Hill donation ‘ slip- up’
MAYOR Jenny Hill has corrected her team’s disclosure of campaign donations, adding a $ 22,000 contribution from a developer almost two years after the period for lodgement closed.
The developer, Wingate Properties, gained a contentious approval to create a $ 500 million residential estate on rural land at Rasmussen from the previous council in 2015.
Electoral Commission of Queensland records show Cr Hill signed a request to amend her team’s 2016 return on March 16 this year, although the request has only recently become available on the commission’s website.
Cr Hill said the omission on her team’s initial list of donations was a “slip- up”.
“While the donations to Team Jenny Hill were disclosed by Wingate and available on the public record, my campaign team picked up that we had only included ( Wingate’s) first contribution on our schedule of donors,” Cr Hill said. “It was a slip- up and we fixed it.” The amendment also corrected the name of another donor from “Lancini Property Development” to “Laurence Lancini Construction Pty Ltd”.
Wingate declared donations totalling $ 57,000 to Team Jenny Hill and $ 73,830.38 to the Jayne Arlett Team in mid- 2016.
Some of the donations, including the $ 22,000 for Team Jenny Hill, were paid directly to advertising agencies, which in the case of Team Jenny Hill was Brisbane- based Campaign Edge.
The Jayne Arlett Team declared $ 73,830.38 in donations from Wingate in 2016, al- though the returns of the Hill and Arlett teams were overdue, having been provided in August 2016, when they were due in July.
University of Queensland law expert Professor Graeme Orr said the point of disclosure was that it was timely and that late amendments were highly inadequate where the amount or the donor was significant.
Prof Orr said the Electoral Commission of Queensland-had a duty to investigate why any disclosure of such a sum was so late.
An ECQ spokeswoman said the deadline for lodgement of disclosure returns for the 2016 election was July 4 but declined to say if any action would be taken over the amendment.
“The commission does not comment on individual compliance matters,” the spokeswoman said.
“The commission is legally obliged to allow amendments which it assesses on a case- bycase basis, and may then issue warnings, fines or take other action.”
Cr Hill declined to comment on a question as to whether the amendment had been prompted by the introduction into State Parliament just a few days before of proposed new laws and penalties relating to donations.
Wingate could not be contacted for comment but residents said the Rasmussen site was being used for cattle grazing and had not been touched or opened for development for at least the past 12 months.