Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking on this report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the Advisory report on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008, I want to commend the committee’s chair, the honourable member for Banks, for his firm conduct of this inquiry; he was collegial but he was firm. I thank other members of the committee for their contributions. I also acknowledge the secretariat’s work to support the committee’s deliberations.

Some of you will know that I am not sure that the issue of political donations is the most important issue in the area that the electoral matters committee looks at—the democratic reform of Australia. In particular, I would have thought that issues emerging from the last government’s regressive legislation, issues of provisional voting and early closure of the roll, are just as important. It is my contention that, in the area of provisional voting, the changes that the previous government wrought to the electoral legislation probably affected three or maybe four seats at the last federal election in a way that disadvantaged the current government.

Having said that, I do not really think that this inquiry, in another sense, was necessary. It was forced on us by the Senate when the government did not have a majority—and it still does not have a majority. The Rudd government has a clear mandate for this piece of legislation. At the time the Howard government foreshadowed the legislation which this bill overturns, we said we would oppose it. When the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducted its inquiry into the Howard government’s legislation, we exposed many of its deficiencies and the Labor members of the committee wrote a minority report saying why we would oppose it. During the last election campaign, the then opposition pledged to overturn this harmful, regressive and undemocratic legislation, and now that we are in government we are carrying out that commitment.

The opposition members of this committee, led by the deputy chair, the honourable member for Cook, have presented a dissenting report to the committee’s report. This is, of course, their right. But they cannot claim that this legislation came as a surprise to them. We said all along—and I personally said many times in this House before the election and publicly—that we opposed the Howard government’s damaging changes to our electoral laws and that we would repeal them as soon as we had the opportunity to do so. So opposition members are entitled to go on arguing the case for discredited legislation but they cannot deny that we have a mandate to overturn it. Opposition members said in their dissenting report:

A responsible government would adopt a holistic, broad, bi-partisan view of the issue and most importantly, consider what is in the best interests of the community and our democracy.

I am delighted to see that the opposition has been converted to the principle of bipartisanship now that they are out of government. I am entitled to ask how much bipartisanship the previous government showed when it rammed electoral laws through both this House and the Senate in 2006.

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