Thursday, 4 June 2026

 The DEPUTY SPEAKER (04:29): The Speaker has received a message from the Legislative Council agreeing to the Electoral Further Amendment Bill 2026 with amendments.

Ordered that amendments be taken into consideration immediately.

Message from Council relating to following amendments considered:

1.   Clause 5, page 13, lines 21 to 23, omit “or, if a higher amount is prescribed by the regulations, the prescribed amount”.

2.   Clause 5, page 92, in the Table, in Column 2 of Item 2, omit “or the prescribed amount”.

3.   Clause 5, page 101, line 7, omit “1 July 2023” and insert “25 November 2018”.

4.   Clause 5, page 107, lines 33 to 35, omit “or, if a higher amount is prescribed by the regulations, the prescribed amount”.

5.   Clause 12, page 115, line 7, after “Assembly” insert “or former member, however described, of the Parliament of the Commonwealth or the Parliament of another State or a Territory”.

 Anthony CARBINES (Ivanhoe – Leader of the House, Minister for Police, Minister for Community Safety, Minister for Victims, Minister for Racing) (04:29): I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

In moving that those amendments be agreed to, I start by pointing out I am not quite sure just how much the member for Brighton has cost the Liberal Party with his shenanigans in relation to these amendments. I point out further that it has only been the Labor Party that has been prepared to stand up for transparency and integrity. It has only been the Labor Party that has not filibustered and spent overnight and into this morning trying to obfuscate and delay to stop the opportunity for fair and free elections and for Victorians to decide election outcomes in our state, not big business, not big money, not those who want to have on speed dial their little slinky mates in the dark. This is what we have seen from the Liberal Party: trying to have big, massive caps, trying to blow up a system that has a special counsel and the support to make sure it can withstand challenge the High Court.

We have seen amendments put before this Parliament that have been about ensuring fair and free elections and fair and free funding to make sure there is transparency and accountability for those who want to make a contribution to who has a say here in Victoria. Those opposite have decided to use ChatGPT, so lazy are they in relation to the determination about what they should do and what they think is appropriate. They do not have any original ideas about these matters. Their strategy, their game, is simply to make sure that nothing stands up to scrutiny, nothing stands up ‍–

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, on relevance, I do not see how attacks at this point in time are relevant to the amendments from the Council before us.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: On relevance, I will bring the minister back to the amendments before the house on the bill.

Anthony CARBINES: Again the question on everyone’s mind is: why doesn’t the opposition want retrospectivity back to 2018? This is in the amendments. Why don’t they want foreign donations outlawed? It is because they are a mess. They want to try and protect themselves over protecting the Victorian people, and that is a disgrace. Firstly, clause 12 of the bill – let us go there – includes a broad-ranging post-election review of the entire act by an expert panel to ensure that reviews are informed by experts. The bill provides that the review ‘must not include more than one former member of the Council or the Assembly’. After discussion with the Greens political party, we recognised that this should be amended to include no former member of the Parliament of the Commonwealth or the Parliament of another state or territory.

As we have seen in the debate on the bill, there has been a lot of misinformation about this bill put out by those opposite. The coalition circulated amendments to change the date regarding the refund mechanism in new section 277. This currently provides an obligation in the bill on political parties to return money transferred from a nominated entity to a political party between 1 July 2023 and 14 April 2026 that was in a party state campaign account on 15 April 2026. Those opposite have said there is something nefarious about the original date of 1 July 2023 – fascinating. In the interests of demonstrating that is not the case, the government moved an amendment to provide that the specified period in the section commences from the day after the 2018 election. We all remember that election, don’t we? Accordingly, this will amend new section 277(3)(a) to change the beginning of the specified period from 1 July 2023 to 25 November 2018. The bill provides that a higher amount can be prescribed for the general cap by regulations. Concerns have been raised about the use of this regulation-making power and whether the government would seek to increase the general cap. We have no plans to increase the general donations cap. Nonetheless, in the interests of assuaging these concerns, we have moved an amendment to amend the definition of the general cap – new section ‍206(1) – to remove the ability to prescribe a higher amount and make any consequential changes, including, in the table in new section 267 and new section 288(1)(b), to prescribe a higher amount for the election period for the 2026 general election.

