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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2070 ..

Decision on requests for review (if any) by Commission...........................unspecified

Pre-election period commences................................36 days before polling day

If each of the unspecified time periods in this process takes about 4 days to complete, around 108 days before polling day is needed to allow all of these processes to take place. In practice, an application received around 60 days before polling day can lead to registration of a party before the election by the Commissioner, since party registration takes effect from the date the Commissioner decides to register the party. However, this minimum period is not fixed and could vary depending on how long it takes to organise a public notice in a newspaper, how long it takes an applicant to respond to an objection, and on how long is needed for the Commissioner to consider any objections. This level of uncertainty is not desirable, and can lead to confusion as to when an application for registration must be made.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (11.23): As I indicated previously, the government will not be supporting this amendment. This amendment would put back the cut-off date for the last day on which an application to register a political party or to change the name or abbreviation of a political party could be lodged with the Electoral Commissioner.

Under the bill, this cut-off date is 1 July. This amendment would put back this date a month until 31 July, meaning that 30 July would be the last day on which applications could be made. The corresponding amendment to insert new transition clauses would see no change made to the party registration deadlines for the 2004 election or this proposed change to the cut-off date applying to elections held after 2004. This amendment would serve to reduce the effectiveness of this change, which is intended to do two things. It is intended to provide for a fixed cut-off date for party registration. At present there is no fixed cut-off date, and this gives rise to considerable uncertainty. This change is also intended to allow for sufficient time to be available for appeals to be made to any decision made by the Electoral Commissioner to register or fail to register an application for party registration.

While this amendment would still provide for a fixed cut-off date, by extending this cut-off date for a month, it would mean that there might be insufficient time for a proper review process to take place if anyone wanted to appeal against a decision of the Electoral Commissioner to register or fail to register a political party.

The Electoral Act provides for several stages in the party registration process. There is a 14-day public objection period followed by another 14-day period in which responses to objections can be lodged by the applicant. Then there’s a 28-day period during which appeals can be lodged seeking a review of a decision to register or fail to register a party. All action on party registration has to cease before the pre-election period, which starts 36 days before polling day. Taking these statutory periods and the administrative time required in between, these statutory periods together, extending the cut-off date to 31 July, would mean that there would be not sufficient time available to permit a review process.

While I am mindful of the fact that the bill is being debated close to the 1 July deadline, the bill has been on the table since May 2003. The new cut-off date should not come as a surprise to anyone seriously interested in registering a political party for the October

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