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

Under standing order 143, I move:

That Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024 and the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Communications) Bill 2024 be referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Reform for consideration and an advisory report by 3 March 2025.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion. These bills, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024 and the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Communications) Bill 2024, make significant changes to who can get into parliament, especially the first one, the electoral reform bill, and they should not be rushed through.

The government has said it has consulted thoroughly, but this is not the case. The remit for the JSCEM—Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters—inquiry was much broader, and the conclusions were very high level. The government said it has consulted, but we did not see any legislation until a few days ago. With such a fundamental change, we need to consider all the consequences, intended and unintended, and this has not been done.

The assistant minister spoke about trust and wanting to build trust, but the process here does anything but build trust in our parliamentary processes and the way laws are passed. There is a need for reform. We desperately need transparency, and I think there's a good case for donation caps at some level. But this bill goes so much further, with a massive increase in public funding and spending caps that tip the balance in favour of parties and incumbents. We really need to have serious public scrutiny before this is passed.

I'll give a bit of history and context on why this needs serious scrutiny now. There has been a consistent decline in support for the major parties over the last 40 years. At the last election we saw the lowest primary vote for majors, with one in three voters voting for a minor or an Independent with their primary vote. The will of the people is changing, and this is a threat to the major parties. Parties are now machines that are designed to win not lead, but like any institution the parties have a strong immune system and are fighting to retain power. This bill is a desperate attempt to arrest that trend.

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters did an inquiry into the 2022 election, and I sat on that inquiry on that committee. Evidence was heard. A report was put forward. I put in my additional comments on the parts of the evidence that the major parties ignored. They were positions put forward by experts, academics, democracy think tanks—people with an interest in the health of our system rather than in preserving the existing power structures.

I provided a path that the government could have taken that showed that it was respecting the will of the people and the integrity of our political system through the restoring trust bill last August and through the fair and transparent elections bill that was introduced in both houses in February. The government could have worked with the crossbench to pass legislation, with appropriate review and inquiries.

The government stated that its policy was real-time disclosure above $1,000, and there have been many private members' bills that have been put forward about improving transparency like this. But the government said it couldn't do this transparency change without addressing other issues such as banning lies and political donations, which are now in a separate bill anyway.

I and other crossbenchers have engaged in good faith with the minister and provided a pathway to good reform without it being a major party stitch-up. The government kept saying that it was working on a bill dealing with all parts of electoral reform together. We now have two separate bills, one massively increasing public funding and imposing caps that will lock out competitors and one dealing with banning lies, which is probably destined to go nowhere in this parliament.

There have been so many delays and radio silence on the basis that this is very complicated and that the drafting was very difficult. We suspected that we might see a last-minute stitch-up by the major parties, presented now at the end of the term, to lock in party advantage while it's still possible. That's exactly what we've got. If the major parties want to rebuild trust and regain their vote share, this is not the way to do it.

If this bill is so complicated that it has taken an entire term of parliament to draft, surely it needs to be considered by a committee and the public needs to be given an opportunity to comment. The experts, the people who don't have a vested interest and are interested in protecting political competition and allowing our democracy to keep evolving, need to be able to look at this in detail before it gets passed as law. Voters can see through this cynical approach and this cynical attempt to lock in the declining support for the majors.

Last time electoral reform was attempted there was public outcry about the increased public funding, and it was dropped. Why would it be any different now? It's very hard to see that this is anything other than an attempt to push it through without appropriate review. It needs two types of scrutiny. Firstly, we need scrutiny on the intended outcome of the bill. We don't let Coles and Woolies make the laws about supermarket competition, but here we've got the two major parties banding together to make the laws about who can compete with them. It also needs scrutiny to look at the unintended consequences of the way it's been drafted. This is 224 pages long. We've had a few days to look at it. No-one outside a few crossbenchers and a few people have been given access to it. It needs external review so that the experts can really look at this, and, if it's such complicated drafting, let's make sure we know what it's actually going to do.

There are a number of issues within the bill that mean it should urgently move to a committee rather than be pushed through. On the public funding, this bill asks taxpayers to pay more to have less choice. There's a huge increase in funding here. Estimates seem to say that it would have been about $70 million more in taxpayers' funding if it had been applied in 2022. Those numbers may not be exactly right, and all those numbers are based on what we suspect at this point, so we need to understand that more deeply. We haven't had enough time to go through it in detail. But this is a massive slap in the face to Australians during a cost-of-living crisis, and it has the effect of locking in the major parties and the incumbents.

