Page 5369 - Week 14 - Thursday, 30 November 2017
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age; it is still the coming of age and becoming of an adult recognised in most forms of our society.
Recommendation 8 is a recommendation that opposition members on the committee did not support, that is, the banning of political donations from property developers. No substantive case was made in the evidence the committee received outlining areas where there has been impropriety by property developers as a result of political donations. It seems this recommendation, largely borne out of the parliamentary agreement between ACT Labor and the ACT Greens, is more designed around fixing a publicity problem the Chief Minister has rather than any sound justification of the need to change these rules in the ACT.
Opposition members also did not support recommendation 11 that the Electoral Commission or other appropriate body provide a detailed proposal including costs of setting up and maintaining a website, mobile app and printed material with details of candidates at Legislative Assembly elections starting in 2020. It is my clear opinion that it is not the role of the Electoral Commissioner to be disseminating electoral material on behalf of candidates. The umpires in the upcoming Australian Ashes test match have no role in the selection of who runs onto the field for either side or in spruiking those players’ stats and bios. Likewise, the Electoral Commissioner should have no place in promoting the candidacy of any one candidate.
Recommendation 14 relates to the Electoral Commission continuing their investigation into electronic voting with a view to capturing voters who are residents of the territory but are overseas at the time of an election. I flag that there remains some concern around the online voting practice that data integrity and the integrity of the ballot be paramount. We constantly in the media see stories of businesses, government agencies and the like being hacked, and I do not want our electoral process and the integrity of it being brought into question as a result of data impropriety.
I whole heartedly endorse recommendation 15 to improve electronic voting technology to give visually impaired and blind voters the opportunity to cast a secret ballot. One of the great strengths of our electoral system both in the territory and across the country is that each voter is given the opportunity to cast a secret ballot, and that should be regardless of ability.
Ms Cody touched on recommendations 18, 19 and 20 around the 100-metre rule, and I will briefly comment on them. The committee in its visit to Tasmania finally got a clear understanding—I might say clearer than many of the members down in Tasmania—of how their electoral system works and how the 100-metre rule works. There seemed to be an amount of conjecture as to legislatively how the mechanics of that worked. Whilst they mirror the 100-metre rule we have here, there is a ban on the distribution of electoral material from midnight on polling day, the difference being that their corflute signs are only on private property. There are some slight differences to what happens in the territory, but it provided a thought-provoking decision about what is the right measure for the ACT going forward.
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