Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting this amendment and we appreciate the opposition indicating through Senator Farrell that the opposition will not be supporting this amendment either. What Senator Di Natale describes as very straightforward is, of course, nothing of the sort. In any democratic process, what is wrong or right in fact is very often a matter of opinion, and the ultimate judges of whether one opinion should prevail as opposed to the other are, of course, the Australian people. That is what elections and democratic processes are all about. We trust the Australian people to be able to pass these judgements. In the end, if somebody puts forward a proposition which is wrong in fact, there will, no doubt, be others involved in this democratic exercise pointing that out. The Australian people will have the benefit of various sides of the argument putting their propositions, and ultimately the Australian people will make a judgement.

This is of course not a matter that is in any way related to the authorisation of electoral communications, which is what this bill is all about. The Australian parliament hasn't in the past gone down the path of seeking to regulate the content of political advertisements. We don't believe that it is desirable to do so at this point in time, and we will not be supporting this amendment.