Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I too would like to thank the staff of the Finance and Administration Legislation Committee who have worked over the weekend to help produce the report we now have before us because of the presumption that we as a parliament may not be meeting before the election; therefore, legislation about this matter needed to be passed this week. I will be moving a contingent motion to allow this bill to be debated in the morning, as senators will know.

However, we are talking here about the report and I would like to respond to the honourable Senator Ryan, who has just spoken for the coalition. Here we have the time-honoured coalition position of opposing but not offering an alternative. It behoves the opposition to do better than that. It leaves the Greens as the constructive opposition in this place, as we have seen repeatedly in the last three years, and here we are again. The opposition’s contribution to the committee report takes out-of-date matters and offers nothing new whatsoever.

What the honourable member is saying is that there should be no rolling in either of the government’s ability to spend money—as we have seen with the $38 million allocation of money for its advocacy of the mining boom tax—or of the corporates on the other side, who are alleged to be spending up to as much as $100 million. One report on Four Corners indicated that BHP may spend as much as the government—that is, $38 million—of which we know they will get a 30 per cent tax break.

The simple figure there is that some $10 million plus is taken out of the public purse to pursue their advertising campaign. The opposition is always very good at saying, ‘What about some other entity that is an NGO, that does not have profitability or that would not be covered?’ I challenge the opposition to support the Greens in adopting the Canadian model of ending donations from all entities to political parties for advertising purposes for a starter and to cover such matters as this advertising so that the practice is stopped, but the opposition will not do that because it has a double standard when it comes to this matter.

The committee in its concluding comments and recommendations on this bill fails to acknowledge the widespread community concern about it as a critical issue that has been of high contention in the last three or four weeks. As the report notes, there is a long history of concerns and various attempts to address the issue of transparency and accountability in the expenditure of public funds through government information and advertising campaigns. This recent public outcry over the government’s $38 million mining tax advertising campaign is testament to the depth of concern on the issue.

This bill is a necessary step in enshrining accountability and integrity mechanisms in law to provide certainty and clarity to governments and to provide assurance and confidence to the community that these practices will be properly implemented and scrutinised. The recommendations by the committee that the bill not proceed contradict the evidence of the four expert submissions which all welcomed the bill for establishing clear legislative provisions around the use of public funds for government advertising. Maybe the government, because the opposition failed in this, will be able to explain why those four expert submissions have been ignored in the findings of the committee.

Each submission from the experts noted that the bill incorporated important changes to strengthen the original 2008 guidelines based on experience of the past two years in which the process has been operational. While the submissions varied in their view of the role of the Auditor-General in the bill there is agreement that the Auditor-General had a key role to play in the review of government advertising campaigns and their assessment against the guidelines.

As you know, Acting Deputy President, my bill gives the Auditor-General a vetting role but not a decision-making role as the opposition would have it. The Auditor-General’s submission in particular made a number of relatively minor technical amendments to the bill for greater clarity and transparency in the process, and these are recommendations which the Greens will take up. I will move suitable amendments when the bill is debated in the Senate, if the Senate so chooses, tomorrow. Other submissions have identified minor elements of the bill that require rewording for clarity, and those will also be addressed.

I draw attention to the important issue of corporate political advertising and the use of tax-deductibility claims by corporate advertisers. I began by talking about this but the opposition has problems. I have raised concerns elsewhere that under current arrangements taxpayers are effectively funding corporate advertising campaigns on the mining tax to the tune of millions of dollars. The corporate advertisers should be subject to the same regime of accountability and scrutiny that is required of government advertising expenditure and deprived of the ability, through tax-deductibility, to have taxpayers’ millions support their campaigns. That is a matter for another piece of legislation; however, I make the commitment, as I have done publicly, that when the next suitable tax bill comes before this place I will move to amend it so that corporate taxpayers cannot deduct political advertising campaigns and so gain a windfall 30 per cent subsidy of their campaigns at the expense of taxpayers. That is money that other—