The funding is done based on the last election, so, if you didn't run in the last election, you don't have access to any funding. To add insult to injury, the major parties can tap into this funding in advance of an election, based on what they expect to win. The fact that this is possible shows that this a reliable revenue stream for the status quo and creates another hurdle for challengers. It also includes a huge increase in administrative funding, which, in my mind, is a ridiculous bribe. There is no relationship between the additional $30,000 per year per MP and the actual increase in administrative costs. This is clearly aimed at getting broad support from both the major parties. It translates to about $17 million in extra taxpayer funding every year—three-quarters of which goes to major parties. There is not a linear relationship between the number of MPs and the administrative task, and no boardroom in the country would accept that the administrative costs were going to increase with the number of people involved. There are economies of scale. We know the ALP currently has four people to meet the administrative needs of 104 parliamentarians. This would massively increase that, and there needs to be some evidence that it will actually cause an increase in workload that's commensurate with the increase in funding, but there is absolutely no clear argument being put forward for why that number was chosen.

Spending caps sound great. No-one likes to see too much money in politics, but, effectively, they lock in the status quo and create a non-level playing field. In drafting my legislation, I tried to find a model that worked on spending caps, but it is almost impossible. But, if your address transparency and donation caps, the spending caps become obsolete. If 5,000 people donate $200 each to a candidate, why shouldn't they be allowed to spend that on a campaign? The spending caps model locks in the incumbents in two ways. Firstly, it doesn't account for incumbent advantages. As a sitting MP, I have these advantages. I have an office. I have a car. I have a team. I have a budget for communications in the hundreds of thousands. None of these count towards my $800,000 cap, but a new challenger would have to fund all of these things. That is not a level playing field. Secondly, it doesn't account for party advantage. There's an outrageous exemption to the divisional cap for party advertising. As long as they stay within their $90 million cap, a party can advertise as much as it likes against a challenger, saying, 'Vote for the Liberal Party,' or 'Vote for the Labor Party,' and that doesn't count towards the $800,000 cap. That is not a level playing field. The government will say that they're caught by the $90 million cap. Sure, if a party intended to run a hard campaign in every seat in the country, then they would have to spend less than $800,000 in each seat because of this cap, but we all know how this actually works. If, for example, a party ran a full $800,000 personalised campaign in 100 seats, they then would have a $10 million spare party funding budget which they could use to target 12 contested seats to double the spending of their challengers. They could double that, and that's not even counting their incumbency benefits.

We desperately need transparency. People should know who's funding their candidates before they vote. But this could have been done on any day of this parliament with the support of both houses. This does not need to be bundled up with this package of reforms that locks in the status quo. The problem with it now is they've left it so late that it won't start in time for the next election. At the next election, you will have no idea how much the parties are spending in each electorate. Passing this bill now will not solve that problem. If this is not going to work in time for the next election, we might as well slow it down and actually look at the legislation and see if this is what the Australian public actually want, as now one in three are now casting their primary vote for someone other than the major parties.

Even within the transparency legislation that's being put forward there are so many exemptions to the definition of 'gift'. We need to go through those with a fine-tooth comb. The definition of 'gift' has been expanded in some small ways, but there is a three-page list of exemptions to what is a gift. This includes: subscriptions, memberships, related party payments, annual levies on members' staff and employees, disposition of property between members of a party's expenditure group or branches, any equipment sharing, office accommodation, a bequest, a loan, a gift to an MP for their personal use and a gift not paid into a federal account. Some of these might be very valid, but these need to be looked at if we're going to make this change. The public deserves better.

In summary, this bill is a travesty. It dresses up a cynical, anticompetitive oligopoly play as reform which is being fed to an unsuspecting public, with the major parties pretending that it will actually make our system better. There are huge problems with the process it's gone through. There are problems with the massive increase to public funding which locks in the status quo. There are problems with limiting spending in a way that creates an uneven playing field for new challenges. The transparency reform is too little, too late. And it's a huge disappointment and insult to the electorate, who demanded better. The major parties are relying on the increasing disengagement of the public, the complexity of this bill, the crowded media space and rushing it through to get away with the only path they've got left to arrest the trend of declining support for the sclerotic leadership the two parties offer to the public.

My community sent a message to the major parties at the last election that they will not be taken for granted, they will not be taken for fools and they expect something better than what the major parties are offering. If this goes through the parliament with no inquiry and no public scrutiny, the only choice the public will have is to speak to the major parties in the only currency they understand: votes. I urge the government to act in the public interest, not in its own interest, and refer this to a committee hearing so that the unintended and intended consequences can be fully understood and the experts and the public can have an opportunity to comment and decide whether this is the direction we want to take our democracy.

