Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I first introduced this bill more than a year ago—in fact, on 27 November 2019—and it's sat on the Notice Paper since then because, of course, this government, the Morrison government, does not want to deal with this issue. They don't want transparency around political donations. They want to continue the cover-up, and the recent release from the Australian Electoral Commission on the political donations for the financial year shows why: a $75,000 donation from Clive Palmer to the National Party. It's simply outrageous that the Nationals are accepting donation from Clive Palmer while he's funding his own political party. This government coalition is a coalition between Liberals, Nationals and Clive Palmer. And, because political parties were only required to disclose individual donations above $14,000 during the last financial year, we don't know whether Clive Palmer also made donations to the Liberal Party. He could have donated $13,999 and we wouldn't know about it.

We also don't know which Liberal donors this government has done favours for. Last year we found out that the Leppington Pastoral Company had donated $58,000 to the Liberals and had been paid $30 million for a parcel of land worth, we found out, one-tenth that much. Just last week we found out that Peter Dutton had awarded an $880,000 grant to an organisation eight days after it made a donation of $1,500 to the LNP in support of Mr Dutton. How many other Liberal Party donors have won tenders, grants and approvals funded by taxpayers' money? We don't know because the system lacks transparency. How many donations are we not seeing because the threshold for disclosure is set so high, at $14,300?

Federal Labor discloses all donations above $1,000. That's our policy and that is what we think all parties should be doing so that donations are transparent and there for all to see. That's why we've introduced this bill, and that's exactly what this bill does. All donations over $1,000 would need to be disclosed. That would mean that the Australian public would actually get to see who is funding political parties, not just a tiny piece of the puzzle. With the lower threshold, a whole heap of donations would come to light. There would be greater media scrutiny and reporting of donations, which would mean greater transparency and more information for voters as they went to cast their vote. This can only be good for the democratic process.

Federally, we have some of the worst disclosure laws in the country. We're lagging behind the states and territories. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT all require donations over $1,000 to be disclosed. Western Australia requires the disclosure of donations over $2,500, and South Australia requires donations over $5,000 to be disclosed. All of them are lower than the federal requirements. We can do, and should be doing, better and we have done better in the past. It will not surprise Senator Dean Smith over there to know that it was a Labor government that first introduced a federal donations disclosure regime. That was nearly 40 years ago, in 1983, under the prime ministership of Bob Hawke. All donations above $1,000 were required to be disclosed. In 2006, though, the Liberals, under John Howard, jacked this back up to $10,000 and linked it to CPI. This indexation has caused it to blow out to the current figure of $14,300 for the 2021 year. That's why this bill also removes indexation of the threshold so that it won't increase every year as it does currently. It will be fixed from now into the future at $1,000.

Why would the Liberals massively increase the disclosure threshold unless they wanted to hide the donations they were receiving? They will tell you it's about privacy—that the people who want to donate don't want their names published. But it's not mum-and-dad donors who donate more than $1,000 in one year. If people choose to donate more than that then they ought to be transparent about that donation. Under Labor's proposals the privacy of small donors will still be protected, but a light will be shone on those seeking to influence policy and government decision-making.

The Liberals will also tell you that they don't want to lower the threshold because of the increased compliance burden for these parties—that it's too difficult and too much effort for political parties to fill in the paperwork. Obviously, with a greater number of donations to declare, there will be a greater amount of work, but transparency and accountability are worth the extra effort, and democracy itself is worth it. If that means providing additional public funding to parties and candidates to ensure their compliance then we should be having a conversation about that too.

The release two weeks ago of the donations data also highlights how extraordinarily long it takes the Australian public to find out about the donations political parties have received. It took over 10 months for Australian voters to find out that Clive Palmer had been donating to the National Party. If a donation is made on 1 July, the soonest we can find out about it is 19 months later. It's a bit better if a donation is made on 30 June; then it's only seven months to find out about that donation. That is, quite frankly, ridiculous and utterly unacceptable and is why Labor has another bill before the Senate which would require donations above the threshold to be disclosed within seven days.

