Page 2440 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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uncomfortable with the government’s proposal that everybody has the same cap. I was of the belief that there should be some differential, but the proposal of the government’s is far superior to that put forward by the Greens and I thank the attorney for the recognition that the civil penalties approach is one that has considerable support and I think that as a result we have, while it is still a compromise, a reasonably good outcome on this one.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (9.36): We will be supporting this, as my amendment was voted down. I still think it is disappointing that we could not recognise that independents do not have those economies of scale and that that should have been recognised in a greater amount of money. I know that Mrs Dunne proposed an even higher amount. We could have had that discussion around putting that up to the higher amount as well, at $120,000, but that debate is over for today. So, in the absence of my amendment getting up, we will be supporting the government’s amendment.
Amendment agreed to.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (9.37): I move amendment No 10 circulated in my name on the white paper [see schedule 5 at page 2474].
Amendment No 10 inserts a new clause 205FB which is a limit on electoral expenditure for third-party campaigners acting in concert. This was one of the issues that arose on a number of occasions during discussion in the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety. As one of the staff put to me recently, money will find a way. Electoral expenditure reform is an ongoing and constant thing because money does find a way. This is a means of ensuring that it is harder for money to find a way. One of the things that we discussed at length was the possibility that people outside political parties would collude and act together to create extra campaigning for a particular issue.
Probably the most spectacular example of this is what is seen in the United States in the “super PACs” where people notionally do not know what is happening but there are third-party organisations who have enormous sums of money that run often very negative ads in electoral campaigns. We have seen the great fiction. I think it was Newt Gingrich who said, “I think the next thing you will see from the ‘we love Newt Gingrich super PAC’ is blah-de-blah.” When he was challenged and asked: “How do you know that is going to happen? There is supposed to be autonomy between the two,” he was caught out and a little embarrassed. The super PACs are a fiction and we do not want to create mini PACs here in the ACT by creating the circumstances where a number of third-party campaigners can get together and advertise and work in particular ways and put their capped expenditure together to sort of create a substantial force.
This is a simple provision. It is based on provisions in the securities legislation that cover people who act in a similar way for a particular outcome and this would be outlawed under this legislation. If third-party campaigners contravene this, the amount by which the combined third parties exceed their expenditure cap would be paid in
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