Select Committee on Electoral and Political Party Funding

Debate resumed from 24 September 2008.Debate resumed from 24 September 2008.

The Hon. MICHAEL VEITCH [2.50 p.m.]: As I said prior to the interruption of this debate in September, this was the first opportunity I have had to be a member of a select committee. At that time there was much public debate, and it is continuing, about political donations and electoral funding in New South Wales and throughout Australia. It was with quite a deal of humility that I sat as a member of the committee. The committee was consensus driven on most matters, and I will say more about that later.

The committee was established by resolution of this House on 27 June 2007. We received 189 submissions. We sat through five public hearings and one public forum at which there were 18 speakers. There were 32 witnesses before the committee and we took the evidence of two witnesses via teleconference—one was an international teleconference. The end result was 47 recommendations from the committee in a report that is a very good read. No doubt the issues and the evidence heard by the committee will be of interest to all members.

Once the resolution to create the select committee had been passed by the House, a number of other matters occurred. One was the Greens Environment Planning and Assessment Amendment (Restoration of Community Participation) Bill 2008. During the debate on that bill a matter was raised by Ms Lee Rhiannon and, as a result of that, on 15 May 2008 the Chamber resolved to refer the bill to the select committee for consideration—that is dealt with in chapters 3 and 7 of the report. The Government also introduced two bills in that time: the Election Funding Amendment (Political Donations and Expenditure) Bill 2008 and the Local Government and Planning Legislation Amendment (Political Donations) Bill 2008. Comment on those two bills is also included in the body of the report.

The Hon. Amanda Fazio and I have logged dissenting statements at the end of the report that relate to recommendations Nos 5 and 25. Recommendation No. 5 involves the Auditor-General oversighting the responsibility for Government advertising. The gist of the recommendation is that we should model the powers of our Auditor-General on something similar to the powers of the Auditor-General of Ontario, Canada. The Hon. Amanda Fazio and I do not support that. The Auditor-General cannot accept responsibility for the oversight of Government advertising without impugning its role. It is against all accepted auditing practices for auditors to oversight expenditure that they will be responsible for auditing.

Legal advice was sought 23 years ago by the then Auditor-General as to whether advertisements were an unlawful use of public funds. The advice was that government advertising would be unlawful if it could be shown that the predominant purpose was to improve the electoral prospects of the incumbent government rather than the business objectives of the agency. This advice still stands and is consistent with recent case law. In fact, in a review by the High Court of the Federal WorkChoices campaign, the High Court judged that there is an implied right to freedom of speech in the Constitution that supports the lawful expenditure of public funds on appropriate government advertising.

Recommendation No. 25 is that as part of the ban on all but small individual donations a disclosure threshold of $500 for all donations be introduced. It is the view of the Hon. Amanda Fazio and me that the threshold should be amended to $1,000, to remain consistent with the arrangements of the Commonwealth. That would result in better administration by the political parties involved because, in our view, having two different amounts will lead to confusion.

I would like to thank the members of the committee: Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile, who ably chaired the committee; the Hon. Don Harwin, who was deputy-chair—actually the basis of his last Commonwealth Parliamentary Association trip was around political donations and he had a wealth of information on the Canadian model; the Hon. Jennifer Gardiner; the Hon. Robert Brown; the Hon. Amanda Fazio and me. I thank the Hansard reporters, who were fantastic. How Hansard can record public forums is just amazing. The accuracy of the recording by Hansard during public forums astounds me. I would like to thank the secretariat staff. I also record my congratulations to Simon Johnston, who became a father for the first time yesterday—that certainly did not affect his participation in the committee. The report is an outstanding one and is a commendation to all those involved. I would hope that the recommendations do not go absent.

Debate adjourned on motion by the Hon. Michael Veitch and set down as an order of the day for a future day.