Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz may be able to enlighten us more on this—give money, as members, to advertise for the Prime Minister, as they did in Bennelong, with big, colourful ads, attributed not to the Exclusive Brethren but to Mr S Hales or to the address of a school, which happens to turn out to be an Exclusive Brethren school. There was the same sort of advertising for the Liberal Party in Parramatta, in Adelaide and in Tasmania. Thousands upon thousands of brochures went out in Tasmania against the Greens under the guise of being somebody’s production—just a person, just a line—but it turns out that they came from the membership of the Exclusive Brethren sect, which is not registered as a political party. According to them, the Prime Minister, John Howard, is the right Prime Minister, the best Prime Minister that this country has ever had, which means that the other political parties are wrong. They will work to ensure, even though their members cannot vote—strangely enough—that this political party stays in office. I say that if the Exclusive Brethren want to do that, fine, but put it on the public record, be honest about it and allow everybody to know where it is coming from and what the philosophy of those behind it is, but we do not get that.

What this legislation will mean is that an extraordinarily well-cashed-up organisation like the Exclusive Brethren, where millions of dollars pass hands each year, will potentially be able to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising for the conservative parties against the Labor Party and/or the Greens and/or any other party in the spectrum, and nobody will know about it. You will just see the ads appearing, you will just see the brochures going out, and nobody will know what the arrangement is and who the people behind that are. That is defrauding democracy. When that happens, democracy is being degraded.

The senator opposite, Senator Bernardi, mentioned the Wilderness Society a while ago. Okay—let us make it more accountable, not less accountable. This is where we should be going with this legislation tonight: we should be following Canada. After a series of corruption scandals, they abolished corporate donations and moved on to effectively abolish private donations, replacing them with public funding. They did that with a great deal of skill and acumen because they wanted to get rid of the cheating, unfairness and skulduggery creeping into Canadian politics. Here is our opportunity to do that, but, instead, the Howard government is moving rapidly in the opposite direction: in the direction of the United States, as I think Senator Carr was pointing out. To corrupt the wonderful political system in this wonderful country of ours is a terrible direction to be going in. This legislation will corrupt it. It is designed to get much larger amounts of money out of people to help this government. That is what it is about: helping the coalition parties. Nobody else is here advocating it.

If you think you have ever seen legislation like this before the parliament, without it having been weighed up and very carefully considered by the back room of the Prime Minister’s office, with the Prime Minister being fully alert to and aware of the weighted odds going in favour of the government and nobody else, then you need to think again. That is just what is happening here. Many of the amendments that this legislation makes—like cutting out young people, as we have been talking about, cutting out prisoners and making it more difficult for new immigrants— (Time expired)

Progress reported.