Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Arbib, are you denying that occurred? Of course you are not, because Mr Swan has been in the game of looking after mates for a long, long time. Having said that, let me return to the subject of the matter and that is Senator Brown and the Australian Greens. This is a matter that I believe Senator Brown now has to come clean on, and any of his so-called anonymous donations should be handed over to consolidated revenue or some other fund and a full disclosure should be made. Sure, the rules allow you to say, ‘I got an anonymous donation of $10,000’ or ‘I got a donation from D Smith’, who just might happen to live in the United States of America. But that is not disclosure in any sense of the word or within the spirit of what is actually being proposed here.

I can understand that people get small gifts. I am the beneficiary of them from time to time. You declare them and say who it was without actually putting a value on them, because you do not necessarily know how much they are worth. But when you are dealing in cash and money you know the exact amount and you know the person who it has come from, unless of course it, very conveniently, is anonymous. If we continue to allow members of this place to say that they have received anonymous donations and, as a result, to escape the Register of Senators’ Interests requirements, or to simply put down names that cannot be verified by way of an address, it seems to me that we are not getting to the situation that this register of interests was in fact designed to get us to.

I call on Senator Brown and the Australian Greens to indicate and say to us that it is not acceptable to put in a list, ‘amount donated through bank, name not disclosed, $10,000’. It must be traceable. You must be able to ask your bank, ‘Where did this money come from?’, and a full and clean declaration of it should be made. Scattered throughout this document are huge numbers of donations. In relation to the report that has just been tabled, I happen to note that about 10 months worth of donations to this personal fund for Senator Brown’s sole use has not been disclosed to us. There is a requirement, as I understand it, to indicate your gifts within a certain period of time, and it is not 10 months.

Given the publicity that he personally sought and gained in relation to this particular fund—trying to get more money—it seems to me that it is vitally important that full disclosure be made by Senator Bob Brown and the Australian Greens, because three-quarters of a million dollars in anybody’s language is big money, huge money. For one parliamentarian to personally deal with those sorts of sums of money rather than deal with them through his or her party’s organisation or through a trust account in a legal firm or an accounting firm, where it can be audited and publicly made available, is something which falls below the threshold of accountability that the Australian Greens so regularly demand of everybody else. But, of course, that is what we know about the Australian Greens—one rule applies to them and another to everybody else, and that is the duplicity which I seek to expose this evening. (Time expired)