Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

I have a couple of questions about the bill that I would like to pose to the minister before I move my first amendment. The explanatory memorandum to the bill reads—and it is quoting from recommendation 11 of the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in 2009—on page 2:

“The Committee recommends the Australian Government introduce amendments to remove the current limitation on spending imposed by section 11(4) of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 (Cth) and include provisions to ensure that spending is directed to referendum education and to equal promotion of the Yes/No arguments.”

Subsection 11(4) generally limits the capacity of the Commonwealth to spend money in relation to a referendum other than on the production and delivery of the Yes/No pamphlet.

Those are both statements of fact. The EM goes on to say:

The Bill implements the Government response to Recommendations 3 and 11 by:

which is a reference to recommendation 3, but with recommendation 11, which I just quoted—

Recommendation 11 was quite explicit. In fact, the last words in it were 'equal promotion of the yes/no arguments'. So how does this bill implement that part of the recommendation, when all this bill does is lift the prohibition on Commonwealth government expenditure? It does nothing at all whatsoever, does it, to ensure equal promotion of the yes and no arguments?