Today in Budget Estimates, Abigail grilled the NSW Treasurer about the denied funding for the Electoral Commission, risking electoral failure in 2027 and suspending iVote, which threatens democratic integrity and voting accessibility for people with disability.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: Good morning, Treasurer. You and I have been on this side of budget estimates for many years prior to this term of Parliament.
Particularly, I recall sitting with you as we had the representatives from the independent agencies in front of us. We have been asking them about their funding.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY (NSW Treasurer): I thought you might ask me about this, Ms Boyd. My years of experience with you suggested that you might ask me about the Electoral Commission.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: Yes. In particular, we have been asking and asking, and waiting, for proper funding for the Electoral Commission. So it was a bit astounding to find out yesterday that the commission is so underfunded that not only will we not get iVote back until 2030 at the very earliest but apparently the Electoral Commission is now being forced to cut half of its staff and is warning of electoral failure and having to manually count the Legislative Council vote in 2027. How can this be?
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: ... You would be aware that that process provides agencies the right to ask but ultimately, though, it is still the responsibility of government to balance such requests with the broader budget challenges... ERC did not reject it; we invited them to pursue it in another budget year. There is a distinction there.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: But can we talk in real terms?
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: Yes, we can.
...The second point that we have adopted as a government is that when it comes to determining the baseline for the Electoral Commission, we think it's appropriate that there is a new commissioner in place. They're currently going through a selection process for the commissioner... I do think it's fair and reasonable that we have a permanent electoral commissioner in place in order for the Government to properly consider the request.
The third point I make... The State's fiscal circumstances are challenging, and I would expect them to be as challenging next year. I well and truly respect the fact that the Electoral Commissioner has, effectively, been seeking these changes for 12 years. I expect that they will continue to seek them until they get them.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: In response to those points, firstly, as you know, The Greens continue to give you a whole lot of revenue-raising ideas, and I will not accept that there was no money left on the table that you could have raised in order to bolster our democratic systems.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: I accept that if you become the first New South Wales Greens Treasurer you will make different choices than we will.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: I certainly would. On the second point, yes, they've been asking for this increase in funding for this long because they could see what was going to happen. We're moving into an atmosphere of heightened risk when it comes to voter interference and fraud, and we need to have very, very strong technology for our Electoral Commission. They have been putting in this bid all this time, and now we're being told that because of the Government's failure, your Government's failure, to fund them appropriately, we are looking at a very high risk of there being electoral failure in 2027.
How can this be allowed?
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: ... The Government did actually fund their cybersecurity uplift to the tune of $15.8 million, which was the part of their funding proposal which, I agree with you, needed to be funded to address the risk that you spoke about— particularly the concept of electoral interference with cyber systems.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: But what they said is they had no staff for that.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: ... Right now, the manner in which they are funded effectively sees that they—given that they predominantly conduct two sets of elections, which are local government elections and the State election, their model has heretofore been that they obviously scale up for that task. What they are seeking to do, and I don't begrudge their right to ask, is rather than a model which sees them scale up and scale down, they would like to keep it permanent.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: Okay, but let's be clear about what that is. They said at the moment they're reliant on third parties, and if they had sufficient staffing they would not have that inefficient extra cost of having to get third parties all the time and it would actually be cheaper and more efficient in the long run. We still haven't addressed the point that, even with the money for the cybersecurity, what they said yesterday was that Treasury had said to them they needed to put the additional staffing required for that into their request for re-baselining, which was then, they said, rejected—you might say deferred. The effect of that is they're telling us they do not have the staff in order to make these systems secure.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: ... I just make the point that with respect to this particular budget the ERC considered $77 billion worth of funding requests at a time when the State had a $12.6 billion reduction in its GST revenue, so of course we have to make priorities.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: We're talking about $80 million a year for the Electoral Commission to be able to do its job properly.
They said $500 million over 10 years and $323 million over 10 years.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: No, it's $500 million over four and it's a billion over 10.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: It's pretty fundamental, though, the integrity of our voting system.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: Yes, and it was a hard decision. I'm not going to suggest for a second it was an easy one.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: It was the wrong decision, wasn't it?
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: Ms Boyd, I accept the fact that you'd make a different choice.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: Can I just raise another aspect of this? The reason why this first piqued my interest four years ago is because the disability community have been saying, "How on earth are people who are blind or vision impaired going to have the ability to cast a vote without a third party?" They loved iVote. Now iVote can't be used. This is yet another decision of your Government not to fund essential services and products for people with disability. It's really offensive. What have you done for people with disability in this budget? I can't find anything except for a $1 million increase in taxi subsidies.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: I think you'll find that when it comes to the provision of assistance to our citizens who have a disability the predominant form of State Government engagement is to ensure that they have access to adequate supports in light of the NDIS changes. But to specifically talk about—
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: That's 10 per cent of people with disability in our State who can access NDIS. What about everyone else?
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: Sure, but it's very important, Ms Boyd, I'm sure you'd agree. The second point is that you make the point around the Electoral Commission's case around what I think they describe as technology-assisted voting. Again, I'm the first to accept that it has merit...
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: It doesn't just have merit; it's a human right.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: But I just make this point: The NSW Electoral Commission did also release a report in November 2023 that said:
TAV has inherent risks that, if they were to materialise, could impact the integrity and delivery of an election. These risks require
mitigation steps, including strictly limiting eligible elector cohorts in the short term to those who require TAV for accessibility reasons...
I think they're quite right to make that point.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: That's why they need the money.
The Hon. DANIEL MOOKHEY: I simply say that is part of the reason why we do think it's appropriate that there be an Electoral Commissioner in place for which we can have discussions around what is the right way in which to mitigate it. But I don't want to for a second suggest to you, Ms Boyd, that I'm underplaying the seriousness of the issues that you're raising.
29 August 2024