Page 2431 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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This is only logical, but if we are going to impose these strictures on individuals and on people who attend a single fundraising event, they should be equally imposed on organisations that would affiliate themselves actively with the political party of their choice.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (8.30): The government will not be supporting this amendment. The effect of this amendment is to limit the capacity of affiliated entities to make payments to the political party they choose to be affiliated with and to make sure it is no more than $10,000. The fact is that the government is of the view that affiliation fees are not a gift; affiliation fees are a payment in consideration. You pay to join a political party or pay to be affiliated with a political party and have rights in the political process in the political party as a result. It is not a gift; it is not a donation. It is a payment for consideration, a payment to access services and access the operations, decision making and policymaking of the political party. The government does not support the amendment.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (8.31): The Greens will not be supporting this amendment. Part of it is that we have not had time to have a proper look at this. Our understanding is that it is $250 from an entity, which we just think is way too low. At this stage the Greens will not be supporting this amendment.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.32): I am not surprised by the outcome. I am surprised at the blatant attitude of the attorney, who says, “If you pay $300 as an individual to a political party, we deem that $50 of that is a donation; it is a gift.” But if an organisation pays the same amount of money—“No, that is a fee for a right to participate.” What does the attorney think that a membership fee is? If a political party chooses to charge a membership fee of $300 to an individual and an individual is prepared to pay that, that person is paying to participate in the political party. That is not valid, according to the attorney. He says that if you pay $300 and you are an individual, we deem that that is too much money and that some of that money will be deemed as a gift. But if an organisation pays $300, that is all right because that is the fee that they pay to participate.
I know that politics sometimes causes you to take contradictory views and try and justify them, but that was an example of the completely unjustifiable. The fact that the minister could do it with a straight face and will be able to sleep tonight after putting forward such a preposterous proposition defies belief. There is no consistency in the approach that this minister has taken. This epitomises the hypocrisy of the Labor Party here. Any time money might come to them through affiliation fees, they say: “No, we have to protect that at all costs. That is okay.”
Let me take unions as an example. This is about unions to a large extent. They are the people, the organisations, most inclined to pay affiliation fees to parties. Unions can pay tens of thousands of dollars and it is not a gift; it is not reportable—all of these things. It will not appear anywhere; it will just go into the coffers of the Labor Party and they can use the money however they like. But if an individual, a man off the
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