Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4026 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (8.47): Mr Speaker, I move:

Omit "200", substitute "50".

Just for the sake of the record, that 200 I refer to there is the 200 penalty units, not the $200 or more. I would not like to think that, if a party volunteer was working in an office, received a cheque, wrote out a receipt in the wrong receipt book and sent it to a particular person - - -

Mr Moore: Or in good faith, wrote it out on a piece of paper.

MR HUMPHRIES: Or in good faith, wrote it out on a piece of paper if they were somewhere where there was not any receipt book handy, they would be incurring their party a fine of $20,000. In fact, I doubt that under this amendment they would incur a fine of even $5,000; but I think lowering the maximum penalty for a provision of this kind is appropriate. I moved that amendment to reflect what I think is probably a more appropriate level of seriousness of an offence under this provision.

Amendment (Mr Humphries's) to Mr Moore's amendments agreed to.

Amendments (Mr Moore's), as amended, agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 16

MR MOORE (8.48): I move:

Page 6, lines 5 to 11, omit the clause, substitute the following clause:

"Interpretation

16. Section 223 of the Principal Act is amended by inserting after paragraph (e) of the definition of `electoral expenditure' in subsection (1) the following paragraph:

`(ea) producing and distributing electoral matter that is addressed to particular persons or organisations and is distributed during the pre-election period;'.".

This amendment prevents the removal of consultants' fees and advertising agents' fees, as Mr Humphries has proposed in the legislation. I think this is a particularly important category and it is what I had presented as my third objective. Reporting of election expenditure is an important and accepted part of the law. The additional category in the Commonwealth legislation is one Commonwealth improvement which the ACT could copy.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .