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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1947 ..

MR RUGENDYKE (continuing):

interest point of view as to the lowering of the bar for donations in relation to the debate we just had on proposed sections 230 and 231. I am satisfied with the advice of the Electoral Commissioner. I will tell you why. I would be quite embarrassed to tell the world how little I have in assets. I have no savings, I have no shares and I have no business interests. I would be embarrassed to tell the world how poor I am, so I will not support this amendment.

MS TUCKER (10.32): That is an interesting argument. This amendment returns the Electoral Act basically to the wording used before the act was amended in September last year. The act was amended then because the wording was confusing and required the Independent MLAs to disclose all their income, whereas the original intention was that the disclosure only include gifts given to the MLAs for political purposes.

The amendment today is basically the same as the one the ALP tried to put in the debate last year to extend the existing reporting requirements on Independent MLAs to all MLAs. At the time I did not support that amendment because I thought there needed to be a more comprehensive approach to the reporting of the pecuniary interests of MLAs. I went to the effort of preparing a private members bill to establish a statutory register of members' pecuniary interests, but was disappointed that this bill was not supported by either of the major parties. I still believe that that is the best approach and that the ALP's amendment was poorly conceived. It is, however, better than having no reporting of members' pecuniary interests, so I will support it in principle today.

Question put:

The Assembly voted-

 	Ayes 6  			Noes 9

 Mr Berry  	Mr Wood  	Mrs Burke  	Mr Osborne
 Mr Corbell     		Mr Cornwell  	Mr Rugendyke
 Mr Quinlan    			Mr Humphries  	Mr Smyth
 Mr Stanhope    		Mr Kaine  	Mr Stefaniak
 Ms Tucker    			Mr Moore     

Mr Stanhope's amendment to Mr Stefaniak's amendment negatived.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health, Housing and Community Services) (10.36): I move amendment 2 [see schedule 8, part 2, at page 1993] to Mr Stefaniak's amendment No 3. I hope that this amendment will be useful to the parties. In going through these sheets, I had my attention drawn to the fact that, as well as gifts, there is income from things like rent. For example, I think the Liberal Party has rent paid to it by a series of people who are in its premises. I think that ought to be put in a distinctive way, because it is not a gift; it is part of normal income from the assets of the party. I think this is a sensible amendment to assist in this annual return.

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