Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Fair and Transparent Elections) Bill 2024. Over the last couple of federal elections there has been a major shift. Australian communities are asking more from their politicians—greater integrity and accountability. They're not interested in the business-as-usual duopoly of the two major parties. They're also incredibly disillusioned with the state of transparency and accountability around elections. It's well past time we fixed this and introduced legislation to ensure greater integrity, transparency and accountability when electing our politicians but also to ensure a competitive field and more choice.

Democracy thrives through the debate of ideas and having a variety of candidates articulating those ideas. This ensures communities have more choice when it comes to electing those who represent them. A system that entrenches the status quo controlled by two major parties limits participation in our democratic process. At the last federal election the combined major party vote was at its lowest on record, and the minor party and independent vote was at its highest, at 31.7 per cent. That's a third of Australians already, on the primary vote, voting outside the major parties.

Then we have the question of funding. We have two systems of disclosures where community independents have to disclose in a vastly different time to the major parties. We also know there is a huge amount of dark money. The origin of at least $57 million in political donations to major parties from 2022 to 2023 is unknown. This amounts to one-quarter of major party funding coming from dark money—don't see that on the front page of the newspapers! Voters want transparency on donations. They want choice. This bill is urgently needed to give voters that transparency and choice. It will improve accountability, it will protect voters from outright lies, it will reduce financial influence and it will level the playing field and limit excessive donations.

We have this crazy double standard where we are protecting consumer rights from misleading and deceptive advertising but not political rights. I am very pleased that the elements of my voter protections bill are included to ban misleading and deceptive political advertising. We know from polling from the Australia Institute last October that some 87 per cent of Australians agree that truth-in-political-advertising laws should be in place in time for the next federal election. So here is the opportunity for the government. It's already two years into this term. It's not enough to say that part of your policy position is to want greater integrity and transparency in elections. Now is your chance to act. This bill sends a blueprint to the parliament and to the Australian people of the kind of election reform we can do. There are the numbers to get this done now, before the next election. I commend this bill to the House.

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