Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I remind the minister that the substance of the motion is a request for the legislation to be referred to a committee. It's not a big ask, particularly when the minister himself, in the other place, has said for months how complicated this legislation is—indeed, it's taken six months to draft. The minister stood in a press conference on Friday with the legislation in his hand and said to journalists, 'This is a very complicated piece of legislation.' I received it as I was watching the press conference and—with apologies to the forests—printed it out and brought it with me to Canberra. That and the explanatory memorandum is the equivalent of about four bricks. If Qantas had weighed my bag I probably wouldn't have been allowed onto the plane. I have not had the opportunity to go through the detail of the legislation. That is what the committee is designed to do.

The minister seems to be asking us to take this piece of legislation in good faith. I don't think this is a good-faith conversation. I say that because the major parties were happily trucking along together until they were under threat, and now suddenly it's time to change the rules without proper scrutiny. Since I've been in this place I have barely seen the two major parties cooperate on anything. Yet, now, self-interest unites a cabal of archenemies, to the detriment of the Australian public and arguably against the will of the Australian public, to entrench their collective power.

I take exception to a few things that the minister has said. Transparency—great. Real-time disclosure—great; pretty much already doing that. And no-one in this place, I think, wants to see US-style politics in this country, least of all me. But what the crossbench is asking for is a committee to analyse this evidently very complicated piece of legislation. It won't even apply to the next election. So why can't we at least have that? I'll tell you why: the major parties don't want scrutiny on this bill, because it's full of loopholes that suit them. People should know, for example, that, while expenditure caps would apply to individual candidates, the major parties could line the highways of my marginal electorate with billboards saying, 'Vote Liberal,' and, 'Vote Labor,' uncapped. Those would not come under any expenditure cap. That is not a level playing field. I say to the government and the opposition: do better to get people to vote for you. That's why people aren't voting for you. Don't change the rules to suit yourselves; send this to a committee at the very least, because this legislation could change the shape of democracy in this country for a generation and it needs close scrutiny.

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