Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I will not take much of the chamber’s time, and I thank the minister for providing me with a copy of this earlier on. There are just a couple of things I would like to make some comments on. The coalition welcomes the movement of the commencement date to 1 July next year. I will just read from the minister’s statement on page 1. It says, ‘This time frame will allow the Australian Electoral Commission to implement new reporting systems and provide an opportunity for them to educate and assist key stakeholders.’ I must say that this is the first indication that the current reporting standards were inadequate to deal with the change. It is, after all, just a reduction in a dollar amount, and the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC, appeared on 26 September before the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008—which was, I note, introduced some 4½ months prior to that—and there was no mention of any issues at that stage. I ask the minister if he would be happy at some stage to provide copies of correspondence between him and the AEC, in the context of openness and transparency, as to when they first became aware of this, which I assume was only fairly recently.

On that same page, I note that the ministerial statement says, ‘The measures contained in this bill are also part of a more extensive review of electoral laws already announced by the government.’ With the greatest respect, normally the measures follow the review; in this case the measures are prior to the review. I appreciate that there are obvious domestic reasons for this to be put by the minister in this way in the statement, but I say to him that these measures are not part of a more extensive review; they are totally separate. If they were part of it, they would have post-dated the outcome of the green paper review. The coalition has said from day one that we believe that this whole matter should be dealt with holistically. We have supported the government’s green paper process on the way through. There have been some timing delays with that, on which we have had no issue at all. We want this done properly and we understand that the reason for the delay is to make sure that it is done properly. We look forward to the release of the green paper in due course.

In relation to the $50 exception to the prohibition on the acceptance of anonymous gifts, I have only had a short period of time to look at this statement but I indicate to the minister that my initial reading is that it is conditional in the way that it does not reflect the committee’s views and also seems to be an increasing compliance burden over and above that which was proposed by the committee. I noticed that, at the bottom of the page, there is a provision that any excess funds be returned or paid to the Commonwealth. I think that this may well be a compliance nightmare, but again I will need to have a closer look at that.

There is one other matter, and that is in relation to the disclosure of thresholds and claims of discrimination for any breach of the second paragraph of subsection 37(2) of the bill. The committee, in the full report, which was effectively the all-of-committee report, foresaw the potential for gross infringements of individual rights. It is a pity that the government has not taken up the opportunity to address the committee’s views in relation to this. I accept that it would require further expenditure from the AEC, and I am acutely aware that money is tight, but I invite the minister to review this provision again. I thought that the committee’s way around this—that is, with a dedicated unit within the AEC—was, with the greatest respect and with no reflection at all on the minister, a far better way of dealing with this than to leave it in the hands of the government. An independent arbiter, if you like, of these matters via the AEC, as proposed by the committee, would have been far better.

With those very short comments, I again thank the minister for his indulgence in providing me with a copy of this document. Clearly the opposition will have a lot more to say about the matter when the bill comes back after Christmas. But I urge the minister to view this question holistically. We have been at odds with the government in relation to both this bill and the other bill that is listed for tomorrow. We do not believe they should have been done through the green paper type review, but the minister is fully aware of my views on that—we have had some very public debates about it. I thank the minister for his courtesy and I ask that he look at those matters that I have raised during this brief presentation.