Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to express my grave concerns about the legislation before the house. I have listened carefully to the contributions of previous speakers, and I am afraid that my experience of the Australian electoral system has not been as positive as that of some who have spoken. In particular, my concerns about the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2006 go to the heart of the concern I have about the values that the Australian government—the Howard government—is trying to impose on and inculcate in the Australian community.

First of all, there is the issue of political equality. This bill will create an unequal system—and I will go to the heart of that in discussions about disclosures and the increased threshold for donations. It also goes to the heart of inclusiveness. Australia has always had a culture of inclusiveness, but we have seen the Howard government try to inculcate exclusiveness in Australia—exclusiveness when it comes to people trying to come to our country, and particularly in relation to refugees; exclusiveness, as we saw yesterday, when it comes to equality under the law with regard to civil unions; and now that same exclusiveness in relation to electoral laws, with some 80,000 new voters now likely to be excluded, not included, as a result of this particular legislation.

We are supposed to have free and fair elections, and yet elections in Australia are no longer fair because of the influence of market forces and, in particular, corporate identity. Yes, you can argue that no ballot boxes have been stolen, that ads are duly authorised and that no major irregularities have occurred. But the electoral process is in fact being subverted by the market economy. Commercial investment in election outcomes is rapidly becoming the order of the day. That is the point I want to talk to. I would like some clarification from the government with regard to the issue of third parties. That is what I want to spend most of my time speaking about today.

When I was first elected to the Tasmanian parliament, I too had a view that Australian elections were free, fair, inclusive and equal. I soon had a dose of reality in the 1989 state election. Following the election, the Concerned Citizens for Tasmania appeared from nowhere to place duly authorised advertisements in newspapers calling for a second election. They purported to be from concerned citizens who did not want to see a Labor-Green accord. They wanted a second election so that the Liberal Party could be reinstated as the majority government in Tasmania.

A royal commission ensued following revelations of a bribery attempt. In that royal commission it was revealed that the advertisement was a deception. I am reading now from the Tasmanian royal commission report. It said:

The drawing and placement of it in newspapers circulating throughout the whole state was directed by Gray—

that is, former Premier Robin Gray—

organised within his office and the process was executed by Tronson—

and that is referring to Darcy Tronson, who was his main adviser at that time. The report of the Carter royal commission into the bribery attempt in Tasmania said:

The deception which attended the placement of the ad and the petition was deliberate. The statement that it had been organised and paid for by Concerned Citizens for Tasmania, who were concerned for the future of the state, and that persons should sign the petition and return it to the organisation’s secretary by 20 June 1989 was deliberately designed to mislead the community into believing that a group of well-meaning and concerned people had come together spontaneously to express their concern and invite others to join them in voicing their protest about the Labor-Green accord in a form which would be acceptable to the Speaker of the House of Assembly.

In truth, the plan for it was conceived by Gray, executed by his chief officer Tronson. The deliberate intention was to obscure the true facts by giving a false message to the community so that those who might be prompted to respond would not and could not know that it had its origins in the Premier’s office and in the parliamentary Liberal Party. It was simply another mechanism for helping to assist in undermining the accord and generating support for another election.

That was my first experience of fair, equal and inclusive elections.

What I am now seeing with these third party provisions is that that is increasingly the case. In the last federal election, in which I was a candidate for the Senate, I was attacked by brochures appearing in the media which were authorised with a single name and address in Sydney. We were unable to establish even whether that person lived at the address. Even if we had, we could not have known at that time that the person concerned represented the Exclusive Brethren. They paid for extensive print advertising which misrepresented entirely the views of the Greens in that election. We then discovered that exactly the same pamphlet, just changed from ‘Australia’ to ‘New Zealand’, was used to try to discredit the Clark government and the Greens in New Zealand. It has been used throughout the country. What we later discovered was, of course, that the Exclusive Brethren had had meetings with the Liberal Party in the context of that election. None of that will turn up in the political disclosures.

