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Bob Brown's Embarassing Testimony

This is an extract of cross-examination of Bob Brown by the Joint Standing Committee On Electoral Matters. Bob Brown makes a total fool of himself by attacking the Herald Sun and the accusations get turned back against him.

Bob Brown making a fool of himself.

The full Official Hansard can be downloaded here, as we have removed the text that isn't pertinent.

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
Official Committee Hansard
JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON ELECTORAL MATTERS
Reference: Conduct of the 2004 federal election and matters related thereto
MONDAY, 8 AUGUST 2005
CANBERRA
BY AUTHORITY OF THE PARLIAMENT

Members in attendance: Senators Brandis, Carr, Forshaw, Mason and Murray and Mr Ciobo, Mr Danby (Deputy Chair), Mr Anthony Smith(Chair) and Ms Panopoulos
Terms of reference for the inquiry:
To inquire into and report on:
Conduct of the 2004 election and matters related thereto.

WITNESSES
BROWN, Senator Bob, Senator for Tasmania
OQUIST, Mr Ben, Adviser to Senator Bob Brown, Australian Greens

CHAIR: Thank you very much for appearing and for your submission, which you have just spoken to this afternoon. Point 2 of your submission is the substance of your complaint against the Herald Sun, and indeed the ruling from the Australian Press Council. I will take you through some of the policy issues involved as a starting point before I open it up to questions from other members and senators so that we have a reasonable basis on which to work. You obviously had a number of things to say during and after the election. In a press release you said that the Herald Sun had misinformed readers in a way that indicated the Murdoch press had gone ‘beyond critic to concoct false policy in its anti-Green bias’. Do you recall that?
Senator Brown: If you have it there in the press release, it has been put out by me.
CHAIR: You called it a ‘disgrace to journalism’ and said it was no accident or mistake.
Senator Brown: I actually said that to the journalist in a press conference.
CHAIR: I think I remember seeing it on television. You said his article had perverted democracy, undermined democracy. I want to take you to your precise problems with the substance of the original article. It was sourced from the Greens web site.
Senator Brown: Chair, what is your basis for making that claim?
CHAIR: I have a printout from the Greens web site. I would like to take you through it.
Mr DANBY: Do you dispute that? Is it a current policy, old policy? I am not sure what document we are talking about.
CHAIR: I will come to that. Two issues will become apparent. I first of all go to the web site and the material on the web site that existed at the time the Herald Sun printed that article.
Senator Brown: At the time it was published, yes.
CHAIR: Your section on drugs and addiction says in the first four lines: The regulation of currently illegal drugs should be moved outside the criminal framework. In a democratic society in which diversity is accepted, each person has the opportunity to achieve personal fulfilment. It is understood that the means and aims of fulfilment may vary between people at different stages of their lives and may for some people at particular times involve the use of drugs. That was on your web site at the time the Herald Sun published their article quoting that section. That is correct, isn’t it?
Senator Brown: We can get into a political debate about this, because your party—
CHAIR: I would like you to answer the question. I would like you to confirm that that is on your web site.
Senator Brown: Let me just finish my answer, if I may.
CHAIR: Sure.
Senator Brown: Thank you. Your party was involved in the derivation of the Herald Sun claims. We have had a thorough investigation of the whole matter by the Australian Press Council. The Press Council has made the finding that readers of the Herald Sun were seriously misled. We have half an hour—
CHAIR: We have all day, actually.
Senator Brown: You may have, but I have other committees to attend, so we do not.
CHAIR: You do not—we do. I said ‘we’ do.
Senator Brown: That is right, you did. If your priority is now to get into a political debate about policy, let that be your priority. What I am saying here is that we need to look at amending the electoral process for the benefit of voters. You can get back into a debate about what was on the Greens web site and what was not, and I hope you will move rapidly onto the taxation levels—
CHAIR: I will go through each aspect when you have finished your answer.
Senator Brown: Then let me finish my answer. The independent arbiter here, the Press Council, made its finding against the Herald Sun. We can repeat that debate, and we will get to no conclusion. But what it will point to is the need for an independent arbiter. That is what I am asking for.
CHAIR: You can ask for that. Most parties that publish policies are happy to confirm the mere existence of a sentence in their policy. What I am going to is whether in fact this was on your web site. You have not answered yes or no. Were those four lines on your web site? Yes or no?
Senator Brown: I do not have that web site before me.
CHAIR: You must know, given that it was the basis of your complaint to the Press Council—