I second the member for Curtin's motion and strongly agree with the call that these two bills must go to inquiry and be properly examined. The hubris and hypocrisy from the government today in justifying their actions to bring forward this legislation are breathtaking. I call on every member of the government side and the opposition to think carefully about what you are doing if you put your name to this legislation. At a time of cost-of-living pressures, these two major parties have cooked up a new deal on new political donation laws designed to keep them in power, and they want the public to pay for it. The hubris is staggering. We need to reform our broken system of political donations; no-one disagrees with that. It is wrong that a billionaire can spend $132 million on trying to get his candidate selected, that there are no limits on corporate donations, especially when companies actually have government contracts, and that it takes months for donations to political parties to be disclosed. And, when they are, they're not broken down in a seat-by-seat way.

But what we do want to see is scrutiny on this major piece of reform. This piece of legislation is substantial. It has taken a huge amount of time to bring it here, and the government is proposing to table it today, force a debate this week and then have us vote on it by the end of the week. That is just the height of insult to the Australian people; that is the best way we can put it.

No-one wants Australia to drift towards a US system where political campaigns have become multibillion dollar exercises, forcing candidates into an unholy dance with big donors to raise the cash they need. We also don't want to end up like the US with a malaise of only two choices—and two poor choices at that—that don't end up delivering good policies for the future.

The bill introduced today—and I've got to say that the member for Perth was really given the dud job of the government to have to table this bill and put your name to it—is said to have the coalition's support, so it will be interesting to see every coalition member maybe exercise their free vote and think carefully of their integrity if they are genuinely going to support this bill. It is highly beneficial to major parties and it smacks of a dirty deal designed to cement their duopoly.

Independents and minor party representatives now make up 12 per cent of the House and 27 per cent of the Senate, yet we have not been consulted on this legislation for months. I first saw a copy of this and was briefed at 12.30 yesterday, less than 24 hours ago. This bill will have such a long consequence to Australian democracy, and yet there is no scrutiny being allowed on this bill. We're being presented with this 215-page bill making significant reform to our electoral process with less than 24 hours and now a proposal that Labor and the coalition intend to rush it through the House this week without proper inquiry, despite the fact it's not intended to come into effect until 2028. Send it off for inquiry and get a report in the new year—unless the intention is that we're not going to come back in the new year. Maybe the government can come clean to the Australian people on that.

There appears to be a flagrant double standard. I understand that, whilst the donation reform will be pushed through with no scrutiny this week, the truth-in-political-advertising bill is intended to languish. The government has no intention to push that one for debate and to a vote, because it wouldn't want to be stopped from lying when it comes to its advertising. Not only are the Australian people being asked to pay more to political parties; they're actually going to have to pay for the privilege of being lied to as well, because there's a constant delay in introducing voter protections. The last time the two major parties got together to agree on an 'integrity measure' was the National Anti-Corruption Commission. Look how well that turned out: a body that has not held a single public hearing has failed to deal with some of our biggest sector scandals, like robodebt, and has adverse findings about its handling of internal conflicts of interest.

Worse still, when it comes to donations, the government is proposing to reach into public coffers now to top up the shortfalls the major parties will experience as a result of their new fundraising constraints. At a time when cost-of-living pressures are a daily worry for households, they are proposing to give themselves an extra boost to funding. Under the government's proposal, public funding per vote will rise from $3.50 to $5 at a cost that is north of $100 million. They can't find the money to top up payments for people on JobSeeker or to deal with the rental crisis, but apparently we can afford additional largesse to the political class. The hypocrisy is staggering. Asking taxpayers to pay more to fund the major parties while making it harder for new entrants to participate has the unmistakable feel of rigging the market.

The bill proposes restrictions on the size of donations and the total amount that can be given by individuals, but it is the proposed spending caps which, in my view, are deliberately designed to put a foot on the scales in favour of our major parties. The government has made it sound like the problem is from the billionaires that fund candidates, but the real problem comes from within the parties, with 23 per cent of the major parties' donation receipts to the Australian Electoral Commission showing a non-declared source. That accounts for around $290 million over the past five years going to the major parties' coffers with no public record of where it came from.

Under this proposed bill, major parties will now be able to spend up to $90 million nationally while a person that chooses to stand as an independent in a seat will be restricted to spending $800,000 in a particular seat. Sure, the major party MP or candidate will also be subject to that candidate cap in a particular seat, but, at the same time, the major party can run a parallel Senate ticket campaign and its political party advertising. It's clear that that $90 million cap will not be spent evenly across candidates by the parties and can be put disproportionately in marginal seats to fend off a challenger.

The major parties will run national television brand campaigns to reach into everyone's living rooms. They can run a centralised campaign office, databases and infrastructure. An Independent taking on a major party candidate must set that up from scratch. To add insult to injury, the proposal in this bill is that an incumbent party or MP will have access to a $30,000-a-year admin cost. It's a linear increase for the parties but a challenger has nothing. The challenger has the 'thanks for coming; you can bear the cost', but a major party MP gets the public purse to pay for it. It's such a gross imbalance and it will be such a weakening of our democracy. It is not a strengthening, because the contest to enter into parliament will be less fair.

