Parliamentary Updates

19 November 2024

I rise to speak on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024. To say that this is a sad day for Australian democracy is an understatement, and I can only say shame, shame, shame on every member of Labor and the coalition that is going to support this legislation.

At a time when the cost-of-living pressures continue to rise, our two major parties have struck a deal to entrench their duopoly through providing themselves increased funding in our elections and diminishing the opportunity to be challenged. This bill—and it appears to have the coalition's support—is highly beneficial to the major parties and smacks of a dirty deal designed to cement their duopoly. What is telling is that currently on the speakers list for this legislation there are no government or coalition MPs prepared to come in this place and speak on behalf of this bill. Beyond the assistant minister and shadow minister, no-one would want to be on the record speaking on behalf of this bill. How could you go back to your electorate and tell them your priority is to get more public funding for yourselves instead of getting support for those in our community doing it tough?

What's clear in the process of this is it's a completely bad-faith manoeuvre by the government and the coalition. This bill should not be rushed through the House. It requires proper consideration of the consequences and the effects it will have. It's a major piece of electoral reform, and there are likely to be long-ongoing issues. For all of the MPs in this place who repeatedly beat their chest and say, 'We are for integrity and transparency and accountability'—and we always see one side saying the other side is so much worse—what we see on this bill is they are all as bad as each other.

I urge the government: do not proceed, like you are at the moment, with this second reading vote; instead, refer this bill to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to inquire into the unintended—but, I would say, likely intended—consequences of this bill, and that is set out in detail in the amendment that I have moved. This bill should not proceed without it going to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. It creates an incredibly unfair playing field. It creates advantage in so many ways that I'll go into in more detail, and it provides, to political parties, disproportionate support that is completely removed from any realistic cost assessment and real, actual expenses.

We need, and the Australian people deserve, an assessment of realistic administrative compliance costs. This should be done and should be a direct correlation with what is proposed to come out of the public purse and go into political party coffers. At a time right now, when cost-of-living pressures are so serious, the hubris and the audacity of the political parties in putting this forward are staggering. The minister has described this legislation as the biggest reform to electoral law and processes in 40 years and yet proposes to ram it through within barely a couple of days of the legislation being public, because you wouldn't want too many people to actually have an opportunity to analyse it before you embed your advantage and pass bad law.

We should not be voting on this bill until it's been properly scrutinised by the joint standing committee. The Australian people are entitled to due diligence in respect to such major reform. I've moved the amendment highlighting the unfair playing field that the bill creates by giving advantage to incumbents over new candidates. This bill fails to give all candidates the same public funding for administrative support and fails to account for incumbent resources such as an office, staff, vehicle, marketing budget, while imposing a spending cap on candidates.

I would challenge most members of the major parties in this place. Have they even read this legislation? I doubt they would have the audacity to vote for it if they had actually read it. Instead, this bill provides disproportionate yearly administrative assistance funding to major political parties and fails to account for any economies of scale for the major parties. Instead, it entrenches political party advantage over independent candidates by imposing a spending cap on individual seats while still permitting additional party advertising under a party's banner up to a $90 million national cap. I will get to the administrative funding in more detail, but the bill should adequately reflect the administrative compliance costs. To do this, the government should undertake an assessment to understand the realistic administrative compliance cost of this bill.

For the benefit of the public, I want everyone to understand just how much money the government and the coalition are proposing to pay themselves. Once this bill takes effect, under the numbers currently in the parliament, Labor are proposing that for their compliance costs they should be paid $2.7 million per year from public funds. The Liberal Party is proposing they should be paid $1.5 million per year for compliance costs. The Nationals are proposing $540,000 per year. No wonder no-one is in here disputing or arguing against this largess that is coming to the political class.

Nothing in the process around this bill has been authentic or in good faith. The government has rushed the bill through the House. It is proposing to do so with very little consultation, with such a short period of time of actual visibility on the bill. There was no exposure draft provided and no active engagement from the government with the crossbench or even the public. The government is proposing to debate a large and significant reform to electoral rules within only one day. It's not only poor practice; it's bad faith governance.

Reform is desperately needed for political donations. While some measures in this bill will strengthen the system, and many people in this place have argued for them for many years, they are completely overshadowed by the bad faith actions the government is undertaking and elements of this bill. The true impact of this bill without proper consideration and without a joint standing committee having the opportunity to analyse it will simply not be known, and the unintended consequences will very likely be very grave from a point of view of fair competition and open field when it comes to our democracy and our elections.

It's clear the objectionable elements to the bill are the spending caps on individuals compared to the national spending of parties, the donation caps and the introduction of gifts. But it's hard to even choose parts to object to in this bill because we know the devil is in the detail, and we've had little over 24 hours with this bill, which is more than 220 pages long with an explanatory memorandum that does not even provide enough detail on the context and the reasoning of these specific changes.

