Australia: Tony Abbott bluntly rejects calls for residency rights for New Zealand migrants after meeting with PM John Key | ABC

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has bluntly rejected calls to give around 200,000 New Zealanders living in Australia greater access to citizenship, taxpayer benefits and other government support. Since 2001, New Zealanders moving to Australia have not been automatically considered permanent residents and must instead apply for a temporary visa, such as the Special Category Visa (SCV). Holders of temporary visas, such as the SCV, do not have access to welfare, voting rights and student loans, while permanent residents do.

Australia: Clive Palmer three votes ahead as Australian Electoral Commission recounts votes | ABC News

Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer leads the LNP’s Ted O’Brien by just three votes in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax. A recount of preferences is underway after an initial count put Mr Palmer 36 votes ahead of Mr O’Brien. On Monday morning Mr Palmer was 42 votes ahead, but by the evening the mining magnate’s lead had narrowed to three votes. As the painstaking count continues, tensions are rising. Last week the Australian Electoral Commission flew in its chief legal officer to deal with an unusually high number of challenges on the validity of ballot papers. The Palmer United Party, which may also hold the balance of power in the Senate, has four lawyers and the LNP has one. Palmer’s scrutineers are being delivered gourmet lunches from the billionaire’s luxury Coolum resort, while Mr O’Brien’s team gets the rare sandwich or roll.

Australia: Electoral chief cautious about online voting | Sydney Morning Herald

The replacement of paper-and-pencil voting with an electronic system could see Australians lose confidence in the poll results, the electoral chief has warned. Australian Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn defended the system’s reliability following attacks from election hopeful Clive Palmer, who portrayed himself as a victim of ”rigged” results and the AEC as a military-infiltrated ”national disgrace”. Despite the conspiracy claims, Mr Palmer extended his lead over his Liberal National Party rival to 111 votes on Friday, with the final counting of outstanding votes in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax expected on Saturday. The Palmer United Party founder and wealthy Queensland businessman reacted angrily to the discovery of 750 votes tallied against the wrong pre-poll location mid-way through the count. In an earlier mistake, officials noticed 1000 votes for Victorian independent Cathy McGowan had not been recorded correctly, pushing the seat of Indi further out of reach of former Coalition frontbencher Sophie Mirabella, who subsequently conceded defeat this week. Mr Killesteyn said computer-based voting would eliminate these kinds of ”human errors” but the benefits would have to be weighed against hacking and manipulation fears.

Australia: Queensland voter ID plan sparks claims Indigenous electors would be shut out | theguardian.com

More than 40,000 marginalised people in Queensland, particularly Indigenous people, the disabled and elderly, could be shut out of the democratic process due to the state’s planned “onerous” voter ID laws, community groups have warned. In a an open letter to Queensland attorney-general Jarrod Bleijie, the groups warn that the proposal “unnecessarily restricts Queenslanders’ voting rights” and could disenfranchise those who do not have the required identification documents. The Queensland government plans to introduce the law – which applies only to state polls – before the 2015 state election, meaning Queensland would become the first state or territory in Australia to require that voters show identification at the polling booth.

Australia: Palmer calls for fresh election in Fairfax | Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Businessman and political aspirant Clive Palmer has demanded a new election in the federal seat of Fairfax on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. His lead over the LNP’s Ted O’Brien in Fairfax has narrowed to only 209 votes, with about 88 per cent of ballot papers counted. Mr Palmer, who founded the Palmer United Party (PUP), says the election is rigged and the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is a national disgrace. He says 768 pre-poll votes from one booth went missing from the voting centre at Coolum Beach, and later turned up at Buderim. On Monday afternoon, the AEC released a statement saying the sorting error makes no difference to the count overall, and it remains confident in the integrity of its processes. However, the Federal Court says the AEC’s media release on Monday suggested there was a reserved judgment.  The court says today Justice Dowsett indicated he would reserve the question of costs in respect of Monday’s hearing, but otherwise Mr Palmer’s application was denied.