Duopolies stifle competition, just like with Coles and Woolies. If the major parties make it too difficult for new players to enter, Australians will end up with fewer choices and poor policy outcomes. Independents bring smart solutions and positive impacts. That is the difference, and that is why the Australian public are turning away from major parties. They can see through this. Whilst the government delivered this on a Friday afternoon, like putting out the trash—no different to the Morrison government when it comes to that tactic—the Australian people will absolutely see through this. The big call in the 2025 election will be that we need to get as many Independents into this parliament as possible, because this piece of legislation is stifling competition. It is there to make sure that political parties are just here for power, not for actual smart solutions and real legislation.

We need to deal with lies in political advertising. The government has put forward its misinformation and disinformation bill, and that has been contentious and has concerned many. It's a necessary guardrail, but there are concerns. It would be the height of hypocrisy if, then, the government does not proceed with pushing for the truth-in-political-advertising bill to be debated and voted on with urgency.

The public can have one standard, but the political class has a different one. It is outrageous. I very strongly support the member for Curtin's motion that this bill should be sent to inquiry. Both bills should be treated equally. The Australian public deserves a robust democracy and the opportunity to participate fairly. We need a fair and equal playing field, and this bill is just trying to lock in a monopoly by the major parties.

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

Given some of what we've heard—and I know we'll hear from a range of members who want to make contributions on suggestions of where this bill should now go—I want to restate, while we've moved on to a different topic, some of the background as to how we've ended up at this point, all of the consultation that has occurred up until this point and also the intention of these reforms. As I said before, they are the largest reforms and improvements to Australian democracy in some 40 years.

This latest round goes back to 5 August 2022, when the Special Minister of State wrote to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters requesting that they initiate a review into the last election as a standard practice but with a specific focus on donation reforms, funding of elections, limits on spending, truth in advertising and how we enhance electoral participation. I commend the Special Minister of State for doing that because, rather than just providing the normal reference, he looked to what it was that we needed to preserve Australian democracy for the future.

We saw incredibly diligent work from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, releasing an interim report on 19 June 2022 and their final report on 27 November 2023, recommending, amongst the things that we now see in front of us, lower disclosure thresholds, real-time reporting, donation caps, spending caps, the introduction of administrative funding and a number of other electoral participation reforms.

Having gone through all that process—all of that work done by members on the crossbench, the opposition, government, the Greens party and elsewhere—you would expect that the government would then follow through on our commitment, and we did. The minister released a statement welcoming and accepting the findings of that review and committing that we would find ourselves in the place we find ourselves today: in this term looking at what we can do to further enhance our electoral system but with a specific focus on the influence of big money in politics.

I think that is something that many in the Australian community are concerned about. They see those who have access to millions, hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. When people have access to that amount of capital, does it mean that we have a less-than-level playing field? Indeed, I've come to the conclusion it does and that we need to do something about it. That's the conclusion the government has come to. Just to remind those following along with this debate: what is actually being proposed? These are very sensible amendments. Australia's electoral system is one of the strongest in the world. We have people time and time again look to our system for what can be learnt for other stable or emerging democracies. I think Australia proudly does that work, whether we be sending parliamentarians on parliamentary exchanges to share insight, sharing across the public service or, indeed, having the Electoral Commission itself engage with other election regulatory bodies.

Let's go through these broad policy proposals again. There would be caps on receiving donations, with a capped amount of $20,000 to a recipient for each individual donor per calendar year. That's reasonable. That's not just about making sure that we don't have big money; it's also about making sure that you don't have people who might have those $2 million campaigns disproportionately funded by one source or another. There would be an anti-avoidance measure to ensure that individual donors can donate only a capped amount per calendar year and only a capped amount to any individual state or territory per calendar year. There would be a cap on campaign spending, ensuring that entities are able to spend only a capped amount on electoral expenditure per calendar year, tied into the federal caps—again, making sure it is the quality of the ideas, not just the quality of your fundraising, that determines who ends up in parliament. This would clarify the definition of a gift so that we capture more of the funds that are coming into the federal campaign accounts. It would lower the disclosure threshold. At the moment, even with those who claim to be disclosing every donation, we see time and time again declarations of anonymous donations, going from that $16,900 index figure down to $1,000. Again, this would make sure that we have a much better idea of who is putting money where and who is funding what campaigns and make sure that Australian voters know where that money is going in real time. I just said before that under the current system voters have to wait up to 24 weeks to find out who funded a campaign. That's just not acceptable, and we should take action to change that. That's why this bill requires that entities will be required to disclose monthly in arrears during the term, weekly once the writ is issued and then daily within the seven days leading up to an election and the seven days after the election, because it's really important that we have that transparency and that people don't time or game the system.

