National Interest

Election speculation has now reached fever pitch. But in the absence of a definite date to look forward to, we start The National Interest round up with a look back to Australia's most recent election in Tasmania and evidence now emerging of the pre-poll spending that flowed from a special account in the Premier's office called the Sundry Grants fund.

According to the government, the fund allows the Premier to provide relatively small but much-needed support to important community organisations, 'relatively small' in this context may be amounts of up to $30,000. There are no formal criteria for allocating the money, the fund is not advertised and requests for cash do not have to be made in writing. In other words the fund is administered entirely at the discretion of the Premier.

Last year the total amount doled out from the slush fund, sorry sundry fund, was $840,000. And according to The Hobart Mercury the fund did such brisk business during the lead-up to to the March election that it had to be topped up twice.

Treasury kicked $200,000 in to the fund in early February just before the election campaign began and added another $185,000 after the poll to balance the books.

The Australian Electoral Commission has been doing its best to get the missing one point four million voters signed up to the federal electoral rolls before the issuing of the writs so that as many people as possible can exercise their democratic rights, or duties, on polling day.

The political lobby group GetUp! thought it would lend a hand. GetUp! devised a system to enable citizens to enroll entirely online, without having to resort to all that old fashioned business of signing a piece of paper.

The group launched a website, OzEnrol.com, which offers the option of signing your enrolment form electronically, using a computer mouse or trackpad. GetUp! then sends the completed form to the Australian Electoral Commission on the voters behalf so their names can be added to the roll.

But there's a bit of a hick-up. A whiz bang techno enrolment like that would be invalid, because it breaches section 101 (1) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which requires people to 'fill in and sign a claim' to enrol.

An Electoral Commission spokesman told The Age that 'a digitally constructed signature would not be valid'. So you still need to grab a pen and wave it over a real piece of paper.

Very 20th century. But at least you don't have to walk all the way to the post box. The Commission says you can fax in the signed form -- not much help really since who uses a fax these days? Or you can scan the form and send it as an email attachment.

And if you really are the old-fashioned type, there's always hand delivery.

Presenter

Peter Mares

Producer

Erica Vowles