Australia: Accidental Senator a Kingmaker in Australia Micro Party Era | Bloomberg

David Leyonhjelm realized he could win an Australian Senate seat when his small Liberal Democratic Party scored the plum spot for the Sept. 7 election — the top, left-hand corner of the ballot sheet in New South Wales state. “That was just complete luck,” said the 61-year-old former veterinarian, who said he wants to broker deals with the Liberal-National coalition government if his place in the 76-seat upper house is confirmed. Some “confused” voters may have mixed up his group with the Liberal party of Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott, he added. Leyonhjelm and six others from tiny, mostly center-right parties are set to hold the balance of power in the upper house from July 1, complicating Abbott’s legislative agenda even as his coalition won a majority in the lower house. While they may back Abbott on his promise to repeal the previous Labor government’s carbon price mechanism and mining tax, his maternity-leave plan costing A$5.5 billion ($5.1 billion) a year could be blocked.

Australia: How Voting For The Senate Works In Australia | Lifehacker Australia

The record large Senate ballot papers have probably already annoyed many early voters. Their great length — over a metre in NSW and Victoria — will soon annoy many more voters. However, the real annoyance will come if new senators with very little popular support get elected. The reason why this might happen is a distortion of the Proportional Representation system, where, by voting “above the line”, it is the party — not the voter — that decides the preferences. In this election, more than ever before, large numbers of parties that we have never heard of are on the ballot paper. Preference deal strategies might even lead to some of them getting elected. Back in 2004, Labor and Australian Democrat preferences in Victoria went to Family First ahead of the Greens. Almost no Labor or Democrat voters knew this when they voted above the line, but this led to Family First’s Steve Fielding’s election to the Senate. This can happens because the above the line option — where the preferences are decided by the party you vote for, not by you the voter — was introduced for Senate polls in 1983. These preferences are listed in the Group Voting Tickets.

Australia: Tony Abbott wants voting procedures to change | News.com.au

Voting procedures could be set for a major shake-up, with the Abbott government flagging changes to the Senate process over widespread confusion at the weekend. Constitutional law experts said on Monday many punters had no idea of who they had actually voted for, with a maze of preference deals and sprawling ballot paper contributing. “In this election it was almost impossible for an ordinary voter to cast a vote with knowledge of where their preference might ultimately end up,” said Professor George Williams from Melbourne University. “Even if you were an expert you would have struggled to have a sense of who you ultimately voted for in the Senate and that’s a major problem. People ended up voting for someone they didn’t support and in many cases voting for someone who they didn’t even know existed.”

Australia: Queensland ballot paper mix up under investigation | Brisbane Times

The Australian Electoral Commission is trying to determine how many Queensland voters were accidentally given ballot papers for the NSW Senate contest. A voter in the far north Queensland tourist town of Port Douglas says he and other voters were given the wrong ballot papers at a pre-polling booth. The man says he realised the mistake about an hour after he voted, and returned to the booth to alert officials. The AEC says it’s unsure how many Queensland voters were given the wrong ballot papers. An investigation into the incident, which happened in the electorate of Leichhardt, is under way.

Australia: Is there a choice of two methods when voting for Senators? | The Age

The Australian Electoral Commission says we have “a choice of two methods” when voting for Senators on Saturday. We can either vote “above the line'” by putting the number ‘1’ in one box only. That gives the group we are voting for the right to allocate our preferences. It says “the rest of the ballot paper must be left blank.” Or we can vote “below the line” by putting the number ‘1’ in the box of our first choice, then number ‘2’ and so on until all the boxes have been numbered. “If a voter chooses to vote below the line, they must number every box below the line for their vote to count,” the website says. “The top part of the ballot paper must be left blank.” If true, it could leave some of us unable fully exercise our democratic rights.

Australia: Postal vote details raises privacy fears | 9News

Some Australians are refusing to use the Australian Electoral Commission’s postal voting forms because they require personal details to be printed on the back of the returning envelope. Voters must provide their name, address and signature, together with the signature of a witness on the envelope which contains their completed ballot papers. If the person has changed their name or address since they last voted, those details must also be added to the form together with a phone number and the town or city in which they were born. One Sydney voter, who asked for his name to be withheld, told ninemsn he was shocked such details would be visible and feared the system made it too easy to facilitate identity theft. He believes the practice goes against the widely held belief that your personal details should be guarded closely to avoid them being used for other purposes.

