Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am sitting here listening to the amount of money spent. As many people know, at the last election, I spent in total about $170,000 to get elected. Half of that was my own money and $80,000 was raised from the community.

For me, there are some fundamental flaws to this bill in terms of the money that major parties are being given, in particular, the bill introducing a new system of administrative funding to assist people that are already in the House and are incumbent.

I take myself back to 2022, to the campaign using my own money. The donations amount I took is nothing in comparison to the amount of money that the major parties seem to be trying to prevent. I think most independents you'll find from the community don't have the large amount of money that this bill seems to be preventing. But I think we need to look at how you justify that we can spend public money to give to the major parties that have already got incumbency of their office. That's the unfairness of it from my perspective. Of course, this bill certainly benefits those that are currently sitting in the House.

Thinking of those who are like me from three years ago, it would be more of a challenge. It would take some people who are madder than me to actually invest their own funds to campaign. So, that's my objection to this bill, because I think it has not been really thought through, even though it looks like the government is doing something about transparency and caps and all that. I think in a way you're also increasing lots of public funding for the major parties to continue the structure that you have.

See this speech in context