MORE ministers, a bigger parliament and more public money for each vote… none of that would have got through if the ACT had gone down the path of a Citizens’ Initiated Referenda, as debated in the first couple of Assemblies.

In the same week as the sixth minister was appointed, the ACT Legislative Assembly Select Committee on Amendments to the Electoral Act made a series of recommendations in its report “Voting Matters”.

Ostensibly, the intention was to increase transparency, provide adequate representation, to cap expenditure and to limit the influence of external forces on the workings of government and the Assembly. All very admirable.

The appointment of Mick Gentleman as a minister with responsibility for Planning and Community Services will ease the load on some of the current ministers. However, it will leave a gaping hole in the ability of the Assembly to maintain viable committees. The committees have been one of the Assembly’s great strengths since the swearing in of the first Assembly in May, 1989.

The compromise is to increase the Assembly first to 25 members at the next election and then to 35 when our population reaches 425,000 people.

“Voting Matters” identifies that the ACT has one MLA for 15,129 enrolled voters. Victoria is next with less than a third of this ratio at one for 4330 voters. The NT has one elected member for 733 voters.

The Assembly does need to be increased taking account of the workload of MLAs and what could be achieved with a greater breadth of talent.

The role of Assembly committees does include exploring new ground, consulting with the community, reviewing legislation and questioning government decisions.

Without a spread of talent and enough members on each of these committees, the community can hardly expect adequate consideration, appropriate outcomes and realistic recommendations.

The role played by committees is even illustrated by this report. All Assembly members have been feeling the pressure of too few MLAs. The compromise has been found between Labor’s desire for five-member electorates and the preference of the Liberals and Greens for seven members in each. They are supported by people such as Prof George Williams, who argued in his submission to the committee: “It is long past time that the ACT had a parliament of an appropriate size”.

However, Prof Williams also recognised the predictable response from some in the community when he stated: “Having more politicians tends to be innately unpopular, in part because of the extra cost. However, the costs of inefficient, or even bad, government are far higher. Not having the strongest possible team to run areas like health and education can, over the longer term, have an enormous multiplier effect across the whole community through less effective hospitals and schools”.

The report recommends limiting the amount that can be donated to individuals and parties and compensation through increasing public funding from $2 per vote to $8 in the hope of providing greater transparency and less corruption.

Unfortunately, the recommendations suggest allowing an anonymous donation of up to $1000 to be made on regular occasions up to twenty five times. There is no such thing as a free lunch and $25,000 buys a lot of lunches, and in anonymous donations is hardly a formula against corruption.

In a dissenting report the Greens’ Shane Rattenbury suggested total party expenditure be capped at $500,000, the cap on donations be halved to $5000 and the increase in public funding above $2 be done in the context of these two reforms. He is right. However, it ought to be noted that some of the comments ensure advantage to the Greens Party.

The committee made 15 major recommendations in its report “Voting Matters”. In considering the recommendations, it is now incumbent upon the government to follow this lead and look beyond its own political advantage by acting in the best interests of the community when the amendments to the Electoral Act are brought back to the Assembly for consideration and voting.

Michael Moore was an independent member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (1989 to 2001) and was minister for health.