Victorians deserve elections that are fair, transparent and free from undue influence. These changes make sure the outcome is determined by voters, not by big money. We know the Liberal Party are perfectly comfortable with having big money flowing into politics, but the Labor Party is not, this government is not. We commend these amendments to the house. We commend this bill to the house, and we will see this bill through.

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (04:35): What we have seen is a government trying to rig the electoral system. That is what this government has done. Yes, they have made some amendments to their bill. They have made some amendments, primarily in a deal for the crossbench votes, not solely. They also made some amendments based on pressure from amendments that we moved to the bill. The Leader of the House spoke to a concern that we have put publicly about the date in 2023 being picked in terms of clawback provisions, 2023 of course being picked because it was shortly after the last date that the Labor Party received a payment, some random date in mid-2023 after receiving the last payment in April of that year. And now the government has accepted the need, through force, to change that date. But I suspect most of this conversation will be irrelevant, because I suspect that very shortly it will all be before the High Court.

We are here because the government got it wrong. The government got this legislation wrong. The government said they got it right. Former Premier Daniel Andrews said he got the legislation right, didn’t he? Well, he got it wrong, just like he got it wrong many, many times before the High Court. This legislation was thrown out. The High Court said they were wrong. They were wrong. That is why we are here. That is why we are dealing with the bill, and that is why we are dealing with the amendments, because the government drafted legislation that was wrong and based in politics, not good policy. It was found to be unconstitutional.

When the drafting began on the subject matter of this bill, the first thing that the coalition said was that the legislation needed to be based in a constitutionally valid set of policy matter. What did the government say? ‘We don’t want to talk about anything relating to the constitutional matters in the bill. We don’t want to deal with any of it.’ So is it any surprise that the successful applicant who saw these laws get thrown out is already publicly talking about their next challenge? This bill has not passed the Parliament, and the successful applicant is already filling out the form for the next challenge. What the coalition said was, ‘We don’t want to see a second challenge and a second challenge which sees these laws thrown out in the immediate lead-up to the election.’ But what did the government say to that conversation? ‘We don’t want to talk about it.’ Why, you would ask? Because the fundamental underpinning – all of the subject matter in the bill that the government does not want to talk about – is based in politics. We have a system that is being put to the house which blocks all big money out of the system except union money. How can it be that this Parliament could pass a bill that blocks big money out of the system, except from the unions? It is rank, and it is obvious what the government is doing. It is absolutely rank and obvious what the government is doing.

But when it comes to other matters in the bill, the government did not want to discuss those either. The government did not want to discuss many of the fundamental elements in the bill that are of constitutional concern. I will raise another one. We just talked about the union backdoor pathway that is built into the bill. We just talked about the union backdoor money that is being delivered like a slush fund to the Labor Party. What does this bill also do in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis? It increases public funding. From the moment that the government proposed an increase in public funding, we said that it was inappropriate and that it was wrong for the Premier to further dip her hand into taxpayers pockets and to take more money out of taxpayers.

Anthony Carbines: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I do seek your advice in relation to relevance to the amendments which we are meant to be speaking on in relation to these matters. I know the member for Brighton has cost the Liberal Party a lot of money tonight, but I do think that we should be sticking to the amendments.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Without the extras from members, I do not uphold the point of order. However, I bring the member back to the amendments in front of us.

James NEWBURY: There is a fundamental misunderstanding that the Leader of the House misses. I do not wake up in the morning wanting to do a deal with Labor.

Jacinta Allan: You did!

James NEWBURY: I do not want to do a deal – no, no, no.

Jacinta Allan: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, the member for Brighton is misleading the house. He would not want me to start tendering evidence of his deep, desperate desire to reach agreement with the Labor government.

Members interjecting.