Senator Brown: Yes, and I had it before me when I went to the Press Council. If you had had the courtesy to tell me that you were going into a political questionnaire about this matter, I would have brought the web site material with me.
CHAIR: I am going to point 2 of your submission. Let me take you to the section on farming. The web site also said: The ... Greens ... consider it environmentally and ethically essential to decrease all production of animal food and other animal products. It said that, didn’t it?
Senator Brown: No, but if—
CHAIR: It did not say that on your web site?
Senator Brown: Not in my look at the web site at the time. If you had wanted this to be an intelligent, informed debate, and had asked me to bring that web site material with me, I would have done so. Trying to ambush me with information you have there, derived from concocted sources by the Victorian Liberal Party—
Ms PANOPOULOS: It is not concocted. This is your web site.
CHAIR: This is your web site.
Senator Brown: No, no—
Ms PANOPOULOS: One would have thought, as such an illustrious—or, some would say, notorious—member of a minor party going to the last election, you would have been very familiar with all the policies that you were selling to the Australian people. To feign ignorance about what was part of your policy as printed on the web site is truly remarkable. You are not above scrutiny on these matters. You have made a complaint, and you have made a complaint against a particular article and a particular journalist. We are trying to ascertain how accurate your comments are. You have made certain recommendations based on your assertion that that article was incorrect. We are trying to verify the statements in that article and what actually existed on the web site as you understood it. If you as leader cannot recall what was on your own party’s web site, that is a statement that goes to something else.
Senator Brown: I have not made that complaint at all. You have not read the submission, and I would have expected you would have. What I am putting before this committee, in the interests of advancing electoral probity for voters at the next election, is a finding by the Australian Press Council.
Ms PANOPOULOS: But you also made comments today about the newspaper. I am not referring to the Press Council. I am referring to the assertion by the Greens about—
Mr DANBY: Perhaps I can help. I just want to confirm a couple more points. Senator Brown raised the issue of tax. Senator Brown says that this is not policy from his web site. What is the point in pursuing this when the provenance of this document is not known?
CHAIR: It is known. If you do not remember—
Ms PANOPOULOS: He does not know what he is saying.
CHAIR: That is a separate issue.
Senator Brown: I could ask Ms Panopoulos what is the Liberal Party policy on the web site at the moment. Can you tell me that? And if Mr Smith can, please do. Of course, you cannot.
CHAIR: Senator Brown made a complaint to the Press Council based on what was on the web site. I am not going to engage in his filibuster, but I will say this. Is it the case—you spoke particularly about tax—that in May your corporate tax policy proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to at least 49c in the dollar but by August that was not there—that was an error in the Herald Sun article. By August it had been amended to 33c. I would assume you would agree with that, because it goes to the submission you made to the Press Council.
Senator Brown: The policy of the Liberal Party, like that of the Labor Party and like that of the Greens, in the past has been for higher corporate tax rates—up to 49c before the Greens came here. Under Labor and—
Senator BRANDIS: Are you saying that, because of the Greens, corporate tax rates were reduced?
Senator Brown: Could well be. You might look that up. What I am saying is that we went to an election with a policy of a corporate tax rate of 33c but the Herald Sun ran an old policy—it did not do it with any other party—
Senator BRANDIS: Off your web site.
Senator Brown: What is more, the Telegraph in Sydney, which had been given the same material, had the decency to apologise and retract, but the Herald Sun did not. Again, you are getting into matters upon which the Australian Press Council has adjudicated. It is an independent arbiter and it has adjudicated and found against the Herald Sun.
Mr DANBY: Was the drugs policy similarly out of date? Did you change it between May and August?
Senator Brown: What we are having put to us is that political parties do not change policy. It is trite and unbecoming. Anyway, there we go. I am sure that if I ask members of this panel about drugs policy—and I just did, and Ms Panopoulos was not able to answer.
CHAIR: I can guarantee you this: those four lines are not on our web site; they are not on the Labor Party’s web site.
Ms PANOPOULOS: Perhaps you have not noticed that none of us is the leader of our political party. As leader, we would expect you would be fully familiar with your policy.
CHAIR: It is clear that you do not want to be taken through your policies line by line. That is something others can reflect on. I put it to you that every claim in this Herald Sun article in the box where it quoted from your web site was either on your web site at that time, in the vast majority of cases, or, in the case of the tax issue, had been on your web site just a matter of months before and had been on that web site for a considerable period of time.
