Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm quite pleased to speak on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021 today, although I have very serious problems with it. In many ways, the issue the bill is trying to solve is a really interesting one and a really important one. We need a far more transparent process in our democracy. We need to know where money is coming from. We need to lower donation thresholds. We need to do a whole range of things so that members of the public who are voting can see where the money that is flowing through election campaigns comes from—no doubt. But this bill is a really bad answer and an absolute demonstration of this government's seeming inability to look at a problem, pull it apart and investigate what the actual question is, and, through broad consultation, come up with an answer that actually works. It's a government that doesn't consult, and, time after time after time, comes up with answers that are simply bad ones.

I would also argue in this case that the government is even trying to solve the wrong problem. They seem to believe there's a whole range of left-wing organisations raising money from the community to campaign against them. I come from a marginal seat, and I can tell them that a lot of the people donating to the climate change advocates and the conservation foundations are actually Liberal voters. If the problem is that a whole stack of Liberal voters are donating to charities that are campaigning against the Liberal Party, then perhaps the Liberal Party should consider their own policies. If their own supporters are putting money into defeating them at the election, perhaps they should look at themselves. Perhaps they are looking at the wrong problem.

Let's go back to the issue that we need more transparency, and have a look at what this bill does. I'll explain why I think it's a rather bad bill, and why it would have incredibly detrimental effects to some organisations in my community that do extraordinary local work in fighting for things the local community cares for. In the field of our democracy there is a group of people that spend money on campaigns and advocacy, and they're called political campaigners. At the moment, individuals or entities that spend at least $500,000 during the year or in any one of the three previous financial years—in other words, are spending a lot of money—or electoral expenditure of two-thirds their annual income must register as a political campaigner. If they do that, they can't accept foreign donations and they have a whole range of information they have to give to the AEC, like total receipts, value of gifts in kind, details of receipts greater than the disclosure threshold et cetera. So there's an incredible amount of red tape that lands, quite rightly, on people that spend more than $500,000 during the year on what might be seen as political campaigning but sometimes is just advocacy for a position or if they spend more than two-thirds of their annual income.

This bill lowers the threshold to $100,000 or one-third of their annual income. My first thing when I'm given a number, because I'm a numbers person, is to actually figure out what the number is. Can I just point out that $100,000 wouldn't pay for many full-page ads in the major papers, so it doesn't actually buy very much. It's also, per electorate, $666.66, so this bill lowers the threshold to any advocacy or charitable organisation that is spending on average more than $666 per electorate. They now become what is known as a political campaigner and are faced with an extraordinary level of red tape—something that I know the government hate, but in this case they seem to be prepared to impose it on a whole group of organisations that are not particularly wealthy and are not necessarily spending very much, because the bill lowers the threshold to $100,000 or one-third of annual income—'or' one-third of annual income. So, according to this bill, as long as what you spend is more than $14,500 and more than a third of your annual income, you are captured by this political campaigners' tag and you face the full reporting requirements including vetting every single person that donates to you, making sure they're not a foreign entity, making sure they can make a donation. It's an incredible amount of red tape on a daily basis to meet the requirements of a political campaigner.

In my electorate there are a number of organisations that I think do an extraordinary job. They don't always agree with me, by the way! Sometimes they campaign against me, but they are people from genuine local organisations that have a passion about something. They come together to make a difference and to persuade people on one point of view or another. One of them, for example, is Save Willow Grove, a campaign run by the North Parramatta Residents Action Group with its wonderful secretary, Suzette Meade. They worked incredibly hard over a number of years to save a heritage property called Willow Grove. They actually lost that argument, but I would be very surprised if through their crowdfunding they didn't spend more than $14,500, which would take them over the lower threshold of disclosure, and they would have spent far more than a third of what they raised. In fact, they probably spent all of it on advocacy. That's a local community organisation of volunteers, a mum with her kid, basically at home, working—when she's not at work—getting the community together to do something that they care about, and they will be potentially quite likely captured by this bill.

