Page 1733 - Week 05 - Thursday, 8 May 2008
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financial contributions are easier to track, if one were of a mind to do so, whether they be in bank form or in some other form of payment, or payment for materials used; but there is a major deficiency in the capacity to enforce the current provisions of disclosure when one does not know where materials are distributed. Given the history of this matter, I think it is very important that this loophole be closed.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (12.06 am): The government will not be supporting this amendment and the reasons for this are that, under the ACT’s Electoral Act 1992 as originally passed before the 1995 election, authorised election material has never been required to show where the material is printed. This policy was adopted as it was considered that the requirement in the commonwealth Electoral Act to list the printer’s name and address was outdated and unnecessary.
The policy intent behind that requirement is to include an authorisation statement on election material to prevent irresponsibility through anonymity and to give voters a clear understanding of who was responsible for publishing material that the voters might use to inform their judgement about candidates and parties. Listing a printer’s name and address does not add to the voters’ understanding of the identity of the authors of electoral material. Given the prevalence of home and office photocopiers, much electoral material is now printed outside the traditional commercial printer environment. In these cases, a typical printer’s statement would be expected to read “Authorised and printed by”, a statement that would not add to the voters’ understanding.
The authorisation requirements as amended by the bill are intended to simplify the required information to ensure that voters are informed about the source of election material by reducing the opportunity for opponents to make petty complaints about each other’s material. To that end, the bill is requiring only the name of the person authorising the material to be included, dropping the current requirement for address, and, if relevant, a statement as to whether the material is published by or on behalf of a candidate or a registered party.
Requiring an authorisation statement to include a printer’s name and address would be contrary to the intent of the simplification contained in the bill. It could be expected that this requirement would lead to petty complaints about campaign material that would not serve the policy objective of ensuring that voters were adequately informed about the source of the material.
The policy intent of Mr Mulcahy’s amendment is to stop the illegal use of commonwealth resources to print material. The amendment is unlikely to achieve this. It is not likely that any campaign material that is illegally printed will include a statement that will indicate that the material is illegally printed. If Mr Mulcahy’s concern is with photocopied material, it can be expected that a printer’s statement will simply say “Authorised and printed by”. If material is printed by a commercial printer using commonwealth funds, this fact will not be ascertainable by simply listing the name and address of the printer.
It is suggested that any illegal use of commonwealth resources should be pursued under more appropriate legislation than providing for this sort of requirement in the Electoral Act. For those reasons, the government does not support the amendment.
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