Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I will go through the caps in their entirety. I think it's important that we are clear on exactly how they roll out. They're outlined in the explanatory memorandum, which I referred to earlier. If we go through what the caps are for spending, I think we know that there's $800,000 for an individual seat. There's a total $90 million annual expenditure cap and the same divisional and Senate expenditure caps, regardless of party size or number of candidates the party is endorsing. That's been very clear for a long time. That's been outlined.

If we go to how that plays out, it is a cap per candidate when it comes to material that endorses an individual candidate, and that's been very clear. That's been what the government, after lots of consultation, got to. Perhaps I could just go through a little bit of the consultation the Special Minister of State has done on this. Obviously there's the inquiry, to which we saw more than 1,500 submissions provided. We had I think 12 hearings in total. Indeed, we've adopted that inquiry and its final report as the impact analysis in the explanatory memorandum. That's not always the case. That's not always how governments do things, but it's actually the government showing respect to the parliament.

We've seen consultation across the Department of Finance. I had the opportunity, last night, to thank officials of the Department of Finance who've helped with the drafting and preparation of this bill. On that, I'll also note thanks to the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, who provide all the drafting services to the Commonwealth for these types of matters.

We have consulted across a range of government agencies. Obviously, discussions have had to happen with the Australian Electoral Commission, where we're talking about new processes to make sure that what is proposed can be implemented by the independent electoral commission that we are so fortunate to have.

We've seen consultations across members of the crossbench, who are here with us now, and they know that because they've been in those conversations themselves. We've had conversations with a range of organisations. I myself have reviewed the submission that was made by Climate 200—which was thanked in the member for Curtin's inaugural speech—amongst others. We have continued to outline these proposals time and time again.

The Minister himself—going as far back as interviews he did on 26 March 2023, talking about electoral reform—has been clear that this has been a priority for the government. It's been clear that we knew we needed to do something when it came to donation reforms.

When it comes to making sure that we have spending caps, we want to make sure that those spending caps are both able to run a campaign that allows voters to get information and not give all of the power to those who have the deepest pockets. That's a really simple proposition. I don't know what it is in your ideas that are so confusing that you would need to spend more than $800,000 in an electorate of some 120,000 to 130,000 people. I don't know why you would need to spend more than that amount of money. It is a very high bar. It's a very reasonable expectation that we would have an expenditure cap.

With that, I'm noting the time. I think our time might be eating into the goods words of the Treasurer for some contributions around the economy.

Debate adjourned.

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