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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2057 ..

supporting Ms Dundas’s amendment regarding the circulation of postal ballots. This is the third round of reforms to the Electoral Act concerning the disclosure of electoral and other political donations that I have been involved in and there is a striking pattern. The major parties have reduced the amount of disclosure and the smaller parties or Independent members have tried to increase the amount of disclosure. In the Electoral Amendment Bill 2001, for example, the Liberal Party, then in government, proposed initially to increase disclosure, but in the end they reversed their position and decreased disclosure.

As I said in my tabling speech for the Electoral Amendment Bill 2002, there are good democratic reasons for closing loopholes and for decreasing thresholds for disclosure, as proposed in my bill. However, while the government’s Electoral Amendment Bill 2003 includes some useful changes on disclosure of electoral funding, it heads in the opposite direction to my bill. There are only two sections which both bills seek to amend, 217 and 218, so I will be moving those parts of my bill as amendments to the government’s bill rather than as part of my bill. I will make further comments in the detail stage.

MRS CROSS (10.38): There are two bills before us and I will speak to both of them. I support much of the government’s bill, but I am against all the clauses in it that relate to the banning of non-party groups. I think the intention to ban non-party groups is undemocratic, unfair and unequal. The reasons given for it both within and outside this chamber are unconvincing to me, Mr Speaker.

It is said that removing non-party groups would give voters a clearer picture of the backgrounds of particular candidates, but how does that possibly make sense when the intention is to lump the non-party candidates into one column, thereby blurring even further the differences that exist between them? In practice, it would do exactly the opposite of what the minister is claiming.

It is also said that the move would reduce the opportunity for mischievous frustration of the electoral process through causing ballot papers to be too large. I have to say that I never dreamt that someone would come up with such an excuse. In the midst of all the recent talk of rights, equality and so forth, something like this non-reason is trotted out to fill the space in a paragraph to make it look as if the proposal has been logically derived.

What is the form of that possible mischievous frustration that Minister Wood has alluded to? Why, on the remote chance of a possible mischief, should the group be subjected to pre-emptive punishment? Why should the size of a ballot paper be considered so important, Mr Speaker? Why should that bit of irrelevance be considered more important than the ideals of fairness, democracy, non-discrimination and equality?

The reasons given as justification for this section of amendments to the bill do not hold water. That means that the real justification is something else. It is difficult not to conclude that the something else is more like setting out to diminish the prospects of Independent candidates.

It also diminishes the spirit of the Hare-Clark system, in which it is stated, as characteristic of the system, that Independent candidates are included in one or more ungrouped columns on the ballot paper. This, no doubt, deliberately accords a degree of significance to Independent candidates, but this amendment bill would strip them of that.

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