James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

To begin with, I want to pay tribute to the many members of the Young Liberals, the Young Nationals and, in my home state, the Young Liberal Nationals for the work they do across Australia and across Queensland in standing up for freedom and standing up against some of the errant nonsense that you hear on the Left side of politics. I commend those young people from the centre-right who, in the recent student union elections, went down in a ball of flames but took the fight to the broad Left on campuses across Queensland and had to put up with buckets of bile and nastiness from those supporting the Greens, those supporting the Socialist Alliance and those supporting the left-wing tickets across Queensland. What they put up with on a daily basis is to be commended, and I speak as someone who reached the dizzying heights of chairman of the Sunshine Coast Young Liberals and president of the Griffith University Liberal Club.

Notwithstanding the strong advocacy for issues impacting across Queensland, it is the view of the youth movements of political parties across Australia who are on the centre-right of politics, on the freedom side of politics, that the voting age should stay as it is, at 18. That is the position of the coalition and the opposition in this chamber. We believe 18 is the appropriate age at which the line should be drawn as to whether people can or should vote. That has been long-accepted practice and we don't see the need to change that.

But, if we are talking about how we can enhance and protect our democracy, there are certain things we should be looking at and we should draw attention to—like Labor's plans to introduce a financial gerrymander at a federal level. Labor plans to bring in a financial gerrymander to try and lock themselves into power. What Labor are up to is they want to bring in the Queensland model. For those who are listening at home and don't know what the Queensland model is, it's very simple: it's limiting the Liberal National Party, under a spending cap, to $15 million and the Labor Party to $15 million. You would think, 'That's pretty fair.' But, under Labor's model, every union in Queensland can also spend up to $10 million. So, on one side of the ledger, on the centre-right, the Liberal National Party, led by David Crisafulli—the next Premier of Queensland, not withstanding the financial gerrymander!—is capped at $15 million, but on the left side you've got the Labor Party on $15 million and, I think, 26 registered trade unions in Queensland—I'm happy to be corrected on that number—that can spend up to $260 million on a state election. So, effectively, you've got $15 million against $275 million. So there is no spending cap in Queensland. It is a financial gerrymander designed to keep the Liberal National Party out of power.

What Labor are proposing at the federal level is to bring in a similar cap on expenditure. So the political parties will all be capped, but the unions won't be. The unions are the campaign wing of the Labor Party; we know the Labor Party is defunct at an organisation level on the ground and is run by the unions. There's nothing wrong with that; the Labor Party was formed out of the union movement. But if we're talking about fairness in politics and ensuring that we have a democracy that allows all voices to be heard, then we should ensure that all voices have the same means and the same ability in which to prosecute arguments before the voters at each election. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Queensland. Unfortunately, that is not what Labor are proposing at a federal level. They are proposing to bring in this financial gerrymander that will lock out so many people from participating in the democratic process so they can entrench themselves into power. Part of this plan—we can see this—is the IR bills that are before parliament, this week and last week. It is the Labor Party ensuring that their union bosses are paid back, and they will make sure that the union bosses will put money into the Labor Party re-election when it comes. But we will win, because we are on the right side of politics. (Time expired)