Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Banning Dirty Donations) Bill 2026
Senator McDONALD (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (09:49): I can't help but reflect on the closing part of Senator Whish-Wilson's contribution where he said that all he sees in the future is dark. Of course, that is what the Greens agenda and the dark money that is flowing into anti-fossil-fuel and anti-energy project campaigns in this campaign would result in.
It would result in a very dark future, and we know already, because of the crazy ideological agenda that is being pushed by these groups, funded by renewable energy profiteers, that it is seeing Australian energy prices go through the roof. There's not an Australian family that is not struggling with the cost of living and with paying the bills in their own home, much less the small business that they work in, and manufacturing jobs have been lost from Victoria.
Worse, the big smelters that provide the important baseload metals—smelters like the bauxite and alumina smelters in Gladstone and Mount Isa, and the smelter in Whyalla for steel—are under threat from its crazy agenda. I want to turn back. It is Australia's democracy that we are speaking about today—the health of being a liberal democracy.
This is an important thing, because democracy, as Winston Churchill described it, is not the best system but it is the best one that we have. I am paraphrasing, obviously; he was much more eloquent than that. But the point that to be made is that we believe in the freedom of democracy, in the rights of association, in the ability to speak, and in the ability to come together, irregularly or regularly, to vote to choose how our country is run.
What we're talking about today is another shield, another veil that's been proposed by the Greens to distract and confuse donations that are being made by legal, taxpaying companies in Australia. What they don't want you to look at is the extraordinary campaign that's being run by influencers, by, yes, billionaires and by foundations like the Rockefeller Center and the KR foundation.
Money flows into Australian organisations that seek to mislead, to confuse and to change the political agenda. These are campaigns that are very, very mischievous at best and, I would say, anti-Australian at worst. These campaigns are not disclosed.
In fact, I love this idea that the Greens are quoting Electoral Commission disclosure laws because they comply with the laws. Any Australian can go to the Electoral Commission reports and see who is donating to their political parties and to their Independents. But there are organisations that are not forced to comply with the same sorts of disclosure rules.
They are organisations that are funding organisations like the Australia Institute and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, IEEFA, and some of the social media influencers who are not disclosing who their posts are being funded by. There are organisations like the Environmental Defenders Office. After being found in the courts of Australia to be confecting evidence and creating cultural heritage stories in order to stop an offshore gas project, their penalty—millions of dollars to pay the legal fees of Santos—was first given as a loan to that organisation, and then that loan was forgiven.
It was millions of dollars, with no disclosure as to who paid that. Surely, if the Greens were interested in transparency—in keeping our electoral system and our rule of law transparent and clear and fair in an open and honest democracy—they would want that disclosure made. They would want to know who paid nearly $10 million for the legal expenses of Santos.
Surely that would be of interest to it. Surely of interest to us would be the $175 million that flowed into Australia to affect our political discussions and our policy position. It was $175 million in 2023-24 and, prior to that, hundreds of millions of dollars in other campaigns—campaigns that used words like 'undermining the financial figures' and 'campaigns that seek to distort, to confuse, to mislead the financial affairs of resources companies in Australia'.
Surely that would be of interest to anybody who sincerely worries about transparency and influence regarding the Australian Electoral Commission. But of course the Greens don't, because it suits their agenda to shut down the sectors that not only pay the biggest amounts of corporate tax, royalties, PAYG tax and payroll tax but also support small businesses in regional parts of Australia and support hundreds of thousands of incredibly well-paid jobs.
What is the plan for all those families who are earning $250,000 or $350.000 a year? Where will they go? Will they go and polish solar panels?
Will they go to another energy project, like wind turbines? No, because those projects don't employ people, and they don't keep the lights on, certainly not in a reliable way and in a way that supports manufacturing in Australia—the sort of agenda the government says they seek. Surely we should be concerned about the transparency of those donations by people who seek to undermine, confuse and mislead in the story about oil, coal, gas and, most recently, nuclear in Australia.
That is the sort of disclosure I would like to see, because what worries me is: what is the plan for us as a nation if there is no resources sector? That is where this is going. The agenda of funding organisations that seek to shut down coal, oil, gas and nuclear means that ultimately we will end up with no mining, because the energy costs make it too expensive, and certainly too expensive to do smelting in this country.
It means the regional parts of Australia become tumbleweed towns and, instead, we end up with technology that is already under investigation by US security agencies for importing Chinese turbines into Australia that have cameras and microphones and potentially could be shut down. That is what we will end up with if this campaign of misinformation is continued.
I want to go back to some numbers that were read into Hansard by one of the Greens senators about donations—completely disclosed, I assume, on the Electoral Commission's website. But in this same period, 2023-24, revenue of $175 million went into, for instance: the Australian Institute, $10 million; GetUp, $6 million; the Graeme Wood Foundation, $2,387,000; and the Environmental Defenders Office, $17 million.
Where is the disclosure that would allow an Australian who is seeking to understand where the funding to influence our political discourse is coming from? Where can people simply go and find that? Well, I'm afraid they won't be able to, because, under the Greens' proposal, we will stop only the legitimate disclosures that are already being made but certainly not these other people of influence, these foreign donations.
I'm fascinated. As a political representative, I can't take money from any foreign donations; it's a blanket 'no'. I don't seek to stop foreign donations flooding into this country, but I do think that there should be better disclosure.
There should be some disclosure. This is extraordinary. If the Greens agreed, they would have included that in the amendments they are providing, but of course they haven't because they want to pretend that they are making this about transparency.
But it's not. It is part of working to their political masters in running a campaign that seeks to mislead Australians. There are many important issues that Australians expect us to focus on in the parliament.
They want us to focus on declining living standards, rising energy prices, housing affordability, small businesses that are collapsing and families under pressure. But, instead of focusing on these issues, we are here debating another thought bubble from the Greens. Their answer to Australia's challenges always remains the same: more regulation, more political censorship and more ideological gatekeeping.
The Greens' solution is to create legal prohibitions around who can participate in the democratic process. They seek to financially throttle political participation based on ideology and to silence industries and Australians that they disagree with. Once again, that demonstrates how out of touch the Greens are with everyday Australians.
The coalition believes in equal participation, equal treatment and transparency that is applied consistently because we trust Australians, not activist politicians, to make their own democratic decisions. For these reasons, the coalition will not support this bill. (Quorum formed)