Jacinta Allan: That is what I am just saying. His deep, desperate desire to reach agreement with the government is why I am saying he is misleading the house.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.

James NEWBURY: As I was saying, from the moment the government proposed increasing public funding, we said that we did not support public funding. From the moment public funding was raised, we opposed public funding. At no point did we propose increasing public funding. This legislation increases public funding in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, which all Victorians will be able to see. This legislation also leaves a back door open for the unions to bring big money into the Labor Party. All this bill shows Victorians is that this government is at the end of its days, and it is.

When you bring a bill and a set of amendments into this place which are simply attempting to rig the system, what does it say to Victorians? Before the last election the CFMEU delivered $1.5 million to the Labor Party, and this bill allows that money to continue. That is what this bill does. It allows this money to continue. Sadly, unfortunately, the Parliament has not seen fit to stop it. Speaking to these amendments, for context, the coalition sought to stop that, because it is only fair and reasonable. I suspect, as has been indicated by the successful applicant in the first challenge, that may be one of their concerns. One of their concerns may be a system that is now in place where all big money is blocked except for the unions. How can it be?

I also suspect that the core of the argument may be that the government is proposing to increase public funding in a bill at the same time as keeping low donation caps. What the government is doing is strangling, frankly, the capacity of non-incumbents to see themselves funded, and there is a fundamental difference between our position and the government’s position. They with pride talk about their reliance on public funding, and our view is that donations are a fair and reasonable part of the electoral system. We are not hiding from that. We are not hiding from the fact that donations should be a fair and reasonable part of the electoral system. As the High Court said, a person’s right to donate is there. It is reasonable, and the government’s bill – unreasonably, I suspect – does not fix that constitutional issue. We have said that this bill will not fix the constitutional problems that the High Court laid out. We have said that repeatedly, and we have also made clear that this bill rigs the system, and Victorians can see it. Whether the government can is frankly irrelevant, because they are at the end of their days. Only a government that was trying to rig the system would be showing how desperate it is, and we will not support it.

 Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (04:49): I would like to thank members of this place and members of the Legislative Council – those who have supported this bill and who have been determined to sit through the night to restore integrity and transparency to Victoria’s political donation system. That is why we on this side of the house, and I do acknowledge the crossbench and political party representatives who supported the bill in the Legislative Council and who propose to support it in this place as well, were determined to sit for as long as was required to ensure that Victorians have the opportunity to determine the outcome of elections – not billionaires and not anonymous foreign donors, who clearly the Liberal–National parties want to see entrenched in our political donation system. That is why we have sat for a very long session, because we choose to vote for integrity and transparency, and we are determined to see this through. I must say, I think it tells Victorians everything they need to know about this craven, desperate Liberal–National partnership who were choosing to use fake questions, ChatGPT-generated questions, to block and stall the restoration of integrity and transparency to our political donation system. That tells Victorians everything they need to know.

But just when you thought it could not get worse than that, we have seen in the dead of night the Leader of the Liberal Party filming social media posts in this place begging for donations. In a craven plea for donations –

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker: relevance.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Premier may have been straying from the amendments in front of the house.

Jacinta ALLAN: If I can draw your attention to why this is relevant to the bill, the Leader of the Liberal Party in this place, who is opposing this legislation and wanting to see big donors – billionaires and foreign donors – have the opportunity to be entrenched in Victoria’s political system is out there ‍–

Members interjecting.

Jacinta ALLAN: No. I can show you the social media post that was posted just tonight, where –

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, specifically in relation to foreign donors, the Premier is misleading the house.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order, as we discovered earlier. The Premier is to continue on the amendments.

Jacinta ALLAN: I say this in the context of something the member for Brighton said in his earlier contribution about discussions that were being held at length outside of this place that we were pursuing in order to restore integrity and transparency to the political donations system as a result of the High Court decision. We did have discussions, and I thank all those representatives who had the discussions with us, based on that determination and that principle of restoring free and fair elections in this state and having a robust political donation system.

