Wednesday, 3 December 2025

 Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (11:09): I rise this morning to make a contribution on a committee report, which is the report of the Electoral Matters Committee inquiry into the 2025 Prahran and Werribee by-elections tabled yesterday. One of those by-elections brought the great member for Werribee to this house, who sits next to me today. I am lucky enough to be the chair of the committee that undertook this inquiry and wrote this report. I would obviously like to acknowledge the secretariat, particularly Christopher Gribbin, who does a fantastic job for all of us on EMC in helping to facilitate our work and these reports. I am not going to go through the entire committee, but I will give a shout-out to the member for Mornington, who is my deputy chair on EMC – a real lateral thinker, the member for Mornington. You have heard the phrase ‘You cannot fit a square peg into a round hole’ – he will try anyway. He will try and find a way. He is a real lateral thinker, and he is a pleasure to work with, to be quite frank.

Nathan Lambert: What about the rest of the committee members?

Dylan WIGHT: They are no good. We remember at the beginning of this year the by-elections in Werribee and Prahran. Obviously, being the member for Tarneit, I spent a significant amount of time working on that byelection in Werribee. It is incredibly important that whenever there is an election that affects this place, that affects the Victorian Parliament, whether that be a general election or a by-election, there is a thorough review undertaken by the Electoral Matters Committee into what worked, into what did not work and into what could be improved. This was a really thorough inquiry and a thorough set of hearings where we heard from several stakeholders: the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) obviously but also candidates – the member for Werribee and I think the member for Prahran specifically came and gave evidence – and the political parties and some independents that took part in those by-elections as well.

After all those hearings we came up with a report that I think thoroughly covers the key issues in these elections. I will speak specifically to Werribee because that is where I was. There were, to be frank, some significant issues with these by-elections in a number of key areas. First and foremost, it is no surprise to anybody that the independence of the electoral commission and everybody working for that commission in these elections is paramount. A fundamental pillar in our democracy is an independent electoral commission. We had some instances, one in particular in Werribee, where we had a VEC employee handing out ballot papers in the ballot room, telling prospective voters to vote for a certain party – a pretty significant issue that goes to not just the recruitment of staff but also training by the VEC. There are clear recommendations in here that the VEC must look at and overhaul its training of recruits and election workers to be able to identify these issues and make sure that they do not occur again.

There are obviously the timelines as well – between nominations and ballots being printed et cetera. Findings 3 and 4 go to those timelines. They take issue with the lack of flexibility for the Speaker in setting election timelines. There is also participation. We saw in these by-elections unfortunately really poor voter turnout. I think voter turnout in Prahran was somewhere in the vicinity of 60 per cent and in Werribee only a little bit above that, at about 70 per cent. Going to that, it is important, particularly in places with a pretty transient community and with a lot of renters, that the VEC has the most up-to-date roll that it possibly can, so there are recommendations within this report that would allow the VEC to take information from further agencies than it already does. Obviously the VEC takes information from VicRoads, for instance. When you change your licence to a new address, the VEC gets updated, so there are recommendations about expanding that as well.