Page 4300 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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As I said, there will be very different views from parties about what is contained in this report. I am sure that there will be some very robust debates and discussions. What I do hope, though, is that this report is going to really get some excitement or some interest—probably “interest” is a better word—out there in the community to engage with this debate, engage with this discussion. It is an important one.
We do need to change the way our electoral funding happens at the moment, as far as donations and so forth are concerned. It is an issue that many people see needs to be addressed and we certainly do not want to end up with a situation where it is only those parties who are connected to large corporations, to the big end of town, who will have the spending power, and we get into some sort of arms-type race over spending power which sees that democracy is not served and that the interests and issues that are dear to the heart of many people who live in our community do not get attention because they are simply outspent by those who have those connections with corporations and so forth.
I commend this report to the Assembly. I look forward to the debates and the discussions we will have in the future. And, as I said, I very much hope that this becomes a broader community discussion.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella): Madam Assistant Speaker, I would seek the indulgence of the Assembly to be allowed to speak again to say thank you to the people who actually compiled the report.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): I suspect the word you mean is “leave”.
MR HARGREAVES: It is.
Leave granted.
MR HARGREAVES: I thank members. I was remiss in not saying a very heartfelt thank you to the committee members. Whilst we disagreed, and we disagreed quite significantly on these issues, I do believe that we conducted the discussions cordially, civilly and I thought it was quite a good process that we went through, even though we departed significantly from the conclusion at the end of the day.
I want to put on record my thanks to Dr Brian Lloyd for all the work that he did. It is not easy compiling a report when you have quite significant departures in views and where people are relying on an academic, if you like, for justification all over the place. To get to the stage where he was able to produce this report, I thought, was a fairly good effort and I wanted to thank him.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.33), in reply: Just briefly, to conclude the debate, I too would like to take this opportunity to thank members for the constructive approach to this and to particularly express my thanks to Dr Lloyd for his forbearance and his thoroughness in this report. It has been difficult. The report has gone through a number of iterations and changes in format to get it as good as we can. I suppose we
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