I say to the member for Brighton that perhaps he was not aware of the desperate phone call my office received less than 48 hours ago from the Leader of the Opposition’s office, desperate to have a conversation at the same time that I may have been standing up holding a press conference announcing the arrangements. I say this: you have got to ask why. When we hear the words from the Leader of the Liberal Party or the National Party, you have got to ask: why don’t they want a fair system? Why don’t they think Victorians deserve to know who is donating and how much they are donating? Why don’t they want them to know, and why did they work overtime, with the assistance of ChatGPT, in an abuse of the parliamentary processes to block and stall this legislation?

I will give the member for Brighton some credit. We thank him for his suggested amendment, which we took on board, and we have taken the decision to take those arrangements back to 2018. I thank the member for Brighton for his amendment and suggestion that he made through this process. As a consequence, we brought it back to this place, and it is why we are amending the bill in this place. Good job, member for Brighton, you have done well. You have done very well there.

I do come back to this central point: these changes are about making sure the outcome is determined by voters, not by big money. This is why we have sat through the night to make sure that Victorians have integrity and transparency restored to our political system. It is why we were determined to stare down the blockers and stallers in the Legislative Council to ensure that this was brought about, because we believe that Victorian elections should be decided by Victorians, not by who has the deepest pockets. And again, you have got to ask: why do the Liberal Party and the National Party not support this? Why don’t they want Victorians to have a fair system? Why don’t they want Victorians to have a system that is based on integrity and transparency?

Finally, the question of a future High Court case on these matters does also beg that question why people would not want to see Victorians have the opportunity to have a system where they determine the outcomes, not big business. That is the fundamental difference between those of us who support this bill and the Liberal–National parties. Again I thank those who have worked incredibly hard. We have worked incredibly hard since that High Court decision to bring the legislation to the Parliament at the earliest opportunity. I thank those who have worked with the government along the way, and at times that did include the Liberal Party and the National Party. At times they were working with the government along the way, but they ultimately walked away. They walked away because they do not believe in integrity and transparency, and we have seen that demonstrated this evening – the blocking and stalling in the upper house, the craven plea for donations on social media tonight. It tells Victorians everything they need to know. Again I thank my colleagues, and I thank members of the Legislative Council who have worked incredibly hard. I commend the bill to the house.

 Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (04:57): I was listening to the Leader of the House earlier this evening when he did not know what he was doing in terms of the management of the house and he moved an entirely new motion. But he started with the words ‘the rivers of gold’ –

Anthony Carbines: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I know there are several former leaders of the opposition in the house. I just wonder where the current Leader of the Opposition is –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The point of order is?

Anthony Carbines: Where the current member for Kew is. Where is she? Where is she hiding?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leader of the House, resume your seat. It is late. Frivolous points of order are annoying.

Danny O’BRIEN: Technically, it is not late; it is early, Deputy Speaker. But obviously the Leader of the House is embarrassed to hear about what his own mistake was earlier when he started a speech talking about rivers of gold. I thought that obviously he was talking about this legislation allowing that CFMEU river of gold to continue to funnel its way to his party, because that is what this legislation is all about tonight. The government is rigging the system again.

Let us all be aware there is only one reason we are here in the first place. It is because this mob stuffed up the legislation. This mob stuffed up the legislation in the first place, and now we come back. We have had since 15 April, and – what is it? – it is 5 June now. The government could not get its act together through whatever that is – that is six weeks – and then suddenly says, ‘We’ve got to rush this through within a day or two,’ 119 pages of legislation. To have the Premier standing there telling us about the dodgy deals that the Liberal Party was running at the last minute – we were being told by the Premier’s office just a few hours before that they could do a deal on increased caps. Just a few hours before, and then ‘No. Oh, sorry’ – well, not even a sorry, actually – ‘did we say that last night? Actually, no. We’ve done a deal with our mates the Greens up there.’ They have done a deal so that those rivers of union gold can just keep on flowing to that one and that one and that one and that one, because they are all very concerned.

