Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's a shame that Senator Canavan is fleeing the chamber and is not going to listen to my response to his diatribe, but I'll send him the link, and he can watch it on TV.

Over the last 20 years, since I started in politics, the major-party vote in this country has fallen every year and every election. It used to be that only 10 to 15 per cent of Australians would vote outside the two major parties. It's now more than a third of Australians who do, and if you look at the Farrer by-election—and there are messages in that by-election and protest vote for all of us—it is clear that people do not think this political system represents their interests, and we need to ask ourselves why. What is a key reason that people are turning away from politics and registering protest votes, and what is causing it? This bill today, the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Banning Dirty Donations) Bill 2026, goes to the heart of that.

I would say to Senator Canavan, after his recent contribution, it is all about questioning the motives of donors to political parties. Why do big companies, big fossil fuel companies, big gambling companies, big real estate companies—I could go on—donate to political parties? That's the question. I'm sure there are going to be different responses around here, but the truth is those companies do not do it out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because they want something from a political party. That is just clear as daylight—one hundred per cent a fact. It's called pay for play. It's been happening since the Roman Republic, and it's still happening today, but it's got to such a calamitous level globally. We seem to have had this mass political psychosis descend on our systems in the Western world, especially in US politics, where it feels like a small bunch of wealthy, psychotic billionaires and politicians have got us by the short and curlies because of money and influence in politics.

Senator Canavan spent most of his contribution talking about third-party donations, or donations or money going through third parties. That has nothing to do with this bill by the way, but it is definitely worth addressing, and I will get to that towards the end of my contribution. There's no more of an expert in how dark money influences politics and outcomes on policy than the National Party and the Liberal Party, who have been backed by billions of dollars of dirty money for years, through think tanks, third-party organisations, PR companies—you name it. It's all part of the denial machine, and I will get to that before I finish. I'm grateful this Senate had a very important inquiry into this exact issue, as to who is paying for the disinformation and misinformation.

But it's good there have been some moves. Senator Watt, in his brief contribution, talked about the government's new legislation to cap donations, but the truth is it doesn't go anywhere near far enough and it is tinkering around the edges. This bill will work alongside the new federal election finance reforms that were passed last year and is designed to commence after those new donation transparency and cap laws begin. This bill goes significantly further than those reforms by outright banning donations from certain sectors rather than just regulating or disclosing them. Those sectors include industries that have an undue influence over government decisions, which is the whole reason they pump millions of dollars into our political system. It's property developers, gambling and liquor companies, banks, tobacco and vaping companies, pharmaceutical companies, mining and fossil fuel companies, defence companies and industry lobby groups representing those sectors. This bill introduces a strict overall donation limit for everyone else, capping political donations at $3,000 per election term for any individual, business or organisation. This is much lower than the caps introduced in the 2025 reforms, which were $50,000.

But also—and this is the thing—you can ban political donations or cap them, but money will find a way to flow to political parties. That happens through, for example, gifts that corporations love to give to the major political parties. This bill will close loopholes that parties and associated entities have used to avoid disclosure rules. Senator Hodgins-May talked about going to the Treasurer's special dinner the other night, the $5,000-a-head dinner, which is a classic example of how you raise a lot of money without having to disclose it. Subscription fees, affiliation fees, discounted services, fundraising tickets and interest-free loans would all count as donations in the circumstances covered by this bill. Membership fees under $1,000 would remain exempt in limited situations, but larger membership or affiliation payments credited to federal accounts would now be treated as political donations and be subject to caps and disclosure laws.

This bill also expands the aggregation rules so that donations to state branches, local branches and associated entities are counted together towards the federal cap, preventing donors from splitting contributions across different arms of the party, which is another way that the 2025 laws can be circumvented. Industry peak bodies and representative organisations would also be banned from donating if most of their members are prohibited donors. This is intended to stop industries funnelling donations through lobby groups or associated entities instead of donating directly. This bill creates new criminal and civil penalties for unlawful donations. Knowingly making or accepting a banned donation could attract penalties of up to two years imprisonment or fines of up to 400 penalty units. Lastly, anti-avoidance provisions are strengthened to stop schemes designed to get around the bans, including channelling donations through third parties. Businesses uncertain as to whether they qualify as prohibited donors could apply to the Electoral Commission for a formal determination, which would be valid for 12 months.

This is the situation we find ourselves in in modern politics. It's especially the case in the US and also in the UK, where third parties wanting to influence outcomes are now, for example, donating to fake industry groups. We broadly call them astroturfing groups. There are a number of them in this country that the Senate looked at recently in our inquiry into misinformation. For example, Coal Australia donated to Australians for Prosperity, run by ex-MP Jason Falinski, who said he knew nothing about the donations but wished he had because—I can't quote his exact words that he made in the media—he felt like that wouldn't have been something he would have supported. The majority of the money for Australians for Prosperity, $2.7 million, came from the coal industry to fund advertisements, before an election, attacking the Greens and the Labor Party. That was just one example. There were plenty more.

