Tuesday, 3 March 2026

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (19:12): (1555) My adjournment tonight is for the Premier, and the action I seek is for the Victorian Labor government to ban all corporate donations to political parties. Here is how it works: big corporations – banks, coal and gas giants, gambling companies and supermarkets – make huge profits, often from digging up the earth or price gouging Victorians. Then they give a tiny amount of those profits to Labor and a tiny bit to the Liberals. In return these two parties make sure that nothing threatens those mega profits. Sometimes governments even make it easier for those companies to make the profits, like through fast-tracking new gas projects or blocking laws that would restrict poker machines. Meanwhile it is harder than ever for Victorians to pay their rent or to afford groceries, and young people wonder what the hell kind of future they are looking forward to. In 2025 the big four banks made $30 billion in profit. Those same banks gave tens of millions of dollars to both the Labor and Liberal parties. When the Victorian Greens put up a bill to tax big banks so that we can pay for the things the Victorians all need, like funded public schools or working public hospitals, Labor and the Liberals knocked that down. Labor, Liberal, One Nation – they all take these corporate donations. So is it any wonder why politicians will not meaningfully act to fix the housing crisis or the climate crisis? It would cut into those same profits of those same companies, and the current system suits them just fine. It stinks. Good governments are supposed to work for people, not for profit-mongering corporations. People are rightly sick of it, and it is no wonder that they are looking for an alternative.

We have kept the receipts. In the past decade Labor accepted more than $325,000 from Coles and Woolworths, more than $1.4 million from fossil fuel giants and more than $20 million from the big four banks. Companies do not just hand that money to their mates in Parliament for nothing. They do it so that when politicians set the rules to the game they rig it in their favour. That is why Coles and Woolies get to keep making billions of dollars in profits but governments will not tackle price gouging. It is why Victorians have to deal with fires and floods while Labor approves new gas drilling that makes these fires and floods worse. Labor and the Liberals do not answer to everyday Victorians, they answer to their corporate donors and the lobbyists and mates that run the companies. It is no coincidence that almost every single resources minister in Australia in the last 10 years has gone on to work for the coal and gas industry. That stinks, and everybody knows it. Unlike Labor and the Liberals, the Greens do not take these dirty corporate donations from developers or gambling or coal and gas companies. The Victorian public deserves politicians who work for people, not for corporate donors, but nothing will change if we keep electing the same two parties.