Real-time reporting of local government political gifts may be on its way - but the authority that will run the system is keen to ensure it does not have a meltdown akin to the Census debacle.
A parliamentary committee is considering a bill that would create a real-time online system to disclose local government election donations.
![The ECQ is doing testing to prevent a Census fail-style meltdown with its real-time political donations website.](/web/20170216105258im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/1/1/5/e/x/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gudncj.png/1487153073152.jpg)
If passed, it will mean that any donations of $500 or higher will need to be reported by the candidate and the gift-giver, and voters will not need to wait months until after the election to find out who got what.
A real-time system for disclosure of election donations on the state government level is expected to come online in 2017.
Electoral Commission Queensland assistant electoral commissioner Dermot Tiernan said a test version of the online system was now online.
"We have put it through two rounds of user acceptance testing and load testing," Mr Tiernan told the Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday.
"By user acceptance testing, we're covering everything from how intuitive it is, do the colours look nice, all the way through to what's the response time, how long do you have to wait.
"The load testing is literally to avoid issues like the ABS had last year with the Census."
Mr Tiernan said the new system passed the first round with "flying colours" and the second round of testing had begun.
The database, the first of its kind in Australia, will allow members of the public to search for a particular electorate, candidate, party, donor or gift value and see the donations.
But Mr Tiernan said attempts were being made to reduce the risk of "malicious" attacks on candidates by people creating an account and logging fake donations.
"My example... I want to ensure the system has the ability to prevent things like, say, a famous criminal, I won't name any, registers as a donor and says they contributed a large amount of money to your campaign," he said.
"The local paper could pick that up and have a field day with you for 24 hours, even a week, and we're partly at fault because we published this false data."
To combat that risk, Mr Tiernan said the system would have a delay, where the candidate would receive an email letting them know of a donation being logged and there would be a 24-hour delay where they could confirm or question the donation.
"It will require some vigilance by political parties and candidates but there's nothing we can really do about that," he said.
Providing false and misleading information in a return is an offence.
"Real time" has not yet been defined.
The next local government elections are scheduled for 2020, and the next state government election will be held before May 2018.
The committee is due to report on the bill on March 7.
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