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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 3723 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

On a more practical level, the Electoral Commissioner already has statutory responsibilities for keeping other financial records of parties and candidates. There are already provisions in the Electoral Act to cover the collection of this information and to investigate breaches of these reporting requirements. It would not be a great extension for the commissioner also to keep records of the financial interests of MLAs.

My bill therefore standardises the annual reporting requirements under the Electoral Act between Independent MLAs and party MLAs. In the process, my bill introduces new annual reporting requirements for each MLA which require them to submit to the Electoral Commissioner annual returns which disclose certain information on the income, electoral expenditure and financial interests of themselves, their spouses and dependent children. New MLAs will be required to declare their financial interests immediately after taking up office and will then get into the annual reporting cycle once the end of the financial year comes around.

These reporting requirements merge the existing annual reporting requirements in the Electoral Act for Independent MLAs with the declarations of members' interests provided to the Clerk of the Assembly under the resolution agreed to by the Assembly in 1992. The disclosure requirements in my bill for members' financial interests are closely modelled on the information required to be disclosed to the Clerk in the existing statement of members' interests.

Once this bill is passed, the register of members' interests held by the Clerk will no longer be needed as all this information will be contained in the MLA returns provided to the Electoral Commissioner. The Electoral Commissioner will provide conditional public access to the returns on the same basis as currently allowed with the register of members' interests.

This new reporting system is intended to operate from the 2001 - 02 financial year, so members will have time to comply with the new reporting requirements. Candidates elected in the October 2001 election will be subject to the new reporting requirements.

In conclusion, this bill is about restoring some of the community's faith in politicians; God knows we need it at the moment. The electoral rorts being uncovered within the Labor Party in Queensland and the allegations of cash for preference deals between Labor and the Democrats bring all politicians into disrepute. One way of restoring public confidence locally is for MLAs to be totally open about their financial situations.

That does involve the disclosure of personal information, but if people want to be in politics they have to expect this level of public scrutiny. We are making laws here that affect the lives of our constituents and I think it is only fair that our constituents can check that we are acting in the public interest and not for vested interests.

Debate (on motion by Mr Smyth ) adjourned to the next sitting.

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