Page 647 - Week 02 - Thursday, 19 February 2015
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reduced the cap to $500,000, I think it would have been appropriate for everybody to stay at $40,000 as a maximum per candidate. I realise that is probably confusing on the face of it, but it is because of the order in which this bill is taken. These were a series of conditional amendments and they have come up in a strange order.
I made no attempt to comment on how many candidates a party should run. I was attempting to make the observation that I think it is better for the system overall if we curtail the spending on elections and focus on people meeting their communities. I am struck by the irony of Mr Hanson’s comment that this is tailored to suit the Greens when, in fact, the party that gains the most out of this entire package will be the Liberal Party.
At the end of the day, at the last election the Liberal Party spent in the order of $650,000. Under this new system, based on their vote from last time—and it will probably go down a bit, but with population growth it will be about the same—they will end up getting in the order of $700,000-plus in public funding. They will already be ahead of where they were last time. Because we have removed the donation caps, presumably they will go off and raise another couple of hundred thousand dollars out of donations, member contributions and those sorts of things—that is fair enough, that is normal—so the Liberal Party will go to the next election campaign with a budget spend close to $1 million, a 50 per cent increase on what they spent last time.
If we want to talk about who this package is all about suiting, it will most suit the Liberal Party. The Labor Party already have $1 million. They have got their sources of income, and members will comment on that as they will. This makes no difference to the Labor Party; it is about what they spent last time. The Liberal Party will see a 50 per cent increase in expenditure at the next election as a result of this package. I look forward to a response to that. That is the truth of this package. The Liberal Party have driven the key changes in this package because it suits them the most. That is the truth of this package of reforms.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (5.11): It is important to note, in contrast to what Mr Rattenbury just said, that we are advocating for a level playing field for candidates, a level playing field for parties and a level playing field for third-party activists as well. Mr Rattenbury is proposing a situation which favours parties which only run half the number of allocated candidates as per seats. Therefore, what he is saying in effect is that there should be a system geared specifically towards a party such as the Greens, which has form for running three or two members in Brindabella and Ginninderra and three or four members in Molonglo. That is how you get the most efficient cap under Mr Rattenbury’s scheme.
The opposition and the government are advocating a system which will ensure that the cap is derived in a fair way. In contrast to what Mr Rattenbury said about this system favouring the Liberals, that is absolute nonsense. There is nothing requiring the Liberal Party to spend $1 million next time. We may choose to spend $650,000 again. We may spend less; we may spend more. That is our decision as a party, just as it was our decision as a party last time. We could have spent more; we could have spent less, but we chose $650,000. The fact that the Liberal Party is efficient and got more votes and spent less money than the Labor Party is a credit to the campaign team and the wonderful 17 candidates we ran.
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