Electoral Reform committee  It's one of our three roles. We need to have an educated electorate, so before every election, we have a campaign that we run in a number of different phases to make sure people are informed about where to vote and how to vote. Those are two very important things.

Electoral Reform committee  I'll focus on administration rather than anything else. For us, the big issue that kills the Australian voting system is the vast number of envelopes that we have to deal with at election time without the access for people voting everywhere. If there were a better system for us

Electoral Reform committee  There's an appointment by the state to the house.

Electoral Reform committee  Essentially, yes, and there are a whole range of conventions around that based on a very long history in Australia, as you can imagine. It has occurred over many years with various things that have occurred, but there is a convention, and the state nominates a member.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, we do.

Electoral Reform committee  We do a full distribution of preferences, and all of that data, both current and historical, is available through our virtual tally room. Each state is different. There's an absolute majority in some, depending on where the seats are located, while in others there's a hugely comp

Electoral Reform committee  I would say that would be rare. I'd have to examine that. There are two major parties. If the Conservative Party is in coalition with another partner.... It's very difficult for me to answer that question in any statistically meaningful way. I can take it on notice and maybe gi

Electoral Reform committee  I think it would be fair to say, and I have said it publicly, that the issue in 2013 with 1,370 lost ballot papers in the state of Western Australia created great difficulty for us and did impact on our public reputation, but we still have a broad degree of public support. We're

Electoral Reform committee  It's essentially true, but unfortunately, at least from an administration perspective, some of the other states have now caught up. I mentioned earlier the need to have magnifying sheets. I think we also had to have them for the Victoria Senate ballot paper and for Queensland. Th

Electoral Reform committee  This matter has been examined in detail by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. Everyone has a view on this. It depends on where you sit. There are some who say the barrier should be very low to encourage participation, and there are others who say the barrier shoul

Electoral Reform committee  I think you summed it up pretty well. That's probably the prevailing opinion.

Electoral Reform committee  I couldn't tell you off the top of my head the proportion of female, indigenous, or other candidates, but I would tell you that indigenous Australians are under-represented on the electoral roll. We are separately funded to try to assist indigenous Australians to participate in t

Electoral Reform committee  Again I'm projecting a bit here because everyone is going to have their own view. I think the system itself is broadly accepted by the community, and there hasn't been a huge clamour, as far as I'm aware, to change that system that you're discussing there. It's a very tradition

Electoral Reform committee  Clearly we're in a different position with mandatory voting. We've taken a slightly different perspective. In the last election, we prosecuted more people for non-voting than we're ever done previously. We are dealing with it slightly differently.

Electoral Reform committee  The size of the electoral roll is at this stage 15.6 million people. There are 150 members of the House of Representatives and 76 senators.