George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that question because Senator Cormann is on his way back from Peru at the moment as a matter of fact. I am not going to comment on a High Court decision, but what I will say to you on the subject more broadly of political donations is this: it lies ill from one who represents a political party in this chamber that was the beneficiary of the largest single political donation in Australian history, from Wotif's Mr Graeme Wood

It was a donation of, I believe—what was it, Senator Colbeck?—$1.6 million. You cannot walk both sides of the street. You cannot pose as a champion for integrity and the process of transparency in political donations on the one hand and then trouser the biggest political donation in Australian political history. So I think, frankly, one must take with a very large grain of salt anything that the Australian Greens have to say about the integrity of the donation system.

I can also inform you, since you are interested, that there were no changes to the donations system in the six years of the Labor government. Occasionally we do have discussions in our system about the appropriate levels of thresholds of disclosure. We have seen some state premiers recently express different views about whether political donations should be raised at the Council of Australian Governments meeting. I will leave any potential discussions to be had by the Prime Minister, the premiers and the chief ministers in the COAG forum rather than taking advice on that topic from the Australian Greens. (Time expired)