Wednesday, 19 February 2025

 Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (10:07): It gives me pleasure to rise to contribute this morning on parliamentary committee reports, and the report that I will be speaking on this morning is the 2022 election review inquiry, of course undertaken by the Electoral Matters Committee. Before I begin I would just like to acknowledge in particular the former members of that committee that contributed to this report, in particular the former chair the member for Kororoit and the former deputy chair the member for Narracan, and also give a special mention to a former member of this committee, the member for Pakenham, who by all accounts in the conversations I have had contributed significantly to this inquiry and should be congratulated as well on her work on this report and indeed on the Electoral Matters Committee.

The 2022 Victorian state election saw, I think we would all agree, some of the worst behaviour that we have witnessed in any election ever. In this place we make the decision to run for Parliament, to run for office, and the vast majority of us have got pretty thick skin. But some of the behaviour, in particular at polling booths, was abhorrent – intimidatory tactics both to candidates and, I think most concerning, to voters as well. When you have people from multicultural communities and people from our disabled communities coming in to vote and they are taken aback and literally scared to go in and exercise their democratic right, then I think we have a problem, and a problem that needs addressing. That was most certainly within the terms of reference of this report.

The report handed down several recommendations, including the adjustment of election timelines just to ease the pressure on both political parties and indeed independents nominating and contesting elections, the shortening of nomination periods and also the improvement of voting processes. There were also recommendations around the composition of Victoria’s upper house – not just the composition but how members are elected to the upper house as well, with a particular focus on group voting tickets. I will note that there is a further inquiry that is being undertaken presently into that issue, so I will not speak on it so as not to cut across the inquiry that is being undertaken right now by the Electoral Matters Committee.

Another key component of this inquiry and indeed this report was the Victorian Electoral Commission’s performance during the 2022 election, and I will note the Leader of the House just referred to this very committee another quite small and narrow inquiry into the Werribee and Prahran by-elections, which will also examine the VEC’s performance. We are incredibly lucky in Australia and in Victoria to have an independent electoral commission. It is a fundamental pillar of our democracy and one that needs to be – I do not want to say protected, because no-one in this place is suggesting that we do not have a VEC. But it needs to perform at its very best, so making sure that the performance of that independent commission is front and centre when we do these election reviews is incredibly important, and this report is no different on that. There has been a government response to this report, and I note that there is further work to do on these issues.