STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (12:57): I want to commend and thank Senator Marielle Smith for all the work that she has done in this place and is proposing to do with this new select committee. It's really important work and will impact the lives of Australians across this great continent. Today is a stark reminder for Australians of just how far we have to go when it comes to ensuring that our democracy delivers for the people and that our democracy is set up in a way that we have a parliament that is thinking longer term and putting community interests ahead of vested interests.
I think more and more Australians are starting to cotton on to what is happening and how this system and the various parts of it produce the kind of outcome that we have today, where we have gambling reform that is just so far out of line with community expectation and what evidence based policy would be. I want to touch on a few of those parts of the puzzle now.
I can almost guarantee you that a person whose life has been wrecked by online gambling and wants reform has never bought a table to a Labor fundraiser and has never spent 10,000 bucks to sit beside the Prime Minister. They're one of the Australians who can't even email the PM. They can go through the Prime Minister's portal, where you give them all your details and send some sort of message to the Prime Minister, and who knows what happens to that.
We've got a prime minister you can't even email in 2026. We've got a lobbying system which for so long has just had zero transparency. We've got over 2,200 people who have access-all-areas passes to this place.
Until very recently, we had no idea who they were, who gave them their pass and what they were in this building to do. Access is a good thing. This is the people's house.
People should be able to access this place, but Australians deserve to know who is accessing this place and what they are doing in here. We regulate third-party lobbyists, but for everyone else it's been open slather. The revolving door is a very inconvenient thing we need to address.
Resources is probably the most stark example. Almost every resources minister in living memory has ended up working in the resources industry. Martin Ferguson started work with British Gas within weeks of leaving parliament.
He chaired Apia's advisory board by October 2013. Ian Macfarlane became CEO of the Queensland Resources Council months after resigning from parliament. Staff obviously follow.
Ian Macfarlane's chief of staff became CEO of the New South Wales Minerals Council. It's the same with gambling, where we have people who know the inner workings of how these industries are regulated then going straight to work for the gambling lobby. We've also got cash for access, which has been in the news recently.
There's been more than $110 million to the major parties since 1999 through dodgy cash-for-access schemes. Australians would be horrified if they knew the scale of cash for access in this place and how the Labor government seems to fly ministers around the country for a meeting that just happens to coincide with a fundraising dinner. Ministers meet and talk about something relevant to the government, which we all obviously want, but then they just so happen to all attend a fundraising dinner that night, and taxpayers have paid for them to get to that city.
That doesn't cut it. This cash for access needs to change, and, clearly, it suits both the major parties, who've stitched us up as part of their electoral reform bill. What is the cost of all this?
The cost is the kind of reform we see today that sells the Australian people out, that puts vested interests ahead of the community and which erodes trust in this place and in all of us. Aussies look at parliament and say: 'Well, they're all just in it for themselves; they don't care about us. We're the ones hearing our kids recite the odds.' Rather than banning ads, they say, 'Let's get the balance right with three ads per hour during the day and as many ads as you want overnight.'