Thursday, 4 June 2026

 The PRESIDENT (09:35): I have received the following message from the Legislative Assembly:

The Legislative Assembly presents for the agreement of the Legislative Council ‘A Bill for an Act to further amend the Electoral Act 2002 in relation to political donations, State funding and reporting requirements, to make consequential amendments to the Electoral Amendment Act 2026 and the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Act 2026 and for other purposes.’

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Government Services, Special Minister of State, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Multicultural and Multifaith Victoria) (09:36): I move:

That the bill be now read a first time.

Council divided on motion:

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Government Services, Special Minister of State, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Multicultural and Multifaith Victoria) (09:42): I declare this bill to be an urgent bill, and I move:

That the bill be treated as an urgent bill.

The PRESIDENT: I remind members that this question triggers a procedural motion, which will have the appropriate time limits if anyone wants to discuss the question.

Ingrid STITT: This bill is clearly a very urgent matter and must be debated by the Council today. The integrity of our electoral donations system is what we are talking about being at stake today. This bill of course addresses the gap in our electoral donation laws in the wake of the recent High Court decision. Urgent action does need to be taken immediately to remedy the fact that we have no regime in place. We need to restore transparency in our electoral donations system, and that is what this bill is all about. In particular, foreign donations need to be outlawed, and retrospectivity for admin funding for parties is required so they can employ staff and properly perform their elected duties. We also must legislate that major parties refund certain moneys from their nominated entities. This action reduces the entrenched disadvantage of major parties, which is critical to addressing the matters in the High Court decision and to ensuring our legislation is sound. Ultimately, this is about electoral integrity issues and indeed, you could argue, national security when it comes to making sure that dark money is not entering our political donations system. I do commend this motion to the house, and I ask that all members who are concerned about protecting our democracy support the government’s intentions with this motion and with the subsequent bill. It is urgent work that the Council needs to deal with today.

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (09:44): I would start off by saying this is not an urgent bill. What this is is a rigged bill by a dodgy government attempting to rig the donations system in their favour. Minister Stitt said it is important due to the High Court case that we pay back the nominated entities money. Why has it picked a date in July 2023? Could it be that from April 2023 Labor’s nominated entity gave millions of dollars to Labor’s political operation? Could it be that they want to keep their entrenched advantage? And they know it. The Premier and the Premier’s office have run a rigged system to entrench their electoral advantage to keep millions of dollars from the Labor Party in the Labor Party’s pockets so they do not have to pay that back.

Sonja Terpstra: On a point of order, President, this is a procedural motion debate, and it sounds to me like Mr Mulholland is actually debating the merits of the bill. I suggest that he could perhaps save his rhetoric, speeches, whatever for the actual debate on the bill.

The PRESIDENT: I think Mr Mulholland was trying to argue against the urgency, so I will let him continue.

Evan MULHOLLAND: I was trying to argue against the urgency, and I would say to the member for North-East Metropolitan Region that I went to exactly the same point the minister went to. This is a rigged bill. The government are attempting to rig it in their favour and have rushed through a process that entrenches their advantage. The High Court did not just knock out the nominated entities part. It knocked out a whole section of the previous laws that this government stuffed up as well. It knocked out a whole section of the laws. The government thinks it can entrench its advantage and it can pluck dates out of nowhere to entrench that advantage. The government expect the Victorian people to believe them when they say they are wanting to make a fair donations system, except they have rigged the bill in their favour – this is a shameful example – to shut off money from Labor’s political opponents and to disadvantage new entrants into the system. This is, to quote anonymous Labor MPs, end-of-days stuff by this government. This end-of-life, 12-year-old government are trying to ram through a system that entrenches their advantage. What they are trying to do here in attempting to rush this into this chamber and consider it an urgent bill is allow associated entities to the Labor Party to keep donating to the Labor Party. So the CFMEU could still affiliate to the Labor Party after the election, and you will get the rivers of gold from the $15 billion. No wonder you want to rush this in.

Members interjecting.

Katherine Copsey: On a point of order, President, I have a headache and cannot hear what is happening in the chamber.

The PRESIDENT: I uphold the point of order and the headache. It is going to be a long day if people get shouted down. There is going to be disagreement, and I think that people should respect each other’s views, even though they completely disagree or whatever.

Evan MULHOLLAND: The Premier herself has said that she expects these laws to be challenged, which is why we must get them right, which is why we must not rush bad laws through this chamber. These laws are an affront to the Parliament and an affront to democracy. The way that elections are funded and how elections are disclosed is important for public confidence in our elections and in our election system. Expecting parliamentarians to consider and pass this bill in a matter of 24 hours – I still have not had a briefing – is an insult to the principles of transparency and integrity. They have rushed the normal process. They have not practised their own treaty process with their consultations. It is an attempt to stack the decks in their favour. As the Premier said, she expects it to be challenged, which is why we must not rush this. We must get it right.

