Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hodgins-May for enabling us to have a debate today about the corrupting influence of political donations on our democracy. Let's be very clear about what political donations are. They are a corrupting influence on our democracy. They are basically institutionalised, legalised political bribery. This is how the big corporations get the outcomes that they got in this week's budget—by their donations to the Labor Party and, in previous governments, to the Liberal and National parties. This is how the one per cent insidiously control our democracy to make sure that they ultimately do not pay their fair share of tax. This is how the big corporations and the super wealthy one per cent make sure that work is taxed more punitively than wealth and that work is taxed more heavily than corporate profits in this country.

Political donations are how the big corporations and the super wealthy one per cent control the major parties in the Australian body politic to make sure the overwhelming majority of tax breaks like negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount end up in the pockets of the wealthiest, highest-income people in our country. This is how fossil fuel corporations made sure there were $46 million worth of direct public subsidies to burn fossil fuels in the budget that Labor brought down earlier this week. Political donations are how the native forest lobbying industry ended up with another $28 million in public subsidies in the budget that Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down this week.

Let us be clear about the direct link between political donations and political outcomes. The budget this week contained cuts to our renewable energy transition. It contained cuts to environmental protection. It contained cuts to the climate transition. It contained cuts to support to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles. And yet, in the very same budget that Labor is trying to convince people is reformist and of high ambition, there is nearly $40 billion ripped out of support for people with disabilities. There is new money to encourage gas production. There is new money for the mendicant native forest logging industry. This is the corrupting influence of political donations on our democracy.

I want to talk a little bit about the environment and climate impacts of this budget because they have been delivered directly through the insidious reach of the donations that the Labor and Liberal and National parties accept from big corporations and from the super wealthy in this country. This budget contains extra subsidies for the native forest logging industries, especially in Tasmania and New South Wales. As if the government throwing $300 million of taxpayer money at the native forest logging industry as a sop when the Greens actually negotiated to strengthen Labor's reforms of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act was not enough, now that mendicant industry, which would end overnight if the public subsidies were withdrawn, is the recipient of another 28 million bucks explicitly designed to help it work around the strengthened environmental laws that were passed through this place late last year. What a disgrace!

The environment and the climate are the big losers in this budget, along with people with disability and young people, who will continue to get ripped off by a tax system that is designed to rip off young people, designed to rip off working people and designed to favour people who are high-income or high-wealth individuals. This is the corrupting influence of political donations.

The Greens bill would finally, and it is desperately overdue, clean up our political system. It would stop dirty donations from harmful industries that are not acting in the public interest like gambling, weapons corporations, fossil fuel corporations and big pharma. These are the industries that continue to reach in through the mechanism of political donations and continue to deliver outcomes not for the Australian people but for their own narrow financial self-interest. Many of these industries are led by CEOs who are prepared to make bank by destroying the planet's climate system, destroying nature and engaging in activities that are not in the public interest.

That includes the gas corporations, who, of course, skated home free in this year's budget because Labor squibbed on introducing a gas export tax of at least 25 per cent. That's multiple tens of billions of dollars forgone over the next decade because Labor will not take on the big gas corporations. This budget contained $46 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. Folks, it's 2026—we're sleepwalking into a climate catastrophe! It's going to smash people around the world. Countless people are going to die, be displaced, suffer starvation and suffer from thirst because water supplies are changing and rainfall patterns are changing. This world is heading for calamity, and in 2026, under a Labor government, we are getting approvals of new coal and gas mines hand over fist and a budget was handed down this week that contained $46 billion in public subsidies for burning fossil fuels—in 2026!

History will not look at you kindly; I can assure you of that.