We've got mandated federal campaign accounts to make sure that it is possible and easy for the Australian Electoral Commission to audit donations and election funding and to make sure that electoral expenditure is paid out of it. Again, this would enhance compliance for those who are standing for election—and I note that everyone who will speak in this debate is someone who has been successful at an election. Indeed, by having the mandated federal campaign accounts, we're also making sure that those who are unsuccessful are held to a higher standard of scrutiny and accountability and also that there are sensible ways that encourage people to participate in Australia's great democracy. We should encourage people to nominate. We should encourage people to have the contest of ideas at the ballot box. This bill does that.

We do have increases to public funding and provisions for advances of public funding. Again, unashamedly, this is all about reducing the influence of big money on elections and recognising that we have a higher level of transparency and accountability work that needs to be done. I don't want to stand here in three years time with someone saying that, because they didn't have the resources, they couldn't comply. Every member, including Independents, will be provided with additional support to make sure that we have compliance and to make sure that the Australian people get the information they want. Also, there are sensible transitional provisions to make sure that the Australian Electoral Commission, admired around the world, can implement this in an effective way.

As we stand here today, we know that billionaires—people with hundreds of millions of dollars—are increasingly using their wealth to influence Australian elections. If we don't act now, our democracy is on track to become an arms race of the biggest spending, with endless fundraising and vested interests. We should act to restrict big donors and we should act to strengthen Australia's independent Electoral Commission.

To those who might say this comes as a surprise: I point out the minister gave the referral more than two years ago, indicating the policy directions he was interested in exploring. The Special Minister of State has talked about this. There are transcripts available on his website of interviews going back to 26 March 2023 and 19 June 2023, and a media release of 28 November 2023 welcoming the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters' final report. He gave an interview this year on ABC Afternoon Briefing in April. He gave a speech to the McKell Institute on 24 September 2024. He held a press conference announcing this legislation at the end of last week. We've had multiple inquiries and looked at this over multiple terms. We've got members speaking on the crossbench—including the member for Curtin, who sits on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The minister has been public about his intentions on donation and spending caps.

When it comes to how we've put this legislation together: we have put that report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters as the impact analysis, to meet the impact analysis requirements. That report itself is the impact analysis because it looked at these things so thoroughly. We had 1,496 submissions. We had hearings here in Parliament House. We had a range of community organisations here. We had four days of hearings in Parliament House, and we came back for another round, another three days, of hearings. People got to have their say. It is important to note in this debate that if the position of the crossbench is that there should be no spending cap they should just say so. That position is an unsustainable position to hold. There should be a spending cap.

I also note a number of members, either collectively or individually, have met with the Special Minister of State. I put on the record that the member for Curtin has met with the Special Minister of State multiple times. If you disagree with the capping of expenditure, just say so. It is an unsustainable position. It is time to set things right. It is time to act on the recommendations of a committee report that's been on the table for a year. It is time to get this done.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to 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.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take a moment to just reframe this debate because I think there's a lot of heat in this chamber at the moment, and rightfully so. We are all incredibly passionate advocates for our community and for our democracy, and I think there's not a single person in this building who doesn't believe that the reason this parliament operates at its best when it's operating at its best is that we come here presenting the opinions of hundreds of thousands of people. The truth of the matter is that every member in this chamber represents over 100,000 Australians. Our democracy was built on the very basis that every community should have the right to send somebody to speak for them in a way which is consistent with their voice.

I rise today to support the member for Curtin's motion because I cannot see how it is an unreasonable motion. This reform is warranted. This reform is necessary. Australians need to know that their democracy is healthy. Australians have a right to know who is giving what money to whom, and they have a right to know how that money is being spent. You are not going to get an argument from me against that reform. What is egregious in the way that this legislation is proceeding is that—and I say this with respect to the assistant minister, through you, Deputy Chair—there has been a very long process of consultation to even get us to the point for this legislation to be tabled. There have been many voices that have been heard. We know there were hundreds of submissions on this matter made. But the report that came from the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters was incredibly high level. And there was a dissenting report. There were additional comments made to that report. It's great that we finally have a minister who said he's prepared to listen to a committee and to work with his staff to bring forward a piece of legislation. But why stop that transparency, that accountability, that reviewing process, now? This is the bit that makes no sense to me. We've done the work, we've done the consultation, the legislation is prepared—great. This parliament still has near on six months to run. May next year is when this parliament formally expires. Why is the government insisting on introducing this massive piece of legislation as of Friday—I got it on Sunday—and telling us they want it through the House this week? What I've come to learn in this place is that we do not do good policy when we seek to rush it. We do not do good policy when we're afraid to have it scrutinised. The very first Independent in my seat of North Sydney, Ted Mack, was very clear when he said that it is true that the best policy comes when the opinions of many are weighed up against the opinions of few. Whether we want to believe it or not, or whether the government wants to accept it or not, at the moment, these are the opinions of a few. These are the opinions of the government in terms of how they've listened to the JSCEM report, how they've interpreted it and how they've turned it into legislation.

