James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the second reading of the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Annual Disclosure Equality) Bill 2021 bill but not the amendment. I could have some more sympathy for the amendment if it were genuine in seeking increased transparency, particularly around union movement donations to political parties. I would love to see a higher threshold and standard for union donation revelations. Perhaps when unions donate to political parties they should be required to reveal the details of every member of that union and put that on the record so that we know, with those millions of dollars that are funnelled into the Labor Party from the union movement, who the members of that union who are making these political donations are. Maybe we should also require unions to undertake a vote before they give political donations to anyone in our system. They should say to their members: 'Hey, we want to funnel millions of dollars of your union dues into political campaigns. Do you support that or not?' Maybe that sort of transparency would make a big difference in our system. But the Labor Party do not propose that in their second reading amendment, and we all know why.

Nonetheless, I support the bill. Firstly, I am surprised that what we're bringing in through this bill wasn't already the case. I just assumed that the standards that we in political parties have to meet around political donation disclosure was also the case for Independent MPs. Of course, I am so shocked that Independent MPs, who would know that they did not have the same obligations as the rest of us, have never chosen to raise this before! They've never come into this chamber or the other chamber and said: 'Hey, here is something terrible. I've just realised that, as an independent MP or senator, I do not have the same disclosure requirements as all of you who are members of a major party. How appalling. I am so fanatically supportive of all these other integrity measures that I raise so regularly in the chamber, so the first thing I want is to make sure that my integrity is beyond reproach.' But we have never had this issue raised by Independent members. It makes me reflect on the motives of some of the contributions they give in regard to their purported desire for increased governance and integrity measures in so many other pieces of legislation that they contribute on when they've never pointed out to us that they aren't doing what the rest of us are doing.

I am not impugning anyone with that, and I am not aware of any evidence that the wrong thing is occurring. But the whole reason for the regime that we have around disclosure is to make sure that there is no risk of that.

And we political parties of course have very significant requirements on us insofar as who we can receive donations from and the disclosure requirements of those donations. As the previous speaker mentioned, at the moment, any donation over $14,500 you receive has to be publicly disclosed each year; and that's been an index linked figure, which is why it changes every year from the legislation that he reflected on from the Howard government in 2006.

It is therefore very surprising that Independent members of parliament, before indicating whether they're contesting the next election, haven't had those requirements on them. I haven't indicated my intention publicly that I'm running at the next election, so maybe I'll take the opportunity to stop the presses and say that I do intend to recontest my seat. If I weren't a member from the Liberal Party, having just made that statement now, if I was an Independent, that's the first time that any requirements under current legislation would suddenly be triggered upon me. If I had chosen not to make that statement, if I chose to wait until next year before I made that statement, until I publicly say I'm recontesting the next election, if I'm not captured within the party political structures, then it seems—and again I express my surprise at not having being aware of this until now—there are absolutely no obligations on me until I make that commitment that I will be a future candidate.

There are things that we are required to do to make sure we're not receiving money from foreign sources, from foreign donors. That is prohibited for political parties. When my party, the Liberal Party, receives donations we have a responsibility and we receive a declaration from the person making a donation that they are not a foreign donor under the definitions in the act. Of course, we also have to make sure we're tracking the money we are receiving so that, if or when a particular donor triggers in a financial year that disclosure threshold of around $14,500, we make sure that we fulfil our responsibilities in our annual returns to the Australian Electoral Commission to declare those donors.

We also declare a whole range of other pieces of information about the financial flows of our party in that financial year. This is very important for the integrity of our democracy, but it is absolutely unbelievable that this same requirement isn't in place for Independent members of parliament. At the moment, the very fact that it isn't means it is possible for someone who's a member of parliament but not operating under the rules of a political party to receive money from a foreign source. It is possible for them to receive more than the disclosure amount of $14,500. They could, for all we know, receive millions of dollars and have no requirement whatsoever to publicly disclose that if they haven't yet committed to contesting a future election. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, frankly. It is completely ludicrous that we would allow a component of our political system, a component of our representative democracy, to not have the same responsibilities as the rest of us.

There are obvious reasons why we believe political donors should be disclosed and we shouldn't be allowed to receive donations from foreign sources. We don't want foreign interference in our political system. We know we don't have it with the major parties, because, if they received any financial contribution from an overseas source, we would have to return it. It's illegal to receive political donations from foreign sources, and that's quite right. We live in a heightened environment of foreign interference in elections. We know this full well from experiences overseas and from reports that we on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters have received from the security agencies about cyberinterference et cetera during campaigns. We know that there are bad actors operating from foreign locations who could well seek to disrupt and influence our elections and our politics more generally into the future. We must be very vigilant in making sure that we stand up against that and have systems in place so foreign money cannot come in and influence politics in this country.

That's why we don't allow political parties to receive donations from foreign sources. It's clearly why—and this is what this bill achieves—we need to make sure that foreign sources also can't finance or bankroll Independent members of parliament and that Independent members can't receive any financial consideration from overseas sources, in exactly the same way that political parties can't.

For the very same reason, we should have the same regime when it comes to revealing donors that are legal Australian sources of donations. We have to be able to receive donations in our political system. We have to be able to raise money so that we can run campaigns and communicate to the Australian people what our ideas are, what we stand for and what we will do if they choose to support us and vote us into government. That's the right of the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Labor Party and the Greens, and it's the right of Independent candidates. But it's equally important that it is known, if it is over a significant figure. I believe that $14,500 is on the low side, frankly. I don't think somebody is influenced by a $14,000 donation, but, for a $50,000 donation or a $1 million donation, absolutely. It makes an enormous impact if someone comes along and gives someone a $1 million donation. Under the current law—bearing in mind that we spend tens of millions of dollars on national election campaigns—anything over $14,500 from a single source within a financial year is disclosed by political parties.

That means that, if someone receives hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions of dollars, from a particular interest group—from a union, for example—in exchange for taking certain policy positions in the parliament, we will know. If the Labor Party come in here and push legislation, we can link it back to the fact that they've received millions and millions of dollars from vested union interests. People might judge, by virtue of the disclosure, that they are influenced by that money that they get from the union movement. Thanks to disclosure laws, it's on the public record that they have received the majority of their funding from those sources, and that is important so that we know what their true motivations are for the sorts of policy positions that they take and the sorts of policy and legislation that they try to bring into this chamber. So we know, and the people of Australia know, what happens with the Labor Party and the connection between union donations and their policy positions. Commensurately, they continue to lose elections in this country, and long may that continue.

That's why it's just as important that Independent members of parliament declare the source of their donations. As I say, it is a great surprise that they have never come clean on this scam and have never been honest, in this chamber or outside of it, about not having the same requirements as the major political parties. Potentially, people have been receiving massive financial contributions and never declaring them, as people in any political party in our system have to do. Why have they never raised it before? I don't know. That's something that they can address if they choose to.

I'm very relieved that we've discovered this massive, gaping hole in the robustness of our donation disclosure laws and that in this bill we are addressing it. I'm sure this will have strong support in this chamber and the other. I'm sure that everyone who will be captured by this, who has been hiding in the shadows until now, is not afraid of the sunlight or of coming clean on an ongoing basis as to where their money comes from and making sure that they have no problem with not accepting donations from foreign sources. I think it is a great oversight that we have captured. I commend the minister for identifying this gaping hole in the integrity measures around our elections. I look forward to this coming into law as soon as possible so that there will no longer be any risk of Independent members receiving funding from offshore sources or taking massive donations from sources here at home that they don't declare. This legislation closes those massive loopholes in our electoral funding disclosure laws. I commend the bill to the House.

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