Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion moved by the member for Indi and offer a couple of brief remarks. I agree wholeheartedly with the member for Indi that it is very bad practice for so many amendments to be brought in unexpectedly with not nearly enough time to scrutinise those amendments, to consider them and to debate them. This is woeful public policymaking and it should be condemned. For that reason, I fully support the member for Indi's amendment. And I agree with the member for Indi that, if the government was fair dinkum about the reform of political donations, then it would do just that—it would reform political donations with reforms such as a $1,000 threshold for the disclosure of political donations. There should also be real-time reporting of political donations, effective caps on the amount that any one donor can donate during an electoral cycle and a cap on how much can be spent by candidates and political parties during election campaigns. They're the sorts of effective reforms that are required for political donations in this country.

At the moment, we have enormous sums of money sloshing around and, to some degree, in secret. And let's not forget that no political donor makes a big political donation without expecting a return on that investment. These aren't gifts just for the sake of a gift to candidates in political parties; these are investments by big political donors. A donation of $10,000, $11,000, $12,000, $13,000, $14,000 is big money, and that's why I make a point of declaring in virtual real time any political donation over $1,000 on my website. That's what the community demands. That's what the community needs, not the changes at the heart of this bill, which are really a clamp down on small organisations and community groups, which are often single-issue focused, often to do with the environment, I would add.

This is where I diverge from the member for Indi: I don't think the original bill is a good bill, nor is it worth supporting. I think the original bill is a very blatant ideological attack on small community organisations, small activist organisations, often environmentally focused organisations. So I don't like the original bill, and I certainly condemn this attempt by the government to ram through a large number of changes which will never be properly scrutinised by the crossbench before a vote. They certainly won't be considered. They won't be debated in full. They'll be shot up to the Senate and be out of the Australian parliament much too quickly for the community's best interests. So it's a delight to second this well-considered amendment by the member for Indi.

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