Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill. I note that the bill has a very innocuous title—Electoral Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2020. Indeed, that's what this is; it's just miscellaneous measures. It doesn't actually go to the heart of what needs to happen in respect of electoral reform. Australians need to know that, if you donate anything less than $14,300, the disclosure requirements are almost non-existent. That's a real issue that needs to dealt with that is not being dealt with by this bill.

People also need to understand what's happened. This bill wasn't actually listed until late last night. The way things work, just to let you know, is that, prior to parliament sitting, the government provides parties with a list of legislation that they expect to be brought up in the upcoming sitting period. That allows people like crossbenchers and Labor to examine legislation, and then they know which legislation to focus on. This bill wasn't on that list.

What's happened over the last couple of weeks is that Labor have concluded their discussions with the government and reached a position. Now that they've done that, they have to urgently deal with this. Senator Lambie was absolutely correct this morning when she pointed out during the motion to suspend standing orders that instead of looking at legislation that would be designed to help people who have to make a choice between going to work—understanding they potentially have COVID or certainly understanding they've got a cold—or staying at home and not being able to feed their family is an awful, awful choice. She talked about a bill that we could have debated today. It would have helped Australians. Instead we've put to the top of the priority list a miscellaneous measures bill that is so miscellaneous it actually doesn't go to the heart of the thing that concerns most Australians, and that's political donations and the transparency around those political donations.

We saw JobKeeper legislation passing through the Senate yesterday. During the debate on that, we looked at how taxpayers' money is going into the JobKeeper program, and everyone in this chamber supports that. But then, following the money and seeing what happens afterwards, we saw Accent Group receiving $13 million of JobKeeper and its CEO getting a $1.2 million bonus from that. We saw IPD Education receiving $1.4 million in JobKeeper and its CEO getting a $600,000 bonus. We saw companies like Nick Scali receiving $44 million from the Australian and New Zealand governments to help them through the pandemic and then paying $2 million in dividends to their investors.

What we didn't talk about was what else that money might be used for. So what else would that money be used for? It's a gift effectively from the taxpayer getting funnelled through a system, and I have no doubt in my mind that some of it will end up in the hands of the LNP and indeed Labor through donations. This bill doesn't seek to look at that. Australians need to be aware of what's happening with their money. So often the money that is getting passed to the large parties by way of donation is not even the company's money; it's money that's been taken from the taxpayer.

Over the last week we also talked about grandfathered large propriety companies—the 1,119 companies that are not required to lodge financial returns to ASIC. So we don't even know if they're paying higher dividends. We don't know if they're paying bonuses to their executives as a result of perhaps receiving JobKeeper. We don't know what JobKeeper is doing to position those companies so that they can donate to political parties. On numerous occasions in this chamber we've tried to stop that loophole, and the government has resisted—and I thank the Labor Party and all of the crossbench for their support in trying to stop this. However, the government has on multiple occasions voted against that and failed. It's gone to the House, come back and ping-pong has occurred, but, in doing so, they've provided no policy basis for that provision to stand to give elitist companies the ability to not lodge those ASIC returns. I am absolutely sure that some of the profits of those companies will flow into the hands of the major parties.

I mentioned this last week: Michael West, who examines these things, is looking at every one of those 1,119 companies. He's using the ability that journalists have to access corporate reports and to do so free of charge—and I encourage all journalists to utilise that facility that was negotiated by Nick Xenophon and me with the government in the last parliament. Michael West is going to pull all of this apart, and we're soon going to learn who those 1,119 companies are and who the beneficiaries of those companies are. We can start looking at tracking donations back to the Liberal Party, and then we might find the policy reason for them resisting closing down that loophole.

This bill doesn't get to the heart of some of the matters that really do concern voters. Let me tell you how this works. We've got Senator Ruston and Senator Cormann, sitting on the other side of the chamber. The way this works to avoid disclosure—and this needs to be addressed, and one of the Greens' amendments seeks to do this—is a lot of companies are not allowed to make political donations. Their corporate governance prevents them from making political donations. So what do they do? They turn up to a Liberal Party function and will pay $2,500 to $5,000 per ticket just to have dinner. Now, if that is not understood to be outright corruption, bypassing their own governance to pass money to political parties—they don't have to declare it as a donation; they're simply paying to go to dinner. Everyone needs to understand: that's how the Liberal Party raise a lot of money. It is completely opaque in respect of who is contributing. I can see on the other side of the chamber that no-one is looking at me; they're all embarrassed by what I'm telling you. This is how they generate money. And it's unacceptable—they should be declaring that. They should be declaring that they had a dinner and they charged $10,000 a seat, and they raised half a million dollars for the purposes of later getting themselves re-elected. But they're not. The bill that's before the parliament today doesn't address that.

We need donations to be disclosed in real time and to have a much lower threshold than the current threshold of $14,300. I don't mind people who donate to a political party because they like what the party is doing. I like the idea that grassroots people can contribute, and they can look and say: 'I like that party. I'm going to support them. I'm going to send my 20 bucks to the party and I'm going to help them. I'm appreciative of them and I'm going to encourage them.' I think that's okay. But there's a difference between saying, 'I like what you do and therefore I'm going to contribute', and saying, 'Give me lots of money, and you've bought me.' And that is, at the very least, the apprehended position of most Australians. They see that as political parties being bought by big corporate donors. So these dinners have to stop. But they won't stop, because neither of the parties will let that happen. In fact, even COVID couldn't stop the dinners. We've had dinners that are being paid for by big corporates to come and sit down and have dinner with their friendly LNP MP, paying a motza for it—and doing it during COVID, whilst everyone is being told to be responsible, to self-isolate and to avoid gatherings. All of that good medical advice gets ignored when it's about funding political parties. This bill does nothing to address that.

The bill title is accurate: it is a 'miscellaneous measures' bill. It hardly does anything. It doesn't go to the big issue that most Australians are concerned with—that is, making sure that democracy functions on behalf of the people, not on behalf of those with the biggest chequebooks. We have to get solid reforms occurring, not these miscellaneous measures.