If the Liberal Party are able to accept donations and keep them secret for 19 months, that means they've got all the time to give grants, award tenders and do dodgy land deals before anyone finds out about them, and we know that that's what they've been doing, of course. If the Liberal Party is able to accept donations and keep them secret for 19 months then it means that voters don't have the information when they're casting their vote in a polling booth and simply can't hold the Morrison government to account. Our bill for real-time disclosure would also aggregate donations so that, as soon as the total of the donations from a single donor reaches the disclosure threshold, the party would need to disclose all subsequent donations from that donor no matter what their value.

We know that transparency is the key to preventing and identifying corruption. That's why we've been driving Labor's reform agenda. It's Labor, not the government or the Greens, who has been driving the agenda for political donation reform, transparency and government accountability. It was Labor who fought for the ban on political donations. The Liberal Party didn't want to stop taking donations from foreign sources, despite the risk of foreign influence to our democracy. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting our amendments. It was Labor who protected charities and not-for-profits from government legislation that sought to silence and suppress their political advocacy. It was Labor who ensured that public election funding was linked to campaign expenditure, preventing candidates and parties from profiting from the electoral system. It is Labor again who's fighting for a powerful and independent integrity commission. Where is the government's promised Integrity Commission? We have seen delay after delay, because this government and this Prime Minister don't believe in integrity or accountability in government. It is a constant battle to get this government to come to the table on integrity reforms, and it is a battle to stop it eroding democracy with draconian measures designed to suppress the vote and silence their critics.

We know from Senator McGrath's recommendation as the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that the Liberals want to introduce voter ID laws, potentially disenfranchising our most vulnerable Australians; abolish compulsory full-preferential voting, undermining our compulsory voting system; and introduce increased restrictions for charities and not-for-profits, making it harder for them to engage in political advocacy. We will be fighting all of those changes, if the Liberals try to introduce legislation before the next election.

Australians want honesty in government, but they've received the opposite from the coalition. We've had the sports rorts, the community grants rorts and now the safe seats rorts. Are there any grant programs that they won't rort? The Morrison government expects everyone else to play by the rules but thinks that the rules don't apply to it. They want to restrict the abilities of charities to fundraise and restrict their ability to campaign on issues that affect the most vulnerable people in our society. But the government's happy to receive donations from wealthy vested interests and happy with the rules that let it keep those donations secret for as long as possible.

Labor is on the side of accountability and transparency in government. That's what our reforms are designed to achieve. The government know who is donating to them and what they're getting for it. It's information they can use which is hidden from us, the media and the public. Doing a favour for a donor is obviously wrong. It raises questions. But it's not obvious if no-one can see it. We cannot question what we do not know about. We have to trust the government not to take advantage of its position. Given the rorting by this government, you will forgive me for not trusting it. Australians should know about political donations. They should know before they vote, not months—to close to two years—later. With our two bills, that is what is going to happen. Lowering the disclosure threshold is something we can do right now to immediately improve transparency. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Transparency Measures—Lowering the Disclosure Threshold) Bill 2019, introduced as a private senator's bill by Senator Farrell. As a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I am pleased to make a contribution to this debate. Senator Farrell's bill proposes to amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 regarding the amount at which disclosure of political donations is required. It claims that amending the act will restore the integrity of our democracy, but what it will actually do is place an unnecessary administrative burden on political parties and increase the red-tape load disproportionately to the amounts being donated. Don't forget: political parties are largely volunteer-run organisations. Do we want to tie our hardworking volunteers up with even more red tape? A disclosure threshold as low as $1,000 could pick up donations or spending by very small groups such as neighbourhood associations, RSL branches, sporting clubs and other small players who comment favourably or adversely on a federal politician or federal party. It would be unreasonable to expect the smallest donors, like your local footy club, to report with the same intensity as major players. Those donors have only limited financial means, and, while their interest in politics may be only at a peripheral or hobbyist level, we do not want to discourage that interest or their willingness to donate to a political cause. Diversity in donors encourages diversity in views, making our political landscape more representative.

