Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance on the need for the Turnbull government to commit to comprehensive and immediate political donations reform. I want to say at the outset that Labor are committed to reform of political donations. Labor are up for reform because we have a longstanding commitment to improving standards of transparency and accountability in relation to political donations.

When Labor were last in government, we introduced legislation into the parliament to significantly reform the rules surrounding political donations. Unfortunately, the then Liberal opposition blocked our changes in the Senate. Our legislation was designed to reverse retrograde changes implemented under the Howard government when the Liberal Party last controlled the Senate. There is a need for reform, and Labor will be at the forefront of that reform because we have high standards for openness around donations to political parties.

The Greens also claim a longstanding policy in favour of reforming political donations. But we know that when they had the opportunity to actually achieve donation reforms, they squibbed it. Earlier this year, the Greens sided with the Liberals and opposed Labor's amendment seeking to make donations reform. This is exactly the kind of hypocrisy we expect from the Greens when it comes to political donations. They claim to oppose corporate donations, and you will often hear them criticise other parties for receiving corporate donations. But in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election the Greens accepted a $1.7 million donation from the founder of travel corporation Wotif.com, Graeme Wood. Even though they suggest it was a personal donation—a very large personal donation—it was the largest political donation in Australian history, whatever you call it. That donation was to a party that apparently opposes private political donations. But, nonetheless, I welcome the Greens bringing this matter before the Senate today.

As I said at the outset, one of the first changes we need to make is to ban foreign donations. The Prime Minister must explain why he thinks it is a good idea to maintain foreign donations in our political system, because the Labor Party do not agree. There is absolutely no reason why we should not begin the reform of political donations by ending foreign donations. I am at a loss to understand why Mr Turnbull does not support parliament getting on with it. We need to make this change in legislation because that is the right and courageous thing to do, and that is what Australians want us to do. More than 100 other countries have banned foreign donations, so we need to act—and we need to act quickly.

Mr Turnbull and his government have a very different view. Mr Turnbull has himself been able to make significant personal donations to the Liberal Party—allegedly, up to $2 million. He seems to want to maintain foreign donations so the conservative side of politics can have a multimillion dollar head start on Labor. But he must provide answers and explain in detail why he wants to continue to allow foreign donations. We must ban foreign donations.

There is room for more reform. Australians have a right to know who has donated to their political parties. Labor is quite clear that the threshold for anonymous donations should be $1,000. There is no reasonable argument as to why the identity of people who want to donate more than $1,000 should be withheld. The law now states that donations above $13,200 have to be made public. So people can contribute tens of thousands of dollars to their political parties and the Australian people will not have a clue who has donated to which party. We need to move on donations reform. (Time expired)