Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As for you poor fellows over there, I don’t think there are many of you who took the wage cut; most of you got a wage rise.

At the same time as he is doing that, he has got a new perk for himself. Where is the accountability? This whole question of accountability brings me to the debate we had earlier in the chamber today, and that is the question of funding of political parties. This is the question of reform of the funding of political parties. And it just happens that I was reading some very interesting material dealing with a fund that was established by the now Prime Minister and the now Treasurer, a fund that they established in Queensland which is estimated to be worth about $100 million. It is within this fund that you will find there is about $20 million worth of shares in banks, about $2 million worth of shares in the Commonwealth Bank and $1.18 million worth of Suncorp shares. You will find that they have a conflict of interest.

When the Commonwealth Bank put its home loan interest rate up by more than the interest rate rise the Reserve Bank announced, the Treasurer said that the fund controlled by the Labor Party, which funds their election campaigns, benefited. They benefited as a result of government policy. The Treasurer went on to say: ‘You can change banks. I’ll make it easier for people to change where their home loan is.’ He made no mention of the fact that the ALP also had a margin loan with CommSec for $10 million. He made no mention of the fact that, every time there is a rise in interest rates, the ALP’s fund to get itself re-elected benefits. There was no mention of this at all.

In fact, if you go through the rather poor reporting requirements, you can do an estimate that shows the Labor Party is now the richest political party in any democratic country—if you put together the holdings of unions like the CFMEU and the Labor Party itself. Bear in mind that Labor Holdings, this fund established by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, donated $8 million to the campaign funds—as disclosed; we do not know how much else was paid. That is $8 million out of the $15 million they spent—as opposed to the $9 million the Liberal Party spent. There is an enormously rich fund which was established by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister. There is a conflict of interest. If there is to be true reform of electoral funding then this fund must be sold down.

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