Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to make the observation that there was a member of the Labor Party in the Senate who left the Labor Party and joined the crossbench, and there has been quite a lot of discussion in the media about whether it was appropriate for her to stay on the crossbench, given that she was not elected on her own basis as she was elected on the basis of the party. I think that is really the point that I'm trying to make here. You could run in my seat. You could not have a candidate until the last possible moment that the election is called. You could run a candidate in my seat and you could actually not spend a single dollar with somebody's name on it as an electoral candidate, and they would still probably get, if they were from the Liberal Party, maybe a primary of 30 per cent, just on the basis of the party alone.

I cannot understand how the government—and the minister, who's obviously not listening to me, because he's having an animated conversation with somebody else, but that's his prerogative—can pretend that this is even, that this is levelling the playing field, when there is so much advantage from having those major parties behave in that case.

I'm going to ask some other questions of the minister, because I think they're important questions. I'm not sure if I am going to get an answer to them. Before I do, I want to make a personal apology. I named a staff member in my comments yesterday and I shouldn't have done that. I apologise unreservedly for that. I should reserve all my comments to the ministers and the people who are responsible.

My questions are about nominated entities. The government is making the case that this fair, that we are 'all on the same playing field', and pieces like that. My concern is that the government and the opposition have these nominated entities which have perhaps up to $100 million in them; we don't know how much money is in them. My understanding of the legislation, which is still imperfect because I only got it on Friday, means that these entities are able to give the Labor Party or the Liberal Party any amount of money that they want. They're not subject to the donation caps that any other member is subject to.

To use a sporting analogy, because there are a lot of people who love sports in this area, my question is: if every team in the AFL had to comply with a salary cap but the two teams that had been going the longest—let's call them Melbourne and Geelong, not the Swans—didn't have the same salary caps, would that be seen as fair? That is my question, really, to the government in relation to this: is it okay that because the McCormick Foundation—which potentially holds up to $100 million worth of assets—was built and grew wealthy before this legislation, it can make any donation of any amount it wants to the Liberal Party, for example, and is not subject to any sorts of donation caps at all? So anyone who wants to give me or anyone else money—even in a party that has not been established—can't give more than $20,000, but it's okay for the McCormick Foundation, because it has been around for ages and reportedly has $100 million in assets, to give as much money as it wants to the Liberal Party.

Similarly in the case of the Labor Party, there are institutions that can give as much money as they want. Do you think that's fair, or should these institutions—if we're really going to level the playing field—perhaps be subject to the same donation caps as everybody else is in this country? It's a genuine question. Why are there no donation caps on the assets of these organisations, these nominated entities, which are not the Labor Party or the Liberal Party? They're entities close to them but they're not the same thing. Why should they be able to give unlimited donations?

Why should everybody else not be able to have these sorts of donations? Or why is there not some sort of management? If you don't have a nominated entity, why don't you for instance get to have a higher donation cap so that there's a chance for, again, challengers to build up their war chest, like the McCormick Foundation and the Labor Party's entities? That's a question I still do not have an answer to, and I think it goes to the heart of why I don't think this is an extremely fair bill.

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