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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1940 ..

MR MOORE: I move the amendment circulated in my name [see schedule 8, part 5, at page 1995]. This gives us a chance to think about what we are doing. Ms Tucker's rather sobering figures drew attention to what we are talking about. One of the things we may have missed in a comparison with either state or House of Representatives electorates is that in those electorates it is not uncommon for somebody to get 4 per cent of the vote, because you do not have seven positions or five positions in the one electorate. We have a huge number of people standing, whereas only five or six people, sometime more, stand for a House of Representatives seat.

We should either leave the 2 per cent, or better still, accept Mr Stefaniak's offer and to go with the 0 per cent.

Mr Stefaniak: Try consistency with the Commonwealth.

MR MOORE: Mr Stefaniak raises consistency with the Commonwealth.

Mr Stefaniak: And the states.

MR MOORE: And the states, but not Tasmania, where they have a Hare-Clark system. You do not want to be consistent with Tasmania, do you, Mr Stefaniak? No, that is another story entirely. You are looking at consistency with an inconsistent system because it is convenient to make it harder for others.

The consistency argument has come up a number of times. That is why, Mr Stefaniak, I had on my desk the party political returns you quoted before. The argument has been that we must be consistent with the Commonwealth, because it is too much work and much too expensive for us to do returns. We want to be able to do them the same as the Commonwealth.

I table the returns for both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party for the last year. One is five pages and one is seven pages. One has eight entries on one page and about 15 on the other. One of the pages is one that it will not be necessary to use. I present the following papers:

Mr Osborne: It must have taken them all of 10 minutes.

MR MOORE: It may have taken at least 10 minutes. If they are successful with their amendments, they will remove the need to declare the expenditure. That will remove another half. What they are worried will be so expensive, time consuming and administratively difficult is something that has just a handful of entries.

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