Page 2451 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (10.20): I move amendment No 4 circulated in my name [see schedule 9 at page 2479].
I was going to speak earlier to Mrs Dunne’s amendment but she has dropped that amendment. This is about getting some consistency with the Commonwealth Electoral Act. This amendment regulates donations as best we can and the government’s proposal is inadequate as the threshold for paying money into an account does not sufficiently regulate donations. This proposal in the amendment we have put forward is modelled on the provisions of the New South Wales act.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.21): The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this amendment. The amendment has two parts, both of which are unacceptable in their present form. The first part, the insertion of a new clause (2A), makes the situation worse. I have been long and loud in my complaint on the notion of creating an ACT electoral collection account. The Greens think that we can solve the problem by creating another account on top of that. So instead of having one badly constructed account we will now have two if the Greens have their way. There was an argument put forward that this would be slightly better and that there would be less capacity for rorting, but it does not pass the first test. It is not simple and it is not easy to understand. We already have the systems in place for accounting for where donations go. It is not supported by the experience in other jurisdictions.
The second part of the provision creates the notion that only individual natural persons can donate to elections. It is sort of hidden away and it took me a while to find it. When the minister’s staff rang my office one day and said, “Are you in support of accepting gifts from natural persons only?” I thought, “There’s no provision in there.” It took us a while to find it and we did miss it. This is a provision that I do not think the ACT is ready for at this stage. It was discussed at some length during the deliberations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety.
I am concerned about this. I know that, for instance, Canada has a prohibition on corporations donating to political parties. I know that recently New South Wales has gone down that path. Although there are some arguments in favour of it in terms of transparency and the like, I am particularly concerned that in the run-up to an election we might place ourselves in a very uncomfortable constitutional difficulty. If we were to pass this and someone contested the matter in the High Court in the six months between now and the election, it would be quite troublesome for us.
I had discussions with Ms Hunter and her staff at the time that Mr O’Farrell announced his intention to introduce these provisions in New South Wales. I thought I had successfully convinced Ms Hunter that this was a pretty bad idea when we were negotiating on the completion of the campaign finance reform report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety. At about the time that I thought I had probably convinced Ms Hunter that this was a pretty bad idea, Mr O’Farrell had to come along and ruin my argument by announcing that he was going to introduce the very provisions that I thought I had been quite convincing about.
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