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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to donations to political parties.

Just once a year we get to see who is donating to political parties, and every year it's awash with big corporates and big polluters donating big money to the big parties, and usually getting big access and big influence over policy-making. Last week we got the donations disclosure data for 2021-22 and, tragically, coal and gas projects, energy companies, and mineral and resources industry bodies all featured heavily. With around $2 million gifted to both of the big parties by the fossil fuel companies and their cheerleaders, it's little wonder that, no matter who is in government, the fossil fuel sector continues to get almost $11 billion in public subsidies every year in things like cheap fuel and accelerated depreciation—plus direct grants to open up new polluting projects.

These industries are not donating millions of dollars because they believe in the institution of a strong democracy; they are donating because it gets results for them. The fingerprints of the coal and gas donors are, tragically, all over Labor's safeguard legislation. Labor is taking money from the coal and gas corporations causing the climate crisis, and then proposing laws that allow new coal and gas projects to go ahead. Four big donors represent five of the highest-polluting facilities covered by the safeguard mechanism: Woodside, BlueScope, Chevron and INPEX. Collectively, they have donated $200,000 to the Labor Party just in the last financial year. You have to wonder how much access to the table that bought them when Labor was designing its weak safeguard mechanism, which allows new coal and gas.

Woodside and Santos donated more to the ALP than to the Liberals and Nationals combined, and they now have free rein to open new projects and trash the climate—projects which damage land and water, which turbo-charge the climate crisis, and which do not respect—and, in fact, ignore—the wishes of First Nations communities. INPEX gave $157,300 to the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor Party. They're a major polluter covered by the safeguard mechanism and they're currently seeking support for a carbon capture and storage project that will benefit from the publicly funded Middle Arm hub. I wonder what legislative concessions and public support their donation will get for them.

The Mineral Resources Council, who recently threatened to unleash an ad campaign against Labor unless it ruled out a windfall profits tax, declared nearly a quarter of a million dollars in donations to the big parties in 2021-22—and still there is no windfall profits tax on the horizon. Santos, which is pushing to frack the Beetaloo basin and the Narrabri gas fields, received $16 million in public money for its Moomba carbon caption and storage project. It gave $154,000 to the major parties, so that's a pretty solid return on investment for Santos there. Tamboran donated $200,000 to the big political parties—the first time they've declared a donation—and they also received $7½ million of public money from the coalition for natural gas exploration in the Beetaloo basin. The Greens attempted to disallow that grant in the Senate, but the Labor Party decided to support the grant of that money—no idea what could have influenced that decision!

These are only the donations that Australians are told about. More than a third of all donations either fall below the disclosure threshold or rely on weak categorisation and loopholes to stay hidden from public view. That is why the Greens want real reform to get the influence of big money out of politics. My private members bill to end dirty donations would cap political donations at $1,000 a year no matter who you are and ban donations from industries with a track record of seeking to buy policy outcomes, including the fossil fuel sector. We want to close that loophole that allows exorbitant membership fees and cash-for-access events for the big parties to completely ignore the disclosure obligations. We want real-time disclosure of all donations over $1,000 so that when voters go to the ballot box they know who is pulling the strings of the people that they're voting for. The Greens have been campaigning for years to clean up democracy, and we are hopeful—we are eternal optimists—that we might now have a chance for the government of the day to come to the table and work with us to ensure that politicians—all of us—work in the public interest and not in the interests of donor polluters.

Question agreed to.