Tasmanian Government to bring on legislation to enforce compulsory voting in council elections

Matt Maloney | The Examiner | 30 May 2021

The government will suspend debate over the 2022-23 state budget this week to debate legislation to introduce compulsory voting in local government elections.

Local Government Minister Nic Street last week tabled a bill in Parliament to enable compulsory voting and simplified preferential voting in council elections.

Voting will still be conducted by post and if the legislation is passed, voting will be a requirement for all eligible Tasmanians in this October’s local government elections.

About 58 per cent of eligible voting Tasmanians cast ballots in the 2018 elections.

Nelson independent MLC Meg Webb questioned the urgency of debate over the legislation and suggested the government add extra parliamentary sittings to the schedule for it to be debated later.

“It is established practice for the state budget process to take precedence over any other parliamentary business,” she said.

“Tasmanians are facing housing eviction now, people are having to choose between food and heating now, current and future COVID challenges continue to impact the budget bottom line, yet the government intends to hit pause on this urgent budget debate for non-urgent local government reforms.”

Government minister Guy Barnett said it was not usual for budget debate in Parliament to be suspended a week after the budget’s release to allow for debate on other priorities, such as the compulsory voting legislation.

“There’s a certain amount of hours that are attributed to debate on the budget, those hours won’t and have not changed,” he said.