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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1900 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

what happens in clause 29, which they are consequential to. That is what Mr Stefaniak's consequential amendments are about at this point.

Obviously, the Greens are not at all happy with what these amendments are intended to achieve. These amendments contain the government's proposal to reverse the funding disclosure provisions in the bill and the act and make them consistent with the Commonwealth Electoral Act.

At present, if a person or organisation donates more than a total of $1,500 in a financial year to a party or Independent MLA, then the party or MLA must include in its annual return to the Electoral Commissioner the name and address of the person or organisation. However, in calculating this sum, any amount donated that is less than $500 need not be counted. This creates a loophole in that a person could give multiple donations-

Mr Moore: These are not related to that at all.

MS TUCKER: Well, that is what my advice is.

Mr Moore: It is about: schedule 2 amends the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act.

MS TUCKER: Are we talking about clause 4?

Mr Moore: These amendments are to clause 4 of the bill.

MS TUCKER: I understood that was to do with the relaxing of funding disclosure. What is it consequential to? I thought it was consequential to-

Mr Moore: To the additional amendments.

MS TUCKER: the clause 29 amendments.

Mr Moore: We have to discuss what we are going to discuss, anyway. At some stage we are going to discuss what we are doing.

MS TUCKER: At some stage we have got to discuss it; that is right. Okay. So this creates a loophole in that a person could give multiple donations of anything less than $500, and those would not have to be identified in the party's return. In the government's original bill, this loophole is significantly closed. It is stated that, in working out whether a donation totals more than $1,500, an amount less than $100 received at a fundraising event need not be counted. I understand that this was the situation before 1996 and that it was also proposed in a private member's bill tabled by Mr Moore in 1999.

We were very happy to support this amendment. The corporate funding of political parties is a major challenge to maintaining our democratic system. It is quite clear to us that companies use their donations to parties as a way of gaining influence in the setting of policies. In addition, the two established parties, who are the major

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