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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4015 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

To give the Government some credit on this, we support the idea that associated entities of political parties be also required to lodge returns of their electoral expenditure. The existing disclosure laws pick up individuals and companies that contribute directly to political parties and Independents, but there is a loophole in that individuals and companies can contribute to a so-called middleman of some sort which then passes on this money to the party or Independent. The middleman would be required to lodge a return but not the individuals or companies that originally contributed the money.

Our concern with this aspect of the Bill, however, is that "associated entity" as defined includes only organisations directly connected to a party or Independent. It does not pick up organisations that contribute large sums of money to parties or Independents for their own self-interest, such as industry organisations, unions and government associations which are not controlled by or operate for the benefit of a party or Independent. At present such organisations are able to collect money from their members and supporters for passing on to a party or Independent, and there is no public scrutiny of the source of these funds. I, therefore, foreshadow that if the Bill passes the in-principle stage I will move an amendment to the Bill to expand the definition of "associated entity" to include any organisation which collects money for distribution to parties or candidates. In conclusion, let me say that the Greens see no justification to water down the existing provisions of the ACT Electoral Act just to be consistent with the Commonwealth legislation.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (8.09), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank the Opposition for its support and I thank Mr Moore for at least partial support for the legislation. I happen to think it is quite important to be able to align the ACT's electoral laws with Commonwealth electoral laws. The amendments passed in 1995 to the Commonwealth Electoral Act were the result of bipartisan agreement in the Federal Parliament - in fact, as far as I can remember, multipartisan agreement in the Federal Parliament - that there should be some simplification of these requirements; there should be imposed on parties and candidates for elections a system which was appropriately wide enough to encourage full disclosure of relevant information about parties, their election campaigns, candidates and so on, but not so onerous as to create unnecessary burdens on organisations, particularly political parties, without any real benefit to the community in terms of what was actually disclosed, what information was actually supplied. Mr Speaker, I defend the process whereby those relatively small donations are made - if you like, in the language of my friends on the crossbenches - slightly less accountable or less disclosable than they were before.

Although it may warm the cockles of the hearts of the Greens and Mr Moore to know that every $25 donation is being disclosed, the fact is that you have to be a very cheap government to be particularly likely to want to rush out and do the bidding of someone who donated $25 or $50 to your campaign coffers.

MR SPEAKER: There are some pretty cheap candidates around.

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, fairly cheap candidates. I have to say, Mr Speaker, people in this Government have disappointed - - -

Mr De Domenico: Many of those $25 donors.

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