One of them over there has said ‘It feels like end of days,’ and they are desperate to do whatever they possibly can. This is a government now standing up and trying to say this is about free and fair elections. Well, if it was free and fair, why wouldn’t you knock out the affiliation fees? Victorians ask us all the time ‘So hang on, you can only get $5000 from the corporates?’ and I say, ‘No, we can only get $5000 from you or BHP Billiton or whoever.’ That is the minimum. And yet the rivers of gold from the union movement keep flowing to all of you. Hands up those in the Parliament who are not members of a union. Everyone on that side, everyone! Every single one of them.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: When the house comes to order, I encourage the Leader of the Nationals not to incite members.

Danny O’BRIEN: I am sure that that ruling applies to all of those as well. This is the point of the dishonesty of this government. Mark our words – not our words, but the other plaintiffs’ – we will see this back again because the government keeps messing this up.

On the legislation, there are five amendments that are before us. Can I request that the first four be put together and that the fifth be put as a separate amendment, and we will vote on them accordingly? This legislation sets up a particular advantage to the Labor government – a Labor government that is desperate to hold on to power. These amendments will do nothing to change that.

 Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (05:02): I rise in strong support of the amendments and indeed of the Electoral Further Amendment Bill 2026 as amended, which is a very important piece of legislation, the urgency of which has been made clear by previous speakers. I just want to touch briefly on amendment 3, which of course is the one we are debating and does go to the topic of nominated entities. But just before I get to that I need to address this claim that unions are somehow getting some sort of special deal here. Unions will have exactly the same donations cap as any other organisation in this state. It is true that associated entities can pay affiliation fees. I cannot help but notice there are some other political organisations that also have things like members paying fees. If we are going to allow political organisations to have flexible, internal, democratic, collective decision-making systems that may well involve members and may well involve other organisations, if the Liberal Party would like to affiliate trade unions or any other type of associated entity, they too may do so. It is simply providing political parties with the key role they play in our system, which is that they need to have the ability to make internal collective decisions, and people may pay affiliation fees if they are then voting within those parties’ internal democratic systems.

Turning very briefly at this time of the morning to nominated entities, I think it is absolutely critical just to go back and remind us where nominated entities came from. They came from a problem that all of us in this chamber faced, which is that it is very difficult for a political party to structure itself legally in this state. Every single party has the same problem: you have got to be an unincorporated association to have your party rules, but then you have inevitably got some assets. In the case of the Labor Party, people might remember we had 360 King Street when we owned it. And people might remember this: 360 King Street was our headquarters. For a long time Jill Hennessy, when she was president, had to own 360 King Street because an unincorporated association cannot own a building. Then, when Greg Sword or whoever took it over next, it had to be handed on to Greg. What we did when we set up Labor Services & Holdings was simply to have a company – the correct good governance structure to hold a piece of property in which we had our meetings and discussed our things. There is nothing nefarious about that. That is not a slush fund, that is basic good governance. The only reason the Greens do not do it is because they, very quietly, have an incorporated association. That means the Greens could have $100 million sitting in their accounts at the moment and somehow they, in all of this, have gotten away scot-free. You could ask yourself how much is currently in the funds of the Greens, and because they are not so keen on transparency, I do not think we will get an answer on that tonight.

But I say this: the High Court did have to address a serious question – I will finish on this point – which is that it is true of course that political parties that have been around for a long time have built up some reserves and assets and owned buildings and things like that. Part of that is because it was easier to get donations back in the day, but mostly it was because parties that have been around for a long time have benefited from compounding returns. The Labor Party built a thing called John Curtin House back in Whitlam’s era, and then, after many, many decades, that was worth quite a bit of money, and people can read a bit more about where that got to. But the High Court genuinely had to address that issue. They came back with this weird answer that you cannot use nominated entities if they are holding companies but you can use an incorporated association. I think, very generously, we have just accepted that in the bill that we have in front of us. More than that, not only have we accepted what they said on nominated entities, but of course we put in those generous extra arrangements so that new entrants have double the cap of everyone else. To summarize for the member for Brighton’s benefit, is this a rort for the Labor Party? It could not be –

Members interjecting.

