Page 2427 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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Finally, turning to amendment 4, paragraph (g), the definition of “party grouping” in new section 198 of the bill has been inadvertently included in the definition. As noted with respect to amendments 1 and 2, it would be inappropriate to make the financial representative as defined in new section 198 responsible for expenditure incurred by an unrelated person or organisation whereby that expenditure pushes the sum of expenditure incurred by the party grouping over the expenditure cap. It is conceivable that a person or organisation could deliberately undertake such expenditure to embarrass a party or lead to prosecution of the party’s financial representative.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.13): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting this. We drew these issues to the attention of the attorney. To his credit, he immediately grasped the problem and undertook to address the issue, for which I thank him.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (8.14): The Greens will be supporting these amendments. They change when and by whom expenditure is incurred. The proposal in the bill is too broad, so we support the government’s amendments to better capture electoral expenditure.
Amendments agreed to.
Clause 12, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 13 agreed to.
Clause 14.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (8.14): I move amendment No 5 circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 2469].
This amendment amends the definition of “third-party campaigner” in new section 198 of the electoral bill to narrow the meaning of the term “publisher of a news publication” as used in the current definition in clause 14. As drafted, clause 14 could allow genuine third-party campaigners to avoid their obligations by publishing their own news publication. Amendment 5 is intended to address this concern by narrowing this definition to a publisher of a news publication, except a publication published for, or for the benefit of, a party, MLA or candidate grouping.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.15): The Canberra Liberals on reflection will be supporting this amendment. We notified the attorney of this the other day. We highlighted this as a problem some time ago. We had a somewhat different, more elegant and labyrinthine approach, for which I thank the drafters, but this is actually simpler. I am not quite sure that it does it as well and as comprehensively as our amendment, but it is definitely simpler.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (8.16): We will be supporting this amendment. It improves the proposal in the bill and for that reason we will support it. It is important that we exclude legitimate news publications; that we
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