George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

(—) (): Senator Farrell, that is absolutely wrong. Far from having delayed, we have moved on this. The Prime Minister commissioned the policy work on this as long ago as August last year. In May of this year, he wrote to me and he wrote to Senator Cormann's predecessor as Special Minister of State—your good self, Mr President—to ask for the legislation to be prepared. By the way, it was legislation to deal with the problem of foreign money coming into and influencing not just Australian politics and Australian elections but also other vectors of influence, like the kind of influence we saw being exercised through your colleague Senator Sam Dastyari, to criminalise that sort of conduct. That is because the Australian political system and the Australian electoral system need to have integrity protected, not just from foreign money but from all of the other forms of foreign influence as well. This government has moved to do something about it. (Time expired)