Senator Minchin, in relation to these third party provisions, has said here that it will be necessary for third party requirements to apply to associated entities as these entities can be actively involved in the political process. The definition of ‘associated entities’ is to include entities with financial membership of a registered political party—and, of course, these religious groups will not be registered members of a political party—and, secondly, entities on whose behalf a person is exercising voting rights in a registered political party. How are you ever going to know that an entity is using their influence and that a person voting in a political party has been influenced by these third party entities?

It is really important that we get that clarification, because I come now to the last Tasmanian state election. Following the election, the chief electoral officer, Bruce Taylor, on ABC Radio on 27 March this year, said:

The second problem appears to be with these—

that is in relation to disclosure from third parties—

that it is hard to actually pinpoint the real source of the fund. They can certainly be channelled through various organisations and it may still be difficult to prove exactly where the money came from.

What he is pointing out there is in relation to the campaign run in Tasmania by Tasmanians for a Better Future. This is the way that I believe the market will get around these third party disclosure laws. Tasmanians for a Better Future is not a registered entity. All its ads, TV and print, were placed by Tony Harrison from Corporate Communications Tasmania, which is a public relations company. That public relations company then refused to disclose who had funded the ad campaign. The requirements just say that it has to be properly authorised. Okay, Tasmanians for a Better Future had a name and address: Tony Harrison, Corporate Communications.

The Public Relations Institute of Australia says in their code of conduct that public relations companies are obligated to reveal who is actually putting the money up. It says:

Members shall be prepared to identify the source of funding of any public communication they initiate or for which they act as a conduit.

Tony Harrison utterly and absolutely has refused to this day to say who funded this hugely successful and expensive advertising campaign in Tasmania against the Greens. Why would they have done that? We had one person come forward as a result of that to say that he had invested money in it. That was Michael Kent. Michael Kent—surprise, surprise!—is the President of the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. But he said he was not doing it on behalf of the chamber of commerce; he was doing it of his own volition. Who is going to put in the return—the chamber of commerce? Or do we accept his word that he is a private entity? How will he end up reporting here and how do we find out who the Tasmanians for a Better Future are? They were reported to be 20 or 30 leading businesspeople. What deals have gone down that mean that you can spend just a relatively small amount of money in the national context in a state like Tasmania and you can change votes?

Corporate Communications now have a very clear business model for anyone trying to influence the outcome of a vote in Tasmania. They can, on a confidential basis, show clients, but not the Australian community or the Electoral Commission, how much was invested in the ad campaign and how many votes they changed. They went for saturation advertising, and the polling shows that they significantly influenced the vote. I would like to know, Senator Minchin, how the third party disclosure laws are going to address that issue.

Then we had another situation where there were full-page ads purported to be from an individual in Launceston, a Mr Dean Cocker. Then we found out that Mr Dean Cocker is in fact the managing director of JAC Group, the company of his grandfather, Mr Joe Chromy. And, after the election, after the full-page ads appeared everywhere, we found out that the messages were all carefully synchronised. We had Tasmanians for a Better Future, we had the Chromy campaign and we had the Exclusive Brethren campaign, and the messages were all carefully synchronised in saying: return a majority government. And, in the Tasmanian context, the only people who could be the majority government were those in Paul Lennon’s Labor Party.

After the election, on Friday 24 March, we discovered in the Examiner that now the election was over the final papers could be settled for the Chromy group, because they would be taking over—the last documents in a huge paper trail that resulted in the signing over of the former Launceston General Hospital building from state government ownership to the ownership of northern businessman Joe Chromy seemed to be on their final journey.

So we had full-page ads from an individual from a private address who happens to be the managing director of a company. When the electoral returns go in, they presumably show a citizen; and at least in this case we could establish who he is and what his relationship with Joe Chromy and the state government is. In the case of Michael Kent, we know that he acts for the large supermarkets, and we know that there is a push on in Tasmania for deregulation of alcohol sales into supermarkets and other outlets. We will see what happens with the Lennon government in Tasmania as a result of the return of a majority government. I am really keen to watch the outcome in relation to that particular advertising.

