Page 2459 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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issues as possible and created checks and balances—have essentially been thrown out. A cap on expenditure of a million and $20,000 for major parties are about all we have got out of it. There are things that have been brought into this today—
Mr Coe: You could drive a truck through—
MRS DUNNE: with the passage of this legislation, as Mr Coe rightly says, that you could drive a truck through.
The caps on donations are illusory and there are so many loopholes. It is better than it was, but there are still so many loopholes. The scales fell from my eyes late in the debate and I now understand why the Greens changed their mind on Mr Smyth’s provisions. It is quite clear when you put together all that has happened here tonight that the Labor Party, against all odds and against the advice that Mr Corbell gave to me in his office two weeks ago, has agreed to the Greens’ proposal to limit donations to natural persons. That has huge implications for everyone. It has real implications for the Labor Party, who will no longer be able to receive donations from unions.
When I discussed this and what happened in New South Wales, the Labor Party were vehemently opposed to donations only by natural persons in New South Wales because of that. So it becomes quite clear: the Labor Party and the Labor Club have already moved all the money that they need out of the Labor Club and into their various entities, so they do not have to rely on donations anymore. They can donate to the federal party all they like, but they now have a big enough war chest that they can live off their interest. That is quite clear, and we will see that, eventually, about the time of the election. The Labor Party have done a deal with the Greens, and the deal is “we’ll give you natural persons if you make sure that Brendan Smyth’s provisions don’t get up”. That is what has happened here tonight.
The people of the ACT have been sold out by the Labor-Greens alliance. We have minute improvements in campaign finance legislation. We have a cap on expenditure. We do not need to cap donations—because the Labor Party have got all the money they will need for decades to come. It will take some time for this to reveal itself. If I am wrong, I will come in here and eat my words. But I will lay you quids, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that is what will be revealed over time.
This is not the sort of reform that the Greens signed up to when they signed up to campaign finance reform, when they agreed that we should inquire into this. They keep saying, “It’s in our parliamentary agreement.” Well, what is the worth of the parliamentary agreement tonight? What is the worth of the parliamentary agreement tonight when all we get out of this after 2½ years of work is a cap on expenditure, a very poorly constructed cap on donations which has loopholes everywhere, and where the Labor Party have already salted away all their money? They do not have to worry about whether there is a cap on donations.
The people of the ACT have been sold short here tonight by the Labor Party and the Greens. The Greens have reneged on their own principles. They have said that they wanted to work hard for campaign finance reform, but if the horse has already bolted, to use Ms Hunter’s words, and they are not prepared to do anything about it, we have
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