Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Pocock. New parties are popping up all the time—we've got Mr Rennick's new party popping up here—and the good thing is that all parties, new or old, are treated exactly the same under this legislation. Nobody gets an advantage and nobody is disadvantaged by this legislation.

I know we've had a number of discussions and I guess we've had to agree to disagree, but the significance of what we're doing here by capping expenditure on individual electorates is that all of the parties in the process are limited by how much they can spend. So, if you are a new party, you know that, if you can raise $800,000, your opponent can only spend $800,000. You know you're on an equal footing with that other party if you choose to challenge them. So I think that, for the first time, we have established a level playing field in every electorate in this country from the election after next.