Page 2755 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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We cannot regulate donations for federal campaigns. This bill makes no attempt to distinguish between the different donations and as such it is more than likely that it is inconsistent with the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The commonwealth act permits donations to fund commonwealth electoral activity, and we cannot act inconsistently with that. Even if we did pass the bill it would inevitably end up in court, it would most likely be found to be invalid and the Assembly would have to suffer the indignity and embarrassment of having a totally inconsistent and almost nonsensical scheme debated in the courts.
Those issues aside, let us be clear what is happening here. When you boil it all down, this is the Liberals trying to take money away from Labor. The Greens’ view is that there are real problems with any political party being part of a commercial activity. Equally, you have to ask the question whether it is appropriate that the Liberal Party make most of their money from property assets, so vigorously oppose any increases in property taxes.
In the last sitting we passed a new scheme to properly address the broader issue of campaign finance. In the lead-up to and during that debate we were very clear that we thought it was far better to deal with the issue in a single bill. We were also very clear during that debate, and particularly in response to the amendments moved by Mrs Dunne, that we thought it was not appropriate to go down this path, for all the reasons I have just outlined. The Greens’ view remains the same and we will not be supporting the bill today.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.45): I thank Mr Smyth for bringing this bill on today because it is an important piece of legislation and it is an important lesson to the community about how duplicitous the Greens can be when it comes to self-interest.
What we saw last year was an attempt by Mr Smyth to bring to the attention of the community a concern that some organisations would attempt to circumvent campaign finance reform by transferring a whole lot of money ahead of the deal and then saying: “Well, it does not matter. We have got the money across there so we can agree to anything you like.”
We had intelligence that this was happening. We introduced this bill and we had the Chief Minister and the Attorney-General standing up here saying: “This is outrageous. This is not happening. How dare anyone intimate that the Labor Club or the Labor Party might be trying to circumvent these things! There is not an ounce of evidence. This is not happening.”
You could say that the Chief Minister was out of the loop and you could think that the Attorney-General himself was out of the loop except when you consider that the president of the Labor Party at that stage worked in the Chief Minister’s office and an office-bearer of the Labor Club worked in the Attorney-General’s office. There is no way that they did not know that this was going on.
What have we now learnt? We do not know how much money has been transferred. We know that a substantial amount of money was transferred, apparently after
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