The government is seeking to massively increase public funding during a cost-of-living crisis. During a cost-of-living crisis the Premier’s answer is to dig deep into the pockets of Victorian taxpayers to prop up the Labor Party.

The Premier’s response is to say, ‘No new money can come into the system. No old money can come into the system, except for the union movement.’ This is why they have rushed through to pluck a date out of nowhere of July 2023. Now, I know many members on the other side are asking, ‘Why that date?’ Why that date? Because Labor received millions of dollars prior to that date from their nominated entity to the Labor Party in order to keep the money for themselves. We know that Labor – we know they are in negotiations – have set up the system in a way because they are worried about the West Party and their ability to fundraise. These laws must not be rushed. As I said, the Premier expects to be challenged. They need to be considered carefully.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:51): I will be supporting this urgency motion because at the moment due to this High Court decision our national security is at risk. We currently have no prohibitions on foreign donations in this state. I know that the Liberal Party and One Nation would love to keep getting money from the Cormack Foundation and Gina and whoever. But the fact of the matter is there have been two parties apply for registration recently, including the Free Palestine Party or whatever they are called. At the moment, under the current regime, they could go and solicit donations from the Middle East of unlimited amount. We have to close this loophole today because Australia’s national security is at risk, and if the Liberal Party and One Nation want to stand in the way of that, then the Australian public should judge them accordingly.

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:51): I thank Mr Limbrick for his very astute observations that he has just made that this is a matter of national security, and of course this needs to be treated as an urgent bill, and this is what we are actually debating. This is a procedural debate, and that was lost on Mr Mulholland, who thought he would just simply move to debating the substance of the actual bill. But it is critically important. There are some parties who are in fact registering, and we do not know where they may in fact receive donations from. I find it very, very fascinating that Mr Mulholland is basically signalling that they will not support this. We are debating a procedural motion, but will they not support this bill? This is about making sure we have integrity in political donations because there are serious threats to our democracy, and it is about trying to make sure that we have integrity in the electoral system. So the problem is that those opposite have got something to hide. Their coffers are low because they have spent so much money on lawyers having internal fights amongst themselves. They have something to hide. There has been so much money spent on lawyers they need these donations. It needs to be treated as an urgent bill, and I look forward to the debate once we get to the bill. Again, this is a procedural motion.

The point is this must be treated as an urgent bill for all the reasons Mr Limbrick very clearly articulated, and the fact is that those opposite are simply seeking to hide something. It is absolutely a disgrace. We must deal with this now. Our national security could potentially be at risk and will be at risk if we continue to allow foreign actors and bad-faith actors to inject dark money into our electoral system. Ultimately it is an integrity issue and indeed a national security issue, and therefore the debate on this bill today must be treated as an urgent bill. That is certainly warranted.

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (09:54): I would like to just speak briefly on this motion. Can I say first of all that I think it is terrific that Mr Mulholland has shared with us today some of his possibly perfectly legitimate concerns. That is what we are here for: we are here to ventilate issues and to debate them out. If there are concerns, then let us get down to that. Mr Mulholland is absolutely correct too that the confidence of the public in the laws that are passed here is critical. And it is good, I think, if one looks at the proposed new section 182A in the bill, that there is specifically a review that is proposed to address the question of what we do after there is a temporary or an interim set of arrangements that gets us on the other side of the election. But all of this is, at this point in time, no more than the substance of the debate we need to have. Therefore it would seem to me that Mr Mulholland actually provides a compelling argument for why we need to get on with it. This is not red wine; it will not get better with the passage of time. Mr Limbrick is right: there are real risks that need to be addressed. On that basis, we will absolutely be supporting this procedural motion, even if we are not generally incredibly keen on urgency motions.

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (09:55): I agree with those who say this is simply a debate about the urgency issue. The key point here is that the High Court decision was on 15 April 2026 – that is seven weeks and one day ago. Fifty days ago the government could have brought sections of legislation to the chamber to deal with if there were truly urgent matters here.

I further make the point that there are retrospectivity provisions in this legislation. Whatever is passed, whenever it is passed, the matters will deal with many of these issues retrospectively. What is required here is a thoughtful process that actually coolly looks at the matter. This is the kind of bill that should have gone to a committee for a short, sharp inquiry.

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: Oh, yes, it should have. I notice that the government is already bringing in house amendments because the bill is not up to scratch. They are already bringing in house amendments, I understand, because they are so incompetent in this. The truth is that the government’s haste here – their inadequate process beforehand – has put the chamber in a position where they are now trying to move an urgency motion. This is not a truly urgent bill. This is a bill that could be considered in a normal way and in a normal time sequence. It has actually got retrospective clauses in it, so let us be clear: whenever it is passed, the clauses will be operative. So I think this is a little bit ridiculous.