We need to strike a balance that ensures transparency for the largest political donations while protecting the democratic freedom and privacy of smaller players. A disclosure threshold that is set too low will mean a loss of privacy, which in turn compromises the ability to freely sponsor participants in public debate. This bill throws up potential consequences, in that it could expose a person to harassment. Aspiring politicians may shy away from further political participation as a result. Privacy rights should not be traded away so lightly. Consider the harassment tactics that have become popular with political activists in recent years. Personal attacks, particularly via social media, have become so commonplace now. We heard harrowing evidence of this during our hearings into the 2019 election campaign. In an environment where such behaviour is becoming accepted as the norm, there is an even greater need to be cautious about aggressive campaigns that demand greater disclosure of political beliefs. Small businesses, which make up the majority of the Australian business landscape, are often owned by the same person who serves you at the counter, who does the books and who markets their operation. They are likely time poor. If they are to donate to support a candidate or political party who champions their values, they do not want that act to be arduous.

On top of the red-tape issue, small businesses are particularly susceptible to 'cancel culture' intimidation. Word-of-mouth is a key marketing tool for small businesses, but negative word-of-mouth can cost these small operations dearly. This means they might decide not to make a political donation, for fear of harassment or intimidation. A low donation threshold would take away the platform for the diverse opinions that are otherwise heard in public debate today. Many of these opinions come from small players like mum-and-dad small businesses and local sporting groups. We don't want to silence their voices. We want these players to have a say in Australian public debate. This bill is such a blunt instrument that it not only proposes to lower the cap but it also does away with indexation of the disclosure threshold, by proposing repeal of section 321A of the Electoral Act. This would mean that the $1,000 threshold would be frozen in nominal terms, effectively lowering the cap each year. Thousands more Australians would therefore be caught in the red-tape-reporting net as a result.

The coalition has already implemented several reforms to improve the integrity of the electoral system. These include prohibiting foreign political donations, including those from foreign governments and state owned enterprises, from being used to finance public debate; limiting public election funding to demonstrated electoral spending that can be substantiated by receipts; requiring public reporting by key non-party players, like left-wing organisation GetUp; applying the electoral authorisation requirements to modern communication channels, like SMSs; increasing funding for the Australian Electoral Commission to use electronic certified lists of electors, to guard against electoral fraud and ensure that absentee voters have their votes counted in the right electorate; funding modernisation of the AEC's Transparency Register to make it easier to locate and extract data; and making it mandatory for an election candidate to complete a qualification checklist to show they are entitled to run for election to parliament.

We explored the topic of electoral processes and procedures and clarified the relationship between federal, state and territory electoral finance laws just a few months ago in this place, when the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2020 was debated. That bill acknowledged that the legislation around elections and referendums held in Australia could be clearer. It also showed how electoral processes could be enhanced and modernised to allow for greater flexibility within the Australian Electoral Commission. More clarity and streamlined election delivery strengthens our electoral integrity and builds confidence in our voting system. To achieve this clarity, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2020 amended the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984. In amending the Electoral Act, it clarified donation and disclosure laws relating to the relationship between federal electoral events and those in the states and territories. This followed the 2019 High Court decision of Spence v State of Queensland and reflected the High Court's findings about the exact limits of the Commonwealth's legislative power. The miscellaneous measures bill also provided greater clarity around the relationship between federal, state and territory electoral laws to improve certainty for those who participated in elections across different levels of government. Individuals and entities are subject to different electoral funding and disclosure laws across federal, state and territory jurisdictions, leading to confusion and potentially costly or unlawful errors.

After each federal election, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducts a review into the election. As a first time member of that committee but a long-time volunteer involved in both state and federal campaigns, I found the process enlightening. Naturally, there are always going to be different views from all sides of politics, and we need to ensure that recommendations made and acted upon improve the outcome for the people of Australia. I'm certain that the committee's chair, Senator McGrath, will elaborate on many of the 27 recommendations made from that inquiry during his contribution later today; however, I want to mention just a few that I believe will provide further confidence in the election process for our community. The first of those is the need to identify voters when they present at a polling booth. With a background in banking, where privacy and security are paramount, I have never understood how anyone can simply walk into a polling booth, state their name and address and be accepted in good faith. Who is to say that they haven't been into every polling booth in the neighbourhood and voted on behalf of their family, their neighbours and anyone else they know the details of? In today's world you're asked to verify your identity in almost every aspect of life using PINs, thumbprints or fingerprints and, yes, occasionally even signatures on a regular basis. Why should voting be any different? Further to this, the chair's report also recommended that the electoral roll be strengthened to ensure only those with photo ID or other forms of suitable ID can enrol or change enrolment. This is a simple no-brainer to me.

