Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Farrell, you just said that all ordinary Australians should be able to stand, but here is the thing: you've got to find $2,000 just to register. I've had many candidates come to me who want to run, but you know what? They don't have $2,000. If they were able to get that money refunded then they might be able to run. I would actually be able to finance them myself. But the problem is that we don't know if they're going to get four per cent of the vote. So, when you say that all Australians can run, that is not entirely true, because they have to get four per cent of the vote to get any electoral funding.

This is ultimately my question to you: by capping all the other money that external people from outside the major political parties can donate, you can then monopolise the electoral funding by increasing the dollar per vote. That's what you'll do in the next cycle—cut off all external sources now and then, knowing that you get the bulk of the votes and you will cut the threshold off at four per cent, lift the dollar count per vote, from $3.50, up to $7 or $8. That's how you're going to make up for the fact that other parties can't actually raise external dollars. That is my question to you. If you genuinely want ordinary Australians to be able to run, why don't you reduce the threshold in order to receive electoral funding from four per cent to one per cent so that people can at least get their registration fee and some costs of the election paid? It's all very well talking about the big end of town and capping them, but you've choked the little end of town and the minor parties, like People First, from actually getting off the ground.