Page 5370 - Week 14 - Thursday, 30 November 2017
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As often is the case, there were myriad views both within the community and within the committee as to whether it should mirror the federal rules of about six metres from the polling booth door, whether we should maintain 100 metres, re-endorse the 250 metres as was recommended in 2014 by a similar committee in the Eighth Assembly, or some other incarnation of voter exclusion. There was steadfast agreement that an exclusion zone around polling booths is required and that it be maintained until there is further consideration on that, ideally by the Electoral Commissioner engaging community views on what that should be going forward.
Recommendation 20 also relates to the 100-metre rule and its application. Members who contested both the 2012 and the 2016 elections recall that the boundaries were measured from a different place at polling booths. In 2012 it was largely from the entrance to a polling booth hall while in 2016 it was taken essentially from the boundary of the school or the building where polling took place. To remove that ambiguity the committee has recommended that sections 303(2) and 303(7)(b) of the Electoral Act be removed to ensure consistency in how that distance is measured. It removes, in essence, autonomy of the Electoral Commission to determine how they choose to measure it from election to election, which the committee thought was a prudent step in ensuring consistency between election periods and commissioners.
Recommendation 22 is one that government members of the committee did not endorse but, nonetheless, I believe it is very important, that is, the Electoral Act be tightened to mitigate multiple entities being registered for the purposes of circumventing expenditure caps primarily by third-party campaigners. We saw myriad changes to the Electoral Act 1992 in the last Assembly in 2014 which removed some of the conditions around third-party campaigns. The experience in 2016 were a number of unions used multiple entities that they have registered to campaign for one side of politics or on one cause or one campaign. It is not in the spirit of an expenditure cap to have one organisation be able to register multiple entities for the purpose of multiplying the expenditure cap they have.
The way the legislation stands at the moment allows candidates to register a business and spend an additional $40,000 on their campaigns. So they will have $40,000 as an individual and, should they go and register a business, which would only cost them a couple of thousand dollars, the opportunity to spend up to another $40,000 is available. And they can do that time and time and time again until essentially they exhaust the funds they have got at their disposal to spend on an election. That is not the spirit or the intent of an expenditure cap on campaigns. Certainly the opposition and also the crossbench supported of this recommendation being part of the report and ensuring a fair electoral system and electoral rules.
I will touch on the recommendation that came off the back of the Electoral Commissioner’s report into last year’s election relating to social media. Many of us who have dabbled in the social media pool and recognise its growing importance as a communication tool in our jobs and in campaigns have been frustrated many times at the interpretation of the rules as they relate to printed material being applied to social media.
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