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

As I was saying, Labor's proposed reforms were designed to reverse retrograde changes implemented under the Howard government, when the Liberal Party last controlled this place. When the Howard government came to power, one of their first actions was to make it harder to track the flow of money into party coffers. Under the previous Labor government, the threshold at which a political donation had to be made public was $1500. The Howard government increased it to $10,000, which with indexation currently stands at $13,000. Even with the lax rules the Liberals and their old coalition partners have still felt the need to circumvent disclosure.

We have heard through the New South Wales ICAC all about the Liberals' practices of setting up associated entities to collect money and, by moving it between various party divisions, to exploit differences in rules between states. The Liberals' new coalition partners, the Australian Greens, claim to have a long-standing policy in favour of reforming donations, when in fact they have accepted large amounts of donations—(Time expired)