Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendments moved by the member for Curtin be agreed to.

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

I have a question for the assistant minister. This is in light of the speeches from both sides in relation to the state of our economy and the need to focus spending on those doing it tough. Could you please clarify to the House the process or calculation for having, the level of inquiry for having, and how it is value for money to the public to have in this legislation provision for an uncapped administrative assistance payment that equates to, on current numbers in the Australian parliament, some $4,820,000 of public money going to political parties yearly, which is made up of $2.72 million to the Labor Party per year, $1.56 million to the Liberal Party and $540,000 to the National Party for expenses, including expenditure for conferences, functions, staff, staff training, staff vehicles, office accommodation and even payment for interest on loans.

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

Of course, where there are some variables in any election, final costings have to be done following the votes of the people. You can't provide funding for a particular vote until you know exactly how many Australians have voted in a particular election. While I wish we had 100 per cent turnout, unfortunately, that's still a goal to which we aspire. I note that the only uncapped proposal of the nature which the member just refers to that's been put to the House is, in fact, her own proposal, which had administrative funding provided to every person who is a candidate.

If you were to provide administrative funding to every person who is a candidate, which was the proposal put in the second reading amendment by the member for Warringah, that would mean that, simply by nominating yourself—it's a great return on investment—and paying your $2,000 nomination fee, you'd get $30,000 under that proposal. If we went on the numbers of the last election, that would be $36 million paid to people just for being a candidate. While I hope that no-one would nominate to be candidate in the interests of financial reward, but instead would do it out of an interest in public service, I would fear that, under the member's proposal, you'd probably have more than those 1,203 candidates for the House of Representatives that we saw at the 2022 election. That is why the government did not support that amendment.

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

Respectfully, assistant minister, while that must have sounded nice in your head, you didn't respond to the question. The question was: how was the amount arrived at which provides for an uncapped amount in relation to members of parliament of major parties each receiving, once elected, $30,000 in administrative assistance from the public purse each year, which equates, if one takes the current membership of our parliament, between this place and the other place, to some $4.82 million per annum from the public purse going to the three major parties for expenses, including conferences, functions, staff training, office accommodation and even payment of interest on loans? My question to the assistant minister is: can he please indicate to the House how this is of benefit to the Australian taxpayer? How was this calculation arrived at? And how does this expense of $4.82 million to the Australian taxpayer have any relevance or equivalence to actual costs incurred by political parties to do this? Or is this just a pork barrel to enable the public to pay for elements like interest on party loans, office accommodation, staff training, staff vehicles, functions, conferences and other ridiculous items that have been included in this section?

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

The question is that the amendments moved by the honourable member for Curtin be agreed to.

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

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (8) as circulated in my name together:

(1) Schedule 4, item 2, page 97 (after line 21), after the definition of Federal cap in section 302ALA, insert:

Independent House candidate means a candidate for election to the House of Representatives, for a Division, at any time while the candidate is not endorsed by a registered political party.

Independent House candidate Divisional cap means 150% of the Divisional cap.

(2) Schedule 4, item 2, page 97 (lines 23 to 25), omit "a candidate for election to the House of Representatives, for a Division, at any time while the candidate is not endorsed by a registered political party", substitute "an Independent House candidate".

(3) Schedule 4, item 2, page 98 (lines 1 to 3), omit the definition of Independent House of Representatives by-election cap in section 302ALA, substitute:

Independent House of Representatives by-election cap, for a by-election, means:

(a) for an Independent House candidate—120% of the Independent House candidate Divisional cap that applies on the 2 day the writ for the by-election is issued; or

(b) otherwise—120% of the Divisional cap that applies on the 2 day the writ for the by-election is issued.

(4) Schedule 4, item 2, page 98 (lines 4 and 5), omit the definition of Independent House of Representatives cap in section 302ALA, substitute:

Independent House of Representatives cap means:

(a) for an Independent House candidate—the Independent House candidate Divisional cap; or

(b) otherwise—the Divisional cap.

(5) Schedule 4, item 2, page 98 (before line 6), before the definition of Independent Senate candidate or Senator in section 302ALA, insert:

Independent Senate candidate means a candidate for election to the Senate, for a State or Territory, at any time while the candidate is not endorsed by a registered political party.

(6) Schedule 4, item 2, page 98 (lines 7 to 9), omit "a candidate for election to the Senate, for a State or Territory, at any time while the candidate is not endorsed by a registered political party", substitute "an Independent Senate candidate".

(7) Schedule 4, item 2, page 98 (after line 16), after the definition of Independent Senate candidate or Senator in section 302ALA, insert:

Independent Senate candidate Senate base amount means 150% of the Senate base amount.

