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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 3722 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

In that debate there appeared to be general agreement that there needed to be consistency between the reporting requirements on Independent MLAs and party MLAs. However, there was much disagreement over where the bar should be set for the reporting requirements on MLAs. The Labor Party in particular thought that the government was setting the bar too low and that we should be requiring all MLAs to report all their income. To quote Mr Stanhope, rather than reducing the obligation of Independent members, we should be increasing the obligation on all members of the Assembly, including party members. Mr Corbell echoed this comment and said that the Labor Party members were prepared to disclose every cent of income received. Other Labor members made similar comments.

I think there is a general acceptance that the public has a right to know from where MLAs are getting gifts and donations in their role as MLAs. The public needs to be assured that incidents cannot be hidden of organisations and individuals seeking favours or support from MLAs through the provision of donations or of MLAs having a conflict of interest because they have financial interests in a matter before the Assembly. Debate in recent years in the federal parliament over the financial interests of certain Liberal ministers and whether they influenced their decisions is a case in point. Locally, we have had debates over the links between the Labor Party and licensed clubs and between the Liberal Party and various businesses around town which have donated funds to the party. These debates point to the need to make the disclosure provisions for MLAs as clear and comprehensive as possible.

However, I believe that the existing rules about disclosure of financial interests are inconsistent and disjointed. The Electoral Commission has a statutory role in collecting information annually from parties and Independent MLAs about gifts and donations, but not from party MLAs. There is also a register of the pecuniary interests of MLAs kept by the Clerk, as authorised by a resolution of the Assembly in 1992, but this information overlaps with what is required by the Electoral Commissioner and public access to this information is under different rules from those in the Electoral Act.

I said in that earlier debate that I would prefer there to be one reporting system that combines the reporting requirements in the Electoral Act and the requirements of the register of financial interests kept by the Clerk so that all financial information about MLAs is in one place and there is no duplication of effort or the potential for the two registers to get out of synchronisation. This bill puts that intention into effect.

It seems to me that there is a need to have only one system for keeping a register of financial interests and that it should be under the control of the Electoral Commissioner. While the register of members' interests kept by the Clerk and the information on election funding and expenditure kept by the Electoral Commissioner serve slightly different functions, they are interlinked in the sense that they are about exposing conflicts of interest held by politicians and would - be politicians. To me, it does not really matter whether these conflicts arise during election campaigns or during the life of the Assembly; they are still conflicts of interest that could unfairly influence an MLA's actions.

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