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

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2010 should have been passed years ago. Early last year the government introduced a similar bill into the Senate to make political donations more transparent, but the bill was defeated by an unholy coalition of Senator Fielding and the Liberals, both of whom do not want to clean up our election campaign finance system. I hope things will be different this time, with that unholy alliance of Senator Fielding and the Liberal Party still there until June. They will certainly change after June, because the government is determined to see that transparent, open and fair electoral funding is put in place.

We have always had a very strong and clean electoral system in Australia. We rarely hear complaints about fraud or rigged elections. However, it is well known that our election funding system—our political donations system—is in need of reform. In 1984 the Hawke government brought in laws that required all donations to political parties, whether from individuals, companies or organisations such as trade unions, to be declared public. In 2004, however, the previous government gained control of the Senate. One of the first things they did was to change the law on political donations. They lifted the disclosure threshold from $1,500 to more than $10,000 and increased tax deductibility. This allowed large amounts of money to flow to political parties, particularly the Liberal Party, without being disclosed. As the member for Corangamite quite rightly pointed out, it meant that the Liberal Party, by disaggregating the donations—for example, they could go to state branches of political parties as though they were separate entities—could get donations of $80,000 secretly, without the public knowing that it was getting such donations.

As I said, it is possible to make separate donations to each of these political parties under the existing legislation. How abhorrent is that? To hide who has donated to which party during an election campaign avoids the forms of transparency and accountability which the public expects of elected officials. What an abuse of power. With this legislation, Labor has sought to undo this deceitfulness.

Previously, the member for Moncrieff was going on about how we need to apply this measure to third parties. He was whingeing and complaining about GetUp!, which he said was a pro-Labor organisation. Goodness me! He must not have been in receipt of the same emails I have been receiving. If anything, it is a pro-Green organisation. The sum of $1 million donated to Getup! pales into insignificance beside the Minerals Council’s advertising costs during the last election, which went directly to the heart of the government’s capability of handling the global financial crisis. Who was the person behind the mining advertising? Mr Textor. He is perfectly entitled to earn a living; he is a very capable person—full honour to him. He helped get the British Conservatives, with their Liberal Democrat mates, into government. But to say that the mining council advertising, which cost $17 million, was insignificant in the last election is obscuring things and makes GetUp! a very poor comparison. This is particularly so when it is much more focused on criticising both the government and the opposition rather than, as the member for Moncrieff claimed, being a Labor Party front.

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2010 seeks to lower the donation threshold, from $10,000 to $1,000. It means that donations received or given by key participants in the political process will be transparent and accountable, as well as reducing the scope of undisclosed gifts. Of course, it also means that if this legislation is passed then individuals or organisations that give $1,000 cannot do it in different states and be in the same situation they would have been in previously. As the member for Corangamite and others have pointed out, this legislation reduces the time frame for the making of returns. It reduces the current time frames for the making of returns and the disclosure of gifts and expenditure relating to an election by individual candidates and members of Senate groups and donors who make donations within the election period. The time frame is reduced from 15 weeks to eight weeks. The idea behind that is quite sensible—that is, the public should know in a timely way what donations are being given by whom so they can make assessments about whether those donations are tied to people’s political views or judgments, particularly those of political parties. Previously, political parties, associated entities, third parties and donors were required to provide returns to the Australian Electoral Commission once every 12 months. They will now be required to be lodged every six months.

This bill also seeks to ban large overseas companies from exerting political influence on parties by making unreported gifts or donations to political parties. The Australian public will, as a result of the change, be able to scrutinise any possible impact that foreign donations have on political decision making. How could the Liberal Party be opposed to this? I do not suggest that they take foreign donations. Of course they should be opposed to overseas countries making foreign donations, and therefore they should, quite logically, support the bill.

All of this legislation is being contemplated, I would suggest, to reduce the risk of corruption and undue influence. The former shadow special minister of state, Senator Michael Ronaldson, attacked union support of Labor last year when we first introduced this legislation. I imagine the new shadow special minister of state, Bronwyn Bishop, will do the same. If the shadow minister and the coalition were serious, they would wean themselves off contributions from outside players and make it clear to the public who they take money from. For example, the Liberals take money from tobacco companies.

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