David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

This question of political donations is of considerable interest to me and my party. The view we take is that individuals, organisations, companies, whatever structure we talk about, is entitled to use its own money for its own political purposes to promote political speech. Most of the time political donations are made because the donor likes what they hear. They like what the recipient is saying and they want them to do more of it. Certainly that is the basis upon which so many donors contribute to the Liberal Democrats, my party. But we repeatedly hear from people who say those donations should not be made or at least they should not be made from particular types of donors. Common are: overseas donors, developers, tobacco companies. We hear it said by some that big coal should not donate. We are even likely to hear it said that big tourism should not donate, which would have implications for the Greens party.

In New South Wales we see these sorts of rules already in law. There are rules affecting developers. There are rules affecting tobacco companies in relation to whether they can give to a political party or a candidate and how much they can give. Those rules are very stringent and they have a very substantial impact on political speech. In fact the New South Wales government went too far. It put too many constraints on political speech in the state and they were found to be unconstitutional by the High Court. And yet, notwithstanding the fact that it went that far and then had to reel them back again, in New South Wales we have plenty of politicians who have found themselves in breach of those laws, and the now somewhat maligned Independent Commission Against Corruption has had a lot to say on the subject. Some politicians' careers have indeed been terminated as a result of breaching these donation laws. And yet what did they achieve? Did they really produce less political influence by donors in New South Wales politics? I do not think there is any evidence whatsoever for that.

I have a better suggestion: transparency. Transparency is publishing the names of the donors irrespective of who they are—and I make no distinctions between international foreign donors and local individuals on the electoral roll. As soon as that donation is made, as soon as is practically possible, within a few days, a week at the most, those donations are published and people can see who has given to whom and how much. The problem we have at the moment in Australia is that transparency basically does not exist. We have disclosure well after the donation has been made, more than 12 months later. The United Kingdom and the United States have much more current transparency. They have reporting at least quarterly, and in the United States, I understand, it is more often than that.

On the basis that you have transparency—so you know who is donating, when they are donating, how much they are donating and obviously to whom—you then have a situation where the voters are entitled to make a decision for themselves. It is up to the voters what they make of those donations. Do they agree that that donation was a good thing or do they disapprove? Obviously they can do what they like with their vote on the basis of that knowledge. Refusing to give voters that choice, refusing to allow voters to make that decision is exactly the kind of nanny state thinking that I have railed against in this place on other issues. It is assuming that the voters are too stupid, too dumb, too incapable of making up their own minds and making an informed choice based on the knowledge that transparency would provide. I do not believe we in this place are more capable of making decisions for voters than voters themselves. I do not believe that we are any smarter than the voters in their collective wisdom.

There is an answer to this whole discussion about political donations—that is, voters should not elect corruptible politicians. So how would an elector know if a politician was corruptible? I have a suggestion for electors: those politicians who do not like donations, who want to ban donations, obviously regard themselves as corruptible. If they want to ban donations, it must be because they think they would be susceptible to the donation and therefore other politicians are similarly inclined. I do not believe that donations should be banned. I do not believe corruptible politicians should be elected. So for voters, the obvious thing to do is to not vote for politicians who want to ban donations because they are the corruptible ones. All they need is transparency and it then becomes a matter for voters. Leave it up to the voters, and they will get it right.