Page 1642 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 April 2009
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Electoral Commission not being able to advertise in the lead-up to election day. My advice—and I will bet my advice is better than yours—is that if this bill passed today the electoral commissioner could not, in the lead-up to the next election, let voters know the location of polling booths or advise them of their responsibilities under the law. That is as it is currently drafted.
I see that you have circulated a few amendments today to try to overcome some of the more absurd aspects of the way in which the bill has been drafted. You have recognised a few of your errors and tried to rectify them through your amendments. You have amendments to explain or to give a better understanding that, in fact, the bill will not outlaw public health safety programs. All of a sudden the Leader of the Opposition has recognised how flawed his bill is. He is now saying, “Perhaps the government should be able to advertise public health programs. Perhaps the government should be able to advertise road safety programs.” We have a couple of exceptions creeping in now. As the Liberal Party realises the absurdity of this bill it is now beginning, through amendments, to list things that it will allow the government to advertise. We see through these amendments.
How thorough is the bill? It is a knee-jerk, political piece of legislation. We are now seeing knee-jerk responses to criticisms that I have made of the bill. I have pointed out that the legislation, as drafted, would prohibit the government from engaging in advertising campaigns on health or road safety, so the amendments are starting to flow. The opposition now says that it never meant to ban advertising on public health, so it will introduce an amendment to the bill. It says that it never meant to outlaw public safety or road safety campaigns, so it will introduce amendment to the bill. There are an awful lot more amendments needed to overcome the raft of really serious mistakes in this totally flawed concept. (Time expired.)
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (12.06): As Mr Seselja noted last year in December when he introduced this bill, this was an issue that I also raised during the election campaign last year, because, frankly, at the time I was appalled by the level of government money that was being spent on government advertising in the context of an election campaign. So I congratulate Mr Seselja and his team on tabling this legislation and bringing forward a model that seeks to address the abuse of taxpayers’ money that we saw during last winter.
The Greens will be supporting this bill in principle today and we believe this legislation provides a good foundation to address the problem that I think will be referred to further in this debate. In that context, and in light of Mr Stanhope’s comments, I speak specifically to the object of the act, which is “to prevent the use of public funds for advertising or other communications for party political purposes”. It is that last clause which is the essential element, the essential tenet, of this legislation. Some of the comments that Mr Stanhope has just made are ameliorated by looking closely at the object of the act, because this is not about limiting government advertising; this is about limiting government advertising for party political purposes. That is why the Greens will be supporting this bill in principle.
That of course can be challenging; getting the definitions exactly right requires a level of care, and that is why later in the debate I will be moving a motion that this bill be
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