Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the five or six minutes I have left to me I will not have the opportunity of discussing at length the merits or otherwise of the proposal. Suffice it to say that were such a commission in existence, the first investigation might be the investigation into Mr Graham Wood's biggest ever political donation to the Greens political party a few years ago. Senators might remember that Mr Wood gave, I think it was, something like $1.5 million to the Greens political party. The Greens in Tasmania, as I remember the incident—and my memory is not all that good, it was a few years ago now—then did something in the Tasmanian parliament in relation to the Triabunna wood mill and port to assist Mr Wood in taking control of that site to the exclusion of the timber industry. The Greens then set up an inquiry in the federal parliament to try to get tax-free exemption for an online newspaper that Mr Graeme Wood was setting up as a commercial entity. The Greens advocated that Mr Wood should be given a tax-free status.

One would wonder just what the New South Wales ICAC might have said about that little cosy deal in the Tasmanian parliament and in the federal parliament at the time that Mr Wood gave that biggest ever political donation to any political party in Australia, and that was to the Greens political party.