Australia: From Antarctica to Outback, Australians must vote | Rappler

From the frozen Antarctic to the dry and remote Outback, millions of Australians will cast their ballots on Saturday in an election that poses logistical challenges in a continent-sized country. Voting is compulsory and a record 14.71 million Australians are registered to make their mark at some 7,500 polling booths set up at schools, surf clubs, church halls and community centers. But finding somewhere to vote for either incumbent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor party, the conservative opposition of Tony Abbott or more than 50 other minor parties is not always easy. With many people living in far-flung locations, 38 polling teams began criss-crossing the enormous country two weeks ahead of the September 7 polling day to reach more than 400 isolated communities.

Australia: Writing on wall for pencil and paper electoral rolls | Sydney Morning Herald

Over the decades little has changed at polling centres on election day. Long lines of impatient voters wind around fundraising sausage sizzles set up to lure and distract hungry captive audiences. Discarded how-to-vote cards sprinkle the paths to polling booths while voters weave in and out of bunting to avoid the avalanche of party faithful ready to thrust candidate information into unresponsive hands.  Finally, you’ve made it to the big tin shed or school gym and wait to have your name and address found among all the other “Smiths” and “Browns” in the important-looking folder. Once located, your name is neatly marked off the electoral roll, or certified list, with a super-sharp pencil guided in a straight line by the federal government-sponsored ruler. However, for this federal election, gone are the sharp-at-the-ready pencils and trusty rulers and in their places are laptops and flat screens for Australia’s first trial of electronic federal electoral rolls.

Australia: Why is voting compulsory? | BBC

Is compulsory voting in a democracy a contradiction in terms? That is the question some Australians have been asking since voting became required by law here nearly a century ago. The right to vote is a freedom fiercely sought by people all over the world, but Australians do not have a choice. The continent is part of a small minority of just 23 countries with mandatory voting laws. Only 10 of those enforce them. Registering to vote and going to the polls are legal duties in Australia for citizens aged 18 and over, and failing to do so can result in a fine and potentially a day in court. Opponents of the system like Libertarian columnist Jason Kent say this stifles political freedom and threatens the basic principles of democracy. “People have been sentenced to jail terms for not voting. It’s disgusting. It’s far from being democratic. We are not a democracy if we can’t vote democratically.” But Dr Peter Chen, who teaches politics at the University of Sydney, warns that this type of heated rhetoric blows things out of proportion. He says showing up to the polls every so often is not a huge burden. “The system demonstrates a social expectation that at a minimum everyone needs to participate every few years and that’s a good thing.”

Australia: Remote polling booths seek to raise indigenous voter participation | The Australian

Indigenous voter participation is the target of a series of new initiatives being trialled at remote polling locations this election, after participation rates in remote communities averaged about 50 per cent during the 2010 election. Voting began at remote locations across Australia this morning, with 38 mobile polling teams heading out on a journey that will take them across an area covering more than 3.4 million square kilometres. Following the recommendations of a major review, the Australian Electoral Commission is now opening remote polling booths for longer and trialling a different make-up of remote polling teams. Rather than the enthusiastic volunteers and retirees who have staffed mobile booths in the past, the three-person teams visiting indigenous communities now comprise one indigenous person, one experienced electoral officer and one Centrelink staff member with existing connections to the community.

Australia: Assange’s Wikileaks runs into Australian election troubles | Reuters

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s plans to capture a seat at Australia’s September 7 elections were in disarray on Thursday after his top local candidate quit due to an internal fight over party organization. Assange, who remains holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, accepted responsibility for the divisions, saying he had been too busy helping fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia. “I made a decision two months ago to spend a lot of my time on dealing with the Edward Snowden asylum situation, and trying to save the life of a young man. The result is over delegation,” Assange told Australian television on Thursday. “I admit and I accept full responsibility for over delegating functions to the Australian party while I try to take care of that situation.” Assange has been given political asylum by Ecuador, but faces immediate arrest and extradition to Sweden to face accusations of rape and sexual assault if he leaves Ecuador’s London embassy.

Australia: Electoral staff swap pencils for computers | ABC

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) staff are trialling notebook computers to electronically check-off voters at polling booths around the country. It is the first time notebook computers have been used in a federal election to mark off names and addresses from the electoral roll. Similar devices were used during the ACT election last year and proved successful. AEC spokesman Phil Diak says staff will swap pencils and rulers for the notebooks, making it easier to look-up interstate voters. “We’ll also be able to print ballot papers from the notebooks and that will help us in terms of holding stocks of interstate ballot papers for the House of Representatives,” he said.

