Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am expecting that tomorrow the government will introduce the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008, which will be a welcome move because it will start to roll back some of the rather unattractive so-called reforms introduced by the previous government. In my adjournment speech tonight I will revisit the issue of political donations and the pressing need to protect politicians from the undue influence of donors. It is an issue on which I have been consistently active over the last 12 years because of my strong belief and my party’s strong belief in the need for a comprehensive regulatory system which not only improves political governance markedly but addresses the waning faith of the wider public in politicians and the political process. It has seemed that for the major political parties it has never been the right time to tighten disclosure laws in any meaningful way. But, to be fair, Labor has previously joined the Democrats in resisting the advance to the lower standards which characterised the efforts of the previous government, and Labor’s latest proposals will indeed lift standards.

Now that Labor has taken government, we are going to find out more about who gives what to whom. They are to be congratulated for that approach. The Labor government’s short-term reform agenda includes revising the Howard government’s huge increase in the disclosure threshold, which went from $1,500 to over $10,000, bringing it back to a lower figure of $1,000. It includes banning donations from overseas. It includes doing away with multiple donations across state and territory branches of the same political party whereby separate divisions of a political party are treated as being separate for donations disclosure purposes. It includes tying the public funding of elections to verified electoral expenditures directly incurred by candidates or parties and it includes increased public scrutiny of donations by reducing a disclosure time frame to six months.

The government has embarked on an electoral reform green paper process comprising two parts: the first part will look at disclosure funding and expenditure issues and is scheduled for release in July 2008; the second part will examine a broader range of issues and contains options aimed at strengthening other areas of electoral law, including fairness, enrolment requirements and provisional voting procedures. Part 2 of the green paper is scheduled for release in October 2008.

I trust that the second part of this reform agenda will include banning strings-attached donations. There is a view that some donors specifically tie large donations to the pursuit of specific outcomes they want achieved in their own self-interest. This is improper conduct in the formulation or execution of public policy. At its worst, it is corruption. Nowhere is a ban more urgently required than on the sea of developer money donated to all levels of government. Controversies regarding developer donations have been numerous, as have been the calls to clamp down on them, including those strongly expressed by former Prime Minister Paul Keating.

Just recently, Robert Needham, chairman of Queensland’s anticorruption body, warned that local government elections could be corrupted because of the Bligh government’s refusal to reform electoral donation laws. This was not a spurious claim and it certainly came from a serious person. It was based on a Crime and Misconduct Commission inquiry into the 2004 Gold Coast City Council poll, which found that the elections had been corrupted by a secret developer-backed fund. Although some cynics may find it surprising, developers themselves—at least those who are organised—have now come out in favour of a new model for political funding.

Mr Aaron Gadiel, Chief Executive of Urban Taskforce Australia, an organisation representing Australia’s most prominent property developers, has recommended a blanket ban on all political party donations, those from business, from unions, from non-profit organisations and from individuals. To compensate for this funding loss, the public funding of political parties according to their electoral performance would need to be massively increased. Similar remarks and a similar approach has been taken by none other than the New South Wales Labor Party. So there is great interest in this sort of approach. Mr Gadiel claimed his model would remove any perception of favouritism in government decision-making processes, whether at the federal, state or local level. If no reform is forthcoming, if there is no crackdown on developer donations, then political parties and individuals will continue to be implicated in assertions of conspiracy deals with them.

In my home state of Western Australia, the highly contentious developer donations issue surfaced last year in the scandals surrounding the notorious former premier and lobbyist, Brian Burke, and property developer, Australand. That issue was trawled through the Corruption and Crime Commission of Western Australia.

Moving forward to earlier this year, we have the scandal involving the Wollongong Council, in New South Wales—in fact, in that state alone, property developers have donated more than $4 million to the Labor Party in the past three years. What is more, research carried out by the Greens found that 10 of the biggest developers paid more than $1 million to the Labor Party while waiting on the planning minister to consider $1½ billion worth of building works across New South Wales. This, at its least, is a blatant conflict of interest and it must not continue in any level of government. Additionally, the 2007 Australian Electoral Commission figures showed that property developers and development companies provided $5.1 million of the $13.9 million donated to the three major political parties. So they seem to be extremely public-spirited—or else they are getting something out of the process.

Back in November 2006, the Democrats attempted to end donations by developers when I moved a motion in the Senate. That motion went nowhere. There was no debate and the amendment only attracted the support of the Greens. The Howard coalition government, the opposition and Family First all voted to continue the practice of developer donations. Had my motion been supported, it would have resulted in the matter being put before the Council of Australian Governments with a view to designing amendments to all federal, state and territory electoral laws prohibiting donations, loans or gifts by developers, either directly or indirectly, to candidates or political parties at any level of government across Australia. I am not a betting man, but I would wager a substantial amount of money that, if a random sample survey of the public were taken on the banning of developer donations, the response would be an overwhelming level of support. But, where the public sees a conflict of interest, most political parties only see a fundraising opportunity, and that is a sad reality for Australian democracy. It is time that it was fixed, and that is why the New South Wales Labor Party’s initiatives are of particular interest. They are making a genuine attempt to address this matter from its base and to review the whole process by which politics is funded. They are to be congratulated for doing that.

The introduction of public funding for federal elections by the Hawke Labor government in 1984 was supposedly to eliminate the link between money and the taint of corruption. However, this funding has merely provided an extra pool of money for political parties to draw on. Granted, a political party requires money and resources to carry out its work, and the Democrats have no issue with those private donors who have donated in the past because of their altruistic enthusiasm for their party. However, along the way there has been a rapid growth in private donations, which have come from a narrow section of society. Too often, such donations result in trying either to buy influence or to advance self-interest. Such people do not donate to advance democracy; in fact, they harm it. In this sense, donations become valued over grassroots involvement and they are largely viewed by the public as unsavoury and distasteful, which erodes public confidence in our political system.

On 19 February 2008, Mr Brad Pedersen, who is the President of Democracy Watch and a former Deputy Mayor of Manly, said:

The time has come to seriously confront this cancer in our political system.

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The control of parliament by political parties riddled with donor cash should not be seen as anything less than the breakdown of fundamental aspects of our democracy.

In my view, it is only when developer or ‘strings attached’ donations are banned that we will see the start of a revival of faith in the integrity of the political system among the wider public. Should the Rudd government do so, it will be a signal, too, that federal Labor is indeed the real deal on political donations reform.