Page 2445 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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extended the reach of the provision to pick up new entities in the expanded definition of associated entity which were not the subject of Mr Smyth’s original bill.
While this amendment would allow party groupings to return amounts received over $50,000 within 30 days after the commencement of the amending provisions, this might arguably work only for cash. It would not work for gifts in kind where those gifts were in the form of labour provided and would be difficult to achieve in the time required if the gift was made by way of transfer of real estate, for example.
For all these reasons, the government does not support this provision.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (9.57): We will not be supporting this amendment, and we have told the Canberra Liberals that in negotiations.
Part of it is that we cannot go back and change the past. Issues about retrospectivity have been raised. The amendment about giving it all back really just exposes that whole issue about squabbling again over money. We need to be saying that today we are passing a new scheme; we are passing a significant reform; we are putting in place legislation to move on from here.
I also refer to the issues raised by the attorney about the constitutionality issues that go with this amendment.
If we go back to why the Greens agreed to Mr Smyth’s bill in principle, we said at the time that we supported the principle of a cap. The issue here was about caps on donations. That was the very important principle that we were concerned with—one that the Greens have long campaigned for. It is not just about caps on electoral expenditure, but also about caps on donations. That was the principle that was part of that debate.
That is a principle that we very much are embedding into the bill here. In this whole legislation tonight, we will be including caps on donations. We are setting up a new scheme. We are setting up significant reform for the future. We will not be going back. How far are we going to go back? Are we going to go back to 1973, when the major parties were given money and told they could go out and invest it? One decided to invest in real estate and one decided to invest in setting up a club. How far back do we go?
The principle here is about caps. That is what we are getting. What we are getting from this legislation tonight, what will come out tomorrow, is caps on donations. That is the principle that we have been campaigning on. We will not be supporting this tonight. It is looking backwards. We want to look forward.
There are a number of concerns that I did raise with Mrs Dunne. She seems to be getting to the point of doing a little bit of verballing, but I am going to let that go by the way and just stick to the main debating point.
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