Federal Voter ID Laws
Electoral Regulation Research Network seminar
Friday 5 November
Presenters:
- Professor Rosalind Dixon, Professor of Law, at the University of New South Wales, Faculty of Law.
- Alice Drury, Senior Lawyer, Human Rights Centre
- Dani Larkin, Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW.
- Professor Graeme Orr, Professor of Law at UQ
Chair:
- Dr Paul Kildea, Director of the Elections and Referendums Project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law
About the Talk:
The federal government has recently announced the intention to enact new voter ID requirements for federal elections. This proposal raises issues of constitutionality and broader democratic policy. Do laws of this kind promote electoral integrity, or ultimately undermine it? Are they consistent with our system of compulsory voting? And do they advance principles of equality, or are they racially discriminatory in effect? This online seminar discussed these and other issues relating to the proposed laws, drawing on a range of perspectives, including recent Queensland and overseas experience.
This webinar is a joint initiative of the Electoral Regulation Research Network (ERRN) and the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales.
More about the Presenters:
Graeme Orr is a Professor of Law at UQ, Brisbane. His books include The Law of Politics (2nd ed, 2019), The Law of Deliberative Democracy (2017, with Ron Levy) and a work on elections as rituals.
Rosalind Dixon is a Professor of Law at UNSW Sydney and Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, and former co-president of the International Society of Public Law. She is the author (with David Landau) of a new book Abusive Constitutional Borrowing: Legal Globalization and the Subversion of Democracy (OUP 2021).
Alice Drury is a Senior Lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, where she leads research and advocacy on Australian democracy.
Dani Larkin is a Bundjalung, Kungarykany woman from Grafton, New South Wales and a public lawyer and representative of the Senior Dialogue Leadership group for the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Dani is also Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW.
Paul Kildea is a Senior Lecturer at the UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice, Director of the Elections and Referendums Project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, and co-convenor of the NSW chapter of the ERRN.