Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a question for the Prime Minister. You've said you will make political donations transparent, ban lies in political ads and reduce financial influence in elections. The next election is looming. Given the high public interest in this issue, will the parliament and the public have an opportunity to comment on an exposure draft, or will we be presented with a bill by the major parties that's designed to lock out political competition?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With respect to the member for Curtin, I say to the member for Curtin that the lobbying on this issue has not been exclusively from people in the major parties. And if the member for Curtin wants me to talk about some of the lobbying that's going on, including from crossbenchers, I'm happy to do so, because one of the issues that does need transparency is the issue of political donations. We have had a long position in the Labor Party—something that was overturned by the former government; something that goes back to the period of the Hawke and Keating governments—that was then overturned by the Howard government, and then there were reforms under the Labor government and then those were overturned further on.

We are consulting very broadly including with members and representatives of the crossbench and the minor parties as well as across the major parties to see if reform, as proposed by Minister Farrell, can receive very broad support. One of the objectives that we have here is to land reform that stays, not reform that comes and goes with changes of government.

My view has been very clear: there needs to be transparency when it comes to political donations, and there needs to be a stopping—to give just one example—of the sort of largess that we saw from Clive Palmer during the last two election campaigns. I don't think it is tenable at all to have the sorts of dollars washing around the system such as occurs in the United States. I think that is unhealthy and I think it undermines our democracy.

I make no apologies for the fact that we will engage, as I have engaged with the member for Curtin and other crossbenchers at meetings that have been held about these issues. I will continue to do so. Senator Farrell, as the minister, will continue to make himself available to see if we can, indeed, entrench greater support for our democracy.

I realise that in a whole range of ways there are a range of changes in technology and changes in practice that are undermining faith in our democracy. That is something we've been determined to do. We promised to have a national anticorruption commission up and running. We did that. We did that in record time. It was promised previously by former governments and was delivered by this government, consistent with our approach to cleaning up politics.