Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is not my first speech. Under the terms of the Electoral Act an Australian Electoral Commission election funding and disclosure report is required to be published by the Australian Electoral Commission after every federal election. It is worth noting that page 17 of the report on the 2016 federal election details the requirements for disclosure of donations above the disclosure threshold. For this federal election the disclosure threshold was $13,200. I want to say, firstly, that that is a ridiculously high amount for a disclosure threshold. To suggest that a donation of $12,000 is somehow minimal and doesn't need disclosure is ludicrous. It's very unfortunate that the Howard government decided to massively increase the disclosure threshold back in the day, back when I was in this chamber previously. To see that still here is very disappointing. The Labor government—I think under former senator John Faulkner—attempted to bring this back down to $1,000. It wasn't successful, because it couldn't get through the Senate at the time. Certainly that's a goal and that needs to occur.

This report does give a reason to emphasise just how inadequate the political donations and disclosure regime is and, indeed, the whole legal framework around political donations across Australia is. This is particularly relevant in my home state of Queensland. We have a state election at the moment and the corrupting influence of political donations has been a major issue, as it was in the local council elections in 2016. We have seen an inquiry in Queensland by the Crime and Corruption Commission flowing out of that 2016 election with a whole lot of, frankly, seriously dodgy donations in councils in South-East Queensland. That led to recommendations to crack down and, indeed, to ban donations from developers in Queensland with regard to local government. The state government, to its credit, took up that recommendation and sought to expand it to the whole state electoral regime. Unfortunately, it chose to go to an election before that law was legislated, so we still have a circumstance where the future of that anticorruption measure to ban developer donations is in the balance. That's another example of why donation reform is so crucial.

From the Greens point of view, we need to move much further than that, because political donations to both the major political parties continue to be enormous. Queensland Labor and the LNP regularly approve major developments at priority development areas that make huge profits that just happen to be for corporate donors. Star Entertainment Group—formerly Echo Entertainment Group—the developer of the Queen's Wharf casino, had received 10 per cent of the public land in the CBD for their massive overdevelopment there. They donated over $60,000 to Labor and over $60,000 to the LNP. There was a donation of over $114,000 to the Springfield Land Corporation, which is in the city of Ipswich, a city that unfortunately has become synonymous in recent times with alleged misconduct by their mayor. We've seen donations of over $330,000 relating to the Toondah Harbour development, which is in a very environmentally sensitive area on Moreton Bay shore.

This is the reason the Queensland Greens have given such a priority to this issue in this state election campaign. The Greens have promised, within the first hundred days of being in parliament, to move to break the dodgy corporate stranglehold on Queensland politics. If elected, within the first 100 days of that parliament a Queensland Greens MP will move to amend Queensland laws to ban dodgy corporate donations from property developers, from banks and from gambling and mining corporations; to strengthen the crime and corruption commission, the anti-corruption watchdog; to stop government ministers offering cash for access meetings; and to stop ex-politicians walking into plush lobbying jobs in retirement.

In a Queensland context, it is clear that, unfortunately, the days of Bjelke-Petersen—with the notorious brown paper bag donations—are not over. The donations might not come in brown paper bags, but they are certainly still coming. The community can see the impact of them very, very clearly. The Greens believe we need to put a cap on the size of any political donations and a cap on electoral expenditure. This, again, is in accordance with what has happened in New South Wales, and I commend the work of our New South Wales Greens colleagues and, particularly in this federal context, my colleague Senator Rhiannon. Also, the Crime and Corruption Commission itself recommended caps on election expenditure in a local government context. That is something the Greens also believe needs to be implemented at state level and is something we will push forward in the state parliament if the Queensland people choose to elect the Greens in this coming state election.

Question agreed to.