Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would love to see if anyone else from the Labor Party is going to get up and defend this bill or if they're just going to try and rush this through the House together with the Liberals. That's a been the history here: pass laws as quickly as you possibly can and hope the public doesn't know that what you're a doing is opening up loophole to allow corporate money to flow into politics.

It is time to get the big corporate money out of politics. It is time to have reform of our donations laws in this country. It is time to ensure that there is a limit as to how much people and corporations can donate and there is a limit on what can be spent during elections. It is time to say there is absolutely no role for the likes of tobacco or fossil fuel corporations to be donating to political parties. We need to know with absolute certainty that decisions that are made in this place are being done for the public interest, not for vested interests and not for the corporate interests. That is what will restore some trust in politics.

We need a federal ICAC, and that is much more important than this bill. The fact that the government thinks that this bill is more important than an ICAC tells you everything you need to know about how the Liberals are just a wholly owned subsidiary of big corporations. We need a federal ICAC, but we need reform to our donations laws as well, real reform that will get the big corporate money out of politics so that people across the country can be guaranteed that parliament is making decisions in the public interest, not for vested interests.

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