Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is grossly inaccurately entitled as an ‘integrity measures’ bill, and of course the government seeks to use it as justification for measures which are essentially about limiting the franchise. The Committee of the Whole has before it an amendment that goes to the question of tax deductibility. There is an inference in the way in which this argument has been put that there is something improper about the taxation arrangements that have been made for political parties, and from that the government has launched yet another assault on the Labor Party by suggesting that there have been occasions on which people have misused office. In fact, all the examples the minister spoke of in this discussion about individuals misusing office have been about the Labor Party. Of course, he ignores the fact that of the 40 million or so votes that have been cast in the last 10 years there have been very few examples put to justify the government’s attacks upon the electoral system which are contained within this legislation.

In fact, you could put forward the ratio of the number of occasions on which it has been demonstrated that people have broken the law and that ratio is one in a million. There is a one in a million chance. To suggest that it is all on one side of politics, which is an inference the government makes, of course is to ignore the facts. We have had clear examples—for instance, the member for Longman, Mal Brough, had members of his staff incorrectly and falsely enrolled. In those circumstances, we had the situation where Mr Christopher Pyne declared that Mr Brough and his office were entirely innocent before the police or the AEC had investigated the matter. There was a clear case in which the government was only too happy to present the proposition that fault lies entirely on one side of politics, even though I think it is universally acknowledged that the examples of misbehaviour are one in a million. I could argue the case similarly on the basis of the fact that, over the last 100 years, I think there has been in excess of 1,000 people elected to the House of Representatives—over 1,000 people have been elected—and on how many occasions have there been—