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

DT (—) (): You know something is going on when the government comes in to move amendments to its own legislation, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021, and no-one even speaks in favour of them—the minister doesn't speak, the assistant minister does not speak and the member who talks about freedom at every opportunity he can doesn't even speak! Instead, we are given 35 amendments and asked to vote on them straightaway without anyone from the government even speaking to them. Why? Even on the most cursory reading of them, you can see that there are problems. Just in the short time that we've had available to look at these, amendments (2) and (24), for example, when looked at together not only add to a bill that restricts freedom of speech, because the government does not like what organisations, charities and people working with people who are doing it tough say from time to time, but actually make some of it retrospective. That's on our quick reading from having had a look at them. These organisations not only are going to be placed under restrictions about what they can say from now on but are going to have to go back, if we've read these correctly in the short time we've had, and look at their books and account for their expenditure over previous years when this law was not even in place. So during an election time, when everyone from charities to organisations to welfare groups should have the right to say, 'Hey, hang on; we are a rich country in Australia and we need laws that look after everyone,' they are now going to be tied up with bookkeeping and requirements for previous years before the law even came into effect.

As the previous speaker said, the strategy from the government is crystal clear. They haven't come in here with laws to stop Clive Palmer buying an election. In fact, they are doing the opposite. They have turned a blind eye to billionaires who write checks for amounts of money that no-one else in the country could afford, the billionaires who come in and seem to buy elections. They are fine with that. But when charities or organisations who work with people doing it tough dare to speak out and say, 'Maybe we should improve things a little bit in our country,' the government come down on them like a tonne of bricks.

So the government's strategy is very clear: stop some people from speaking out and stop some people from even voting and then, on the other hand, run over and suck up to Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson and all the far Right and everyone else and say, 'Can you please come and do the same again for us? Can you please write out a huge cheque to ensure the re-election of the Liberal government—please, please, please? We'll do everything we can to support you'—even if it means standing up and saying in Queensland, 'Oh, it's okay; people should be able to go and have a cup of coffee without being double vaxxed,' when, at the same time, that is exactly what has been put out in Victoria and New South Wales and the government doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

So enough pandering to the far Right as a re-election strategy. If you were serious about ensuring that there are the kinds of restrictions on political campaigners that most people in this country would like, you would stop billionaires from buying elections. You would come in here with amendments that say, 'Perhaps we should have a cap on how much corporations and billionaires can donate to political parties.' But, no, you don't do that. The government comes in here with a bill that says, 'Let's shut down some people who are speaking out, because we don't like what they are saying,' and then, at the last minute, come in with 35 amendments which, on the face of them, on a quick read, mean that some of these laws will potentially apply retrospectively and then turn a blind eye to everything else. Oh, by the way, forget about that promise of an independent corruption commission; that's never going to happen at all.

This is a terrible process. We should not be supporting amendments that get lobbed on us at the last minute, particularly when on a quick read it looks like some are going to have retrospective application. This is all about the government trying to silence people it does not like. A government that was proud of what it did wouldn't be scared when people spoke up and spoke out; it would engage in the debate. But, instead, this government says: 'We're going to shut you down. We're going to use the power of the law to let the billionaires keep getting away with buying elections while we shut down charities and other groups.' Well, no; we should stand up to the government and say no. And any amendments that come in, when you don't even have the decency to speak to them and put an argument as to why they are good, should be opposed.

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