 2: terms of vote counting.

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Speaker 1: Are you sure this is a good idea, Well, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a good idea.

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Speaker 2: Oh think it's a perfectly good idea. In the UK,

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Speaker 2: it's twelve days before election day, there's many countries do this.

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Speaker 2: You send a clear signal if you want to engage,

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Speaker 2: if you want to vote, you make sure you're enrolled.

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Speaker 2: It's actually legal. You are required to enroll within one

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Speaker 2: month of any change of circumstances, and we're also changing

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Speaker 2: the rules so that they can automatically update enrollment so

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Speaker 2: it's easier for people. It's all just about trying to

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Speaker 2: get the system as efficient as we can so we

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Speaker 2: can get an outcome sooner rather than later.

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Speaker 1: Okay, thank you appreciate it. Paul Goldsmith, Justice Minister. For

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Speaker 1: more from Heather Duplassy, Allen Drive, listen live to news talks.

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Speaker 2: It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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