Page 654 - Week 02 - Thursday, 19 February 2015
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MR RATTENBURY: It was designed to provide the parties with a level of resourcing so that they could get a bookkeeper, work with an accountant, to fulfil the disclosure requirements and the auditing requirements of the Electoral Commission. That was deemed fair enough.
However, after the election it is likely that the Labor and Liberal parties will at least have 10 members each and possibly some more, depending on how things go. So what that is going to mean is that as a minimum they will be receiving $200,000-plus in administrative funding, plus indexation.
This is simply a windfall gain. It is a windfall gain. There is not going to be any extra administrative requirement. In this place we always need to be mindful of ensuring that we pay for a reasonable level of services, but this is simply a windfall gain to larger parties. I cannot support it on that basis.
I think that we should put a cap on administrative funding for parties. I am proposing a cap at the value of five MLAs. That would be the equivalent of $100,000 plus indexation. It is about where the parties are at at the moment. It speaks to a true and fair amount of money to fulfil the intention of the provision, which is to enable the parties to address the administrative and auditing requirements they are expected to deal with under this act.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (5.39): This amendment proposes to reopen the issue of administrative expenditure. This was previously debated extensively by the Assembly before the last ACT election and, really, the position has not changed. The size of the administrative requirement is driven by the number of MLAs you have to provide for, provide administrative support to and report to the Electoral Commission on. So I do not think it is appropriate to re-litigate administrative expenditure, given the previous debates we have had in this place about it.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.40): We will not be supporting this amendment. Again, this amendment is one of those that are tailored to the Greens. Mr Coe referred to one of his adjournment speeches before. I will reflect on another speech he made. I remembered a Greens speech on peak oil. Mr Coe wrote a speech about peak Greens. It would appear that Mr Rattenbury has picked the figure of five. They decided the maximum figure that they are going to go for at the next election and it was decided to cap it at that.
I think we can see that there is no argument that is logical that has been put forward other than the fact that he wants to restrict the amount of funding to an amount that he thinks would suit his party at a peak level, rather than an argument that I think has been well made, as Mr Corbell said, often in this place and is an established way now of providing administrative funding under the act.
Proposed new clause 24A negatived.
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