Other recommendations included broadening the test for affiliated organisations, exploring the possibility of introducing an electronic certified roll, replacing compulsory preferential voting with optional preferential voting, and introducing the Tasmanian initiative the Robson rotation for ordering candidates on ballot papers for the House of Representatives.

Further opportunity to gain insight into the transparency and accountability around political donations and disclosure is currently underway, with the current Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters reporting later this year on its review on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Act 2018. This review commenced on the second anniversary of the royal assent of the bill and will allow us to understand the impacts of the amendments made at that time while also providing an opportunity for further community consultation on this matter.

We need to ensure that we maintain a balanced approach when it comes to political donations. Yes, we need transparency for the largest political donations, but we also need to protect the democratic freedom and privacy of smaller players. This bill seeks to introduce a disclosure threshold so low that it will rob small donors of their privacy and drive them out of political life. A balanced disclosure regime is one that allows political participation by all Australians. The current disclosure threshold appropriately balances red tape, political participation and transparency of the electoral system. Therefore I call on the Senate to reject this bill.

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

I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Transparency Measures—Lowering the Disclosure Threshold) Bill 2019. This is a bill that would lower the disclosure threshold for donations to political parties to $1,000. That is a noble outcome, but I'm extremely disappointed that, whilst we are debating this bill today, the Labor Party are not bringing this bill on for a vote. They could have done so. The Senate could have voted this through. The Greens certainly would have supported it, and we do support it. It is a bare minimum reform but it is a start. I am extremely disheartened that there seems to be an attempt to be seen to be doing something without actually doing the thing. I call on Labor to rethink their plans to not move this bill for a vote, because, surely, when private senators' time is so scarce, we should use those opportunities to pass good laws.

I will talk about how this bill could be further improved, but the major point here is: it is great that we are debating reform, but why not bring it on for a vote? We know the government don't even want to be seen to be doing anything, let alone actually do something, but to have this chance to push them to a vote and to not do so is baffling to me and incredibly disheartening to the Australian population who want reform in this space. They are sick of their democracy being perceived as for sale, so this is a bare minimum reform. Lowering the disclosure threshold is the least we could do to clean up the influence of big money on politics. It wouldn't remove the influence of that money but it would at least have some transparency over the process. But, after today, we still won't have that because Labor are not bringing this bill on for a vote. So one wonders, frankly, about the point of even debating this if you are not going to move it to a vote.

I'm sure everybody knows that big money continues to corrupt our democracy and prioritises private interests over the public interest and over the interests of the broader constituency and people. Figures disclosed last Monday by the Electoral Commission show that, in 2019, nearly $170 million was donated to political parties, and the majority of that money came from just five big donors. The alarming thing is the trend here. Between the 2016 and the 2019 elections, the amount of money that was donated tripled. So the problem of private money buying political parties and funding their re-election campaigns is getting worse. It has become three times worse between the last two elections, and these are just the donations that we do know about—I will talk a bit about dark money in a moment. This is a particularly concerning trajectory, particularly since we are staring down the barrel of the next election.

The usual suspects like the gambling industry, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals and the banking sector have continued to give very generously, and they have been rewarded with grants, with contracts, with advantageous policy outcomes—or advantageous policy inaction, in the case of the climate crisis. To give just a few examples, the guy whose box factory opening kept the Prime Minister from an international climate summit, Mr Anthony Pratt, donated $1.55 million to the coalition through Pratt Holdings. And Pratt's company, Visy, ended up with a $10 million bushfire recovery grant and now a recycling export ban that strengthens their market dominance. The biggest five fossil fuel giants—Woodside, Santos, Rio Tinto, BHP and Peabody—collectively gave around $10 million to the major parties and to lobby groups in 2019-20. Is it any wonder that we see government paralysis on the climate crisis and this continued fiction of a gas led recovery?

