Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to take the opportunity in the committee stage to make a few remarks about the way that my party has approached the electoral reforms that have been before this chamber over recent days, before turning to the substance of the amendment proposed by Senator Patrick.

The government, of course, has had an entire term to progress reforms to our electoral system, had it wanted to. But, as is so often the case with this government, it has deferred, delayed, done very little and then introduced a set of bills very late in the piece. At the centre of those bills, as everyone will be aware, was a proposal for voters to have to provide ID at the polling booth. There were other measures proposed in the bills, including reforms to the obligations for those who engage in political campaigning. Labor was quite clear about both of those measures in particular. We did not support voter ID, because of the impacts it would have on marginalised people. Our view is that Australian democracy is for everyone. It's important that everyone has an opportunity to participate. It is especially important that people on the margins of society have no impairments to their participation, and it was on that basis we did not support the voter ID reforms proposed by the government. We made that very clear—publicly—and I'll come back to that. We also didn't support the approach taken to disclosures for political campaigners for a range of reasons, which we set out at the time.

I make the obvious observation that, regrettably, I am giving this speech from this side of the chamber. It would be my preference to give it from the other side of the chamber. Indeed, at the next election, I hope that the Australian public looks at this lazy, tired government, which is presently occupying the other side, and decides to kick it out. If we want real electoral reform and if we want to protect our democracy, through establishing a national anticorruption commission, through improving disclosure arrangements for donations and through a raft of other measures to make sure that as many Australians as possible are enrolled and participating in our democratic system, then I'm afraid we'll have to wait for a Labor government, because there's no energy or enthusiasm for that on that side of the chamber.

But here we are. We're not yet at an election; we're here in this chamber, and the fact that I am giving this speech from this side of the chamber has other implications. When legislation comes here, we don't automatically have a majority in this place to stop it. It hasn't been at all clear what the position of many members of the crossbench has been on the matters that I've just referred to. I'm not going to name individual crossbench members. How they behave here is up to them. But Labor will always do our best to get the best outcome for our democracy in this chamber of scrutiny and review. We are pleased that, after conversations with us and no doubt with others, the government withdrew its voter ID bill. We are also pleased that the government agreed to change the threshold for disclosure for political campaigners and made other changes to that legislation. We don't like that legislation, but that is a better outcome than what was proposed by the government—legislation which we had consistently said we opposed. As I say, it really wasn't clear what the crossbench were going to do on that question.

I run through that because I do object to the characterisation placed on Labor's decision-making by a number of contributors to this debate. There is in fact no shame at all in negotiating towards an outcome that enfranchises marginalised people. There's no shame in negotiating and advocating against a bill that would absolutely have excluded many First Nations people from participation. And there's no shame in negotiating amendments to a bill that imposes obligations on charities and not-for-profits to improve it. That's because, as far as we could tell, based on the stated positions of people on the crossbench, those things were going to come through the chamber unamended. It's on that basis that Labor seeks to improve legislation here. It's all very well to throw barbs later, after the fact, but if people had really wanted to oppose and block these things then they might have made their intentions clearer a little sooner.

I turn now to the amendment proposed by Senator Patrick. As Senator Patrick pointed out, we have always had a policy that supports increased transparency of donations and lowering the disclosure threshold. It was in fact the Hawke Labor government that first introduced our donations disclosure regime. It's a great example: a Labor government and improved transparency in democratic arrangements. And here's the contrast: the Liberals, under John Howard, jacked that up. They jacked up the level of disclosure and linked it to inflation. You can give tens of thousands of dollars to a political party and don't have to disclose it under this crowd. That's not our position. We have two bills currently before this Senate to lower the disclosure threshold to $1,000 and to introduce real-time disclosure of donations. That would improve things; that would make a difference. We fully support the principle of amending the disclosure threshold.

However, we won't be supporting the amendments of Senator Patrick and Senator Lambie today. We believe, despite the election-eve changes to the electoral act introduced by the government, that genuine electoral reform should be done in a consultative manner. It should be done by reviewing the operation of the Commonwealth Electoral Act more broadly, rather than through these kinds of last-minute amendments. It's on that basis that we won't be providing support today.