Australia: Statistics show 25 per cent of young people failed to enrol to vote in September election | ABC

Not enough Australians are voting and not enough young people have enrolled to vote, latest figures show. Statistics from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) revealed 20 per cent of eligible voters did not cast their ballot in the last federal election and 25 per cent of young voters failed to enrol for the next election. Of those aged 18-24, 400,000 people did not enrol in time meaning they cannot vote in September’s election, a trend that is of great concern to the AEC. “It is clear from the evidence that the trend is for increasing numbers of otherwise eligible electors to remain outside the electoral system,” Electoral commissioner Ed Killesteyn said. The AEC studied the 2010 election and found more than 3 million Australians did not vote.

Australia: How long is a piece of electoral string? | The Age

How long is a piece of string? In the case of the coming federal election, it’s 140 kilometres! That’s how much string will anchor the the 100,000 pencils the Australian Electoral Commission is distributing for voters to mark their voting slips on September 7. The logistical task of organising an election has never been greater, according to the commission, which is busy delivering the Official Guide to the Federal Election to 9.7 million Australian households. If that isn’t enough, you can always go to the commission’s website to gain access to digital formats of the guide. Around 70,000 polling officials will be required to oversee events on election day, and almost 50,000 of them already signed up. About 50,000 ballot boxes have been hammered together and are being distributed across the land, and more than 43 million ballot papers – just to be sure, to be sure – are being sent out to cater for voting for the House of Representatives and Senate polls.

Australia: Pitching for overseas voters | SBS World News

The major political parties have launched a pitch for the votes of thousands of expatriate Australians who could influence the final result in this year’s federal election. The Australian Electoral Commission says over 74,000 votes were cast from overseas at the previous federal election in 2010 and it’s expecting similar numbers this time. The major parties are distributing campaign material to potential voters overseas and say they will have volunteers handing out how to vote cards around the world in the lead up to polling day. The Australian Electoral Commission is encouraging voters who are likely to be overseas on the date of the federal election to cast a vote through Australian embassies and consulates. Voters who will be overseas for a short time can fill in an AEC form with details of their electoral division and cast a vote either through the post or through voting centres which will be set up at diplomatic missions.

Australia: What is preferential voting? | SBS World News

Preferential voting is required in Australia. It’s largely unique to our political scene, reflecting the number and diversity of smaller parties that participate in elections. It is a system of voting that allows a citizen to individually number and rank all candidates for both houses of parliament according to their preferences. It is employed when no one candidate or party wins outright, based on first preference votes. It means a citizen’s vote can still be counted, even if their first choice of candidate is eliminated due to a lack of votes. On a ballot paper, placing a number one against a candidate is considered the first preference or primary vote. If no candidate secures an absolute majority of primary votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is then eliminated from the count.

Australia: Federal election may miss three million Australian votes | The Age

Election officials fear a record three million Australians either won’t vote or will cast an informal vote this election as the deadline looms for enrolments. Voters have until 8pm (AEST) to register their details with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). Spokesman Phil Diak said there were 14.6 million on the roll at the weekend, out of a total pool of 15.9 million. He said 900,000 people didn’t vote last federal election and about 700,000 spoiled their ballot papers resulting in informal votes.

Australia: More than 1.3 million still not enrolled to vote | 9News

More than 1.3 million Australians still aren’t enrolled to vote in the federal election. And with Monday night the deadline, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) faces an uphill battle to persuade around five per cent of the nation to register. About 100,000 people have enrolled since June, thanks in part to a high profile advertising campaign, links posted on Facebook and Twitter and a new online enrolment system. The AEC expects a late flurry this weekend but a spokesman conceded there will be some who miss the 8pm (AEST) Monday deadline and won’t be eligible to vote.