Chevron paid no tax on their Australian earnings, but they somehow managed to find $92,000 to donate to the major parties. Crown, who you'll hear a lot more about this week, gave almost $146,000 to the major parties in 2019-20 and they have given $2 million since the year 2000. Given the evidence in the Bergin report just last week about criminal involvement and money-laundering allegations, it really is incumbent upon both big parties to give that money back or, better still, to give it to a gambling support service and charity, and we'll be talking about that later today.

I have more examples of big money buying big outcomes. The big four accounting firms donated $400,000 to the big parties. Over that same period they got themselves almost $600 million in government contracts. That's a pretty good return on investment. After a brief hiatus during the banking royal commission, the big banks have resumed donating. The banks, the financial lobby groups and the major insurance and credit firms delivered over $900,000 to the government in 2019-20. That wouldn't possibly have anything to do with the efforts to relax responsible-lending laws now, would it?

The Greens have consistently advocated for lowering not just the disclosure threshold but the amount that people, organisations, companies and unions—anybody—are permitted to donate to a political party. We'd like to see bans on particular industries that have a demonstrated history of seeking influence on policymaking. We don't think they should be allowed to donate at all. But at the very least we think that there should be a cap of $1,000 per year on how much you—no matter who you are—can donate to the big political parties. This would level the playing field. This small modest amount, hopefully, isn't enough to buy influence. It would still be constitutional and allow people to express their desires to support a particular party. Big money should not be running our political system. At the moment it's running rife. It got worse over the last election period. This bill attempts to do the barest minimum of reforms, and we're not even going to get to vote on it today.

Real-time disclosure is another issue. We've that in Queensland now. This bill doesn't address speeding up the disclosure time frame. There's a lag of up to 19 months before the public learns who donated what to whom. That delay doesn't help transparency. In fact, it hides possible policy outcomes that may have been obtained from that donating. So we need a rigorous real-time disclosure regime and we need to properly address this issue of dark money not just by lowering the disclosure threshold but by treating as political donations things like membership fees, fundraising dinner fees and the cosy lunches and dinners where you pay a squillion dollars to sit next to the minister and speak in her or his ear. We need to treat all of that as political donations to get some transparency and accountability in the system.

As I said, we support lowering the disclosure threshold to $1,000. Whilst this improves transparency, it doesn't remove the influence of that money. Greater transparency would give information but it would still take up to 19 months to disclose. It will tell us who's buying our democracy but not in a timely manner and it won't stop it being for sale.

We saw a report this morning that the extent of dark money is off the charts. Some 40 per cent of the money received by the coalition falls into the category where they don't need to disclose who's giving them that money. It's called dark money because it either falls under the disclosure threshold or is in a category where you don't otherwise have to disclose. It includes things like fundraising dinners, membership subscriptions and donations from support bodies that are affiliated with the party. Dark money is a huge problem. Some 40 per cent of the coalition's funds are dark money and I think 27.7 per cent of Labor's funds are dark money. So, while lowering the disclosure threshold will address some of that, it still leaves those other categories unregulated. We have the chance to fix that, and we should be doing exactly that.

This bill doesn't capture membership fees. It doesn't capture subscriptions or attendance at fundraising events. It doesn't lift the curtain on those holding companies and foundations that warehouse donations. So, without that reform, significant sources of campaign income will remain hidden. This bill also doesn't stop government grants and contracts from going to donors. It doesn't prevent companies from applying for government approvals while donating and donating while their applications are being assessed. In recent years we've seen a litany of examples of companies, including Santos and Adani, making donations at around about the time their approvals were given. That is something that the Greens would like to reform as well. This bill doesn't impose any restrictions on the source of political donations. We've seen in the media this week the revelations about Crown. Clearly, accepting donations from organisations like Crown, which is now embroiled in criminal allegations and money-laundering allegations—it's just past tenable that any party would continue to receive or even retain donations from folk like Crown. The defence, pharmaceutical, mining, property development, banking and alcohol industries should also be explicitly prohibited from seeking to buy favourable outcomes through donations.

Lastly, this bill doesn't put a cap on the total amount of donations that can be made. It doesn't bring forward that 19-month delay in disclosure. A few weeks ago—as, earlier today, Senator Farrell said when he spoke to this bill—the Labor Party were dismayed that Clive Palmer and his political party had made donations to the Nationals and generally spent an awful lot of money trying to buy electoral outcomes, either for themselves or for the coalition. But despite this outrage, which I note is lacking when it comes to fossil fuel donations and the influence that that industry seeks, just last week they sadly refused to vote for our motion calling for real-time disclosure and donation caps. They said the parliament needed to debate real reforms. Here we are debating some reforms, but you're not even bringing it to a vote. I think you're being hoist with your own petard. I therefore move a second reading amendment standing in my name on sheet 1194:

At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate notes that this Bill should be complemented by reforms to:

(a) cap the total value of political donations that can be received by a political party, candidate, political campaigner or associated entity; and

(b) require more timely disclosure of political donations above the disclosure thresh

This amendment is drafted in such a way that we hope people will be able to support it. I understand it has now been circulated in the chamber. This amendment calls for a cap on the amount of political donations that can be made. We would like it set at $1,000, but we're open to discussion. It also calls for a more timely disclosure of political donations so that we're not waiting for 19 months. Queensland manages real-time disclosure, and there is a variety of time frames that apply in different states. It can be done; it can be sped up. Let's have that conversation. As I'm an eternal optimist, I look forward to getting some support when the time comes for the second reading amendment.

I might flag one final point: were this bill to have gone to a vote, had the Labor Party sought to do so, we would have moved some committee stage amendments to address this point. We don't have that opportunity today, but we may have that opportunity in the future. Lowering the disclosure threshold will impose greater reporting requirements on third parties, and the term 'third party' is defined. The definition in section 287 means that an organisation becomes a third party when its spending on electoral matters is more than the disclosure threshold. If you were to be deemed a third party, you would therefore be subject to higher reporting requirements and, beyond just the disclosure of those same donations, there would be additional obligations that would flow. We are concerned, as we always have been, that that might deter smaller organisations from advocating on important political issues during election campaigns—I'm thinking in particular of environmental organisation, given that's my background. This is a very readily fixed issue, simply by decoupling the definition of 'third party' from the disclosure threshold and instead tying it to an amount of electoral expenditure. I understand this issue is before JSCEM, which I sit on, and will probably be addressed in the review of the electoral funding and disclosure reform, or EFDR, bill. We look forward to, hopefully, having a consensus workable solution on that matter. But I wanted to place on record that we're aware of the issue and keen to see it addressed.

We had an opportunity here today to debate donations reform. There is such a long list of reforms that are needed. Yes, we need to lower the disclosure threshold, but we've got to cap the amount that people can donate. We've got to make sure that that disclosure happens as quickly as possible. We've got to capture all that dark money by making sure that memberships, fundraisers and those other uncategorised donations actually do have to be disclosed. People have a right to know who is seeking to buy influence, and, frankly, people have a right to a system that is free from being able to be bought. That's why we'd like to see a cap on the amount of donations that can be made to political parties, and a level playing field. No matter who you are, that cap should apply. Individuals, unions, companies, vested interests, lobby groups—you name it. Let's get the influence of big money out of our politics and out of our democracy. This isn't America. Our democracy shouldn't be for sale to the highest bidder. We should be guided by evidence and by the public interest in making decisions, not by who just took you out to lunch and promised to make a motza of a contribution to get you re-elected.

The Australian people deserve that reform. Momentum is building for that reform. The Greens have been pushing for this for 10 years now—that seems to be about the time frame it has taken for other things to get done. It took us 10 years before a federal ICAC was at least agreed to in principle by big political parties. Of course we're yet to see one, but we continue to wait. So we will still be here pushing for reform of our political system, because people want their democracy back.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've listened carefully to Senator Waters and to Senator Farrell outline their approaches to the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Transparency Measures—Lowering the Disclosure Threshold) Bill 2019. I have to say I think there is largely agreement in the Australian community about what the nature of the problem is. There is largely agreement—apart from on the government side—that the influence of unregulated undisclosed money in politics is a deep problem for our political system and a deep problem for the level of trust that there is between people and their government.

