Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I support the remarks by Senator Murray. I cannot see any justification for increasing the amount to this extent. Yes, it is a basic principle of democracy to give access to people to stand as candidates. I would like to ask the government since there is no reference to this being an issue anywhere in relation to election reports: on what basis have they increased the amount? On what basis have they increased it to the level that they have? Where is there any evidence that the current levels have encouraged any kind of frivolous activity in relation to accessing the capacity to run as a candidate in an election? Where is the evidence for any of this? Is this just not simply something that the government has decided to do without rhyme or reason except that the government wishes, again, to use a capacity to finance access to the election to restrict the number of small parties that might wish to contest an election? I am interested to know what the evidence is, where the government has got this idea from, where it got the level from and what the justification is for it.