Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

My apologies—not some lies that have been promulgated and been put on the nightly news and every damn billboard you see as you drive down any road. We will keep pushing for the lobbying code of conduct to be strengthened, because it is a joke. It is an actual joke. Lobbyists run this place, and ministers who formerly were meant to have regulated an industry have left this parliament and gone off to work for the very same industry in five seconds flat. It doesn't breach anything, and that is a complete joke. We need a five-year cooling-off period for ministers. Otherwise, these industries have their claws into our democracy, and it is not right.

My second reading amendment calls on the government to split the transparency measures and the truth-in-political-advertising measures off and to pass those ones pronto. They are good disclosure provisions, and they are good protections for the public against lies. You can't lie to a consumer about what's in the tin of some grocery product they're buying, but you're allowed to lie to them about what your policy platform is or what you opponent's policy platform is. It's pathetic.

We call again for an inquiry into the funding elements of this bill, to allow proper scrutiny. This is the dodgiest deal that I've seen done between these two big parties in my 14 or 15 years here—however long I've been here. This is it, folks. When they're going down in the polls, this is all they've got. They don't have policies to help you. They've got policies to help each other. I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) any legislation to deliver electoral reforms must strengthen democracy and not just the political fortunes of the major parties,

(ii) the Greens are concerned that the proposed reforms entrench incumbency advantages that stack outcomes in favour of the two-party system, and

(iii) the Greens continue to advocate for genuine electoral reform including getting big money out of politics, banning donations from fossil fuel corporations and other social harm industries, implementing truth in political advertising laws, strengthening the Lobbying Code of Conduct and enforcing longer post-parliamentary cooling-off periods for Ministers before they go to work for industries they were regulating; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) separate the transparency measures in this bill so that Parliament can pass them as a matter of urgency, and

(ii) support an inquiry into the funding elements of the bill to allow for democratic scrutiny of its provisions".