Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I commence my brief remarks by also giving my thanks to the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the member for Banks. Working with the chair of the committee has been a very positive process. I appreciate the very even-handed way in which he has dealt with committee members from this side of the House. I also pass on my thanks to the secretariat and to those who participated in the hearings on this matter.

The opposition members of the committee have issued a dissenting report as part of this paper. We note, particularly for this reason, that there is a green paper that is being put together by the government. It is taking some time for this green paper to emerge. There are very important reforms that need to take place as part of this process, and I think members right across this chamber agree with the need for that. It highlights all the more that we should not deal with reform of campaign finance in a piecemeal fashion. We need to deal with these matters comprehensively and inclusively. Things need to be looked at system-wide and not in a piecemeal way. Once again, we have outlined in this report the need not to go off on one-off measures but to consider these matters in their totality as part of the proper green paper process.

Those on the other side, particularly those outside this place, seem to have some disagreement about issues relating to the reform. We have the Premier of New South Wales very much for the reform process. We have the Premier of Victoria very much against it. We have the just-departed general secretary of the Labor Party, Tim Gartrell, who made very interesting comments on the weekend in the Sydney press. Who knows what the new general secretary’s view is? I think it is very important that the parties form very clear views about this and engage with the reform process as a matter of urgency. We look forward to receiving the green paper in due course and to engaging in that proper debate.

The other point I make is that we welcome the accommodations that have been made, which the chair of the committee has referred to. In particular, I wish to thank the chair and the committee for taking up the position on increasing the protections from intimidation available to citizens who are making donations. There are provisions in the act which clearly make that sort of intimidation illegal. There are—and should be—harsh penalties for that type of behaviour in the act. If you are going to lower the threshold for disclosure then we need to make sure that people understand that there is someone they can go to if they feel they are being intimidated. Those people are available on a hotline and through a website, and the resources need to be there for the AAC to make sure that those complaints can be taken seriously.

We also note in our dissenting report the issue of a compliance burden. We have to be very careful, in going through these reforms, that we do not overload what is basically a volunteer membership across political parties with compliance measures which herd them into default. With the penalties here in this bill, we are trying to ensure that negative behaviour, dangerous behaviour that comes from the culture and the politics of money, does not infect our political system. In doing that, we have to be careful not to create a compliance burden which traps the wrong people. To that end, we have argued that the anonymous donation threshold should be $250, not $50, to ensure that those penalties are not imposed on people simply making administrative errors. I thank the House for its indulgence in allowing me to make these statements and, again, I thank the chair.

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