Victorian Electoral Commission direct enrolment

MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (17:42:04) — My adjournment matter tonight is for the Special Minister of State, and it relates to the Victorian Electoral Commission’s (VEC) direct enrolment of students onto the electoral roll. The VEC had been doing automatic enrolments since 2010, and it was actually a great service. They sent out a 17th birthday card to students and then when the student turned 18 years they would be directly enrolled onto the electoral roll. But this process stopped a couple of years ago. The VEC stated that this was due to the fact that they became overwhelmed with a whole range of electoral matters and they really could not keep up with the direct enrolment process that they had done previously.

They are re-instigating direct enrolment now, which I am very pleased about. As we know, they get that information from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. But what they have decided to do is only directly enrol students at the end of term, after they have done all their exams. So all of these 18-year-olds will miss out on voting in this election unless they enrol themselves.

The action I am seeking from the minister is for him to ask the electoral commission to go back to their regular process of automatically enrolling students when they turn 18 years rather than doing it in a bulk lot at the end of term when the Australian tertiary admission rank scores come out. This will obviously enable students to be enrolled for the upcoming November election.