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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 817 ..

Mr Whitecross: Political contributions - $200,000 in rent, $150,000 from the 250 Club.

MR HUMPHRIES: You did not say "political contributions"; you said "donations". Here is the distortion we are engaged in. He tells the Assembly that the Liberal Party gets donations of $1m and fails to mention that at least $400,000 of that is public funding. There is a bit of a difference, is there not, Mr Whitecross? Talk about secretive!

Mr Whitecross: It is not a secret; it is in public documents.

MR HUMPHRIES: You did not tell that to the Assembly, did you? It did not suit your rhetorical flourish. Mr Speaker, obviously this motion is not going to succeed today; but I make no bones about supporting it because I think it is important to put on the record that, with an order of interest of this size from the Labor Party - a massive amount of money coming from gaming machines in these two or three licensed clubs - - -

Mr Whitecross: You get a massive amount of money from a secret organisation.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is not a secret organisation. The 250 Club is no more secret than - - -

Mr Whitecross: Well, give us the membership. Tell us who donated what. Go on.

MR HUMPHRIES: You tell me who donated what in fundraising for the Australian Labor Party, Mr Whitecross.

Mr Whitecross: You have it all.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, we have not. You have the same amount of information about internal donations from the 250 Club as we have about internal donations from the Labor Party. When someone puts money on a plate at a function or makes a donation which is under the amount prescribed in the Electoral Act, which I think is $1,500 - when those things occur - we do not know the details of those donations. The position with the 250 Club is exactly the same as the position with donations made by members of the Labor Party to the Labor Party. It is precisely the same. Describing it as a secretive organisation is no reflection on that organisation because it is exactly the same as the Labor Party itself in that respect.

Mr Speaker, I think the Labor Party will stand condemned if they are prepared both to vote against this motion - that is one thing - and also to ignore the spirit of this motion, because they will have to explain to the community why they were prepared to make critical decisions about matters affecting their income stream from which they derived a direct and ongoing benefit. It is no lie to say that every Labor member of this place - you, Mr Whitecross; you, Mr Berry; you, Mr Corbell; every one of you - derives a direct benefit from that money from gaming machines. A dollar put into each of those gaming machines in the Labor Club is a dollar going, sooner or later, in most cases, to the direct benefit of one of you six people. It is a direct benefit to you people; that is both the reality and the perception, which is important as well.

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