Page 1149 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
of the 1989 election was due more to the fact that we had a controversial election in its own right. This brought many people out of the woodwork to put their toe in the water, or in some cases to ridicule the process by virtue of their candidacy. Generally speaking, in places where these things have occurred, to my knowledge there is no strong evidence that there is any greater number of people nominating to stand for election.
The second argument, that public funding would reduce dependence on special interest groups, is certainly not the case. The political parties, particularly the Liberal and Labor parties, have not ceased to turn to their respective special supporters. The trade union movement continues to fund the Labor Party at elections; the business community, or parts of it, continues to fund the Liberal Party. It is hard to argue that either of those parties is now more in a position to make some kind of independent judgment because of public funding. It certainly has not had the effect of reducing that dependence, but it has had the effect of allowing political parties to run bigger and better campaigns.
It might also be said to have had the effect of causing some parties to be a little bit more reckless about the debt that they have incurred. I suspect that the Australian Labor Party is still paying off some of the debt it incurred at the 1989 election when, for all the major parties, there was an extraordinarily large difference between the votes that were obtained and the votes that were expected, and therefore the public funding that was expected. Perhaps the Labor Party is not paying off the 1989 election, but I understand that it is still paying off the 1992 election. There is a knowing nod from a certain adviser.
These proposals, Part XIV, have more to do with giving the established parties an edge over minor parties than they have with levelling the playing field. Had we had public funding at the last ACT election something like three-quarters of all the public funding, or more, would have gone to the Liberal and Labor parties. It has not had the effect of letting other players have a particularly significant role. It is all about giving those parties that extra capacity to take part in very big, flashy campaigns. That is what it has been all about.
I think, therefore, that we need to ask ourselves whether the commitment of $170,000-odd of taxpayers' money - money which, as the Chief Minister has often told us, is in increasingly short supply - should be defrayed for the purposes of running political parties' campaigns. When I was being interviewed about this subject a few days ago one journalist said to me, "Well, why should we not do this? This is what is done everywhere else in Australia". It occurred to me that these people had been fed some sort of line. We know that public funding is not the norm in Australia. The Western Australian elections do not have public funding. South Australian elections do not have public funding. Elections in Queensland do not have public funding - at least, not at this stage. The Northern Territory has no public funding. Tasmania, on which we are basing this system, has no public funding. Victoria has no public funding. It is only in New South Wales and at the Commonwealth level that we have had public funding, and, of course, for the first ACT election. So there is no norm of public funding. Indeed, it is the exception, I would argue, and I think that there is no strong case for it to be introduced.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .