Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator Lambie today relating to donations to political parties.

The start of the 2020 financial year was 19 months ago, in July 2019. Our country has changed a lot since then. We've had a once-in-a-century health crisis, we've struggled through brutal economic shockwaves and we've seen the government shovel incredible amounts of money out the door just to try to keep businesses afloat and industries alive. The government has made choices that have benefited some businesses more than others, and that's natural. Sometimes in a crisis you've got to make difficult choices to make sure you can get through it. What worries me, though, is that, through all of that time, the coalition has been taking donations from businesses that might have benefited from the choices it has made. But we don't hear anything about that money until after the decisions are made.

Yesterday we found out that the coalition has had $69 million in donations and other receipts since July 2019. Businesses owned by Mr Anthony Pratt gave them more than $1.5 million, and a mystery organisation called the Greenfields Foundation gave at least $450,000.

That's not a foundation. It is a political donation that is usually just given in a brown paper bag. That's all that is. The ANZ has donated over $100,000. This is the point: donors do not give money out of the goodness of their hearts. They're giving it because they want a chance to bend a minister's ear about what they need to get through the tough times we've had since COVID has hit our shores. They're looking for a chance to make their case, and they're getting levels of access that most small businesses can only dream of. It's no wonder that a person who used to be in charge of policing our political donation laws has come out and said that they're among the worst in the world. It's about time the major parties did the right thing and tidied this up for the good of the country.

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

I too rise to take note of the answer given to Senator Lambie's questions on donations. Yesterday was the one day of the year when we find out who is paying who, and what that tells us is that democracy is still for sale. In fact, in terms of the amount of donations that were given during the 2016 election compared to the 2019 election, three times as much money is being paid to political parties. The problem is getting worse, not better, and this government is still doing absolutely nothing to fix it. Donors aren't just donating for the sake of it because they're altruistic. They're donating to get favours; they're donating to buy outcomes. That is what the Australian public think. That's why perceptions of integrity of government are at all-time lows. We had to wait 19 months to find out about those donations. It should be real-time disclosure. We don't find out about all of them because the disclosure threshold is so high. It's $14,000, and it goes up by a little bit each year. That means that, for one-third of the amount of money that is being donated to the big political parties, we will never know the source, precisely because that threshold for disclosure is so high. We think the threshold for disclosure should be much, much lower at $1,000, so that people know who's paying who, so that they can see what outcomes are being bought and, ideally, stop the rot.

What we saw this morning, finally, was some hope for the broader reforms that the Greens have been pushing for for years. We think big money should not influence politics. We think it should not be buying outcomes. We'd like to see bans on donations from certain industries that have a track record of trying to buy outcomes, like the mining industry, the banking sector and the gambling sector. But, ideally, we think donations, no matter where they're coming from, should be tiny. We want to set a cap on donations of $1,000 per year. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter whether you're a big corporate, a union, a grouping or an individual. No-one should be able to buy influence. Democracy shouldn't be for sale.

We were pleased to see some members of the opposition express some support for the notion of a cap on donations. We know that other folk on the crossbench have also pushed for that. In fact, there are a number of private members' bills before this parliament that would cap donations and lower the disclosure threshold. I'm hopeful that we might see some action. I'll be speaking with other members in this chamber to try to deliver donations reform, because the members of the Australian country want their democracy back. They want to know that the folk in here are representing their best interests, not the best interests of whoever just took them out for a lobster lunch or whoever just paid a massive amount of money to buy a government contract. That's the other thing that needs to be fixed. If you're applying for an environmental approval or a government tender, you should not be allowed to bribe your way to that outcome. You should not be allowed to donate while your application is on foot or for six months on either side of it.

There are so many ways we could clean up our system. There are so many opportunities for reform to restore confidence in democracy and in this political system. The Greens look forward to continuing that work and, finally, delivering democracy back to the people.

Question agreed to.