Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the matter of urgency:

The need to reform Australia's political donation system by lowering the disclosure threshold, banning foreign donations, restricting anonymous donations and preventing donation splitting to avoid disclosure.

While it is somewhat tempting to talk about Senator Bernardi's contribution, it is really not worth mentioning. So I will talk about the substance of this matter of urgency. The recent scandal relating to former Minister Robert's visit to China has yet again highlighted the urgent need for improved transparency of political donations. This type of behaviour leads to the belief that political influence can be bought by wealthy corporations or individuals. My colleague Mr Dreyfus, in the other place, summed up the perception the public would be given by Mr Robert's actions and Mr Turnbull's failure to take prompt and decisive action, saying:

If Mr Turnbull doesn't show some leadership and sack Mr Robert today, then all Australians will know that a government that Mr Turnbull is leading is the kind of government where $2 million from a wealthy donor to the Liberal Party will buy you the services of a minister in the Australian Government.

Whether reality or just perception, the impact is the same—it seriously undermines the credibility of our democracy.

The public deserve transparency around who wields power in our political system. While the scandal surrounding Minister Robert's visit to China with his friend and Liberal donor, Paul Marks, directly reflects on his poor judgement, it also highlights the broader systemic problems with the interplay between politics and political donors. Disgraceful events like this seriously erode public confidence in politicians and our political system. The best way to restore confidence in our political system is to enhance transparency and improve disclosure arrangements.

Labor upholds the highest standards voluntarily disclosing all donations greater than $1000. The current legislation only requires disclosure of amounts greater than $13,000. The Australian Labor Party has a long-standing commitment to improving standards of transparency and accountability in relation to political donations. I believe any senator, if they were fair dinkum in their contributions on this matter, would acknowledge the Labor Party's long-standing commitment to improving standards. At our national conference last year, we committed to reform the political donations transparency system, calling for a better and more transparent political funding and disclosure framework.

As some of my colleagues have already highlighted, when Labor was last in government, we introduced legislation into parliament which sought to significantly reform the rules surrounding political donations, but, as many of us in this place remember, the then Liberal opposition blocked Labor's reforms.

Senator Rhiannon interjecting—

Excuse me, Senator Rhiannon, but you are just as bad—