I wonder about how many of the others might be too—Parramatta Park, for example. The New South Wales government has been moving ahead with a plan to move several parks in the Sydney Basin into a centrally managed Greater Sydney Parklands and take away the local control. There's a whole group of people who have come together and formed an organisation to fight that. Again, it's extremely unlikely that their fundraising would raise less than $14,500, so they'll be over the disclosure threshold, and they will spend all of it or close to all of it, so they will be captured by the political campaigners bill and they will be required to undergo an extraordinary amount of red tape. Again, these are little local organisations that come together because there's something they care about. That's a good thing.

Our job in this place and our job in our communities is to make our communities stronger. I sometimes say our job is to make ourselves redundant in as many areas as we can, empower people, give them a voice and make it possible for communities to talk to each other to come to shared views, to argue things out in the community to work out what their common view is. That's our job, and a lot of these organisations, which will be severely hampered and many of which will disappear altogether, will be caught by this bad answer to a very real problem. There has to be another way to make sure we have transparency, without loading the full weight of the red tape of large political campaigners on small organisations that either spend relatively small amounts locally or spend, on average, $666 per electorate. That is what $100,000 is: $666.66 per electorate. They will be caught by this bill.

With the Parramatta Female Factory, the campaigners there have ensured that we've actually kept the female factory. A number of times governments of various persuasions have tried to get rid of that extraordinary piece of heritage—the most intact female convict factory and the oldest in Australia. The campaigners have fought for years to keep the factory. Again, with their crowdfunding, the idea that their expenditure would be less than $14,500 or that they would have spent less than a third of their expenditure on making a case in the community that that venue should be kept—that's not going to be the case. It's quite likely they would be captured by this bill, as would, possibly, even Westmead Push for Palliative Care. This is an extraordinary organisation that realised that Westmead doesn't have a palliative care ward. They have campaigned for a considerable time with great effect. Again, this is a really important local organisation fighting for something really important locally and doing the job that we all want them to do: caring about something, getting involved, making a difference, making their case and engaging the community. That is the art of persuasion, which is the absolute definition of what politics is supposed to be. That's what they are doing. They are getting involved in a very real and valuable way, and it's hard to imagine that they also wouldn't suddenly find themselves, under these definitions, as political campaigners, subject to extraordinary levels of red tape: details of debts greater than the disclosure threshold and values of gifts in kind.

Tell local organisations—that works with volunteers, that goes out and campaigns and hands out pamphlets and all the rest of the things, that gets on the phone, that letterboxes, that does all the things that volunteers do—that suddenly they will have to record all the value of the gifts in kind. Their total turnover through their fundraising might be $20,000 and if they spend it all on a local campaign that puts them over the disclosure limit. Surely that's not what this government intended? If it is, then, really, the entire country should vote against them. If they actually want to shut down small local organisations that care about the local park, that care about more trees in a suburb, that care about the number of birds, that care about the heritage in their area, that care about building a new childcare centre, that care about the things that we in this place want our communities to care about and get involved in, surely it's not the government's intention to shut down those organisations or bury them in red tape to the extent that they won't be able to do what we all want them to do, which is to build strong local community networks and put their efforts into building those systems and structures within our community that support good lives in our local community?

I'm going to go back to that $100,000 threshold. If you're not used to campaigning, you might think $100,000 is a lot of money. Again, if it's a national campaign, it's a couple of full-page ads and not much more. If it's spent on the ground, it's $666 per electorate. I can tell the government, I'm not afraid of $666 flowing into my electorate from a national charity. I'm not afraid of that. In fact, I welcome the views in my electorate. I'm in a marginal seat. There are many of them. I don't always agree with the different voices, but what we need to be doing in this place is finding a way to balance the need for strong community voices and people getting involved in things they care about and building relationships and helping to persuade the community members around them and ensuring that our democratic system is transparent. There will be ways to do that through proper consultation over a proper period of time—talking it through with people who do donate, not just the charities that receive donations. Who is donating and why? What is going on out there? What do we need to address to make sure that this is transparent? What technology can be used?

Donation thresholds, truth in advertising, caps on how much can be spent—all of those things would improve our democracy. This will not. It's a very bad answer to a very serious question. I would urge the government to rethink it. I know they won't, because they're not very good with answers. This government are not very good at all. They're certainly not very good at consulting. But this is an incredibly bad answer.

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