Nathan LAMBERT: No, listen. It could not less be a rort for the Labor Party. Let us start with the facts here. The Cormack Foundation is the worst of the nominated entities. At least Pilliwinks is kind of half all right. Ours is the best of the nominated entities by any measure, and yet we agreed to get rid of all three of them. We have done the Liberal Party a favour by getting rid of Labor Services & Holdings when they had the Cormack Foundation, which was the big problem here. Not only have we done that, we have let the Greens keep their incorporated association arrangement, left it completely untouched, and then we have given new entrants – again, not us – this special deal. Every single other group are benefiting out of this piece of legislation. Why are we doing it? Not because it benefits us but because it is the right thing to do, because we are a party that believes in integrity. We know we need to fix our system, and we are going to fix it this morning. And why are they opposing it? They are opposing it because they do not share our integrity, and they are partially opposing it because those opposite do not understand it: ‘If you don’t know, vote no.’ They have had 12 hours tonight to learn this thing. They still have not done their homework. God forbid they ever run this state. I endorse the motion, and I support the amendments.

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (05:08): I will take a short break from counting my money and make some brief comments about the Electoral Further Amendment Bill 2026, which contains now some amendments which fix some of the bugs in the bill. Of course the real bug in the bill was introduced in the 2018 amendments, which favoured the major parties, creating the problem.

Nathan Lambert: Which you voted for; your party voted for it.

Tim READ: I do not deny that. I would like to take up the point raised by the member for Preston and say I just wish we had the war chest that he surmises. But unfortunately that is not the case.

Since the High Court threw out part 12 of the act, we have had seven weeks of no regulation of campaign finance, allowing potentially large sums of money to flow that we do not know about and cannot see, so it is very urgent to regulate money in politics. When you think about it, money is really corrosive to politics: it forces candidates to spend time fundraising instead of talking to voters, it generates a conscious or unconscious desire for candidates to impress donors and it ensures that those with greater means have greater influence. There is no way of getting around that point. You can run an election campaign on a shoestring; I have some silver medals to prove it. Provided every voter is just sent an outline of every candidate’s policies, which is what a lot of councils do, then that is probably sufficient. But we spend a whole lot more on advertising. Collectively we all send a lot of money to Mark Zuckerberg. We make Mark Zuckerberg a lot richer. We spend a lot of money on Meta and Google and on billboards. But does the electorate really make wiser choices as a result of the extra money we spend? Campaign funding is an arms race: if you are doing that kind of advertising, then I want to follow suit; if I do something, then you will want to match it. If you removed a zero from all the amounts of money spent on campaigning by all parties and candidates on campaigns across the state, I doubt the results would be any different.

You can see why the Greens are keen to regulate political finance as soon as possible, and the bill, imperfect though it may be, does that. It reimposes caps on donations; the Greens were able to negotiate a lower cap. It addresses the concerns of the High Court, we hope, with a higher cap for new entrants and by subjecting nominated entities to the cap. It reinstates public funding. It reinstates disclosure requirements, which is even more important, for donations above $1250. Importantly, it bans foreign donations.

However, the review is important because the legislation is rushed. A number of bugs were picked up in its passage through the Legislative Council. No doubt there will be one or two more. A review will also enable better and more complete legislation to be passed if the next Parliament is so minded. For example, the bill does not contain spending caps. Other countries and other states have them. The ACT has quite a good model. There is no limit to contributions by candidates. Multiple entities controlled by the same person can donate up to the cap, and there is no campaign finance regulation at all in local government.

There is a lot that still could be added to the principal act and should be added to the act, but in Parliament you often have to choose the least worst option. We are confident in this case that we have improved the legislation by working with the government. We urge the next Parliament to continue to work to make our electoral laws fairer for newcomers and incumbents and for people and political movements who do not have thousands of spare dollars to elevate their ideas.

