Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, I am speaking directly to foreign donations and donations generally made in the electoral act. Deputy Speaker, I know why you are trying to get me to limit my comments. I know that you know how embarrassing this is for a member of this parliament. I notice that that particular member of parliament was down to speak on this bill. I assumed that was either sarcasm or irony. But they've exercised judgement—which they haven't exercised to this point in accepting a $100,000 donation and then seeking to hide it—by deciding not to speak on this bill.

I say to you, Deputy Speaker, that you would not accept a $100,000 cheque from the tobacco industry, and you would not then try to hide that by spreading it over eight separate people, so that it was under the disclosure limit. I can't understand why anyone thinks this is okay. Of course, this went unreported by the ABC. It went unreported by The Guardian. It took a crack team of investigative journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald, which—and I say this in dark humour—has now been described as a pro-government paper. How a paper that publishes very prominent and good journalists like Jackie Maley and, until recently, Elizabeth Farrelly, who joined the Labor Party, could be described as pro Liberal strikes me as curious. But apparently the problem we have here is not actually a problem; we just have a PR problem.

Now, I note that Simon Holmes a Court is speaking at the National Press Club in five minutes. I wonder if those intrepid journalists, who I know get frightened by people who've inherited a lot of money, will stand up at the microphone and ask the tough questions, like: if you tried to hide a $100,000 donation from a director of a coal company, how can we trust that you haven't tried to hide other donations? When it comes to it, we realise, of course, that the member responsible for this, the Climate 200 candidate, is using exactly the same person who is being used by Simon Holmes a Court to run his fundraising entity. Oh dear. Oh dear, indeed.

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