Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I need a little bit of indulgence on your part or, more importantly, on the Clerk’s part because I am going to refer to an article by Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Senate, in this chamber. I hope you will be tolerant, Mr Speaker. It is an article called ‘The life of a state: Australia’s longevity’, in which he talks about democracy around the world. Basically, he refers to the fact that Australia is the country that has functioned continuously under the same constitution for the sixth longest amount of time. That is quite amazing when you think of the countries and nationstates that have operated around the world for the last 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 years. We are the country that has functioned continuously under the same constitution for the sixth longest amount of time. The United States is the first; then come the United Kingdom, Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada and Australia. It is quite amazing to think that our democracy ranks up there with the rest of the world in terms of being continuous.

I move from that to the fact that this chamber is all about democracy. I am a relatively new member of parliament. My first day in this House was the day when the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made the apology. That was an incredible way to start my political life, and I thought: ‘This is fantastic. It’s so wonderful to be here in this chamber.’ When I became a lawyer I thought law would be all about being someone like Atticus Finch; well, politics started like that for me. Obviously, not every moment in the chamber since then has been quite as lofty. All sorts of debates about legislation take place, and we certainly saw that in the previous speech from the member for Sturt. I have never heard anything like it. Metaphorically speaking, the whole way through that speech he was wiping his shoe as if he had stepped in something. That is what it was like. We have a great piece of legislation before the House that is all about protecting democracy, and he stood up there with a hollow voice—a hollow man—making a hollow speech. As I said, the whole way through his speech it sounded as if he had stepped in something and was trying to wipe it off his foot.

I rise to support the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2009 before the House. The bill is about ensuring greater transparency and accountability in our political process. It delivers on a Rudd Labor government election commitment to do away with John Howard’s and Peter Costello’s ideological assault on open government. The previous government arrogantly used their control of the Senate to increase the declarable limit for disclosure of political donations, which was at a low of $1,500. They ramped it up to $10,000—and, with the CPI, it is equivalent to $10,900 today. This represented a huge jump in the limit required before donation details must be made public and ensured that massive sums of money had gone into party coffers without the public knowing. So, whilst the member for Sturt gave a historical rant about what might have gone on in Queensland—mistakes that have been long remedied—he could have gone back only a few years to see how people in his own party had abused things. Instead, he stood behind the facade of voting against this piece of legislation in the other house because it might have been better. That is, as I said, incredibly hollow.

The Howard government created a system that was much more open to corruption and allowed the possibility for conflicts of interest to go unnoticed. The Labor Party opposed these measures in opposition, and we are now following through with our election commitment to repeal these laws in government. It was wrong law when John Howard and Peter Costello controlled the public purse, and it remains wrong now when they do not. As a Queenslander, I remember the Fitzgerald inquiry; I remember the horrible years, and I can go back beyond that as well—back to the Bjelke-Petersen government and those horrible times when old National Party politics consisted of secret backroom deals, nods and winks, and money passing under the table in brown paper bags. That is right. That was used to influence political process.

Thankfully, I learnt about my political views from my grandfather. One of his proudest stories was standing up to a National Party politician, Russ Hinze, who was called the ‘Colossus of Roads’. My grandfather was able to say: ‘Look, I took a shovel to him because he was trying to rort a road-making process.’ I remember Russ Hinze well and those bad old days of the way political processes were carried out. Thankfully, now we are in a more modern Australia, where Australians want and deserve to know where the money is coming from that is used to fund political parties and candidates. But the opposition are opposed to this bill and they should hang their heads in shame.

The Liberals say they want transparency in the process but, every chance they get, they move to block this bill. It is the old Turnbull three-step: initially you say you support it, then as the next step you undermine it, and the third step is that you oppose it—you vote against it. They have already delayed this bill in the Senate by referring it to the parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters for inquiry, and then they voted against it last week in the Senate. Apparently the opposition are not interested in political accountability. This bill will amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to reduce the current threshold of donations from the current $10,900 down to $1,000. It will also remove the CPI indexation and prohibit foreign and anonymous donations below $50. I assure people that this does not mean that, when they buy a couple of raffle tickets at their local branch, they will have to disclose their donations—it is only below $50.

This will bring Australia into line with other countries, including the United States, which is the longest continuous democracy under the one constitution. I cannot speak for those opposite, but I do know that we on this side of the House have nothing to fear from greater transparency in the process. In my experience, donors to the Labor Party are not ashamed of their association, are not trying to hide and would be proud to have their details recorded. The Labor Party, as the political arm of the trade union movement, know about our connections. I am always amazed when those opposite suddenly say, ‘You are connected with the union movement,’ like it is a great discovery. I am not sure why they are so scared of the collective. We have had some significant political leaders from the Right that have been of the trade union movement. Ronald Reagan was a trade union representative for the equivalent of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance. I think even Brendan Nelson was head of a collective—I am not sure if you would call it a union movement—at one stage.

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