Page 4299 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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I guess part of recommendation 18, having some research done to look at how development grants and so forth could be made available to emerging political parties within the territory, was a way of ensuring that there is a bit of a level playing field out there, that we are not stifling democracy, that we are encouraging different groups to emerge. And that very much goes to the heart of what that was about.
Obviously it would have been quite good to see a recommendation that pushed that further, but I understand that really it is a new idea, and research should be conducted so that we can have a good look at whether that will address the issue of the incumbency but also whether it is the way that we could foster a greater democracy and assist emerging parties who will no doubt come out of the woodwork. Some of them might be single-issue parties. My own party started from having pretty much a single issue. It is now a very broad-based party with a range of policies. And so we do need to ensure that we are not stifling the development and the evolution of democracy across Australia.
As I said earlier, there were a number of people who were critical of the current situation and did raise issues around the fact that there were people in our community who did not agree with the way that things were at the moment, where large corporations could give very large amounts of money to political parties. Really the perception out there is that it is a way for the big end of town to have a greater say and that the average person and those groups who do not have that sort of cash could not get a foot in the door and would not have their issues heard. Issues were raised about the perceptions that were out there in the community.
This is a theme that is just not here in the ACT. This is a theme that has run through the commonwealth discussions. There also have been discussions in both the Queensland and New South Wales parliaments.
Obviously with a major report like this, we are not going to get everything absolutely right but I think that this has been a good effort to get these issues out into the public for the public to discuss it.
Mr Hargreaves has raised the issue of public funding. It is a view and, as I have said, it is a long-held Greens’ view that we should not have corporate donations. We are happy with donations from natural persons but not from corporations. But if you do cut off that source of revenue in order to ensure that parties can engage with their members to ensure that you do not again somehow stifle the activity and democracy, public funding needs to be introduced. And that is what has happened in New South Wales.
There was a lot of discussion in the committee about what that would look like, and how much. At the end of the day, the recommendation has said: “Have a look at what New South Wales has in place. This is really the starting point of our discussion here.” And it may be that there are some people saying: “In the ACT we would not have the exact amount of money because we are a city-state. We do not have large geographic distances, very spread out electorates and so forth.” I think it was important for the committee to provide a starting point for that discussion.
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