Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill, the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Lowering the Donation Disclosure Threshold) Bill 2023, goes hand in hand with the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Real Time Disclosure of Political Donations) Bill 2023, which I just introduced. We need to have real-time disclosure of political donations and we need to lower the donation disclosure threshold.

Australia has some of the most lax political donation laws in the world. That is true. We rank only 106th out of 180 countries on the Regulation of Political Finance Indicator. Among 13 nations with similar socioeconomic circumstances, including New Zealand, several European nations, the United States and Canada, we manage only eighth. That's pretty appalling.

This is largely due to having fewer restrictions on who can donate and spending limits, weaker regulation requirements and less access to public funding than other comparable nations.

The interim report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the 2022 federal election identified that former MP Clive Palmer's mining company donated $117 million to his United Australia Party for the 2022 election campaign, while Pratt Holdings shared around $3.7 million across the two major parties.

The Grattan Institute noted in its submission that union donations made up more than half of all Labor's declared donations, and that some wealthy individuals and corporations channelled donations through fundraising entities associated with the Liberal or National parties. Australia also saw a rise in donations from significant third parties to Independents like myself. The Parliamentary Library found that the existing political finance laws were challenged in effectively capturing the political finance activities of Independent candidates at the 2022 election and noted that complexity rendered it difficult for some Independent candidates to comply.

Further, the Centre for Public Integrity, in its submission to the joint standing committee stated:

With Australian political parties declaring $1.38 billion in income of unexplained origin between 1998/99- 2020/21 … the Commonwealth's high disclosure threshold is creating a transparency void. For the 2020/21 financial year alone, 38.6% of parties' income—or $68,265,479—was of unexplained origin.

That is a huge amount of money to be swimming around the system when nobody knows where it comes from. They noted that this is significantly out of step with states' and territories' thresholds for disclosure of such donations.

During the last parliament, myself and the now Special Minister of State, in his shadow role, and other members introduced proposals to lower the reporting threshold for political donations. But we haven't seen anything yet in this parliament. So I would urge the government: when you were in opposition, you supported this, so please be the champion now and bring this into our parliament.

This bill also provides that donations include gifts. The definition of 'gift' is broadened to include electoral expenditure and gifts-in-kind to a political entity, where the value of the gift is equal to or more than $1,000 and provided without consideration or with inadequate consideration. The bill also expands the definition to include amounts paid to attend fundraisers or functions. As the member for Indi just said in a speech related to the previous bill, it is absurd that we can have a system where somebody can pay for the exclusivity of being in the company of ministers, to the tune of thousands of dollars—$20,000—just to sit at the table, and that that is not disclosed. We don't know. We need to change this system. If we want people to trust us, they need to see that big money is out of this place.

This bill does not limit the amount that may be donated, nor prevent certain organisations from making donations. I would like to see in future bills that we actually limit the amount that people can donate. They have that in Canada. They have a maximum amount that an individual can donate, and corporations can't donate. I think that that's entirely sensible. What that means is that we need to properly fund candidates and systems much better than we do in Australia. We need to get the big money influence out of politics.

I first introduced this bill back in 2019 after the Museum of Australian Democracy launched Democracy 2025 with a report entitled Trust and democracy in Australia: democratic decline and renewal. This report found that without action to address eroding trust in key institutions fewer than 10 per cent of Australians would trust their politicians and political institutions by 2025. Well, we're a year out from that, and I believe we need to stem this growing electoral arms race and lack of transparency. I believe that it threatens trust in us all—as individuals and collectively—and ultimately in democracy, so I call on all members to support this bill.

I'd like to provide my remaining time to the member for Fowler, who is seconding this bill, but I might just again read from that dissenting report from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that was tabled in 2020. In the dissenting report, Labor said:

… it is Labor's strong belief that donations reform and transparency in disclosure are the vital next steps in preventing undue influence and restoring faith in our democracy.

Thank you, and I would like to provide the rest of my time to the member for Fowler, who is seconding the bill.

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