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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 2967 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The public needs to be assured that incidents cannot be hidden of organisations and individuals attempting to buy favours or support from MLAs through the provision of gifts, or MLAs having a conflict of interest because they have financial interests in a matter before the Assembly or they do not want to offend their donors. I am sure that the members of this Assembly would not place themselves in this position, but it is important that the rules are clear so that the public can be assured that such incidents could not occur in the future.

However, the existing rules about disclosure of pecuniary interests are disjointed. The Electoral Commission has a statutory role in collecting information from parties and the Independent MLAs about gifts and donations, but not from party MLAs. There is also a register of MLAs' pecuniary interests kept by the Clerk, as authorised by resolution of the Assembly in 1992, but this information overlaps what is required by the Electoral Commissioner, and public access to this information is under different rules from those in the Electoral Act. It seems to me that there is a need to have only one system for keeping a register of pecuniary interests, and that this should be under the control of the Electoral Commissioner in line with his responsibilities for keeping other records on parties and candidates.

The speed at which the government has presented this bill and wants it passed has prevented me from doing a thorough review of this part of the act and preparing amendments to establish a statutory register of pecuniary interests. However, I understand that the ALP have been quicker than me in coming up with amendments to this bill that have the effect of applying the existing reporting provisions for Independent MLAs to all MLAs. I agree with the concept of having the same reporting requirement for all MLAs but can see some complications in how this has been drafted because it assumes that the existing reporting arrangements are acceptable. I will talk about this more in the detail stage.

In terms of the bill before us, I have prepared an amendment to clarify the information that Independent MLAs have to provide to the Electoral Commissioner, and a consequential amendment relating to the annual returns provided by donors. My intention is not to pick on Independent MLAs but to complete what I see as the first stage of requiring all MLAs to declare to the Electoral Commissioner gifts.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health and Community Care) (11.20): Mr Speaker, although I support this bill in principle I have to say I am not surprised that the Labor Party have not taken the Electoral Commissioner's advice because when it comes to electoral amendment bills they are extraordinarily embarrassed, particularly when it comes to disclosure. We saw yesterday Mr Stanhope's embarrassment over what happened federally in terms of the very fast train, but that is nothing compared to the embarrassment when people mention two words, poker machines. The electoral amendment bill and disclosure systems, Mr Speaker, highlight the fact that the Labor Party takes huge amounts of money from poker machines and yet continues to vote in this place to support its own cash cow, and that is a matter of embarrassment to the party.

I should point this out to clarify the situation to Mr Quinlan. When I have run for the Assembly I have run as Moore Independents and in that sense am considered, as far as the Electoral Commission is concerned, as a party, and I run my party-

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