Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I first introduced this bill more than a year ago—in fact, on 27 November 2019—and it's sat on the Notice Paper since then because, of course, this government, the Morrison government, does not want to deal with this issue. They don't want transparency around political donations. They want to continue the cover-up, and the recent release from the Australian Electoral Commission on the political donations for the financial year shows why: a $75,000 donation from Clive Palmer to the National Party. It's simply outrageous that the Nationals are accepting donation from Clive Palmer while he's funding his own political party. This government coalition is a coalition between Liberals, Nationals and Clive Palmer. And, because political parties were only required to disclose individual donations above $14,000 during the last financial year, we don't know whether Clive Palmer also made donations to the Liberal Party. He could have donated $13,999 and we wouldn't know about it.

We also don't know which Liberal donors this government has done favours for. Last year we found out that the Leppington Pastoral Company had donated $58,000 to the Liberals and had been paid $30 million for a parcel of land worth, we found out, one-tenth that much. Just last week we found out that Peter Dutton had awarded an $880,000 grant to an organisation eight days after it made a donation of $1,500 to the LNP in support of Mr Dutton. How many other Liberal Party donors have won tenders, grants and approvals funded by taxpayers' money? We don't know because the system lacks transparency. How many donations are we not seeing because the threshold for disclosure is set so high, at $14,300?

Federal Labor discloses all donations above $1,000. That's our policy and that is what we think all parties should be doing so that donations are transparent and there for all to see. That's why we've introduced this bill, and that's exactly what this bill does. All donations over $1,000 would need to be disclosed. That would mean that the Australian public would actually get to see who is funding political parties, not just a tiny piece of the puzzle. With the lower threshold, a whole heap of donations would come to light. There would be greater media scrutiny and reporting of donations, which would mean greater transparency and more information for voters as they went to cast their vote. This can only be good for the democratic process.

Federally, we have some of the worst disclosure laws in the country. We're lagging behind the states and territories. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT all require donations over $1,000 to be disclosed. Western Australia requires the disclosure of donations over $2,500, and South Australia requires donations over $5,000 to be disclosed. All of them are lower than the federal requirements. We can do, and should be doing, better and we have done better in the past. It will not surprise Senator Dean Smith over there to know that it was a Labor government that first introduced a federal donations disclosure regime. That was nearly 40 years ago, in 1983, under the prime ministership of Bob Hawke. All donations above $1,000 were required to be disclosed. In 2006, though, the Liberals, under John Howard, jacked this back up to $10,000 and linked it to CPI. This indexation has caused it to blow out to the current figure of $14,300 for the 2021 year. That's why this bill also removes indexation of the threshold so that it won't increase every year as it does currently. It will be fixed from now into the future at $1,000.

Why would the Liberals massively increase the disclosure threshold unless they wanted to hide the donations they were receiving? They will tell you it's about privacy—that the people who want to donate don't want their names published. But it's not mum-and-dad donors who donate more than $1,000 in one year. If people choose to donate more than that then they ought to be transparent about that donation. Under Labor's proposals the privacy of small donors will still be protected, but a light will be shone on those seeking to influence policy and government decision-making.

The Liberals will also tell you that they don't want to lower the threshold because of the increased compliance burden for these parties—that it's too difficult and too much effort for political parties to fill in the paperwork. Obviously, with a greater number of donations to declare, there will be a greater amount of work, but transparency and accountability are worth the extra effort, and democracy itself is worth it. If that means providing additional public funding to parties and candidates to ensure their compliance then we should be having a conversation about that too.

The release two weeks ago of the donations data also highlights how extraordinarily long it takes the Australian public to find out about the donations political parties have received. It took over 10 months for Australian voters to find out that Clive Palmer had been donating to the National Party. If a donation is made on 1 July, the soonest we can find out about it is 19 months later. It's a bit better if a donation is made on 30 June; then it's only seven months to find out about that donation. That is, quite frankly, ridiculous and utterly unacceptable and is why Labor has another bill before the Senate which would require donations above the threshold to be disclosed within seven days.

If the Liberal Party are able to accept donations and keep them secret for 19 months, that means they've got all the time to give grants, award tenders and do dodgy land deals before anyone finds out about them, and we know that that's what they've been doing, of course. If the Liberal Party is able to accept donations and keep them secret for 19 months then it means that voters don't have the information when they're casting their vote in a polling booth and simply can't hold the Morrison government to account. Our bill for real-time disclosure would also aggregate donations so that, as soon as the total of the donations from a single donor reaches the disclosure threshold, the party would need to disclose all subsequent donations from that donor no matter what their value.

We know that transparency is the key to preventing and identifying corruption. That's why we've been driving Labor's reform agenda. It's Labor, not the government or the Greens, who has been driving the agenda for political donation reform, transparency and government accountability. It was Labor who fought for the ban on political donations. The Liberal Party didn't want to stop taking donations from foreign sources, despite the risk of foreign influence to our democracy. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting our amendments. It was Labor who protected charities and not-for-profits from government legislation that sought to silence and suppress their political advocacy. It was Labor who ensured that public election funding was linked to campaign expenditure, preventing candidates and parties from profiting from the electoral system. It is Labor again who's fighting for a powerful and independent integrity commission. Where is the government's promised Integrity Commission? We have seen delay after delay, because this government and this Prime Minister don't believe in integrity or accountability in government. It is a constant battle to get this government to come to the table on integrity reforms, and it is a battle to stop it eroding democracy with draconian measures designed to suppress the vote and silence their critics.

We know from Senator McGrath's recommendation as the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that the Liberals want to introduce voter ID laws, potentially disenfranchising our most vulnerable Australians; abolish compulsory full-preferential voting, undermining our compulsory voting system; and introduce increased restrictions for charities and not-for-profits, making it harder for them to engage in political advocacy. We will be fighting all of those changes, if the Liberals try to introduce legislation before the next election.

Australians want honesty in government, but they've received the opposite from the coalition. We've had the sports rorts, the community grants rorts and now the safe seats rorts. Are there any grant programs that they won't rort? The Morrison government expects everyone else to play by the rules but thinks that the rules don't apply to it. They want to restrict the abilities of charities to fundraise and restrict their ability to campaign on issues that affect the most vulnerable people in our society. But the government's happy to receive donations from wealthy vested interests and happy with the rules that let it keep those donations secret for as long as possible.

Labor is on the side of accountability and transparency in government. That's what our reforms are designed to achieve. The government know who is donating to them and what they're getting for it. It's information they can use which is hidden from us, the media and the public. Doing a favour for a donor is obviously wrong. It raises questions. But it's not obvious if no-one can see it. We cannot question what we do not know about. We have to trust the government not to take advantage of its position. Given the rorting by this government, you will forgive me for not trusting it. Australians should know about political donations. They should know before they vote, not months—to close to two years—later. With our two bills, that is what is going to happen. Lowering the disclosure threshold is something we can do right now to immediately improve transparency. I commend the bill to the Senate.