Also, the errors that are likely to be in this bill because of the way it has been cobbled together by the government make it vulnerable to High Court challenge. We know that some parties are already intending to challenge it. We have heard a number of minor parties say they will challenge it. That is a matter for them; they have got their legal rights. I say, though, it is actually up to our chamber to get these bills right and to make sure that the points are put together properly. I would argue that few in this chamber have had sufficient time to scrutinise the bill. Few in this chamber have had the opportunity to go through the detail.

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: Well, let me just be clear about the negotiations: these were a sham. They were an absolute sham, with the Premier’s office leaking details of negotiations, the Premier’s office trying to target people who are doing negotiations and the Premier’s office behaving absolutely reprehensibly. The Premier’s office ought to have settled down and negotiated in good faith. They actually ought to have put out an exposure draft, for example. They could have put an exposure draft into the public domain and actually had input from a wide range of lawyers and others. Instead of that, they say, after 50 days, ‘Oh, it’s suddenly urgent.’ It has suddenly come on with an urgency. Well, no, that is not right. This is not a truly urgent bill. It is a bill that could be considered methodically and carefully, and that is what should have occurred with this bill. Fifty days is not a period after which the government can say, ‘Oh, it’s suddenly urgent this week.’ This week? Really? I do not believe that for a second.

This is an abuse of process – be clear what is going on here. This is an absolute abuse of the parliamentary process. It is designed to roll over MPs and not give them sufficient time to scrutinise these matters closely and perfectly. There are some matters of broad agreement that could have been brought in a bill very quickly to close some of the matters that need to be dealt with more urgently.

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: Well, there are large and small issues in this bill, and some of those could have been dealt with quite expeditiously with broad agreement. But to wrap up the whole bill without a proper time period and without proper opportunity is an abuse of process – that is what is going on here. Make no mistake: the government is rushing this through because it does not want the scrutiny on the bill that the bill actually deserves.

I say that there is a very high chance that this bill will end up in the High Court, that there will be errors and problems in the bill and that they would have been exposed with a proper process.

We actually need to have a good, hard look at the way the government is behaving. They are a very arrogant government. They think they own the Parliament, they own control of the Parliament, they can rush stuff through as they feel fit and they can do that with an arrogance that befits a 14-year-old government that has completely and utterly lost touch.

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (10:00): It would seem that Mr Davis has just belled the cat on just how riven the Liberal Party is, given that the current Leader of the Opposition and her office have been involved in extensive discussions over recent weeks. Mr Davis was clearly not included in those discussions, but more importantly, it would seem that the opposition leader’s office saw fit not to include Mr Davis in those conversations for very good reason. This legislation, as Mr Davis has indicated, has not actually been rushed. I am not sure, Mr Davis, if you actually listened to anything discussed in the Legislative Assembly yesterday all day. That was a process of interrogation and of examination of the content of this bill. What you are doing in denying this chamber the opportunity to debate the bill is actually gagging and hamstringing a process that you say is necessary to acquit in order to bring integrity to the system. You cannot have it both ways. This cognitive dissonance from the opposition is absolutely breathtaking.

What I would suggest is, further to Mr Limbrick’s contribution, if you want to wait to see, as Mr Mulholland has been breathlessly talking about, these rivers of gold flow through to parties – foreign parties, foreign donations – then it will be on you to explain to people in your communities why it is that that money has flowed without accountability. What I would say to you is: if you do not like the bill, then vote against it, but do not withhold a process which is the entire genesis for this chamber of debate, of consideration, of interrogation, of committee stages before final decisions on positions are made. You have constantly stood in the way of the passage of legislation on the basis of Mr Davis’s constant refrains of a need for an inquiry. This is literally the house of review. This is literally the place where we come to have these very discussions about the content of proposed legislation.

Mr Davis, you have been here long enough to perhaps understand that the work that you do might have some relevance to the democratic process, and yet time and time again you turn your back on it with references to inquiries, to discussions, to conversations. Well, your leader, Mr Davis, has been part of those conversations directly and through her office for weeks now. It is not the problem of this house that you cannot get it together in order to have a conversation about the progress of those discussions and negotiations. If you are saying that this is not a matter of urgency, then you are sending a clear and unambiguous signal to Victorians that you do not see that the substance of this bill is urgent, that you do not see that as the way in which we as a Parliament can and should be addressing matters of integrity, of transparency and of accountability. What this does is belie the very fact that scrutiny is something that you are turning your backs on as fast as you possibly can.

