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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2060 ..

parliamentary party which allowed any MLA or any member of a parliament in another jurisdiction to register a political party without any membership requirement at all.

The current registration model is a two-tiered scheme consisting of registered political parties all of which must have at least 100 members who are ACT electors and registered ballot groups established by Independent MLAs. In considering the operation of this two-tiered arrangement, the government has concluded that it would be preferable to put all registered ballot entities on an equal footing rather than giving Independent MLAs an advantage over other candidates and allowing them to register a ballot group name without any demonstrated community support at all. These amendments would remove all references to ballot groups in the Electoral Act and require all political participants to register a political party containing at least 100 members if they wish to have a party name listed on the ballot paper.

The bill also provides that postal vote applications from electors who are overseas must be received before the last mail delivery on the Friday eight days before polling day. This will allow for the time needed for mail to be delivered to and from overseas locations and should serve to increase the probability that an overseas postal vote will be received in time to be included in the count. As the Electoral Commission reported, at the 2001 election all postal votes sent to overseas locations in the week before polling day were not able to be returned in time to be counted. This bill will correct an anomaly that emerged during the 2001 election related to recounts of ballot papers.

The bill provides that the Electoral Commissioner will not be permitted to take part in any deliberation of the commission in relation to a review of a decision by the commissioner not to conduct a recount. This will bring this process into line with the principle that a person should not consider appeals to the person’s own decisions. Finally, this bill increases a range of thresholds used in the disclosure scheme to a standard $1,500. These changes will remove a number of inconsistencies and inequities in the current disclosure scheme, ensuring that different types of political entities will be treated in the same way.

I understand that Ms Tucker intends to move amendments aimed at breaking the nexus between the Commonwealth and the ACT disclosure schemes and removing the provisions that allow parties, MLAs and associated entities not to take account of individual donations of less than $1,500 when determining whether a donor has to be identified. I believe that there is good reason to maintain the nexus between the ACT and the Commonwealth disclosure schemes. Maintaining the nexus ensures a lighter administrative burden for political parties when keeping records and making returns under the disclosure provisions.

Under the current disclosure scheme, even though parties are not required to take account of small donations in determining whether to disclose the identifies of donors, there is still a requirement imposed on all donors who give more than $1,500 to a party in a financial year to give the Electoral Commissioner an annual return. In other words, there is a legal obligation on all donors to submit a disclosure return if they give more than $1,500 to a party, regardless of the size of the individual amounts.

The current law does require all significant donors to disclose the details of their contributions to parties, MLAs and associated entities. Donors who fail to submit returns

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