I support the member for Curtin's motion to have it referred to a committee because, by doing that, we enable the opinions of many to be taken on board in terms of what this reform looks like. As a participatory democracy—a democracy that exists to represent ordinary Australians—ordinary Australians should have every right to know that this piece of legislation has been laid open in the sun for all to see and really deeply understand.

I do not understand why, in the interests of transparency, accountability and integrity, the right course of action for this legislation is not for it to be referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and taken through an inquiry process and for a report from that committee to come back—if you want it before the next election—next March. That would still give us ample time to deal with this legislation before this parliamentary term ends.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024, smells like the Christmas ham on 6 January. It is a sneaky piece of legislation which is aimed at entrenching the dominance of the major political parties in this country. It looks superficially attractive, but any close examination reveals that its dominant purpose is to protect the self-interest of Labor and the coalition and to pull up the drawbridge against the Independents and the small parties.

The bill will limit donations and spending on federal elections. In principle, that is a good thing; we all want to see the financial influence on government in this country restricted. The bill will also increase the amount of taxpayers' money used to reimburse political parties and candidates, and that could be a good thing. However, caps on spending benefit those MPs who are already in this parliament over the candidates who choose to run against them at elections. They allow parties to concentrate their spending on target seats. They enable them to outspend Independent candidates in those seats.

Similar legislation—we've seen it already in Victoria and New South Wales—decimated independent representation in those states, and it shored up the flagging, bloated and tired major parties. Donation caps do not prevent cash-for-access payments to ministers or to shadow ministers, and they are unlikely to limit the effect of the associated entities which now account for a third of the cash which flows to the Liberal and Labor parties.

Let's be open about this: this legislation is aimed at propping up incumbency. It's aimed at helping those people who are already in parliament to stay there, and it's aimed at stopping Independents and small parties coming on board. That is why the Labor Party and the coalition have worked together secretly for months on this legislation. They have cooked up something which they are now rushing through parliament at the last possible minute. This is not the sort of transparent, bipartisan reform that our voters would like to see, and that they deserve. It is a dodgy deal cooked up behind closed doors because the big parties are, with good reason, increasingly spooked by the Independents.

The legislation has not been subject to appropriate review, and the government does not propose to subject it to appropriate review—by either house—by parliamentary committee or by independent experts. It won't effect the 2025 election, so there is absolutely no reason to push it through with this unseemly haste. The only reason the government is doing this with the coalition is that it does not want the public to recognise how poorly the major parties are behaving with this bill.

In 2022, one-third of Australian voters voted for Independents and small parties. In 2025, we will encourage them to remember this sort of cynical political manoeuvring when they decide who they can trust to represent them further.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to add my voice to those in this section of the House, the crossbench, in support of the member for Curtin's call for an inquiry into this piece of legislation—a referral of it to the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters. We're talking about legislation. We're not talking about report that was tabled. We're not talking about some vague set of principles and ideas. We're talking about laws, and the parliament that I love is the parliament that uses all its tools to interrogate laws that will be sitting on the statute books for a long time.

The community that brought me to this parliament brought me here with a very clear mandate to ask for greater scrutiny, to shine a light into dark corners, to turn up the torch and, indeed, to turn up the heat when I see something that isn't right. And when I look at this legislation, that's what I see—and so far it has only been a look. As my colleagues have said, no exposure draft was circulated to the broader parliament. There was no opportunity to look at the detail on this legislation. It seems that the only opportunity that was given to interrogate this legislation was a cosy interrogation that happened behind the closed doors of goodness knows where between the government and the opposition.

Any person out in broader Australia who is listening to this debate can smell a rat. I certainly can. There are good elements to this bill—elements that I've called for, for a long time: lowering the disclosure threshold—good idea; I've been doing it since I was elected, and it's not that hard. The major parties, though, of course need to have significant investment of public funds in order to do that—on every seat, it seems, even though most funds go into a general pool. In such a piece of legislation, the details are thick—so thick that we don't want to investigate them or interrogate them through an inquiry.

I think when you look at this bill you ask, 'Well, what does the label on the can say?' The label on the can says 'electoral reform'. Who could argue with that? We need it; clearly we do. We need big money to be taken out of politics; we absolutely do. We need transparency and real-time exposure of who is donating to whom and influencing policies and politicians; we do. We need a diverse parliament. How many times have I seen members of this place stand up and beat their chest about having representation from all kinds of people? But the details of this legislation, the bits the government doesn't want you to see, are really designed to make sure we can't flip a seat from an incumbent.

