Page 2435 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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make mistakes and put money in the wrong accounts. The moving of them backwards and forwards, doing it legally, accounting for it and making sure the audit trail is there creates more trouble than it is worth.
The whole notion of having a separate banking account rather than dealing with this through appropriate accounting methods is antiquated and outmoded. If the Assembly is concerned about doing this is in a modern and progressive way, it should do away with the notion of a separate banking account. It should not rely on the fact that New South Wales has done it and therefore we should do it, because the political parties in New South Wales regret that they have done it this way.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (8.50): With this amendment, and in talking about accounts—whether you have a separate bank account, whether you set up your chart of accounts as Mrs Dunne has spoken about—yes, it could go either way, and that has been some of the discussion. But on balance, and on the Electoral Commissioner’s advice, we think that there should be a separate account. Mrs Dunne has just said that with a separate account you could accidentally deposit something into that account. The same thing can happen with a chart of accounts, putting something to the wrong budget line item or whatever. So as far as I am concerned the same accidents can happen at times. As I said, in a way it is pretty balanced in both cases. The Electoral Commissioner has advised it this way. We will be supporting a separate account at this stage.
Amendment negatived.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.51), by leave: I move amendments Nos 7 and 8 circulated in my name together [see schedule 5 at page 2474].
These amendments reinsert into the government’s bill the expenditure caps that were in my legislation that was tabled in November last year. These expenditure caps most closely reflect the recommendations by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety inquiry into campaign finance reform. The recommendations were that for party groupings there should be an expenditure cap of $60,000 per candidate seeking election, up to a maximum of 17 members, and that any third-party campaigner should be given an expenditure cap of $30,000.
In consultation with my colleagues and others in putting together the drafting of this bill, we came to the view that independent members would be somewhat constrained by an expenditure cap of $120,000. If there was a genuine independent, Fred Smith for Ginninderra, who ran as an independent in Ginninderra and he did not have any party organisations, with $60,000 it would be difficult for him to run an effective campaign, without the economies of scale of having a large party organisation behind him.
It was suggested to me by my colleagues and others that perhaps they should have a different and larger cap. My proposal was to double that cap. I notice that there is a multiplicity of views around the place as to the extent of whether that should be double or some other amount. But there is clear recognition that real, bona fide independents would find it difficult to run an election campaign within the cap and
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