On 28 November 2019, the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, the Hon Yvette D’Ath MP, introduced the Electoral and Other Legislation (Accountability, Integrity and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2019 into the Legislative Assembly. In accordance with Standing Order 131, the Bill was referred to the Economics and Governance Committee (EGC) for consideration and report.
On the introduction of the Bill, the Legislative Assembly also agreed to a motion that the committee, when examining the Bill, also consider recommendation 1 from the Crime and Corruption Commission’s (CCC’s) Operation Belcarra Report regarding the feasibility of introducing expenditure caps for Queensland local government elections, with a view to the model commencing after the 2020 local government elections.
The CCC’s full recommendation 1 is:
That an appropriate Parliamentary Committee review the feasibility of introducing expenditure caps for Queensland local government elections. Without limiting the scope of the review, the review should consider:
- expenditure caps for candidates, groups of candidates, third parties, political parties and associated entities
- the merit of having different expenditure caps for incumbent versus new candidates
- practices in other jurisdictions.
On 23 April, OSCAR, along with other community groups made a presentation to the EGC in relation to expenditure caps.
The broadcast of the public hearing can be viewed here. The community presentations begin at the 27:30 point in the video.
We have also started to undertake some analysis of expenditure incurred by candidates in the local government election conducted on 28 March 2020. The figures come from the ECQ’s Electronic Disclosure System (EDS) and make some very interesting reading:
Local Government Election 2020 – candidate expenditure data
