Irish Echo News

Irish-born permanent residents of Australia who arrived here before January 1984 may lose their right to vote in elections,  if a Labor parliamentarian has his way.

As the law stands, nationals of British Commonwealth countries resident in Australia before 1984 have the right to vote in elections without becoming citizens. The only non-Commonwealth country that Australia has extended this right to is the Republic of Ireland.

According to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), there are 162,928 such voters here who are not citizens, but yet are eligible to vote in elections. This represents 1.18 per cent of electors on the electoral roll as of September 2008.

These people come from 49 different countries, including the Republic of Ireland, and are deemed to have “British subject” notation by the AEC.

But now, a Labor MP is advocating that the provision be reviewed. Daryl Melham recently sat on a Joint Standing Committee examining Electoral Affairs at the 2007 federal election and co-chaired a report, which was released last week.

The MP believes that it is time for Australia to review this arrangement.

“This is a treasured right,” he told the Irish Echo. “It is not fair to Australian citizens and other non-citizens that such a situation continues to exist.”

Mr Melham is ‘sympathetic’ to those who want to wait for Australia to become a republic to become citizens and he acknowledges that some of those he wishes to disenfranchise have served in the military.

But he believes that only citizens should be allowed to vote and points to the potential for these non-citizen voters to alter the result of individual seats and/or even an election.

“There are eight divisions with more than 2,500 electors with British subject notations (sic) on the electoral roll, and a further 62 divisions with more than 1,000 electors with British subject notations on the electoral roll,” he said.

“Of the 150 divisions at the 2007 election, nine divisions had final margins of less than 1,000 votes and 19 divisions had margins of less than 2,500 votes,” he said.

“It is clear that the continued enfranchisement of British subjects (sic) has the potential to affect [the outcome of an election],” he continued.

But he believes that voting non-citizens should be given ample opportunity to become certified Aussies before their vote is taken from them.

“Notwithstanding our historical links, I believe that in this day and age, continuing the grandfathering arrangements for a special class of British subjects (sic) is unfair and unreasonable to other non-citizens,” he said.

Mr Melham acknowledged that he may not be able to win support from his government colleagues to precipitate the change but his main intention was to create debate on the topic at federal elections.