Electoral Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to our final debate. This is the debate on clauses 1 to 3, the debate on the title, commencement, and the principal Act.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 316 in my name. It amends the start date—the commencement date—of this bill by changing it from January 2023 to 31 December 2023.

My reasoning for this is because election year is upon us. And while we understand that the Minister and the Government is looking for some transparency, we also need to be able to have time for political parties to be able to get themselves in order for this.

I would have thought—the ACT Party would have thought—that being able to implement a new regime, especially in an election year, which is upon us, is rushed and unnecessary; that looking at the transparency that we need should be looked at for the 2026 election; and, in fact, that if we amend the date to 31 December 2023, we would allow all political parties a just way to be able to participate in the 2023 election without fear of fine or consequence.

So Minister, I’d like to know whether or not the Government would support my Supplementary Order Paper to extend the commencement date to 31 December 2023.

Just to acknowledge the member for her thoughts and considerations that have gone into preparing Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 316. Two parts, probably, in my response before I inevitably let you down.

First is that when we’ve thought about the design of this as the scheme for next year and how it might practically work, I have confidence in the fact that in terms of the actual reporting—the system that’s currently in place—there are very minor amendments that will be required to be understood by political parties, I understand, in terms of the way that the reporting is conducted.

Then the actual returns for next year’s general election won’t be required until 2024. So there’s certainly a sufficient amount of time to make sure that any of our political parties won’t have to have fear of any negative ramifications as a consequence of stuffing up reporting. Got some confidence there.

In terms of the way that really structured my views here, the problem we’ve got is that if we were to adopt this type of approach, it would be a two-stage commencement process for these political donations. In terms of what we’re trying to do here, I guess, is enhance the public’s confidence in the transparency of our system. This, of course, would create further ambiguity and probably would be counterproductive to the ultimate purpose that we seek to embed with these amendments.

So we won’t be supporting the SOP, but we do have confidence that there will be enough time for political parties to be able to understand how to report and adequate timing by the time those annual returns are required to be in in 2024.

The question is that Nicole McKee’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 316 be agreed to.