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

I hear interjections coming from the government side about why this bill is necessary. If you really cared about integrity, then bring on a federal integrity commission. Come on, where is it? Where's the anticorruption commission that requires government and MPs and politicians to act transparently? It's nowhere. It's nowhere because the government's goal is to hide and cover up. That's what it always does. But, with this, the government and Labor—the Liberals and Labor—are now about to make a whole lot of organisations and civil society bound by laws that are potentially retrospective and that we don't even know the full impact of. Why? Why don't we know the full impact of what amendment (1) will mean? Because Labor and the Liberals wouldn't even allow a Senate inquiry into it. They wouldn't even let the Senate debate it! It got rammed through the Senate without debate.

You've always got to be worried about what happens on the last day of parliament, because that's when Liberal and Labor come together to push through bad bills that are bad for democracy, and this is one of those. Should it be $100,000 or $250,000? No, it should stay where it is. No-one should be cutting it.

We Greens voted against this bill when it was put to the House. We voted against it in the Senate. We've made the point that we shouldn't be debating these amendments. And this cut from Labor and Liberal is to bring a whole lot of new charities and organisations in at this election—this election, of all times!—to give the Liberals a leg-up by silencing dissent! This election! Well, be it on your heads. Be it on your heads for silencing civil society and requiring them to retrospectively comply with laws that we haven't even had a chance to debate and haven't even had a chance to inquire into to understand what it's going to mean for democracy in our country. Shame on the Liberals! Shame on Labor! Shame on this dirty deal that is a dark day for democracy!

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