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

by leave—I too rise to speak to this report and, in particular, commend the dissenting report from coalition members. This report will obviously see, clearly, a number of pieces of reform—perhaps in one bill or in multiple bills—come before parliament. We, in the coalition, hold grave concerns about attempts to partially change our electoral system to favour one particular political hue. In particular, we are concerned that the government will be proposing reforms that benefit them and the union movement and their business model. Whilst they will claim the virtue of things like limiting donations and expenditure, we're very wary that the report of the majority and the potential legislation that might come forward will be about using the union movement's business model with the Labor Party and undertaking reforms that give them a particular advantage.

Expenditure caps and donations are a really good example, and the crossbench—in particular, I hope, in the Senate—need to be alive do this. Ways of using third parties and the union movement, which will claim to be third parties in legislation—some unions are affiliated to the Labor Party; some unions aren't technically affiliated with the Labor Party. Unions will funnel money to the Labor Party through things like affiliation fees instead of donations, and when the government bring legislation forward we should be very alive to the concept of how that will allow 'funny money' to be fed into one particular party in this country outside the spirit of the claimed virtue of reforms that the government at the same time will be putting forward through that reform.

We see this in this report, but we've also seen it in the reforms that Labor governments have undertaken at a state level around the country. I know particular examples from my own state, but every Labor government are very consistent on these things: they're very good at looking after themselves and the union movement when they get the opportunity to undertake reform. The fact that we could see changes to our electoral system that are not about improving our democracy but are about gerrymandering financial benefit to the union movement and one particular party in our system must be resisted in the interests of our democracy.

I look forward to working as hard as I can with my coalition colleagues—but, more importantly, hopefully with those on the crossbench—to resist this sort of trickery that is designed to entrench the advantage of one particular political persuasion over another. We should all defend democracy and stand up against that sort of rorting. We, in the coalition, are alive to that. We can see in this report the beginnings of these claimed arguments of transparency that are actually about providing a direct benefit to the union movement and the Labor Party over other political participants. We will resist that, tooth and nail.

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