Page 283 - Week 01 - Thursday, 10 February 2022
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changes. And now it seems that Mr Hanson no longer likes the system that he strongly supported because it no longer suits his wishes.
Under the Electoral Act, the disclosures only cover the material costs of political campaigns. These are things such as advertising products, postage and other collateral. The disclosure section of the Electoral Act does not intend to create an exhaustive list of legitimate campaign expenses. What it does not include is people, which is a key shortfall in Mr Hanson’s arguments because it appears that he does not get people.
The Canberra Liberals pay for gimmicks like balloons, putting their faces on cars and roadside corflutes. It is not enough for Mr Hanson to put his face up once or twice on Hindmarsh Drive. He has to go and do it over and over—20 times over. Then, as if that is not good enough, he goes and parks a truck on the roadside as a further visual blight on our landscape. This is the way that Mr Hanson campaigns and why he can only conceive of advertising as electoral expenditure.
But there is another way of campaigning that the Greens use, which Mr Hanson cannot seem to wrap his mind around, and it is all about people. The Greens employ local Canberrans to help coordinate our grassroots campaigns. The salaries of these staff are not included in the disclosure requirements under the act but are a very real cost of campaigning. I would rather be investing in people, training them, having them work for a purpose that they are passionate about. These paid Greens staff then support our volunteers by doing the work of coordination and back office whilst we get our volunteers out doing what they love, which is talking to Canberrans. This appears to be in stark contrast to the Liberals’ approach to campaigning, which is to put their enlarged faces on cars, distribute balloons with three-word slogans and push our public advertising laws to the limit.
It appears that our recent success, based on low-cost, grassroots campaigning, is a threat to the Liberals. I am not sure why. Perhaps they prefer simply giving out balloons, banging in the roadside corflutes or putting some slogans on some boxing gloves—all of which are destined to end up in landfill quicker than a Liberal candidate’s dreams.
The next shortcoming in Mr Hanson’s argument is time. The funding provided under the Electoral Act is to support the legitimate activities of political parties throughout the electoral cycle. It is not meant to be time limited. The electoral expenditure report that Mr Hanson loves to refer to, conversely, is limited from 1 January to the date of the election that year. The act does not say that this funding is only for activity that occurred for the period 1 January 2020 to 17 October 2020. Does this mean that parties are not allowed to start campaigning before 1 January? There is no implication or intent for the act to limit campaign activities or expenses to the reporting period.
My campaign is an example of this. I was announced as a candidate on 6 December 2019. By 1 January 2020 we had already had our photoshoots, designed and printed some initial materials, done some promotions on social media, recruited staff, and started training volunteers and ensuring that our neighbourhood teams were ready. I note that the Canberra Liberals declared their candidates even earlier, on 30 November 2019. Is Mr Hanson guaranteeing that the Canberra Liberals undertook
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