Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was not vinegar but I do not think it was wonderful.

The northern outskirts of Brisbane and the adjacent area, where we come from, are really tough country to raise money. We do not have big businesses, so none of this is going to bother me terribly much at all. But I think that $50 is reasonable, although I could be convinced that it might be $100. But the majority of the committee said $50. Some members think a couple of dollars more than that is fair. That is okay that they should think that.

We have also talked about increasing the capacity of the AEC to follow up complaints and to ensure compliance, and we have talked about increasing the penalties for people who miss their time lines or seek to indicate something that might be misleading.

At the end of the day, what this bill is about—and what the committee’s report supports—is simply openness with the community: let the community know that it is not a great difficulty for us to think about the fact that they deserve to know. As Robert Ray said in 1983, they actually have a right to know who is supporting us. It is not something we should hide from them. Heaven forbid that we should end up with an electoral system the same as that of America—which we like to laud, and they themselves particularly like to laud, as the greatest democracy in the world—where Barack Obama was able to raise, I understand, US$600 million. That is a substantial amount of money. If those sorts of funds came flowing in our direction, graduated down to the relative size of our population it would be $60 million of public money that could be raised—and $60 million can buy a lot of access. That is the purpose of major companies donating, of course. They want access—not necessarily influence but the ability to put their case.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to support the report. I am delighted with the work that the committee has done. As I say, despite the fact that we have different political views, this committee works fairly well. To my mind, the fact that the dissenting report has been modest—on a sensitive area of the work we do—is a testimony to the way that the committee, particularly the chair, Mr Daryl Melham, and the deputy chair, Mr Scott Morrison, have been able to work together to overcome those issues as best we can. We will never actually see eye to eye on these matters, I suspect, but if we can go a long way towards doing that then I think that the people of Australia are well served.

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