But the point remains: we still do not have transparency in the whole electoral system. As a result of the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s abandonment of its own code, which requires its members to say who is backing any campaign they are running, we now have a perfect business model that can operate across Australia and not be captured within the electoral laws. And that is what we are going to see. In the Tasmanian context, a mere $100,000 well placed in Tasmania’s fairly narrow media is sufficient to alter the outcome of elections. I would like to know, Senator Minchin, how that kind of thing is going to be captured—like Tasmanians for a Better Future and using a public relations company to front for a series of donors so that they never have to be revealed. How is that going to be captured by the third party provisions?

I want to know how a religious group is going to be caught by these provisions. How are we going to know, unless we do our own investigation, how much money and with which entity they are associated? Certainly, the person running the Tasmanian Liberal Party campaign, Mr Mantac, admitted that he had talks with the Exclusive Brethren. And we know that before the last federal election the Prime Minister had had talks with both the Exclusive Brethren and the backers of Family First. Again, we have a situation whereby there are large business entities offering loans—not donations. Does a loan which may never be paid back in our lifetimes constitute a donation for the purposes of disclosure? If I make a $1 million loan from my company to a political party, is that a donation for the purposes of disclosure?

We know that the Prime Minister met with Peter Harris of Family First before the election. Media reports said that Mr Harris would provide $1 million for an advertising campaign to attack the Greens, and that preferences would be exchanged between Family First and the Liberal Party. Apparently, that is fine in Australia, and we are not going to be able find out precisely what has gone on. That is why I am arguing that, whilst in theory we might have free and fair elections in Australia, we are now getting to the point with third parties where there is no way that the community can find out who is backing whom and which groups are behind advertisements and what they stand to gain. We cannot know who they are; therefore, after elections, you cannot look at the deals that were done to establish those things.

I was very interested to see that the Exclusive Brethren got a particularly specific mention in the regulations pertaining to industrial relations which exempted them from having unions in their workplace. Isn’t that an interesting thing? One religious group gets a specific regulation in that legislation, brought in by the Howard government, that exempts them from having to have unions in their workplace. It might just be a strange coincidence that that could have occurred.

I am arguing that we are meant to have a comprehensive enrolment and an accurate roll. I am arguing that this legislation is narrowing that comprehensiveness. Unlike, say, New Zealand and the UK, which have quite a different view, we are going to have only 86 per cent of the current adult population of Australia enrolled to vote because voting will be specifically for Australian citizens and not for people with permanent residency. So, whilst we have compulsory voting, we do not have comprehensiveness. And now we are going to narrow the roll even further with the requirement to close the rolls virtually straightaway. That is my first objection: I believe the bill makes the system not inclusive but exclusive. I believe it is inequitable; it goes against the principle of equality because of the increased threshold of donations and the third party provisions, which are meaningless with the advent of the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s approach.

When I made a formal complaint to the institute, I got a two-line reply saying that they had looked at Mr Harrison and Corporate Communications and found there was no case to answer, in spite of the fact there could be nothing plainer in their code of conduct than them saying that members are required to disclose who is funding their campaigns. So we have a situation where the Howard government is once again promoting the values of inequality, exclusiveness and unfairness in elections. That is why I am strongly opposing this legislation.

We should be making our electoral laws more inclusive, not less. We should be making our elections more fair, not less. And we should make sure that there is real equality in Australia and not a situation whereby the rich get richer and have greater influence the more money they spend. The more donations they can give, the more access they can get by buying themselves seats at the relevant tables, while the poor stay out in the suburbs unable to take advantage of the access that delivers results. They are the values that underpin this legislation. They are not the values of progressive politics. On this side of the chamber we want equality, inclusiveness, freedom and fairness. I would argue that just about everything that the government has brought in since I have been here undermines those values.