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (05:12): The Greens did work with the government on this legislation, and I certainly acknowledge that. Some here did want to work with the government on this, and they woke up in the morning seeking to do so. They will not be doing that very often from here on in. They will be waking up every morning working out which part of One Nation they deal with. That is where they are headed. They are not waking up after this. They are waking up straight for One Nation. I am going to be brief, because some of us have been up for more than 24 hours now. We have improved this bill through the amendments to make sure that no former member of the Parliament of the Commonwealth or a parliament of another state or territory and no former members can be part of the review – an important matter, an important improvement made through the upper house. I know you have got an obsession with David Feeney. Some do, particularly the member for Brighton.

The SPEAKER: Through the Chair, member for Point Cook.

Mathew HILAKARI: Of course, Speaker, thank you for your counsel – well required. We have improved, at the suggestion of the member for Brighton, the dates for which we specify the period for looking back at donations all the way back to 2018. What a wonderful thing to do.

Finally, the general donations cap will provide absolute clarity so that everyone will be in no doubt that you cannot prescribe a higher or a lower fee in the future. Some may seek that as well. We have removed that provision from the bill. This is an excellent bill, and it is time to pass it.

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (05:14): I think it is only a matter of time before this bill, this law that is about to be passed, returns to the High Court. It is only a matter of time before whatever deal has been done by whoever it has been done with ends up under consideration before the High Court again and more uncertainty is thrown into our electoral donations system in this state.

I am thrilled that the member for Point Cook raised the issue of One Nation, because I have a question that I think all Victorians would love to know the answer to. One Nation voted to support the government on this bill in the other place. So the question that I think Victorians deserve to know the answer to is: what is the deal that this Premier did with One Nation to get this dirty deal through this Parliament? What is the deal that One Nation did with the Australian Labor Party to get this dirty deal through the Parliament? And while we are at it, is part of that consideration a preference deal with the Australian Labor Party at the next Victorian election? Is that under consideration? I think these are questions that are on the minds of Victorians.

Anthony Carbines: On a point of order, Speaker, there are a couple of elements there. I would ask that the member confine himself to the amendments. I also point out that the entire crossbench voted for this bill and these amendments.

The SPEAKER: The member for Sandringham will come back to the amendments.

Brad ROWSWELL: Just finally, I think –

Jacinta Allan interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: I do not think anyone behind you, Premier, wants anyone to keep going.

The SPEAKER: The day is very early, member for Sandringham. It does not mean the rules should not be followed. Through the Chair.

Brad ROWSWELL: It was the CFMEU that donated $1.5 million to the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party before the last election. It was the CFMEU that donated $400,000 to the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party after the 2022 election. There is a reason why it is in the interests of the government for this arrangement to continue. It is because they have relied upon them, and every single one of the Australian Labor Party members elected to this place at the 2022 election owes it, in some part, to a donation received by the CFMEU. On my maths that averages out to about $22,000 on the head of every member of the Australian Labor Party that was elected at the 2022 election. It is no wonder the Premier of this state does not want a royal commission into union corruption in this state, because it will unravel something. It will open a Pandora’s box for this Premier. It will open a Pandora’s box of corruption for this Premier. She does not want to address it.

It is a real shame that this Premier and this government continue to seek to elevate these new donation laws for the time being – before they are revisited by the High Court at some point in the near future, I suspect – through the prism of greater integrity and greater accountability, because the truth could not be further from that. In fact that is an absolute and utter fib. It is not right, and I think Victorians deserve a hell of a lot better than what we are about to vote on now.

The SPEAKER: The Leader of the House has moved that Council amendments 1 to 5 be agreed to. The Leader of the Nationals has requested that the Chair split the question so that members can support some aspects of that question and oppose another.

Amendments 1 to 4 agreed to.

Assembly divided on amendment 5:

The SPEAKER: A message will now be sent to the Legislative Council informing them of the house’s decision.