Page 1940 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 August 2014
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extend my thanks to Ms Gell, who has done a superb job. She was very diligent and very thorough and she made very thoughtful contributions to the committee. I very much extend my thanks to her but also to Mr Snedden for his contribution until early April.
This inquiry was a rare opportunity to discuss some issues which are often very political and very partisan. I think the attitude that each member brought to the discussion was one of maturity and one of professionalism. I also want to thank Mr Gentleman and Mr Rattenbury for their contributions and for the manner in which they approached this committee inquiry.
Mr Gentleman has given a very thorough rundown of the report’s recommendations. I do not propose to go through the recommendations and reiterate what Mr Gentleman has already said. However, I do want to say that this series of recommendations is simply advice for the Assembly to consider. There will be a detailed discussion that will need to take place both in this chamber and perhaps outside this chamber to get to a position that can, in fact, be turned into legislation. It is going to take courage and it is going to take confidence to enact some of these recommendations that have been put in place in this committee report. However, I do not think we should be shying away from the tough decisions that will need to be made to ensure the democratic processes that are in place here in the territory.
The issue of public funding is always tricky and always controversial. There is no easy way to implement such a scheme, but what this recommendation tries to do is to make the ACT democratic process as clean as possible. We are trying to avoid a situation which has happened in other jurisdictions. We are trying to avoid a situation where parties or votes are for purchase. We want to make sure that the ACT continues to be clean. We have been clean, but we should not be complacent about what could happen in the future.
It is for that reason that the recommendation that we increase public funding through the dollar-per-vote mechanism is probably the cleanest way to implement such a public funding scheme. However, there is no doubt that we need to have further discussions and use these recommendations as food for thought as we go to the final stage of drafting legislation to be in place for the 2016 election.
In conclusion, I would like to once again thank my colleagues for the approach that they took to this committee inquiry. I hope that all members of the Assembly will take this opportunity to review the recommendations and the issues and consider how we can put in place a better regime for the 2016 election.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.06): I too would like to take this opportunity to make a few remarks on the committee’s report. I too would like to thank my colleagues on the committee—Mr Gentleman and Mr Coe. We had a very interesting time on this committee, actually. I think it is one for people who are into electoral matters. It was an interesting committee to be on. It probably was not everybody’s cup of tea, but we did have some good discussions. I think we worked through the issues very well. Whilst I ended up drawing different conclusions on a couple of matters, nonetheless, the spirit of the discussion was very good and even when we had different views I think we had good discussions.
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