Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Milne agrees, which is good. But when you start spending minutes and minutes talking about the early closure of the electoral roll and other matters and having a bash at the Exclusive Brethren church, which has now become a mantra of the Greens, I just do not think it assists the committee stage debate.

In relation to the disclosure laws, it is well known that some 20-plus years ago a new regime was introduced into this country for public disclosure. I have pointed out, on a number of occasions now, the basis of that. Former senator Graham Richardson bragged in his book as to why he did it, and he even acknowledged that, at the end of the day, you could not even argue that Australia is better off for it. That was his own analysis of what he did. He did it to try to damage the cause of their political opponents—that, of course, being the Liberal and National parties and, indeed, the smaller parties.

Therefore, it is interesting to reflect on the debate back then. At the time, the disclosure threshold was deliberately set by Labor at $1,000. The Australian Democrats more sensibly were of the view that it should be set at $2,000. We believed then, a quarter of a century ago now, that it should have been set at $10,000. If $1,000—or $2,000 for the Democrats—was an appropriate threshold a quarter of a century ago, those involved in this debate have to indicate to the Australian people why the inflation factor should not be applied as an absolute minimum. We know that if you did that—as the Australian Democrats asserted in 1982—in today’s figures, therefore, a sum of $5,376 would in fact be the appropriate disclosure threshold. All of a sudden, we are being told that, in relative terms, this $5,000, which equated to $1,000 a quarter of a century ago, will somehow lead to corruption. If it leads to corruption today, (1) show me the proof of it and (2) explain to me why it was not corrupt when it was originally introduced in 1984. Of course, that is where the arguments fail.

We the Liberal Party have always believed that the threshold should be $10,000. We have not sought to index that to justify an even higher limit, but what we are saying is that we are willing to take into account inflation over those 20-plus years and put down a threshold. And then, more importantly, let us have a CPI on it so that, as the value of money decreases, we have the same level and we do not have the nonsense of what we are experiencing today, where the monetary value has been substantially eroded.

We have been told about corruption and the potential for corruption. I need only remind those opposite of a particular Labor senator who assisted the now member for Hindmarsh, Steve Georganas. They ran a bogus raffle, a raffle that cost $10,000. Only one person bought the raffle tickets. There was no prize, no declaration. When it leaked out, former Senator Bolkus finally put in a declaration. Those who are minded to manipulate will unfortunately always do that.

In relation to Senator Milne’s proposition about BHP, I simply say that that is just a flight of fancy. Nobody has suggested that that is happening under the current disclosure requirements. We are not changing the disclosure requirements other than the actual threshold figure. Former senator Don Chipp admitted that people should be protected if they gave insignificant amounts, and at the time he put that figure at $2,000.