(8) Schedule 4, item 2, page 98 (lines 19 and 20), omit paragraph (a) of the definition of Independent Senate cap in section 302ALA, substitute:

(a) multiplying whichever of the following applies by the number of Divisions in the State or Territory:

(i) for an Independent Senate candidate—the Independent Senate candidate Senate base amount;

(ii) otherwise—the Senate base amount; and

This is a deeply problematic bill and a deeply problematic process that has been followed to push it through the House with almost no scrutiny. Despite the complexity of the legislation, despite it running to more than 200 pages and despite it being described by the minister as the largest reform to Australia's electoral laws for over 40 years, the government and the opposition voted against the bill even being considered by a committee inquiry. This is clearly a stitch-up, trying to entrench incumbency and reduce competition in our democracy. It is very telling that, aside from the minister and shadow minister, not a single member of either the Labor Party, the Liberal Party or the National Party got up to defend this bill. That says it all.

One of the biggest issues in this bill is the structural spending caps. I support spending caps in principle. As we all agree, Clive Palmer should not be able to spend more than $100 million on an election. So, on paper, the $800,000 spending cap for individual candidates seems reasonable. But, when you unpack how these caps are applied, it's clear they create a structural bias towards the major parties. Whilst an Independent is limited to spending $800,000, the major party can not only spend $800,000 promoting themselves personally with their name; they also benefit from their party's advertising for the Senate, up to $9.2 million in New South Wales, as well as their party's national spending, which can be up to $90 million overall. The structure of these caps has many loopholes, that the Labor Party could line every single street in my electorate with banners saying, 'Vote (1) Labor,' and it would not count towards a candidate's $800,000 divisional cap.

I have heard the minister describe how he didn't need to spend $800,000 on his electorate and this should be allowed for competition. But the point is that this bill entrenches unfairness in competition. And this is why the loopholes are being called by the Centre for Public Integrity, Transparency International and the Australian Democracy Network—I mean, these are hardly bodies that are sitting there not interested in electoral reform. These guys have been pushing it from long before the Labor Party agreed to do this. They all said yesterday that 'the bill will entrench major party and incumbency advantage', and they said passing it without an inquiry was 'not in the interest of the Australian public'.

While Independent MPs like me are disadvantaged by the structure of these caps, the impact on challengers is much worse. New independent candidates, selected by communities who are frustrated by major parties' failures to tackle long-term problems, face huge barriers. Most of these candidates, including most of the people on the crossbench right now, do not have a political past. They come from business. They are doctors. They are from not-for-profits or, perhaps, the public service. That is exactly the sort of diversity we want in this parliament, but it means that challengers usually don't have a big profile and will have to spend heavily to build name recognition, establish credibility and educate the electorate about their policies. In contrast, the major party can rely on the reputation of the party. They can rely on the fact that the major parties are on television practically every single day and that the major parties have consistently used public spending on advertising to promote what they do in their parties and to really build on the back of these in the national media, even if incumbent MPs, like me, have an advantage over them. So applying the same cap to Independent challengers and to incumbents is clearly not a level playing field.

This amendment seeks to address that imbalance. It raises the spending cap for non-incumbent Independent candidates in the House and allows them to spend 150 per cent of the divisional cap. An equivalent provision is made for in the Senate. This change is modelled on spending caps in New South Wales, where Independents are able to spend 1.5 times that of major parties. This amendment does not benefit a single member of this House nor a single member of this crossbench, and I think that should be noted, because I think there has been a lot of imputation, saying I'm trying to protect—this is not about me trying to protect my seat. This is about trying to make sure that we have contestability in our parliament and in our democracy, and that means competition. It does not benefit a single senator. It only benefits those who seek to challenge us, and it is about purely creating competition in our democracy.

The government could argue that this cap unfairly disadvantages major party candidates at the expense of their challengers, and I would refer them to my earlier example. This bill bakes in structural spending advantages for the major parties, which this amendment would only partly—and I hesitate to bring it forward because I know it will only partly address so many problems in this bill, but it would still make it better for challengers. (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendments be agreed to. I call the member for Wentworth.

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

I just have a question to the minister. I actually have some other questions about amendments I couldn't put forward because, unfortunately, the drafters have not been able to deal with them in time, but I'd appreciate your response first, and then we can perhaps go to questions afterwards? Is that possible?

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

I'll just outline the government's position on these amendments, which will be my contribution for this part of the consideration in detail. The government will not be supporting this amendment. The caps have been set based on evidence. Everything has been provided in briefings, in what we've seen in the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report and the explanatory memorandum, and our proposal is about limiting the arms race for everyone.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to 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.

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

():  I just wanted to check whether the minister will be responding straightaway to the questions put by the member for Wentworth or whether I can ask another question and he'll take them all as a whole?

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can't direct who stands on their feet. I can just continue the procedures for the day. I take it you're on your feet, so the member for Indi has the call.

