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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2704 ..

For example, tonight, both parties voted pretty much in the same way. Mr Stefaniak agreed to an allowable instrument that I do not think Mr Quinlan agreed to but, other than that, their voting has been pretty much the same, unless—

Mr Quinlan: Separate the issues, Kerrie.

MS TUCKER: Just listen, Mr Quinlan. I am addressing the question of the conflict of interest. There is good logic in my argument. If you chose to listen instead of interrupting we might get through it quicker. As I said, I do not see any difference between the major parties, and I think the main issue is the co-option that occurs as a result of the tax revenue that comes in.

The second argument seems to be that there should be a particular onus on a political party that receives revenue from an activity with an accompanying accepted social ill. The argument is that, therefore, there should be a penalty on that party for accepting revenue that comes from a potentially socially—well, we accept that it has social fallout. I do not think anyone in this place disagrees with that. That is why we have a gambling commission and all the different mechanisms that are supposedly reducing the harm.

That argument has some merit, except I do have to then say, if that is the case, to be fair, you really have to make that apply across the board, because other political parties—apart from the Greens; I do not know about the Democrats—do accept money from pretty much anyone, including tobacco, sugar, junk food and alcohol companies. We could have an analysis of relative social harm and revenue going to political parties and then make a decision that we are going to apply that rationale to the acceptance of money by political parties from the community. However, we do not see that, so that is a problem for me.

The third argument is that there seems to be an inference that the Labor Party should be penalised for accepting money from poker machines, but that it is not a community activity. We have all decided, because of the social harm that is accepted as coming from poker machines, that there has to be a contribution to the community to compensate. So they make contributions to sports clubs, they make contributions to charities and they make contributions to cultural groups. The inference made by the people who are proposing to put this back in is that a political party is not a community activity.

I do not accept that because I think it is pretty obvious that, in a democracy, we cherish political activity and political parties, and they are very important parts of our democracy. We want to see engagement in and respect for the political process, which means not just what we do in here but what political groups, parties or independents do and how they work and so on.

When I think about all those factors, I come to the conclusion that I cannot support putting this back, although I have to say that I would be much more comfortable if Mr Quinlan had been more prepared to accept the proposals that Ms Dundas and I have put forward tonight to further reduce the harm. That would have made it an easier position for the Labor Party to take in dealing with that perception of a conflict of interest. However, after giving it serious consideration, I have to say that I cannot support putting this back in.

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