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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2068 ..

The purpose of this amendment goes to delaying by only a month the date by which a party can be formed or registered. The reason that I have moved this amendment and put that date is the delay by the government in having this bill debated.

No-one can predict what is in the minds of the people who decided the delay, but one can speculate. I suppose we tend to be rather cynical. So I would suspect that one of the reasons is that the longer you delay the debate on this bill the more you disadvantage those in the community who wish to form a party; and, of course, the less time they have to do that, the better it is for the government—I assume. Given that they assume they are going to have a majority after the next election, this disadvantages others. It is the only thing I can think of. But I could be wrong.

So I have asked that the crossbench and the opposition—maybe the government—consider extending the date to 31 July, substituting that for 1 July, to allow that time, given that it was the government that delayed the debate on this bill. That would give those who wish to register a political party time to meet the criteria in order to register that party.

MR STEFANIAK (11.16): The opposition will be supporting this. It is appropriate for a number of reasons. The debate on this bill has only just occurred now, that is, halfway into May.

Also, I had a note from Bogey Musidlak on this. He is a bit of a doyen in relation to these things. He states that bringing forward the time by which parties and ballot groups must be registered might be administratively convenient. He referred to some of the uncertainty to which the Electoral Commission also referred in its report—that this should be weighed against the possibility that some groups only become certain rather late in the life of an Assembly that the current registered parties do not reflect their views strongly enough and that they, therefore, wish to enter the political fray directly by obtaining registration.

He urged again caution in bringing the cut-off date too much forward in relation to polling day. He noted that, in 2001, three ballot groups actually were registered in mid-August and stated that there was currently no cut-off date and that a lot depends on the objections. Well, that is certainly so.

Given that Mrs Cross wants to bring this in only for this particular election, given that we are only now debating the bill, given that she wants to revert to, I think, 30 June in future years—

Mrs Cross: Well, there’s a sunset clause further down.

MR STEFANIAK: And she has a sunset clause typed in further down—we are very happy to support her in relation to this particular amendment.

MRS CROSS: I seek leave to speak again for a moment.

Leave granted.

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