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

Okay. I will take it that the minister has held those questions in his mind. Can I add one more to them—a very simple question? The minister just said in his remarks in response to the member for Wentworth's amendments that the government was acting on evidence in order to arrive at the metric for the caps. I've seen no such evidence. The JSCEM report supported both recommended donation caps and expenditure caps in principle but did not nominate an amount, so I would like the minister to give us the evidence that the government have used to arrive at these numbers, please.

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

To the minister: as part of the consideration in detail process, this is a question and answer session—that is my understanding—whether you're moving an amendment or not. It would just be great to understand if the minister is going to engage in consideration in detail.

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

I had a question for the assistant minister, who asserted that this legislation was all about taking big money out of our electoral system—something that everyone here on the crossbench does agree with. We do need far greater transparency and we need to take the influence of big money out of our electoral system.

However, I'd like to ask a question about the fairness of the way that this bill is structured. I want to give the example of two candidates in an electorate. One is able to spend $800,000 and $800,000 only. The other candidate, who is part of a party, is able to spend $800,000 plus potentially another $1 million, as long as their name isn't mentioned. I'd like to hear from the assistant minister how that can be portrayed as fair and equal and a level playing field.

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

I have a series of other questions on this bill in relation to exemptions in relation to donations. It's not clear to me whether the minister's going to respond or not—unfortunately, it seems not. There are three pages of exemptions to the definition of a donation or a gift under this bill. Whether each of these is justified is exactly the sort of thing that we should be looking at in a committee inquiry, but the minister has said that we don't need another inquiry because all these questions were considered by JSCEM.

Can the minister explain where each of these exemptions is justified and explained in the JSCEM report? I am still seeking justification and understanding of why these areas were excluded from the gifts.

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sitting here listening to the amount of money spent. As many people know, at the last election, I spent in total about $170,000 to get elected. Half of that was my own money and $80,000 was raised from the community.

For me, there are some fundamental flaws to this bill in terms of the money that major parties are being given, in particular, the bill introducing a new system of administrative funding to assist people that are already in the House and are incumbent.

I take myself back to 2022, to the campaign using my own money. The donations amount I took is nothing in comparison to the amount of money that the major parties seem to be trying to prevent. I think most independents you'll find from the community don't have the large amount of money that this bill seems to be preventing. But I think we need to look at how you justify that we can spend public money to give to the major parties that have already got incumbency of their office. That's the unfairness of it from my perspective. Of course, this bill certainly benefits those that are currently sitting in the House.

Thinking of those who are like me from three years ago, it would be more of a challenge. It would take some people who are madder than me to actually invest their own funds to campaign. So, that's my objection to this bill, because I think it has not been really thought through, even though it looks like the government is doing something about transparency and caps and all that. I think in a way you're also increasing lots of public funding for the major parties to continue the structure that you have.

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

An additional question I have is whether the major parties are willing to give greater transparency about their nominated entities, which are the ones they are going to use to fund their campaigns, which nobody else can fund in the same way—all these nominated entities that the major parties will have access to. They're considerable funds. Will we get transparency in terms of their assets, in terms of all those pieces? And will the government consider, if people don't have nominated entities—which could give literally tens of millions of dollars to the major parties as donations, completely legitimately, under this bill, as far as I can read it—making some consideration that if the major parties get these uncapped donations from these nominated entities then there is some sort of consideration for those people who can't get uncapped donations, those people who haven't got funds that were set up 40 years ago to the benefit? Or perhaps the major parties will consider handing over these nominated entities to the public funds? This could be a great way to fund all this new expenditure fees, if we just had the assets of these nominated entities.

They're legitimate questions. If the major parties want to be able to access uncapped donations from their nominated entities, how do we level the playing field, if they're going to be able to access those uncapped donations but are going to cap them for everyone who doesn't have these nominated entities?

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

I think the questions being raised by the crossbench are extremely important, and I'm sure that Australians who are listening at home have many questions as well. Perhaps the Australian people, who are very passionate about the integrity of their democracy, would find it useful to hear a careful explanation from the assistant minister about the difference between a nominated entity and an associated entity, to make clear to the voting public what we're talking about here—where donations go and how they're treated in those various entities.

This is complex legislation; of course it is. We know. We've been deep in it for a couple of days, which is the only amount of time we've had to look at it—unlike, I suspect, some members of the major parties, who've had more time with this. But there are many questions raised, and I think it's very important that they're answered. So, I really do earnestly request that the assistant minister go through that, because there are people listening, and this Hansard will record that the crossbench has a very deep interest in ensuring that this legislation is what it says on the can: electoral reform. So, I put that question to the minister—to please explain the definition of those two entities.

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

I'd like to add to the contribution by the member for Indi regarding the fact that this electoral reform bill will not be scrutinised, it seems, by a committee or a Senate inquiry. There have been several questions—very legitimate questions—from the crossbench. Seeing as the bill is not going to be interrogated under an inquiry, we would deeply appreciate some answers to our questions. We have questions that we would legitimately like answered and which the Australian public would also like the opportunity to hear your answers to.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendments be agreed to.