We saw, of course, in the last election Mr Clive Palmer—that disreputable businessman from Queensland—spending an enormous amount of money largely directed against the Labor Party. It was tens of millions of dollars across the country, spent in an entirely unaccountable and unprincipled way and directed to supporting—in particular in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia—the candidates that the Morrison government put forward in that election. We've seen scandals about donations being provided by companies and by organisations who later got grants from the Morrison government. People are, I think, entitled to have a deep level of scepticism about this government's commitment to a clean electoral system, to a balanced electoral system.

When you listen to Senator Waters, it is as if the impetus for electoral reform somehow comes from the Greens political party. It's as if they are the pure source of deep concern about the Australian electoral system and as if nobody else in the system, in the community or in academia has been talking about this issue for decade after decade. The Greens' interest in this area is welcome, though. I do think, having listened carefully to Senator Waters and looking at the Greens' policy position in this area, that they have some similar motivations but they get the answer quite wrong.

I do think that the bill that Senator Farrell has spoken to and dealt with offers the right answer to some very complex questions. It only deals with the questions that we've been outlining today. As Senator Waters says, there are other issues in the political system that we ought to be having regard to. So that's the Greens' position: right motivation, but I think they get the answers wrong. I think the Farrell bill is well worth this parliament supporting. But it does beg the question: what is the Morrison government's position about electoral reform? Well, it's two things. Firstly, it's, 'Nothing to see here; move on,' and, secondly, it's, 'How can we use this for our own partisan political advantage, to game the system?'

Of course the regulation of political donations is fundamental to our democracy. Donations are a form of speech, in fact. The High Court has upheld that donations are a form of political communication. Who can donate, how they can donate and the process through which that is disclosed are fundamental for citizens' participation in democracy. The lesson has to be clear from the United States about where you end up going as a society and a community if you allow completely unregulated, undisclosable, not transparent money into the political system.

In this country, the laws around political donations are subject to two legal tests: firstly, does the law burden the implied freedom of political communication and, secondly, is the law reasonably appropriate and adapted to serve a legitimate end in a manner compatible with a constitutionally prescribed system of responsible and representative government? The truth is that all regulation of political donations effectively burdens the freedom of political communication. The question is: when you regulate, is it appropriate and is it directed towards a legitimate end? We don't want an American-style system that preferences the constitutional rights of a wealthy few over the health of our whole political system, so what should be the legitimate ends of our system of electoral donations?

Our system should prioritise accountability, transparency, integrity and equity. The purpose of regulation in this area should be to provide for a vibrant public sphere. It should be to provide for more voices of ordinary Australians in politics, not fewer. It should engage and encourage speech and donations by individuals and organisations that bring more people into the political system and don't force the voices of ordinary Australians out. I don't believe that our election system should be entirely publicly funded. That is a recipe, supported by some, that leads to a sort of dull centrism where the ordinary voices of Australians are locked out. There's a balance to be struck here between proper public funding and ensuring that political parties are able to participate effectively in the political system without being beholden to donations and supporting the rights of political parties to be supported, whether it's by $10 donations from individuals or larger donations from organisations.

I have been engaged in this argument for many, many years, inside this parliament and outside of it. In 2012, the New South Wales government introduced laws that banned donations from any organisation or person who was not an enrolled voter in the state. It aggregated the electoral communications expenditure of parties and affiliated bodies such as unions under expenditure caps. So the Liberal Party in New South Wales did in its interests what the Greens would like to do in their interests if they were ever in charge: they abolished the capacity of their political opponents to participate in the system. That's what they did. They made it unlawful for unions and community organisations—environment organisations, neighbourhood organisations—to participate in the political system. I supported the Unions New South Wales case, which went to the High Court, which ultimately kicked out the O'Farrell legislation and turned down the New South Wales government on the basis that I described. It was not a legitimate end that the government sought; it was a political end that the government sought for its own political advantage.

