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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1931 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

adopted these names obviously thought the issues were important enough to want to change their names.

The Greens believe that this provision is a restriction on freedom of political expression. Candidates should be allowed to call themselves whatever they like, provided it is not obscene, and it should be left to the voters to decide whether they appreciate the name or not. We do not think the Electoral Commissioner should be deciding which names are political or frivolous as this can be quite a value judgment.

However, we think there is a legitimate problem if a candidate intentionally adopts a name of another party or candidate for political purposes as this could be misleading and confusing. If we just totally rejected such names this could cause problems for people whose birth names include a party name, Phil Green, for example, or who were really called Michael Moore or John Howard. That is why my proposed new subsection (2A) specifically says "may" while proposed subsection (2) says "must", so the commissioner would have discretion to still allow candidates whose legitimate names clash with the names of other parties or candidates.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health, Housing and Community Services) (9.18): Mr Speaker, I think this is one of the sillier amendments that we see from Ms Tucker. On the one hand she says the only reason we have obscene and none of the other criteria is because value judgments are used. Then she goes on to describe why she has given the commissioner discretion to make a value judgment about how names of parties may not be used. She used as a very good example that nobody with the name of Mr Green is likely to be able to run or to put value judgments on it if in some way it appears to interfere with the ACT Greens or the green party or something along those lines.

I think it may have caused a problem for Mr Osborne last election when, as I recall, he was running with one Linda Moore. I may well have lodged an objection. The commissioner may have used his discretion to say no, that is okay, but when the commissioner uses discretion that is always appealable. We could get a set of appeals going.

These amendments that Ms Tucker puts forward are simply unnecessary. They are totally unnecessary. They would create a discretion, an appealable discretion, that is entirely inappropriate.

Ms Tucker: It is already there. The discretion is there.

MR MOORE: There are very good reasons, Ms Tucker, for the list of things other than obscene that are in the act. You may not remember, but Mr Stefaniak, Mr Wood and Mr Berry were there for the first election when a range of frivolous names drew a huge amount of media attention. The media always loves frivolous names. You may remember the Party Party Party, the Sun-ripened Warm Tomato Party and so on.

Ms Tucker: That is democracy, Mr Moore. That is freedom. That is democratic freedom.

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