Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

‘Vacant pieces of land,’ my honourable friend the member for Herbert points out. When you had small numbers of people in the Labor Party itself in Townsville, you could actually have five or six enrolments at the same address and, in doing so, dominate the preselection process, and unfortunately that is why Queensland wears the crown as the state that has been investigated the most in this House for electoral fraud. Of course, it does not just stop in Queensland, with the Shepherdson inquiry and with my own inquiry. Unfortunately, it spread to New South Wales. The most recent case has been the Wollongong council sex and bribery scandal, which has dogged the Wollongong council and the Australian Labor Party in that state in recent months.

The Liberal Party want to work with the government to make sure that we get something decent out of this reform process. Some members of the Labor Party might not think so after my excoriation of the Queensland Labor Party for electoral fraud, but I can tell you that we are prepared to put that aside and work with the Australian Labor Party for real reform of the Electoral Act. If only they were as genuine as the coalition! This is the chance to make real improvements to our system of electoral funding, to improve transparency and credibility and to improve the public perception of politics and politicians in general. If this were a serious and comprehensive campaign finance reform bill, it would do something to account for or limit the influence of trade unions and other rich third parties, which provide overwhelming support for the Labor Party. The Electoral Act should be politically blind and nonpartisan, open and neutral. The coalition say, ‘Let’s tackle campaign reform seriously and with consideration of the whole process, not just those parts that assist the Labor Party.’ So, while we can see the need for the content of this bill, we do not support a piecemeal approach to campaign finance reform. We believe that the report of the green paper into campaign finance reform should be awaited, and so should the reports being done by those committees of the parliament that are meeting to discuss this very important issue. I thank the House.

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