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

Then two minutes for all, you may say, Mr Deputy President. Senator Birmingham requires a position from the Greens. We will be voting against his motion. The difficulty for the opposition is complexity—they are frightened of it, but we are not. I have a bill before the Senate which requires such advertising as this to go before the Auditor-General, and I would expect that will be the case if advertising is devised—and I know the government has indicated that is the case.

On the other hand, the opposition leaves out of this the most potent factor at play, to bombard and distort democracy—that is, the power of the corporate, tax-deductible advertiser. We saw in the mining tax advertising $22 million from the big corporate sector, who are very much invested in the issue of reducing any carbon price in the future. They effectively used advertising to get an arrangement which is going to rip $10 billion per annum out of the public purse over the next 10 years. That is $10 billion for schools, hospitals, transport and housing every year, through a targeted advertising campaign that had the current Labor government take a much weaker stand, and of course the opposition back off all together. I do not think we should allow public opinion simply to be exposed to that without any sensible, well thought out and fair rejoinder.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Birmingham’s), as amended, be agreed to.