Linda White (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor has a proud history of political donations reform. As Senator Ciccone has mentioned, it was the Hawke government that established an independent Electoral Commission to publish details about political donations. It was the same Hawke government that first introduced the political donations disclosure regime and, under Hawke, political donations above $1,000 had to be declared. This was the status quo until a coalition government got into power and decided to link the disclosure amount with the rate of inflation, which caused the disclosure threshold to blow out to the current rate of over $15,000. What can I say? I'm not surprised at the coalition, but I am disappointed.

Nevertheless, Labor maintains its proud tradition of electoral reform in the pursuit of integrity and accountability in government, and it is this proud Labor tradition that I point out to Senator Lambie and others. The donation issue she is talking about is in fact one part of a much broader and deeper suite of reforms that the government is currently considering. These include: mandatory disclosure for donations over $1,000; real-time reporting; reforms to the funding of elections, including donation caps; and public funding for parties and candidates. All these matters are being considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and are things Labor has been talking about for quite some time.

Let's not forget that we took electoral and donation reform to the election in 2022, and we won. As the Special Minister of State has explain repeatedly, for our government electoral reform is about greater integrity and transparency for the Australian people, but it's also about consensus. The government wants to bring the Australian people and the parliament along with it when it comes to electoral reform, and in that spirit of consensus neither myself nor any other government senator is going to pre-empt the recommendations of the Electoral Matters Committee. That is what the committee is there for—to review issues like the one Senator Lambie is pointing to and then report back to parliament with its findings and recommendations. Once that in-depth process is complete and we have the policy work done, we can and will act on these matters. You don't have to believe me; you just have to look at the record.

It was Labor that forced the coalition government to ban foreign political donations in order to safeguard our democracy from foreign interference and it is the Australian Labor Party that goes above and beyond what is currently required by the rules. Our party discloses all donations above $1,000 federally because we respect transparency and accountability. In opposition, we brought legislation to the Senate to fix the disclosure threshold to $1,000 and require those donations to be disclosed within seven days. Of course, as is often the case with the coalition on matters of integrity, they chose not to support transparency and accountability. Instead, they chose to keep the matter—