Australia: WikiLeaks founder, Senate candidate Assange says he’s proud of support in homeland | Washington Post

WikiLeaks founder and Australian Senate candidate Julian Assange says he is proud of the level of support he enjoys in his home country and has pledged to enforce transparency in Parliament if he wins a seat in elections in September. “When you turn a bright light on, the cockroaches scuttle away, and that’s what we need to do to Canberra,” the Australian capital, Assange told Nine Network television in an interview filmed in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and broadcast in Australia on Sunday. In a separate interview at the embassy, where he has taken refuge for more than a year, the 42-year-old fugitive told Ten Network that his popularity demonstrated by a recent opinion poll reflected poorly on the ruling Labor Party. The center-left government staunchly supports the U.S. condemnation of WikiLeaks’ disclosure of hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Australia: Election Commission Twitter Account Hacked | International Business Times

Early Tuesday morning the twitter account of the Australian election commission was hacked and users started to get messages from the hacked account. The hacker launched a phishing attack from the hacked account aimed at getting the login details of the users. Australian voters have been asked to ignore direct messages purportedly sent from the Australian Electoral Commission, after the commission’s Twitter account was hacked. Unsuspecting users got messages for the Election commission’s hacked twitter account with a clickable link with some messages reading “I found a funny pic of you!” by clicking this link the victims would be taken to a fake twitter page for “authentication” if the user fills in the login details the account details reach the hacker and the newly hacked account can be used to further spread the phishing scam and obtain more login details.

Australia: Kevin Rudd calls Australia election for September 7 | CNN

Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd has called an election for September 7, kicking off a five-week campaign as polls show his ruling Labor party has dramatically closed the gap on the Liberal opposition. The election will centre on the management of the A$1.4tn economy, which faces an increasingly uncertain outlook. “This election will be about who the Australian people trust to best lead them through the difficult new economic challenges which now lie ahead — new challenges brought about by the end of the China resources boom,” Mr Rudd said in Canberra on Sunday, shortly after visiting Australia’s governor general to seek permission to hold an election. Mr Rudd was reinstalled as leader six weeks ago after ousting his predecessor Julia Gillard in a bruising leadership contest, Labor has closed the gap on the opposition led by Tony Abbott, a Rhodes scholar who trained for the priesthood.

Australia: Rudd Says He Hasn’t Decided Election Date, Wants to Attend G-20 | Businessweek

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said “no determination whatsoever” has been made on an election date and he wants to attend a Group of 20 summit in Russia on Sept. 5-6, making a vote early next month less likely. The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that Rudd will visit the governor-general tomorrow or Aug. 5 to seek approval for an election on Sept. 7, citing unidentified people. “I’ve made no determination whatsoever in terms of the date of an election,” Rudd, who’s obliged to call an election by Nov. 30, told reporters in Brisbane today. “It’s my intention to be in St. Petersburg. But I’m very mindful, also, of the other challenges which lie ahead of us.”

Australia: Rudd to rally troops for an early election | The Australian

Kevin Rudd will put his Labor colleagues on alert for an imminent election as he assembles the federal caucus in Sydney today to prepare for a “tough campaign” in the wake of his policy shifts on border protection and climate change. The Prime Minister is expected to overcome objections to the severity of his new policy on asylum-seekers to gain a show of support for the “no settlement” regime despite doubts among some of the party’s Left faction. Amid talk within the caucus that the federal election would be held on August 31, party members reported a positive response from voters to the Papua New Guinea solution to asylum-seekers over the weekend.

Australia: WikiLeaks party registered for Australian election | The Guardian

The political arm of the global whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks has been formally registered by the Australian Electoral Commission in time for the federal election where the party plans to contest Senate seats in three Australian states. The WikiLeaks party received formal registration on Tuesday and was registered under the name of Gail Malone, a member of the party’s national council and described as a “peace activist” on their website. The registration lists an address in Fitzroy, Melbourne as the party’s correspondence address.

Australia: Queensland moves to have electronic, and potentially online voting, within six years | The Telegraph

Queenslanders who fail to vote in State Elections will continue to cop a fine after the Newman Government decided not to scrap compulsory voting. But the Government will eventually make it more convenient to vote, moving to introduce electronic, and potentially online voting, within six years. Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie yesterday announced Cabinet had decided against removing fines for voters who fail to show up on polling day. It comes after The Courier-Mail revealed in January the Government was reviewing compulsory voting among other reforms. Other changes include a new requirement for voters to show proof of identification at the polling booth, a move that could affect pensioners.