When it comes to self-interest, this legislation is not going to affect many of us, myself included, because I am an incumbent and I have all the advantages that go with that. But I don't want to win a race that I have all the advantages in. That doesn't bring me a sense of having been the best competitor. This is not about levelling the playing field. This is about making the mountain more difficult to climb for anyone who dares to say that the major parties don't have all the answers.

This was an opportunity for this government to be statespeople, an opportunity to show the Australian public what integrity is all about, what courage is all about, by saying: 'Do you know what? The Australian people have lost so much faith in their democracy and we're going to help to restore it. But when it comes to the scrutiny, well, we're not going to allow that, actually. We're not going to circulate an exposure draft for the whole parliament to see. No: we're going to introduce a bill into the House of Representatives. We're going to drop it on a Friday. Maybe some of the Independents will get their hands on it on the weekend and then cause a bit of a fuss on a Monday'—and here we are, doing that; I'm glad that we have fulfilled that destiny—'and then we're going to ram it through the House as quickly as we can.'

Won't it be fascinating to see who's on the speaking list when we have this debate? How many members of the coalition will stand up and call for greater scrutiny? How many members of the government will stand up and look to the detail, look to those pages of exclusions when it comes to the definition of a gift? I'll be very curious to see who's on the speaking list, actually.

Just imagine, as one of my colleagues, the member for Goldstein, said, if we saw the two major parties walking into this chamber in a spirit of collaboration on some of the big existential questions this parliament faces. Just imagine: they've gone away together on a little camp, perhaps, and come together into the parliament with strong evidence based, scientifically backed policy on climate change and are saying, 'Australia, this is what we're going to do, and we're going to do it together.' Just imagine that. We'd all be here cheering. But no, we're not doing that.

This is one of those moments, really—if a person was a bit cynical; I don't know why they would be out there in constituency land!—that feels like a Deirdre Chambers 'what a coincidence' moment: we're in the chamber today with the two major parties coming together with this wonderful gift for democracy that's called electoral reform.

So, I fully support this legislation going to the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters. If it is as good as the minister has told us it is, and he's really confident, then he won't be afraid of scrutiny. He'll be welcoming it. He'll be using every parliamentary tool there is because there's no rush on this, is there? No rush whatsoever! The only rush is to get truth in political advertising, and we're not going near that. The only rush is to get real-time political donation transparency—no rush on that either, it seems. But there's a big rush on making sure that we lock this in before the potential for perhaps a different make-up in the chamber, come the outcome of the next election, when it may not be so easy to do a cosy deal.

I will pause here and allow others to speak. My central contention here right now is that, if this bill is as good as the government says, then let's not just leave it to trust; let's leave it to scrutiny, which is what a parliament's all about.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've always got to be careful when this parliament heads towards Christmas, because that's when Labor and Liberal try and put a lump of coal in the democracy stocking. Their rushed legislation is very often bad legislation. We just heard the minister say that this was—I think I'm quoting him correctly—the largest reform in 40 years of the foundations of the way that our democracy works. The motion that we're debating right now—it's important for people who are listening to understand this—is not about whether we're voting for or against that bill or whether there are good provisions, bad provisions or provisions that need to be improved in it; it's about whether there should be any inquiry into whether the bill does what it says on the tin.

Now, it is the usual practice in this place that, when bills are brought here, a committee of one house or another, or in this instance both, scrutinises that legislation. That's the normal course. It's especially the normal course when very significant pieces of legislation are brought here. What we've seen, in the way that this chamber has worked in the past, is that, when bills are allowed to go through that process of scrutiny, they are very often improved. Not only that but you often find flaws in the bill that were unintended. That is why we have this process that has worked this way for a very long time.

That is even more important when you're passing legislation that, on the government's own admission, has no need for urgency because it won't affect this coming election but will affect the one after that. That's what the government has said. So there's absolutely no justification for not doing the thing that we do with pretty much every other piece of legislation in this place, which is to have an inquiry into it.

For a very, very long time the Greens in this place, together with others, including others who have spoken here today and others who have come before, have been arguing strongly that the rules around who gets to fund and, in many instances, 'own' politicians in this place need to change—that we need greater transparency and we need greater disclosure. We have argued that for a very long time. As others, including here on the crossbench, have said, there are some good measures in what the government is proposing, in many instances because they've picked up measures that we've all been advocating for a very long time. But there's a lot more in the bill.

