Page 2430 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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sort of sense of what we think is an adequate consideration, the bar should be lifted much higher and that $1,000 would be considered appropriate. This is what my amendments propose to do.
I do put on notice that, if this amendment to Mr Corbell’s amendment should fail, I still think that it is appropriate, and if we decide that the bar should be set at $250 I think that it is appropriate that affiliation fees over $250 should be considered gifts and reported on in the same way as moneys paid for dinners and moneys paid for individual membership of the party.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (8.26): The Greens will not be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendments. All evidence presented to the JACS inquiry said less money, not more. For that reason we will not agree to this amendment. Mrs Dunne says it is subjective, but in fact the government amendment makes it clear and deems that more than $250 is a gift. It makes it easier to administer, and it is an important protection for the integrity of the caps.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (8.26): The government does not support Mrs Dunne’s amendment either. It raises the threshold for the amount of money that can be collected at fundraising activities such as dinners without them needing to be declared and captured by the cap, and that is not acceptable. I think all of us have been to fundraising dinners where the ticket price may have been $1,000 or $2,000 and the quality of the meal did not equate to that value. This is an obvious loophole that must be closed. That is why $250 is the appropriate threshold—not the higher amount proposed by Mrs Dunne.
Mrs Dunne’s amendments to Mr Corbell’s amendments negatived.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.28): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name on the yellow paper, which amends Mr Corbell’s amendment No 6 [see schedule 8 at page 2477].
As I have foreshadowed, this is an amendment which, whilst keeping the threshold at $250, incorporates an affiliation fee into the definition of gift which is currently not there. The government proposes a change to the definition of gift relating to what happens if one pays a membership fee to a party. If I paid $300 a year as my membership to the Liberal Party, which I do not, the first $250 of that would be considered a membership fee and the remainder would be a gift for the purposes of the act. If I paid $1,000 a plate for a dinner with the Attorney-General, $250 of that would be considered the consideration for the dinner and the remainder would be considered a donation and reported appropriately. That leaves out a large sum of money which comes to organisations through affiliation fees. Affiliation fees can be on a per capita basis, so in the case of a membership organisation which is affiliated with a political party you might pay either a flat fee or so much per membership of the affiliating organisation. This amendment incorporates the same principle: if an individual pays an annual subscription, the first $250 is considered to be a membership fee and the rest is a gift; if an affiliated organisation pays an annual subscription fee, the same conditions would apply.
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