Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make another contribution, except I do need to respond to the rewriting of history that has just occurred from both Senator Cormann—Senator Di Natale may not have been a participant at this stage. What needs to be set out is: when the Labor Party sought to deal with political donations, we sought to do it in a cross-parliament fashion. We sought to reach arrangements—and, indeed, we made compromises—with the Abbott government. These are the arrangements that the Abbott government retreated from. This was one of Tony Abbott's first broken promises. But this is, indeed, our criticism of this current process. We have said from the outset and we have said in terms of the operations of JSCEM that you cannot progress important matters such as electoral reform or the reform of political donations in a partisan, backroom, closed-door deal type of fashion. That was the problem with political donations. That was the problem with what has occurred here. The consistent theme in that is the government and the government's behaviour in managing those issues, and rewriting history is not going to change any of that.