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

A recent Prime Minister of Italy Mr Berlusconi, using the numbers that he had in both houses of parliament, changed the laws to escape charges against him on corruption from his previous activities and also to facilitate him being able to keep going the way he was into the future. He made the corrupt and unlawful legal—ergo, making it no longer corrupt. This legislation is the same. It is saying, ‘It would be corrupt to have a collective of people donating $10,000 to the coalition or to another political party, but that is a good thing for the political party, so let us make it legal so that it is not corrupt.’ That is the process we are looking at here. With that comes all the concern that large amounts of money are going to be able to be fed into political parties. The money is not given without strings attached. They are always there, visible or invisible.