The bill introduces three types of caps that will create a very unfair and uneven playing field. First, the bill imposes a cap of $800,000 spending on individual candidates in the electorate. I agree that it sounds like a lot of money, but the spending cap only relates to the campaign spend and does not account for the incumbent access to government offices, staff, vehicle, marketing budgets that are already paid for. So, whilst a new challenger and candidate will be expected to pay for all that and need do it, for them it has to come out of their $800,000 budget. For an incumbent, that's okay—you can get that extra. The proposed amendments favour an incumbent not just through those advantages of votes and time spent and presence in the electorate but through that expenditure budget as well. Under these rules, an independent candidate will be outspent before they even reach the starting line.

Secondly, while the spending cap for individuals only applies to a specific seat, political parties get a national cap of $90 million to spend. This means that they will allocate their resources and advertising under that national party cap. It's clear that they are not going to allocate the full $800,000 to 151 seats in an election. They will pick and choose which seats they think are winnable, which ones might be safe and which ones might be marginal. Then they will blanket those electorates with additional advertising under that national cap. We can see a challenger will be limited to $800,000, but a political party candidate will have that $800,000 cap plus any additional amount that can be used from that $90 million cap. So it is clear that there will not be an even spend when it comes to political campaigns and it will disproportionately impact marginal seats, especially if they are trying to fend off a challenger.

We know the major parties already run national television brand campaigns that have mass reach to voters across all electorates. They run centralised campaign offices, databases and infrastructure. But an Independent taking on a major party candidate must set up from scratch. There is just no accounting for that. On top of that, a major party candidate will be able to channel up to $800,000 into seats which they want to win or which are under threat, bombarding them with social media, billboards and leaflets, and they're all designed by head office to stamp out the voice of a challenger.

Then, when we look at the donation cap of $20,000, it is clearly unfair because it is likely to further limit democratic participation and unfairly impact an individual candidate compared to existing legacy parties, who can transfer over their war chest accumulated through their nominated entity provisions. No-one has disputed that there is something wrong when our elections have someone like Clive Palmer putting north of $100 million into an election, but there is also something very wrong when established political parties can just transfer over their war chest accumulated with dark money that has not been disclosed and then try and come into this place and say, 'Everybody should be limited to a cap of $20,000 donations.' Under the provisions in this bill, nominated entities give the political parties bodies that they can use to make unlimited contributions to the parties, including for electoral expenditure. While each registered party is limited to one nominated entity, many parties are actually composed of several registered parties, each of which can access funds through a different nominated entity. The devil is in the detail because there are provisions in the exceptions for gifts that allow for transfer of assets between those various entities from federal to state and the different nominated entities. One example is the Cormack Foundation, which funds the Liberal Party. It is estimated to be worth some $120 million. I don't think that's going to fall under a cap of a donation of $20,000. So is this going to be an even playing field? Not on your life!

The other iniquity in this the bill is the provision relating to administrative assistance funding, which will provide additional funding to existing MPs without making any equivalent allocation to new challenger candidates. New administrative costs may not be able to be spent on campaigning but can provide much-needed funding for assistance with policy proposals and volunteer management alongside compliance costs under the bill. If anyone is wondering, 'What does that really mean?' an existing incumbent MP, including me, will be entitled to a $30,000 admin fee. But a challenger has to just bear the cost of compliance—the daily reporting and all those aspects—completely out of their campaign cap. There is no allocation for them to receive repayment for that administrative cost or that support. That is an incredibly unfair playing field. As I said, before even getting to the starting line a challenger is already being penalised and disadvantaged by the system. On this, I should note that the government has resisted again that there be more scrutiny on this, and it's resisted in all briefings any notion that there be an administrative assistance funding to new challengers or that such administrative assistance funding should be capped in relation to what the major parties are going to receive. They are proposing just a linear extrapolation of the numbers of members of the current parliament. For any number of MPs in a political party, that just keeps adding lots of $30,000 to that political party. Every year, what you're going to see—even non-election years—is that the public purse will pay political parties at a time when their support is waning. The Australian people are saying: 'We don't trust you. We don't like you as our choice. We want more competition and diversity.' The political parties, rather than evolve to actually reflect and represent the issues and concerns of the community, are turning to: 'How can I rig the game to help myself from the public purse?' It is outrageous.

The very real economies of scale that exist in relation to compliance are just ignored. That is why my amendment seeks that that be specifically assessed. You have to forgive the cynicism, but, at a time when Australians are struggling under cost-of-living pressures, the hubris of the major parties to come in here asking for this gross imbalance of payment is just staggering. There simply is not enough time to say all the things that are wrong with this bill.