Page 1595 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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legislation and multiple amendments floating around the place. They have done a sterling job, and at the same time they have managed to sort of maintain the confidentiality of members in the highest form possible.
In concluding, I think I need to summarise the problems that the Canberra Liberals have with this bill as it currently stands. It needs to be said in this context that Labor were brought kicking and screaming to reform in this area. The bill that I presented better represents the considered view of the justice and community safety committee, who took considerable time to inquire into this matter and took into account the views of not only local political parties and people locally involved in politics but academics, and particularly constitutional lawyers, across the country. We also looked at the work that was done in other jurisdictions.
In summation, as I have said, this bill amounts to “campaign finance reform lite” from the government. It would have been better had we debated the bill that represented the views of the JACS committee and had we addressed the constitutional issues about administrative funding by a separate bill brought forward by the government.
As I have said before, there are problems with this bill. It attempts to make the Labor Club a de facto associated entity, which is a radical departure from more than 20 years of practice in this place. A spurious claim was made by the Attorney-General in discussions that advice that they have received says that the Labor Club is not an associated entity and should not be subject to the donations cap. However, if that is the case it would be tantamount to being able to drive an armoured car laden with the revenues of problem gamblers through the provisions of the Electoral Act. There are issues with hurried drafting and these are problems that need to be addressed. The government has put forward amendments that would address the most egregious of these, but they leave gaps.
The model of setting up a separate account is outmoded in terms of accounting practice. It is command and control and creates loopholes where donations in kind will not be touched.
In summation, the bill that represented the views of the justice and community safety committee was a better starting point. It would have been better if we had debated that. We are reluctantly debating this bill today, but with amendments we may be able to make this a reasonable attempt at campaign finance reform.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (4.55): If ever there was a timely event that demonstrated why reform was needed we had it this week with the Conservative Party scandal in the UK. The Conservative Party co-treasurer was caught saying to people who he thought were potential donors that for £250,000 he could get them a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron and influence in Conservative Party policy. We now know that a number of major party donors have been to dinners at 10 Downing Street, and there is no doubt that incidents like this really challenge people’s confidence in the political system.
This incident illustrates all the reasons why money and politics do not mix and the problems that we are attempting to prevent from occurring here in the ACT. Whether
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