We heard that, in the US alone, $3.4 billion had been funnelled by fossil fuel companies to PR firms, just to run attack ads and campaigns, in the last 10 years in the US. That's just to PR firms, let alone to consulting companies who write reports full of misinformation designed to undermine climate science and climate action, or the hundreds or thousands of right-wing think tanks set up deliberately to change the Overton window and to change public policy all around the world to suit the vested interests that fund those think tanks.

Senator Canavan talked about environment groups that have disclosed their donations to Australian environmental campaigns and movements openly and proudly, saying they're campaigning to stop the age of fossil fuels and transition to clean energy. Senator McDonald talked the other day about the Sunrise Movement. Sunrise were out and proud about donating to these campaigns. They do want to stop the age of fossil fuels and transition to clean energy because they care about future generations. They care about us actually taking climate action and stopping the robbing of future generations of the same things that we've been lucky enough to experience in our lifetime. They're not trying to hide any of these donations. It's completely different when you do try and hide them through third-party organisations, through astroturfing strategies.

The recommendation from our inquiry was that the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, who are looking at these things and looking at how we could improve these laws, look at the last election and the amount of money that was funnelled into groups like Advance and these other astroturfing groups to suit the agendas of, at the time, the Liberal and National parties but, increasingly, One Nation. There are the campaigns around mass immigration and against net zero, the tens of millions of dollars being funded into groups like Advance and the hundreds of posts appearing out of websites internationally. We don't even know who is paying for them. There were 400 posts in one week essentially promoting One Nation using deepfake AI. Australians and people around the world are so confused. They don't know what's real and what's not any longer. That's the world we live in today, and it is getting worse every single day.

This has been the strategy. Steve Bannon has openly talked about this—flood the zone and create confusion. That's what it's all about. If you repeat disinformation, lies and deceptions often enough, people start believing them. It's hard to know where to get your information in this day and age. We are drowning in a sea of misinformation and disinformation, and just about everything Senator Canavan contributed in this debate was misinformation on climate change, renewable energy and climate action.

So this is where we are today. This is why we need to crack down on dark money and dirty money influencing our elections. It's been going on for too long. I commend Senator Hodgins-May for bringing this bill forward. I also want to acknowledge the long list of Greens MPs in this place over decades who have pushed and pushed for donation reform. No-one has done more in this Senate chamber than the Greens to try and progress cleaning up politics. It's what the Australian people expect.

We need to pay attention to the Farrer by-election. Senator Canavan made another disinformation claim about the Greens vote. The Greens vote is holding up very well, thank you very much. In fact, it grew substantially all around the country six months ago when the Iran war was declared. It's actually the national Liberal-National vote that has been falling every day for years and years. Yet they come in here and do the same old thing. They are shills for the fossil fuel industry and other industries. They somehow think that campaigning against climate action is going to win them the next election. I acknowledge that there are senators in this place, such as Senator Canavan, who wouldn't have a job if they came out and said they believed in climate action and climate science and wanted to transition to renewables. He literally would not have a job as the leader of the National Party or probably even get preselected and elected because the incentives are all around making this a political issue for their own power, ambition and careers.

They don't care about the science or the fact that the climate is breaking down before our very eyes. It's a massive threat to national security. It's a threat to people's cost of living. It's a threat to biodiversity around this country. It's a threat that's been recognised all around the world by thousands of scientists over hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers, and yet it gets thrown out the door on the altar of people's political ambitions. I've had enough of it. I have seen what this place has done to some people. They ignore the facts. We all ignore the facts at our own peril. Do you know what? I've had my fair say in here, and it's about to end, but history will be the ultimate judge of people like Senator Canavan and what he stands for and what his party stands for. I have no doubt about that.

So I'll ask senators, with the last minute of my contribution, to consider how we can further clean up politics, which is to everyone's advantage in this place. If we don't connect with people, if people don't feel they can connect with us and don't feel like what we stand for is what they stand for, it erodes trust in this institution of parliament and in politics and we will continue to see protest votes and we will continue to see Australians disillusioned and disorientated by the standard of debate. If we can show them that we are in here legislating for them and not for special interests—the big, dirty fossil fuel corporations and other corporations that have rigged the system for too long and the billionaires who have used it to distract away from the fact that they are making record profits every day and don't pay their fair share of tax—then the rot will continue. I can only see darkness ahead if we don't act. This is a simple, easy way for us to act—getting behind Senator Hodgins-May's bill. Let's clean up politics. (Time expired)