Senator ABETZ (Special Minister of State) (1:17 PM) —The integrity and robustness of the Commonwealth Electoral Act and its processes lie at the very heart of our democratic system and the Australian people's acceptance of the outcomes of our elections. The speakers who have involved themselves in today's debate have, with slightly different slants, indicated the history and background of the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Representation in the House of Representatives) Bill 2004. Put very simply, the member for Solomon, David Tollner, raised the issue publicly and, as Senator Scullion indicated, when other people raised their hands in despair and said nothing could be done, Mr Tollner championed the cause. He introduced a private member's bill. Confronted with that and, as the responsible minister, having tried to work through the process as to what an appropriate outcome ought be, I came to the view that the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters should be seized of the matter, look at it and come up with a proposal.

I commend the committee and the representatives on that committee from four different political parties for coming up with a robust, transparent solution, which the government were willing to adopt. One of the committee's three recommendations was to give, for the short term at least, the Northern Territory its second seat back. That was something which we as a government thought was important. As a result of that we were prepared to move on that recom-mendation alone, on the strict understanding and promise that we would be legislating in relation to the other two recommendations as well. The opposition took a view, which I fully accept, that one bill should include all matters so we got our skates on and put all three recommendations into the one bill. That bill is before us today and I thank honourable senators for their cooperation in assisting us in getting the bill through.

I refer to Senator Murray's amendments and indicate that there are substantial technological problems with his amend-ments. I will not seek to delay the Senate today—time is at a premium—but simply indicate that there are problems. I would be happy to discuss them further with Senator Murray some time in the future.

Senator Murray —How about the principle?

Senator ABETZ —The principle is interesting because the concept of foreign donations was somewhat foreign to me until I had a look at the Australian Electoral Commission website and found out who the major beneficiary of foreign donations was. The major beneficiary is a political party that is not represented in the chamber by its two representatives at the moment. It is interesting that those who have `Australian' as a prefix to the title of their party are the major beneficiaries of overseas contributions. I will not traverse that path too far because we are debating non-controversial legislation. I thank honourable senators for their contributions and indicate to the Acting Deputy President, Senator Lightfoot, who is looking at his clock, that I will finish after speaking for four minutes—as opposed to Senator Crossin, who took about eight minutes to repeat one sentence a hundred times. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.