Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Donations Reform) Bill 2014. I have had an opportunity to have a look at the various High Court issues that might surround this debate, particularly McCloy & Ors v State of New South Wales & Anor. Before I come to that I want to ensure that what the Greens were doing is clear to everyone, because ultimately I find that the answer the Greens have to everything is to ban it. This is from a party that generally promotes freedom of expression and generally promotes the opportunity to participate in a range of activities that are already banned. Nonetheless, their general focus in this area is that they want to strengthen the integrity and accountability framework underpinning Australia's electoral system by effectively banning a whole group from that.

The group is quite broad. Specifically, amendments are proposed to ban donations from property developers and tobacco industry business entities—as an aside, Labor does not accept donations from the tobacco industry, and we complain that the coalition should follow the same line. It also encompasses liquor business entities, gambling industry business entities, general resources or—not and/or, so I think there might be a bit of a loose provision there—mining industry business entities, and industry representative organisations whose majority members are those listed above. The difficulty is not that I do not think the sentiment might be correct that we should do something to ensure that we have a strengthened integrity and accountability framework underpinning Australia's electoral system. I think we can all agree with that motherhood statement. We could all then look at how we can put a proper process in place to achieve that.

I do not think this achieves that in any way, shape or form. What it will achieve is significant litigation around how broad these terms are, how narrow these terms are, who is in and who is out, what is an industry representative organisation whose majority members, however you might decide what a majority is, then are of the above type within that definition—such as property developers, tobacco industry entities, liquor business entities, gambling or mineral resources entities.

What we now have is an effective ban on practically everybody you could possibly think of who might be donating to various political parties, probably including the Greens. I suspect that was their import, because they also I suspect get donations from a range of sources to meet their political causes. It says that these amendments will improve the electoral system. I think it will bog it down in insignificant High Court actions.

The reliance on this by the Greens is quite stunning. It relies on a very peculiar case in New South Wales that is well documented. It is one that I suspect most people who follow this area will be familiar with; it is McCloy & Ors v State of New South Wales & Anor. In that provision, it is one that I think turns on the peculiar facts of the industry and what was happening in New South Wales, and the role that property developers played. It did not take very much for the High Court—although it was not a majority—to conclude that there was a need to, what I would say, contain free speech in the way of supporting the amendment to ban property developer donations.

Ostensibly, the way we have pursued this from the Labor perspective is transparency around political donations themselves. I will come back to this in a little bit more detail, because it is worth examining that part. But I want to come more to the base issues that Senator Rhiannon and the Greens are arguing. If they were adamant and serious about reforming political donations, then they had a really good opportunity to do that. They could have forced the government to include it as part of the bill that was introduced yesterday to kneecap our electoral system—if they were serious. If they wanted to pick up this part then they would have done a deal with the coalition for Senate reform and included this within it.