Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Section 328 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act provides guidelines for the printing and publication of electoral advertisements, notices and other material. If a person or organisation wishes to print or publish electoral advertisements then they must include on the advertisement the name and address of the person authorising the advertisement and the name and place of the printer. The penalty for not complying with these requirements is $1,000 for an individual and $5,000 for a body corporate.

On 20 November 2007, then members of the Liberal Party were involved in the distribution of unauthorised election material. The persons involved in the events in the division of Lindsay were in breach of section 328 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. Mr Gary Clark was fined the maximum amount. Three other persons were found guilty of the crime. Mr Jeff Egan was not convicted, because he claimed he did not know that the electoral pamphlet did not contain the name and address of the person who authorised it and the name of the business of the printer.

While the election pamphlet was unauthorised, it was the content matter that caused distress and disgust. The pamphlet sought to turn voters away from the Labor candidate and to incite racial tensions. The then Prime Minister, the Hon. John Howard MP, commented that the action was ‘tasteless and offensive’. All members of the committee agreed that the actions that occurred in Lindsay were appalling and needed to be stamped out with the introduction of more significant penalties.

The committee recommended that section 328 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act be redrafted as a strict liability offence and that the maximum penalties be 60 penalty units, or $6,600, for an individual and 300 penalty units, or $33,000, for a body corporate. Strict liability will make it more difficult for people to claim that they did not know that a pamphlet was not authorised. I am hopeful that the government can provide an early response to this report and can draft the relevant amendments and that, with the support of the opposition, the Greens and the Independents in the other place, we can have the amendments to section 328 in place for the next federal election. I think that is important and that it sends the right message to the community in relation to the parliament’s attitude as to how this issue should be responded to.

In reviewing the wider penalties of the Commonwealth Electoral Act the committee was advised that the penalties had not been updated since 1983. It should be noted that the committee, in 1989 and, again, in 1996, recommended that the penalty framework in the Commonwealth Electoral Act be updated. Unfortunately, these recommendations were not progressed. The committee has now recommended that the Special Minister of State, with assistance from the Attorney-General, introduce amending legislation to update the penalty provisions in the Commonwealth Electoral Act. When the amending legislation is introduced to the parliament, the bill should be referred to a committee for inquiry so that proposed changes can be publicly debated. The committee believes that these recommendations will help to strengthen the Commonwealth Electoral Act by increasing penalties to help deter electoral crimes.

In the appendices of the report we have copies of the unauthorised pamphlet and copies of the judgment in the Clark and Egan cases. We also have the apologies of Mr Clark and Mr Chijoff, and copies of the bogus pamphlet that was produced in 2004 in Greenway. The report is a factual report and people can go to the report to get the full picture. I think it is not insignificant that the report was a unanimous report by government and non-government members. The dissenting report itself is from Senator Bob Brown, but that relates to truth in advertising. He has used this report as an opportunity to make some comments in relation to tackling the problem of truth in advertising in election campaigns.

In conclusion, I want to thank my committee colleagues for their contribution to the report and those organisations and individuals who prepared submissions and appeared as witnesses before the committee. I would also like to thank the committee secretariat for their work in preparing the report and commend the report to the House.

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