As the point was made, one of the other things that I think most people would expect should exist in our laws, truth in advertising, is not part of this rush. It's not part of the rush. So the onus is really on the government to explain why, in what they are calling the largest reform in 40 years, they want to bypass the standard practice of this parliament and not have any scrutiny of the bills whatsoever. One of the things they might say—and I saw the minister shaking his head at the table before, saying, 'No, there is an urgency.' Let's just take that for a moment. Let's assume that the government is right. Something else—and it's critical that people listening understand this—is that, when the government has brought legislation to parliament before and said that they need to get this through in, say, a week, even then they've had inquiries into it. Now, sometimes those inquiries have run for just a couple of days. In one of those instances—we saw it here this year in parliament—the government brought a piece of legislation in. We in the Senate managed to secure an inquiry into it. Through that inquiry, so many problems were found in the bill that the government pulled it altogether and hasn't even brought it back, if I recall correctly.

Inquiries into legislation can do their job and often find problems in it that even the government and this parliament have used to say, 'Okay, we may not progress the bill,' or, 'We're going to fix it.' In the context where people are raising some very serious concerns about what it means for democracy to entrench a two-party system, to use this to try to effectively tilt the playing field so a certain outcome is more likely than a different outcome in a way that affects the will of the people—given the seriousness of that, that is all the more reason for there to be an inquiry into this legislation. I think the test that most people in this country now will have for every piece of legislation that comes past here, especially legislation that's about changing the rules of the game, is: does this legislation allow for more voices in parliament or not? They'll also be asking: does this piece of legislation make the parliament work in a way where different voices have to come together, fix the problems that we're facing as a country and get outcomes that make my life better? That's the test. That's the test that most people increasingly have for the laws that pass this parliament. That is a fair test and it is a right test.

We are in a situation at the moment—and I've said it several times before—where less than a third of the country voted for this government. A bit more than a third voted for the opposition and about a third is voting for someone else. There are two ways you can deal with that. You can deal with that by saying, 'We'd better have a listen to what that third of the country that's voting for someone else is saying and maybe lift our game and put forward some policies that might actually make people's lives better,' or you can say, 'We'll just try and change the rules of the game.' If this legislation is as good as the government says it is then they will have nothing to hide from an inquiry. If it's that good then let people run the ruler over it. This practice that we're getting into where we're saying that we can't even scrutinise legislation in this place anymore is very concerning.

I've got views about this bill. It's been tabled now, but there will be other people who will have views about this bill, and they should be given a chance to be heard. Ordinarily, when any other bill comes up, there's a chance for people such as the experts, the people who've had lived experience of something or people that are going to be affected by the bill to have their say in an inquiry. That's the usual process. As I've said, people can often find flaws in the bill that no-one even knew were there. You get a chance to fix that by having scrutiny. Critically, it gives people a chance to have their say. Nothing I've heard from the government so far can put forward any legitimate reason as to why we should be denying people a chance to have their say and some scrutiny into this legislation. Yes, we have a view, as the Greens, about what the rules of the game here should be to ensure that this parliament starts to reflect the will of the Australian people accurately and does not distort it, but, even if you don't agree with me and take the government's view at face value, that's still no reason for excluding people from the right to have scrutiny of a bill and their right to have a say, and that's what this motion is about. This motion is not actually about the merits of this bill or about whether or not it props up a two-party system. That's not what this motion is about.

This motion is about: whether or not the usual practice, which applies to just about every other bill in this place, should apply to this one as well; whether there should be an inquiry into it, to find the flaws that the government didn't even know were there; and hearing arguments that may force a bit of a rethink—when you think, 'I didn't think about that,' or, 'Maybe we do need to fix that.' Nothing put forward by this minister today makes one single case for removing people's rights to have a look at this bill which, as the minister himself has said, is the largest reform in 40 years. It won't affect what happens at this election, only the one after that. So I support this motion.

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the motion today from the member for Curtin for this electoral reform legislation to be referred for scrutiny by a parliamentary committee. If ever there was a piece of legislation that should be referred for further scrutiny, this is probably it. It goes to the heart of our democracy. Our democracy is our greatest strength and our greatest asset. A piece of legislation as complex and as important as this must be scrutinised by a parliamentary committee.

The member for Curtin's request is a very simple and reasonable request. As we've heard from other members on the crossbench, there is no rush. There is no reason why it can't go through that inquiry, why the experts can't scrutinise it and why it can't be interrogated. This is our democracy, and we know that democracy is fragile. We can never take it for granted. We see what's happening in other nations whose democracies have a strong and long history and who are also becoming more and more polarised. That is something that we do not want to see in this country. We saw at the last election and at other recent elections a growing diversity in our parliament. More eyes, more voices, more debate—that is what makes our democracy strong.

Many of us here on the crossbench are concerned, as are many people across the nation, that this legislation may undermine our democracy—maybe in an unintended way, but it may. So we absolutely need to scrutinise the proper process for one of the most important pieces of legislation that has come in this term. As the minister himself has said, it must be scrutinised in a parliamentary committee. It must have proper process. Our democracy is our strongest asset. There is no rush. We must do everything to keep it a strong and as vibrant as possible.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed to.