And then we come to the conclusion, where we are going to end up on this bill. You stand up and vote against it after we have gone through the committee stage. Let the public record show that you oppose integrity, that you oppose transparency, that you oppose accountability, that you oppose mechanisms that we need and should be put in place to make sure that we have a level of rigour, that we have a process whereby these rivers of gold, as Mr Mulholland has hysterically put it to this chamber, will not in fact be able to come in here without some measure of accountability and of assessment. This shows you up for who you are. No matter how you try to kick the can down the road, no matter how you try to delay this or push this down the track, no matter how many procedural motions you bring to this place, the inevitable conclusion remains: you are opposing this bill for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the things that bring us to this place.

You are opposing debate of this bill because you cannot bring yourselves to be part of a conversation that might shine a light on the deficiencies that have plagued the opposition for years now. We bring something to this chamber for debate and for discussion and for resolution and for voting, and you cannot get away from it fast enough. What I would suggest is that anybody interested in this particular debate pay very careful attention to the fact that the opposition just do not want to talk about integrity.

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:05): Well, for you to talk about integrity over there is an absolute insult not only to this chamber but to the people of Victoria. You would not even be able to spell ‘integrity’ – $15 billion of a lack of integrity is what you are involved in. To talk about scrutiny, that would be the pot calling the kettle black in this place. You abhor scrutiny. You abhor transparency. And to talk about urgency, you have known ever since the court case was underway that changes needed to be made to legislation. You had all the time in the world to produce legislation. You failed dismally, as you have failed dismally in every aspect of government delivery in this place. You have had every chance to get this right. You have had every chance to produce legislation that could have been properly debated in time and with a sense of involvement by all parties. We have not had a briefing. I do not know whether you have given one to the crossbench – we have not had one. As for the member for the north-east region, who I think is chair of the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee – has SARC got a position on this? Has SARC met? Has the new fourth chamber of this Parliament given a position on this bill?

You talk about a dysfunctional rabble – there is no more dysfunctional rabble than the members on the opposite side of this house. You are a dysfunctional rabble, and you treat Victorians with absolute contempt. You treat every member of this chamber with absolute contempt. You are incredible. Foreign donations – you could have solved that problem immediately on day one. Do not come here and make use of Mr Limbrick’s point about foreign donations. You could solve that problem in any case. In any case, as Mr Davis has said, this has a retrospective aspect to the whole thing. You could have fixed this. You are not interested in fixing this. The reason why you chose a date of July previously on the nominated entities is because you took the money from unions happily and do not need to disclose it because of your date. You are corrupt in the extreme in this whole thing; there is absolutely no transparency and no integrity – absolutely none.

The people of Victoria should be well aware that you are not the least bit interested in a fair, transparent, accountable system of government in this place. You absolutely deliver that message every day. You obfuscate in every forum that occurs in this place. You do not produce the documents when we all ask for them to gain information that is vitally needed for the whole of Victoria. And now you want to rush in a very significant piece of legislation, which Mr Mulholland and Mr Davis have quite rightly said will again be subject to the High Court, and we will all be in a state of abyss when that occurs. Why do you not want to get this right? You do not want to get it right because you do have a lot to hide. You want to keep maintaining the fact that unions can give you money by foul means or fair.

That is what you are on about. You gave them $15 billion. This is payback time for the Labor Party – that is what this is – and everybody else will be shafted. We know what you are up to, and the people of Victoria will hold you accountable for this nonsense. Of course this is not an urgent bill, and it should not be treated as one. We should give it the due respect that it totally deserves and not rush it through.

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (10:10): We will be supporting this urgency motion. I certainly agree that these are really important laws and they deserve a thorough looking into. I just think we should take into consideration how we got into this position. The two major parties for a long time have benefited from their slush funds. There was ample opportunity to correct that problem within the laws. It was not done. There was a High Court challenge, and now we find ourselves in a position, in an absolute mess, where there are no laws in place at all, and every day that goes past where there is not some sort of handbrake on the money that pours into election campaigns, our election, which is imminent, which is around the corner, is at risk of influence from big vested interests, big money. We need to do something about that urgently, and so in that sense we will be supporting this motion.

We will be debating the substance of it later, and I will have the opportunity to speak more about the importance of a thorough review. That is something that we have pushed very hard for. We believe that there does need to be a serious look at these laws as a whole as soon as possible, but at the moment we need a fix in place to deal with the urgent problem of there being absolutely no donation laws and no boundaries on who can donate and how much they can donate to these election campaigns. It is an unfortunate mess we find ourselves in at the moment, but we need to do something about it urgently, so in that sense we will be supporting the urgency motion today.

Council divided on motion:

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Government Services, Special Minister of State, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Multicultural and Multifaith Victoria) (10:18): I move:

That the second reading be made an order of the day for later this day.

Motion agreed to.