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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 2983 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

I was drawing attention to my colleague Paul Osborne. I think the fact that he has stood aside on such issues is to be admired. In the terms of standing order 156, he will have to make his own decision about that. I am not going to at this stage, unless he requests that I do so as part of a vote in the Assembly. If I were getting large sums of money, say up to $1m over a three-year period, from the Michael Moore club that Mr Berry talked about earlier, then I would have to say that I would have a conflict of interest. I would consider that $1m towards my campaign would have some influence on the way I thought. I would not want to slow down my milking cow or $1m coming towards me for my election campaign or to support the structure of my organisation. I would have to admit to the community that I had a conflict of interest. I would not have the gall to stand here and say, "I do not have a conflict of interest. I can deal with these matters. It is not a problem".

In addressing amendment No. 3, Mr Berry referred to the terrible unfettered power that the Minister is going to have in gazetting a notice that will be subject to disallowance under the Subordinate Laws Act. All any member in this Assembly has to do is say, "I do not like what the Minister has done there. I will disallow it completely and not let him have it; or, better still, I will amend it. I will turn it around on him a bit". Provided it is consistent with the original, you have those two choices. I would hardly consider this an unfettered power. This is not an unfettered power. It is a power that was fettered in this Assembly when Mr Connolly - I was going to say "when Labor was in government", but it was actually Mr Connolly - put through a very good piece of legislation that I later amended to allow us to amend rather than simply to disallow.

Another very important issue is the distinction between what is voluntary and what is required. Nobody is stopping a club doing all those things that Mr Berry wants them to do. They can continue doing those things. They can put their money where they like. However, in certain circumstances as set out in the legislation they are required to keep records on contributions to charitable organisations declared as such by the Minister by a notice in the Gazette that is subject to disallowance. That seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable thing. Let them go and do all those other things they want to do. If they want to record the money they put into sports clubs or any other sort of organisation as they wish, let them put it in their annual report. I think it would be very interesting to read where clubs put their money. In many cases they put it in very sensible places that make a great contribution to the community. I do not think anybody is denying that. But it is important for us to understand where the money from these organisations goes.

Why is it important? It is important because this community has said, "We are not going to tax clubs in the same way as other organisations within the community that do the same sorts of things as they do". We have given them a fantastic tax break. Let us see whether their contribution to the wider community or in this specific narrow area is worthy of a tax break. If they want to give us more information, I am open to that. I think it is fantastic. I think this Bill is very sensible and the amendments very silly.

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