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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4027 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

We should not delete items from our ACT legislation just because the Commonwealth has done so. In fact, this one worries me particularly, because we have the situation where it will not be necessary to claim consultants' fees and advertising agents' fees. It would seem to me that, if you are running an election campaign and for some reason you decide you want to hide the expenditure that the parties are going through because you do not like the advertising or the media attention that that brings about or something, all you need to do is pay it to a consultant and you no longer have a problem.

Let me give you a much better example. Recently, the Federal Liberal Party was in strife over encouraging a tender by a particular advertising group that they had been involved with in their election campaign. There was a series of questions asked about whether it was appropriate for them to do so or whether there was a conflict of interest in terms of the Government trying to look after somebody who had looked after the party. Under this proposal, it might well be the case that we would have no idea who the advertising agent was, because there would be a propensity for people to say, "I will pay the consultant to run the campaign; the consultant then can employ whom they like; and we no longer need to do it". I think that would be an inappropriate way to go. I think my amendment achieves that.

I draw members' attention to my amendment No. 6, which is part of the same issue. If this amendment fails, I will not be moving amendment No. 6. However, if it does pass, then I will need to move my amendment No. 6 at a later time.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (8.51): I have been persuaded by Mr Moore that there is some value in accepting his amendment. I understand that the reason the Federal Government at the time proposed to remove the requirement to include in electoral expenditure any expenditure on consultants and advertising agents in respect of a pre-election period was that there was some murkiness about the distinction between such expenditure during that period and at other periods between elections. For example, if a political party were to commission an opinion poll and used a consultant to conduct an opinion poll two years out from an election, then that would not be electoral expenditure pursuant to the provisions of section 223 of the Act unless that opinion polling, that information, was used again in respect of the pre-election period. But, of course, it is very hard to know just how it is used in that period. If a party worker picks it up, reads it and draws some conclusion from it or perhaps tells someone else about it, writes a letter about it or whatever, is that being used or is it not? It is very hard to know.

Notwithstanding that, Mr Speaker, clearly, in those circumstances it would be safer for people with that kind of material, having engaged in those kinds of dealings with advertising agencies and consultants, to accept that they should disclose all that spending in their returns. We are not talking about an onerous degree of disclosure either; we are talking simply about a line that says, "XYZ Advertising Agency, $2,000". That is not exactly onerous, in my view. Although this takes us out of line with the Commonwealth legislation, this is in respect of ACT elections. In a sense, being in line with requirements for Commonwealth elections is not exactly a heavy burden and I would suggest it is acceptable to pick this amendment up.

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