Page 2436 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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that they should be given the right and the privilege to perhaps spend more, in recognition of the fact that they are running by themselves.
The justification for giving third-party campaigners a lower cap was that they do not have any skin in the game, quite frankly. People who put their names on the ballot paper and political parties who put forward their candidates for election are there campaigning for the main game. Third-party campaigners are commentators, essentially. If they are not prepared to put their name on the ballot paper, I think the view in the committee was that they did not have the same rights. They have a right to express themselves in the political process but they probably do not require the same cap as independents.
I notice that the Greens are proposing a much more radical approach than this and are proposing to up the cap fourfold from the original recommendations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety which I have touched on and which I will touch on again later in the song.
Amendment 8 is consequential to amendment 7 because as the government’s bill currently stands there is only one amount, $60,000. My amendment creates three amounts; therefore we need to have multiple amounts.
I commend this amendment to the house because this is the amendment that most closely reflects the views of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety. This was the advice of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety to this Assembly. It was not done lightly. It was done with considerable deliberation and based on the substantial evidence put forward that said there needs to be a reasonable amount of money to allow people to legitimately participate in the democratic process, while at the same time being mindful of the fact that we believe there should be some caps on this so that we do not have all-out war when it comes to expenditure.
I commend my amendments 7 and 8 to the house.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (8.56): We will not be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendments 7 and 8. I will be moving my own amendments shortly. We disagree with the caps that are proposed by Mrs Dunne. In particular, we are concerned that the $30,000 cap on third parties may well be unconstitutional. That is one of the key reasons why we will not be supporting the caps that have been put forward by Mrs Dunne in her amendments.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (8.57): The amendments are not supported by the government. They remove the government’s proposed new section 205D from the bill. That provision defines “expenditure cap”. The Liberals’ amendments substitute a new section 205D which alters the level of the expenditure cap to leave the party cap unchanged at $60,000 per candidate, double the cap for non-party MLAs and candidates to $120,000, and reduce the cap for third-party campaigners to $30,000. Putting such a low cap on third-party campaigners could arguably be discriminatory and contrary to the constitutional right of free
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