There is quite some history to the labour movement's engagement in politics in this country. Most of our modern political history was shaped by the labour movement and the Labor Party participating in politics. Almost all of the good things that have happened in modern Australian history have happened as a result of the labour movement and the Labor Party's participation; and people, when considering their approach to donations, ought to have regard to that.

If the Nurses and Midwives Association want to use their resources in the lead-up to an election to campaign on nurse-to-patient ratios in a way that's openly declared, spending perhaps millions of dollars worth of members' money, who on earth are a group of politicians to tell them that that ought to be regulated out of existence? If the AMWU want to fight for locally built trains and apprenticeships, if the ASU want to fight for proper funding for better funded domestic violence services, or if the SDA or the United Workers Union want to fight for penalty rates in hospitality and retail, that's what we want in the political system. We want more people making the argument, bringing the argument home, but the Greens bill would see those voices silenced, in many respects.

The first meeting of the New South Wales Labor Party—I always say the New South Wales Labor Party; I don't want to upset my Queensland colleagues—was on 4 April 1891 at the Unity Hall Hotel in Balmain. That pub is still there. The Balmain Labor Electoral League accepted a donation from the dock workers union, which paid for the registration of all of the Labor league candidates for that election. Our movement has survived for 130 years because of those institutional connections.

In my view, the bill being offered this morning by the Greens is naive. It's partisan recklessness. Excluding individuals should be a product of careful and deliberate consultation, not a list of the people that you wish weren't participating in the public space. It's based on the proposition—I think by many people who approach this area of regulation—that, if all of these voices were removed, somehow the argument that had merit would rise to the top; somehow there would be this process where people would fairly consider the arguments. Well, the truth is that politics is shaped by institutional power, by a struggle for power and a struggle for winning propositions in the public sphere, and, whether your disagreement is with big mining or the finance industry, you can't legislate those people out of having some role. It is true that, where there is a nexus between pecuniary advantage and public policy, it is a legitimate end. For example, in the New South Wales system, I do think that there is a very strong argument for keeping property developers out of local and state government decision-making. That makes absolute sense. I think there is a community understanding that the tobacco industry ought not be engaged in that, given how closely related they are to health industry regulation. The case has to be made out, and it has to satisfy the test that the High Court set out for the parliament. I don't think the list that's provided does that.

I do want to spend a little bit of time, though, on the bill before us and the government's approach. Lowering disclosure thresholds is pretty fundamental. Our federal sphere has the weakest political donation laws of any jurisdiction. The disclosure threshold is entirely out of step with the states and the territories. In Queensland, it's $1,000; New South Wales, $1,000; Western Australia, $1,000; Victoria, $1,040, for some reason; the ACT, $1,000; and South Australia, $5,000. In the federal sphere, you can donate up to $14,300, and nobody will know. There is no aggregation. Multiple donations below the threshold can go unreported. As Senator Waters outlined to the chamber, that's why 40 per cent of the money received by the coalition parties to campaign in Australia is dark money—it is unreported, unaccountable, from individuals unknown.

In a system where we are watching developments overseas and watching developments in our own jurisdiction with foreign interference, with big money getting involved in politics, with scandal after scandal here, rort after rort here and smug arrogance in the way this government treats government money as Liberal Party money, it is entirely proper that people look at that 40 per cent of Scott Morrison's electoral war chest—40 per cent of it; nearly half—when nobody knows where it's come from. Nobody knows who made those donations. Nobody knows which piper is calling the Morrison tune on any particular day.

We do need proper electoral regulation in this country. We do need a National Integrity Commission to oversee the intersection between money and politics. We saw, just last week, Mr Dutton award a grant of nearly $900,000 to an organisation eight days after it donated to the Queensland Liberal National Party. He took a $36,000 chartered flight to Tasmania to announce a grant that he hadn't even awarded yet. This program wasn't Safer Communities; it was Safer Seats! That's what Minister Dutton was engaged in. That's why people are sceptical about the role of money in politics, and that's why this place and the other place need to get with the program and get a decent system of electoral regulation so we can rebuild confidence in the system.

Debate adjourned.