James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021. I happen to serve on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and this bill sees us implement one of the recommendations from our report into the 2019 election, amongst other elements of that report which are being implemented via other bills that are at various stages of moving through the parliament. We, as we do after every election, undertook a thorough round of public hearings inquiring into the conduct of the 2019 election. The intention was to do that physically around the country, but with COVID restrictions that wasn't possible. But I still think we gave excellent access to a whole range of relevant parties that wished to submit their views and experiences with regard to the 2019 election. I think all members of that committee—on which all parties are represented and which is a joint committee of this House and the Senate—would agree that very broad access was provided and we held hearings day by day, although online, on a geographic basis so that people from all the different states and territories had a consolidated period of time to put their perspectives. Clearly, different issues arise in different parts of the country, as well as different issues being raised based on what your political persuasion is or what your activism might be in politics.

The recommendation that we're putting in place now, I think, is a particularly important one. It is important that we always review our democracy and look for ways of continuing to respond to things that develop. In every election, there are going to be new things that occur and come along, and we've got to make changes to respond to those so that the principles of protecting our democracy and having a fair playing field for all in the great contest of ideas continue to be protected.

When it comes to electoral funding, fundraising and expenditure, this is an area that's very important. There are very high standards, particularly for the formal players in election campaigns—obviously, political parties and other more established actors in that space. We in this chamber all know the rules. It would be a surprise to me if anyone who had made their way into the federal parliament had not had experience in ensuring that they comply with the various pieces of legislation that we have to comply with when it comes to elections, particularly when it comes to donations and finance.

It is very important that we have standards in place. We want to have a robust democracy, but we also want to make sure that it is a fair system and that there is transparency over the way in which finance is provided to support people in politics, which is why the member for Melbourne's contribution was so bizarre to me, given his purported interest in some other areas of policy and transparency. To apparently not think that it is a good thing to have standards in place for all participants in the democratic political process, whether or not they be formal political parties or other people with particular interests, and the fact that he doesn't believe—and it seems the Greens don't believe—that those high standards should apply to everyone participating in a democracy is spectacularly hypocritical and perhaps raises more questions than answers around the motivation of some of the rhetoric that he and the Greens use at times when they campaign for transparency in other areas of public policy.

Under the Electorate Act, all political parties have requirements that they have to follow insofar as the declaration of donations received over a certain value. And, of course, there is this double challenge if you operate in the state jurisdictions, where they have rules in place which govern state campaigns. There is a lot of complexity around determining how you are making sure that both your federal and state compliance is adequately occurring, particularly when you operate in multiple jurisdictions where there are different regimes in different states as well as the Commonwealth regime. So I think it would be fair to say that political parties all have very robust accountability mechanisms in place and requirements upon them. I hope that it is not the case that those aren't properly observed by all the parties in this country. I do not make that accusation; I assume that it is not the case and that we have that transparency in place.

So why would we not think that other people who engage in political activities, political campaigning activities, shouldn't have the same requirements in place? If we think that political parties should disclose when they receive a donation over a certain value from someone—if that should be the standard for a political party—why shouldn't that be the standard for anyone who is engaging in political activity? Just because they are not a political party—just because they don't meet some of those triggers in the Electoral Act—they are still seeking to do the exact same thing as political parties seek to do, which is engage in the process and effect an outcome. And, if they are seeking to do that, whether it is supporting a particular person or a particular position, for the exact same reasons that we want to know where the political parties get their money from, we want to know where the money is ultimately coming from that might be supporting some of those causes.

That's the exact sort of transparency that we should expect to be in place across all actors in our democratic process, not just those that are formal political parties. I would be surprised that anyone would find fault with that principle or have a concern with it. When people want to have debates about other issues to do with transparency, I can't understand how anyone could not believe that the concept in this bill of bringing more transparency to other participants in the process is a good and valuable thing for our democracy.

It is also very important that we are wary of foreign influence in our elections and our democracy. That, again, is an area that we need to pay closer attention to. This bill will go some way towards ensuring that we are closing some potential loopholes that could be exploited. It is a reality that we are seeing nefarious activities in terms of supporting and trying to influence the democratic outcomes of elections in jurisdictions worldwide. We have had testimony at the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters about a potential risk in our system for people, particularly foreign participants, to influence our democracy. Clearly, the online and fake news and websites and activity on social media et cetera is a very high-risk area, and we have agencies in our country as part of our government that are doing what they can to identify those bad actors, but it's also very high risk that activity in our campaigns is financed from overseas sources. Of course, as political parties we can't receive money from overseas sources. That's a black-and-white situation when it comes to the rules around our funding and disclosure regime, as it well and truly should be. But there is a risk that other shadowy organisations could receive financing from overseas sources and could use that to influence our democracy. If we don't have a robust regime in place to make sure that anyone who is a participant in our democracy, anyone that is seeking to influence the outcome of an election or a particular policy objective being adopted by a political party or a parliament or a government, anyone seeking to push an agenda—we must make sure that any people in those categories are meeting the same high standards that we expect for the formal political actors in our system, being the political parties.

Foreign interference and the risk of that can be reduced by having a clearer regime in place for accountability, transparency and reporting, which this bill will bring about. Also, for people who are seeking to influence our political outcomes from within the country, clearly the requirement of disclosure of where that money is coming from is going to go some way to reducing the risk of that happening. So I'm a very strong supporter of this bill.

I actually agree with the member for Melbourne that it needs to be viewed within the context of other electoral reforms that we are undertaking, and, as I mentioned at the start of my contribution, they are moving at various different stages through the parliament as we speak, but they are all in response to the lessons that we learnt from the 2019 election. There were things that happened in that campaign that I hope never to see happen again in politics in this country, particularly the intimidation of candidates, particularly female candidates, who were targeted and vilified and attacked. In my home state the member for Boothby had some awful experiences that nobody should have to go through who's seeking to participate in our democracy. At the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, we were able to hear about experiences like that and many others, which we are seeking to address so that people feel comfortable and attracted to participating in our democracy.

No matter what our ideological perspective or what our views are on the important debates of the day, we're all the better for more and more people wanting to participate in our democracy. The worst thing we can have is apathy, where there isn't engagement or interest from not only the broad population but also people who are thinking about and considering participating in a more committed way, perhaps by joining a political party, by becoming a volunteer, by donating to a political party and, most importantly, considering running as a candidate, whether it's for a political party or as an Independent. We should not have a situation where people have apprehension about participating in our democracy because they think they potentially won't be safe or they'll potentially have experiences that no person that's seeking to serve their community and wants to make a contribution to the debates of our time should have to go through. So this is part of those reforms that we are undertaking. I was very interested and honoured to be a part of the process of reviewing the election and identifying opportunities like this to strengthen and make our democracy more robust. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

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