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

Someone is listening! It makes a change. I want to talk about the upcoming referendum. I welcome the government's claim that it will support a yes and no pamphlet being sent out to every Australian household. Regardless of your position on the voice, it is very important that any constitutional change is carefully considered. To us on this side of the chamber, that means three particular things in relation to that bill that Labor have proposed. The first is that there should be a yes and no pamphlet, because that goes to people's households. Evidence supplied by the Electoral Commission said that during the election up to 40 per cent of Australians campaign got election information from written material sent out by the Electoral Commission.

The second is that there should be an official 'yes' and 'no' campaign to help with the compliance that comes with receiving donations. Political parties are professional bodies but, contrary to sometimes popular 'misopinion', are not particularly well staffed and don't have hundreds of people working for them. Indeed, in my own LNP in Queensland we have about 10 people working for us, three or four in the compliance section. Sometimes political parties do make mistakes when they are lodging their returns. Those are always unintentional mistakes, and the ECQ and the AEC understand that. That's why it's very important for the upcoming referendum that there is an official 'yes' and 'no' body that can assist with the receipt of donations, to ensure that the donations received comply with the federal laws that cover donations; in particular, to ensure that foreign donations are not received.

The third is that we think there needs to be a change to the government's legislation, which also comes under the subject of donations, so that there is equal public funding for the 'yes' and 'no' cases. It would be disappointing if a government that talked about goodwill and the country coming together sought—as a cynic might suggest—to gerrymander a result by restricting people's access to information that would enable them to carefully consider the changes to the Constitution, a document that essentially is the backbone of Australia. We need to make sure that any changes improve Australia, rather than leading to deleterious changes as such.

The position of the National-Liberal coalition is that we obviously do support the current regime. We do support the view that Australians should see where donations come from and rules should be complied with in a timely manner. We don't see the need to change the current regime. People who donate money over a certain threshold are publicly identified. My experience in Queensland is probably similar to Senator Lambie's. She may not believe this, but my party is funded by good old raffles. At every meeting we go to—and Senator Scarr is the same—if we don't turn up with a raffle prize we get into trouble.