Page 1938 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 August 2014
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technical amendments are required to finetune the legislation, and these are set out in the committee’s report. There are also some bigger issues for members’ further consideration.
One matter the committee was asked to consider was how the High Court’s decision in Unions NSW versus New South Wales affected the ACT. The High Court found in December 2013 that two New South Wales provisions regulating election finances impermissibly burdened the implied freedom of political communication. Following the court’s reasoning, it seems clear that the ACT legislative provision that prevents anyone other than an ACT voter from making a donation to an ACT election campaign cannot stand. The committee has recommended the repeal of that provision.
As in New South Wales, the ACT legislation contains provisions that aggregate expenditure by different entities for the purpose of calculating a cap on campaign spending. The committee heard evidence from the ACT Electoral Commission and two experts in constitutional law suggesting that the ACT provisions, being more narrowly drafted than those found invalid in New South Wales, may well be considered to meet the High Court’s test—that is, they would be found to be reasonably appropriate and adapted to the legitimate purposes of preventing corruption and facilitating a level playing field in electoral contests. Accordingly, the committee has not recommended any change to these aggregated expenditure provisions.
The committee did consider that if the number of members is increased to 25, as proposed in the bills that the Attorney-General presented to the Assembly on 5 June, some changes are necessary to ensure that campaign expenditure does not massively increase as a result. The majority of the committee recommended a reduction from the current limit of $62,530 per candidate, to a maximum of 17 candidates, to $40,000 per candidate, to a maximum of 25 candidates. Mr Rattenbury supported a reduction in overall campaign expenditure, but has a different view on how that should be achieved. The committee agreed that third parties who have an interest in how the ACT is governed should not be unnecessarily constrained from advocating on political issues. Accordingly, we did not recommend reducing the cap on their expenditure.
Equally important to regulation of electoral finances is the source of campaign funds. The committee considered, but did not support, full public funding for election campaigns at this stage, noting that this issue is being examined in New South Wales. However, to reduce the possibility of undue influence through large donations and to prevent the perception of corruption, the majority of the committee considered that the amount of public funding currently available to those who achieve at least four per cent of first preference votes in an electorate should increase to $8 per eligible vote. The committee also recommended that the Assembly debate the merits of the current $10,000 limit on donations from a single source in a financial year.
In other proposed changes to the rules on donations, the committee recommended resolving anomalies in the Electoral Act by removing references to small anonymous gifts worth up to $250. If adopted, this will mean that any anonymous gift—that is, one where the donor is unknown to the recipient—worth $1,000 or more must be
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