Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Hansard source

I note with some interest that this bill was introduced by Minister Bowen in his first and second reading speeches on 27 August 2008, and I invite honourable senators to listen to the words that were spoken by Mr Bowen and see how things have changed quite remarkably over a short period of time. He said:

I strongly urge the opposition to reconsider their approach to this measure—

and I will refer back to that later on—

which forms part of the government’s response to inflationary pressures in the economy and our savings plan. This measure and other savings measures are an important component of our effort to put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates.

What remarkable words in light of the pressure we are now seeing on inflation and interest rates with the continuation of this government’s so-called stimulus spending. What remarkable words, and they have come back to haunt the government and will continue to do so.

This bill, the Tax Laws Amendment (Political Contributions and Gifts) Bill 2008 started life as the Tax Laws Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008 and that was defeated in the Senate. It was defeated by the government versus all other parties because it sought to disenfranchise individuals in the community from participating in the political process. The great irony of that is that the government was happy to disenfranchise individuals while at the same time it was quite happy to keep a tax deduction for its own members if they were making a donation to the Australian Labor Party. If a sitting senator or member of the Labor Party was donating to the Labor Party then it was okay to get the deduction, but if someone in the community wanted to participate in the political process, apparently it was not. The government voted against that. It had the sense, thankfully, to take up this amended bill and bring it back in through the House of Representatives to here, today.

Again, of course, that original bill was a cute little way of bringing in some campaign finance reform without actually taking on the responsibility of comprehensive campaign finance reform. The government was caught out and the Senate, to its great credit, caught the government out in relation to this bill. The government knows it was caught out because within a very short period after this it started talking about comprehensive campaign finance reform, and started talking about the very things the coalition had referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters for consideration as appropriate. The government, again, was trying, for purely partisan reasons, to introduce a very, very small and minimal part of campaign finance reform without having the intestinal fortitude to take it further. Funnily enough, not much has changed.

One could ask why the Australian Labor Party, the Rudd government, would want to deny citizens the right to participate in the political process by getting a tax deduction for donations while enabling their own members to get a tax deduction. Their view, I suspect, is that when you have the union movement financing you, why give the ordinary citizen the opportunity to participate? I have some figures here. From 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2008 there was a massive $61.4 million put into the election of the Australian Labor Party—$61.4 million over two years. As honourable senators have heard me say before, the trade union movement is owed by Prime Minister Rudd and the Australian Labor Party is owned by the unions.

If you look further at some of these figures, from 2007 to 2008 there was $37.6 million. If it was not for the fact that we had changed the rules in relation to transparency and associated entity returns, we would not have found out about the $26.8 million, which was indirect financing of the Australian Labor Party by their masters, the ACTU and the wider trade union movement. We would not have seen that. People would not have seen the level of influence of the unions on the Australian Labor Party if we had not changed the rules.

I am mindful of the time. We do support this bill but the irony is the government bringing it on today as noncontroversial, having been vehemently opposed to the opportunity for Australian citizens to participate in the political process by making a tax deductible donation—while at the same time ensuring that their own members were able to claim a deduction for the same donation to the same party. That is quite remarkable. But the opposition does support this bill because, quite frankly, along with the Greens and the Independents, we were the ones who effectively sponsored it.

Question agreed to.

Resolution reported; report adopted.