Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

he gave an address to the Sydney Institute where he presented his wish list for what this bill would contain. Senator Abetz, I welcome you into the chamber. I did not think it would be long. I raised my voice to make sure you did not miss it. In his address, he quoted at length from former senator Graham Richardson’s book, Whatever It Takes, where Richo wrote an anecdote about his role in the Hawke government’s changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act in 1984. Senator Abetz thought he was terribly clever when he quoted Richo’s take on the reason why Labor made the changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act:

... that Labor could embrace power as a right and make the task of anyone trying to take it from us as difficult as we could.

Senator Abetz went on to say that the changes Labor made in 1984 were to introduce prescriptive disclosure laws and extend the grace period to seven days after an election is called before the rolls are closed. Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President: Senator Abetz, you should think long and hard about this. Sure, you might think it clever to highlight Richo’s comments in order to portray Labor as acting only in its own interest, but the truth is that Labor’s changes were to create greater transparency and scrutiny of political donations and to make it easier for eligible people to be able to enrol to vote.

If creating greater transparency of political donations and making it easier for eligible people to vote help Labor to gain and to hold on to power then I think that says a great deal more about the moral bankruptcy of the Liberal Party than it does about the motivations of the Labor Party. If Senator Abetz was saying that it was self-serving of the Labor Party and that the Labor Party was advantaged by more scrutiny of political donations and more people being able to vote then, conversely, the Liberal Party must be advantaged by less scrutiny and fewer people being able to vote.

The Liberal Party would ram this disgusting bill through parliament and has the hide to say that it is about integrity. When this bill becomes law—as we know it will, unfortunately—around 80 per cent of donations that go into party coffers will disappear from public scrutiny. If these laws had applied to the 2003-04 financial year then over $12 million across the major parties would have vanished from public view. That is the first major reason why I oppose this bill.

The second major reason I oppose this bill is that, while the Howard government has been weakening the requirements for disclosure of political donations, it has been tightening up enrolment procedures, making it harder for Australians to get on the electoral roll. When this bill does become law, the Howard government will close the electoral roll to new enrolees on the day the election is called, some 33 days before polling day, and will reduce the time available for enrolled voters to change their details from a week to just three days. If we compare that to other English-speaking Western democracies, in Britain the roll closes 11 days before polling day, in New Zealand the roll closes the day before polling day, and in Canada voters can enrol at the polling booth on election day.

The only reason the Howard government has given for making it harder to get on the electoral roll is that it will make life easier for the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC. But this is at odds with the AEC’s longstanding view about the early closure of the rolls in an election period. In their submission to a parliamentary inquiry in 2000, the AEC stated:

... the early close of rolls will not improve the accuracy of the rolls for an election ... In fact, the expectation is that the ... election will be less accurate, because less time will be available for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received.

Apparently it is more important to the Howard government to make life procedurally easier for the new Electoral Commissioner than it is to have an accurate electorate roll and, therefore, an accurate election result. This seems to suggest that either the Howard government believes that the new Electoral Commissioner is less competent than the last one or that the AEC is being under-resourced.

Neither of those reasons is a good reason to axe the grace period. The period of grace is a longstanding feature of our electoral system. Since 1940, the average gap between the calling of the election and the closing of the rolls has been more than 19 days, and John Howard wants to reduce this gap to less than one day. If this change had been implemented for the last election, up to 80,000 Australians may have been unable to enrol to vote and up to 280,000 would have had the wrong address on the electoral roll. The Howard government’s agenda is very clear: the Howard government will make it easier for you to donate to influence the political process but a lot harder for you to exercise your democratic rights.

I would like to bring a seat in my home state of Western Australia to the Senate’s attention. It is a marginal seat and it is held by government by, I think, 1.8 per cent. In that seat there is an airport with a lot of land, and the Federal Airports Commission have the land available for lease. There is a major donator to the Liberal Party: Mr Len Buckridge. Maybe that is why the Howard government wants to push this legislation through—I do not know; we will find out anyway. The big problem we have is that Mr Len Buckridge wants to put a brickworks on the airport site. He has been offered land north of Perth by the state Labor Party, but he wants the brickworks right in suburbia. It is a lot cheaper for him for transport costs and so on. Do not worry about the pollution problems!

But you can understand that the state Liberal Party would be profusely supporting this bill, because it is broke. I heard Senator Ray mention the ‘dash-for-cash’ legislation, and the state Liberal parties are blaming that legislation for their being broke, but I think it goes deeper. The Western Australian party is broke; it is moribund. I will tell you how broke it is, Madam Acting Deputy President: it is that broke that the president of the party sent out a canvassing letter saying, ‘Please donate money. We need money; we’re poor and we’re broke. We’ve got to fight elections and we’ve got nothing.’ Big business must have deserted them. I know that for a fact because the Deputy Premier of Western Australia, Mr Eric Ripper, got a copy. I am proud to say that he did not donate to it.

Not only are they broke and desperate but they are seriously devoid of any talent. I am sure this is how far they would be pushing this bill so they can get some finances. In fact, they could not even run a chook raffle. So they will be rubbing their hands together. This is how I see this bill. If this bill passes, there will be an interesting scenario in the seat of Hasluck. Once the Howard government have put out a few bushfires—and by the time Senator Vanstone has knocked over the rebel backbenchers who are causing a bit of heartburn at the moment—they will check the polls, see how the IR is going, and check on fuel prices going up and where interest rates are heading, and maybe they will sit back in a few months time and realise that Australia is starting to wake up and realise that not everything that is being said by the Howard government is the truth.

Then they are going to be faced with a problem: do they look after a major donor to the Western Australian Liberal Party and grant him his land to put his brickworks on—and sacrifice a marginal seat—or do they sit back and think: ‘Crikey, we’re really not looking that good. The electorate is waking up to us. The electorate has finally realised that it’s not as rosy as we’ve painted it. They’ve finally realised we don’t have any skilled labourers here in Australia because we’ve cut out funding and TAFE positions, and all we’ve tried to do is look after big business and put a bandaid on it.’ So what are they going to do? I will tell you what is going to happen. I am going to watch this with great interest, because there will probably be a bidding war between the member for Hasluck and a Liberal Party mate—through you, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore—and I wonder who will be able to come up with the most money. The bidding war will be for two reasons: for one person wanting his brickworks, who will cut off his funding to the Liberal Party—it could happen—or for the other one trying to save his marginal seat.