Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the JSCEM report on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2017. This is a very clever bill, because the government is selling it as a bill that's meant to restrict the impact of foreign money on our political system but in fact it does that very poorly. What it does very well is restrict the ability of charities and not-for-profits to undertake advocacy work to reform our system and to work for public interest outcomes and the social good of us all. So this is yet another exercise by the government where they're pretending to do something when in fact they're continuing their attack on the not-for-profit sector, which has been going on for several years now in various guises under countless different Prime Ministers. So we take great umbrage at the government's purporting to try to clean up the influence of money on our political system when they have completely left alone the issue of corporate influence over our democracy and the hundreds of millions of dollars that they and the opposition have taken from corporate donors, particularly in the last decade. This is a fig leaf of a bill that's just designed to keep attacking the charity sector, which has been resisting the clampdowns on civil society that this government has been promulgating since it's been in office.

The other sting in the tail of this bill, and in this report pertaining to the bill, was a new little bit the government snuck in that the committee didn't take any evidence on and it allows the Commonwealth to override state government donation laws. We're finally seeing some state governments start to tighten up the rules around how big money influences state politics. We have seen good restrictions brought in, thanks in part to the Greens, to stop donations from property developers and other large vested interests. We have finally seen the Queensland government, under threat from the Greens in the recent state election, bring in restrictions on property developers making donations. But this Commonwealth bill would override those restrictions. It is drafted very deliberately. If a donor doesn't say their donation is specifically for the state election then, hey presto, it just so happens that it can be used in any way that that political party deems okay, which is a back-door way of getting around those state restrictions.

This is not a drafting error; it is a deliberate attempt by this government to facilitate corporate dollars flowing into its own pockets—and, frankly, into the pockets of the opposition as well. This is a dirty deal to allow those corporate dollars to keep flowing into the coffers of the major parties. Thankfully, the opposition have decided that they don't like this part of the bill either. I flag that I will be moving amendments to remove this bit from the bill entirely. You can't have a bill that you say is about restricting the influence of foreign money on politics, and at the same time remove from your state governments the restrictions on dirty money influencing politics. It is sheer hypocrisy. So I hope we will get support from the opposition on those amendments. I think the government should think long and hard about whether they even bring this bill on for a vote this week because, frankly, it looks like it is going down—which I would celebrate, because we don't need another attack on the charity sector.

What we do need is genuine reform of the political donation system so that our democracy starts working for people. At the moment, it is working for vested interests, for corporate lobbyists, and for the people these folk go to fancy lunches with. Since 2010, we in the Greens have been moving to clean up politics and end the corporate donations from vested interests like big mining, property developers, and the tobacco, gambling and alcohol industries. All sorts of influence is peddled through those vested interests' donations. They get access that nobody else gets. The community doesn't get that sort of access to Parliament House. You have to have a lobbyist's pass and some dollars that you're prepared to donate to the political parties. You then get access and, hey presto, you get a decision that suits your bottom line.

Our democracy shouldn't be for sale. We are meant to be here to represent the public interest, the interests of people and the interests of our future—and, frankly, the interests of our planet. But this government has been completely hijacked by corporate interests. They don't even know what they stand for any more. They are being puppeteered by big corporates and big business who have made generous donations to both sides of politics to buy the outcomes that they want. It is disgusting and it deserves to be cleaned up. We have been moving to try to clean up the system, and there is growing discontent among the public that their democracy doesn't work for them.

When we see this sort of access and influence by big corporates and big business is it any wonder that people now hold politicians in very low regard? It is about time we started remembering who we are here to represent. It is about time we passed some of those measures to clean up our democracy, to ban those dirty donations from vested interests and to tighten up the lobbying rules—and stop the revolving door between ministers, frontbenchers and staff and big industry lobbying groups once they leave parliament. You can literally track it: they go back and forth, give or take a couple of years. It is an immense conflict of interest that has corrupted our system.

We will not stop trying to clean up politics. We think parliament is meant to work for people and the planet. We don't think you should be able to buy the outcomes that suit your bottom line. That is definitely not how democracy is meant to work. Unfortunately, that is how it works at the moment. This bill does nothing to change that. It is an attack on the not-for-profit sector. It doesn't actually stop the influence of foreign money. It pretends to, but they can actually keep donating through Australian subsidiaries. So it doesn't even achieve the stated purpose. It is a thinly disguised attack on charities to silence them and to put a shroud of uncertainty over the rules that they will now have to comply with if they venture into issue based advocacy.

We know this government can't stand advocacy, and it has been trying for many years now to restrict not-for-profits' undertaking any advocacy work. They're now saying, 'You'll have to comply with a whole range of red tape.' I thought they didn't like red tape; it turns out they like red tape for the folk whose opinions they disagree with. It puts a whole lot of red tape on charities which will have the effect of silencing those small organisations that can't afford the legal advice to tell them what the rules are meant to mean. It is drafted in a deliberately confusing manner to have precisely that effect, and that's shameful. The government needs to fix up that drafting if it wants to have any semblance of integrity. Hey, I'm an eternal optimist, but I won't be waiting for that.

Question agreed to.