Page 2441 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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double penalties back to the territory in the same way as is proposed in many of the other penalty provisions here.
This is a sensible means of ensuring that we have a level playing field, that there is not a mini arms race in relation to campaign funding and that it is as clear and as above board as possible. I commend the amendment to the Assembly.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (9.40): We agree to this amendment. It is about preventing people from working together to circumvent the expenditure cap and I do agree with the statements that Mrs Dunne has made. It is important that we do have a level playing field; that we make sure that we close off any gaps in the legislation. We will be supporting this amendment.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (9.41): The government supports Mrs Dunne’s amendment. The proposed new section 205FB introduces a new offence of acting in concert with another third-party campaigner to exceed the expenditure cap. This clause is problematic. It may be difficult to determine, where two or more third parties act in concert to exceed the expenditure cap, which of the third parties is required to pay the penalty. It may be difficult to prove that someone was acting under an agreement, whether the agreement is formal or informal, in breach of this provision, in the absence of clear written proof of an agreement.
However, the government still see merit in the amendment and we will support the proposal.
Amendment agreed to.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (9.42): I move amendment No 11 circulated in my name on the white paper [see schedule 5 at page 2475].
This innocuous looking amendment will be quite controversial; I have no doubt about that. This amendment creates a new section 205FC, which will be time limited. This effectively takes the provisions of the bill proposed by Mr Smyth, and agreed to in principle, in June last year and incorporates the essential provisions in this legislation.
What Mr Smyth’s amendments to the Electoral Act did last year—they were agreed to in principle in this place but have not progressed beyond that—was create a donation cap for the period from 22 June of $50,000. This was done in anticipation of the Labor Party’s actions; there are no two ways about it. This was about the Labor Party taking large amounts of money out of the Labor clubs and transferring it over to the Labor Party in anticipation of the implementation of campaign finance reform. If campaign finance reform had got up in the way that the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety had envisaged, it would be very difficult for the Labor Club to donate more than $10,000 every year to the Labor Party.
What Mr Smyth did in anticipation of this, and very wisely, was move a set of provisions that created, from the date of the introduction of his legislation, a
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