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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2058 ..

Most changes in a democracy are progressive, but this part of the amendment bill is anything but progressive. I therefore oppose all clauses relating to the banning of non-party groups.

It is interesting to me that the Chief Minister will be moving amendments to this bill relating to sitting Independent members and how this debate has been delayed for quite some time. The Chief Minister wanted it delayed in, I think, the last sitting because he said that he wanted to get his head around it, but this government was prepared to barter this bill in exchange for support on other bills, which obviously shows contempt for what it is trying to do today.

Ms Tucker’s bill seeks to impose greater disclosure requirements on parties and MLAs in regard to their electoral funding and expenditure. The primary element of the bill is to reduce the level of donations that have to be counted for determining whether the details of the donor and amount donated have to be disclosed in the annual return to the Electoral Commissioner.

The majority of the bill deals with a simple reduction of figures, gifts and donations over a new lower figure that would have to be reported in the annual return. The bill has a clause, proposed new section 230 (7A), that requires MLAs to distinguish between gifts and other receipts in their annual return and to state the purpose of non-gift receipts. The bill also requires particulars of any payment to an individual or organisation of $1,500 or more to be reported and all amounts over $500 must be reported.

The final major component of the bill is that registered parties that would previously submit their annual return to the Australian Electoral Commission as their return to the ACT Electoral Commissioner can no longer do so. I support Ms Tucker’s accountability measures. I have no problem in declaring donations that I receive, irrespective of the amount. I just wonder whether one of the many reasons that this government decided to delay the debate on this bill was to get as much of its fundraising out of the way as possible so that it did not have to declare the larger amounts.

I will speak further in the detail stage on the amendments that have been circulated.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (10.43): Mr Deputy Speaker, the provisions of this bill are based essentially on recommendations made by the ACT Electoral Commission in its report on the operation of the Electoral Act 1992 during the 2001 ACT Assembly election. The government supports all of the recommendations put forward by the Electoral Commission in its report.

The amendments included in this bill are primarily aimed at clarifying some procedures and removing inconsistencies. They do not constitute major changes to the ACT’s electoral arrangements, which have now been successfully tested at three general elections using the Hare-Clark system.

As stated in the presentation speech for this bill, the measures listed in the bill include changes to the party registration scheme to clarify membership requirements, the removal of non-party groups from ballot papers, changes to postal voting procedures to increase the chance that votes will be included in the count, preventing the Electoral

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