Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are rumblings in Tasmania about an early election. The Liberal government down there is governing in the minority because two of their MPs quit over—guess what—the lack of transparency. A month ago, one of those MP said, 'What is the government trying to hide?' What they're trying to hide, in this case, is that the Treasurer and the department's report on the stadium. It's the old cabinet-in-confidence thing again, except that experts have said this doesn't apply to these reports.

Transparency isn't the only problem we have down in Tasmania. The Tasmanian Liberal government still hasn't done anything about donation reform. How about that? Even though they promised they would fix it in 2018. The political donation rules in Tasmania are the same as the federal government laws. Only donations of more than $14½ thousand need to be declared. And the ones that are over that amount—the public doesn't find out about those until 18 months after election. It's absolutely shocking!

At the Jacqui Lambie Network, we don't take donations from unions or from big donors, and there is a very good reason for this. Because, once money changes hands, there is always an obligation. This is how political donations work. The Jacqui Lambie Network is fuelled by people—people power!—and our average donation is about $25. But we are proud of that.

A few weeks ago I met a group of women in Queensland who are thinking about running for parliament. They asked me what the hardest thing is about running as an independent. There's an easy answer. We don't have a party machine behind us. We don't have funds to fight party worker bees and to hand our flyers, we don't have unions to advertise for us and we don't have big corporate donations paying our bills. The plus side—and it's a big plus side—is that nobody tells Senator Tyrrell and I what to do, who to listen to and, more importantly, who to vote for and how to vote. So I'm just letting the Tasmanians out there know that nothing has been done about those donations. So guess who's running those major parties down there? Work it out.