Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Schools) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I present the committee's second advisory report incorporating dissenting reports on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill and I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this report, which goes to a very important piece of legislation and indeed to a revised bundle of amendments the government proposes to introduce which will deal principally with implementing a ban on foreign donations to political parties and other political actors. The Australian Labor Party has long been in favour of introducing such a provision into Australian law, in particular into the Commonwealth Electoral Act.

This report follows an earlier report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters done in April this year, which made a very large number of amendments to the government's substantive amendment proposal to the Electoral Act. It is very pleasing to see that a number of the committee's bipartisan recommendations have been acted upon by the government and certainly the legislation that will be before the Senate—the other place—as I understand it, is a marked improvement on that which was originally proposed. Many of the unintended consequences that were identified by members of the committee, guided by academics and civil society, have been rectified.

However, unlike that report of the Joint Standing Committee, this report features two dissenting reports. That is disappointing. It is less than pleasing in a committee of this nature, which is really concerned about upholding the standards of our democracy, that we have felt in the Australian Labor Party—through me and my three colleagues—that it's necessary to issue a dissenting report and we have not done so lightly. We've done so principally because the amendments introduced by the government, without notice, introduced an entirely new element to this legislation, an element that bears only the barest resemblance to the subject matter of the principal piece of legislation—that is, a series of provisions which would, in effect, seek to override state electoral laws about donations. These electoral laws include provisions introduced on the recommendation of state anticorruption commissions that, for example, in the case of Queensland, ban developer donations. This is a really important matter which goes to the heart of trust and integrity in politics. It's not a matter upon which the Commonwealth parliament should lightly, if ever, seek to override state jurisdictions that have considered these matters and made laws. It is deeply concerning that such a provision is proposed here, and it is principally for that reason that the Labor members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters are dissenting. We urge the government to reconsider. We urge the government to get on with the job, the bipartisan and multipartisan goal, of banning foreign donations from our national politics, without unduly interfering with state arrangements that take money out of politics and remove certain vested interests out of politics, as I said, including on the recommendation of state anticorruption commissions.

I note also that there are some important matters that will require careful consideration in debate, and this particularly goes to some of the key definitions that are contained in these amendments. Labor members are concerned to see that any such ban and significant changes to definitional arrangements take place in a manner that provides certainty to all political actors. The regime here requires to be clearly understood by all participants, and we will be looking very carefully at the bill as presented to the parliament to ensure that that objective is met.

Fundamentally, all of us in this place have a responsibility to lift the standards of Australian politics. This bill, if enacted properly with those concerns addressed, and in particular with those provisions seeking to override state laws, would be a step forward—a necessary but insufficient step. I call on the government to look seriously at Labor's longstanding proposals to take money and the undue influence it brings out of Australian politics so that Australians can feel that our democracy is working for them.

I take this opportunity, lastly, to thank my colleagues on the committee for their hard work under a very short—indeed, unnecessarily short, in my view—time frame and of course the secretariat of the committee for their extraordinary work on behalf of all of us in this place. I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Debate adjourned.

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