Senator Brown: The article introduced, quite spuriously and falsely, the word ‘force’ in a lot of matters—force farmers off the land, force people onto bicycles, force people to do things. That was never, ever on the Greens web site. That was concocted by the journalist and misled the voters on the way to the ballot box. That again is what the adjudicator found, and that is why we need an independent arbiter—not to protect politicians or journalists who break their code of ethics, as this one did on that occasion, but to protect the voter.
CHAIR: That is a different answer to what you gave before. What I said was that the Herald Sun quoted in a text box material from your web site, and in every respect the material they quoted had been put on the web site by the Greens—nobody else—and was quoted accurately. To the extent that there was one error there, it was on your web site just a matter of months earlier.
Senator Brown: In terms of the time preceding, it did not quote the Labor Party as wanting to nationalise the banks, a past policy. It did not quote the Liberal Party as wanting to ban other political parties, a past policy. It has an obligation to quote the policies on which a party is going to an election, Mr Smith. If you have trouble with that then we disagree.
CHAIR: What I have said is that certainly the drugs policy was on your web site and quoted accurately. So you were running to the election on this policy.
Senator Brown: No, it was not quoted accurately. We can get into a long debate about that. I again say that the paper was found against by the Australian Press Council.
CHAIR: You have said that.
Senator Brown: There ought to be a similar independent body—the Electoral Office ought to be empowered to establish such a body—to keep a watch on misleading information in newspapers or anywhere else in advertising leading on to an election.
CHAIR: You have made your point. I want to put an alternative proposition to you as my last question. That is that you had a long-standing policy position on a range of fronts, quite comprehensive, that was on your web site for a long period of time. But in the lead-up to the election you experienced something unique to the Greens: you began to be held accountable, as every other major party is, and people started to question your policies. When that happened, they began to disappear off the web site. Is that a fair proposition?
Senator Brown: No, that is wrong, but that is your pattern today—you get things wrong.
CHAIR: They did not disappear off the web site?
Senator Brown: If they did, then give us chapter and verse.
CHAIR: You have already said that your tax policy changed.
Senator Brown: I did not say it disappeared off the web site. I said it changed.
CHAIR: You invited me to give you chapter and verse. I will. I will go to capital gains tax on the family home. This will be my final question. It says: ‘Proposes capital gains tax on luxury homes. Luxury homes defined as top 5 per cent of homes sold in a particular region’ et cetera. By August that section had been removed entirely from the web site.
Senator Brown: Because the policy had been changed at a national conference of the Greens. The same thing happens with the Liberals. The same thing happens with the Labor Party.
CHAIR: But with respect to the drugs issue, which was the headline in this article, I invite you for the last time to confirm that what was quoted in the Herald Sun article was sourced from your web site and put there by the Greens and nobody else.
Senator Brown: It was embellished by a journalist who took licence to comment on it in a way which appeared to make it factual. In so doing he trespassed on the obligation of journalists to tell things how they are—not how they think they are or would like to see them presented to readers. Mr McManus ought to have known better than that. He did not. He failed in his obligation to uphold journalistic ethics in not telling the facts but embellishing them in the way in which he did.
CHAIR: When he says ‘decriminalised personal use of all current illegal drugs’—and that is on your web site—he was right, wasn’t he? He has quoted directly without deletion or alteration in any way, shape or form.
Senator Brown: What he did not do is say that that is effectively what has happened in Western Australia using Commonwealth money, that people are not sent to jail but sent to reeducation and given health—
CHAIR: So he did not invent this.
Senator Brown: Let me finish.
CHAIR: He did not invent the sentence and words.
Senator Brown: So in effect what the Greens were proposing in terms of not filling the jails with people who get addicted but trying to get them out of their habit for the benefit of the community is also practised by the Liberals. It is just that they do not have the gumption to say so.
CHAIR: Let us just finish off with a proposition. Let us perhaps assume for a second that you do not agree with your party’s policy. Do you agree with the statement from your web site that the regulation of currently illegal drugs should be moved outside the criminal framework?
Senator Brown: I think it should be put into a framework of delivering people out of the criminal system back into gainful mainstream society.
CHAIR: It should be decriminalised.
Senator Brown: What we say is that—
CHAIR: Outside the criminal remit.
Senator Brown: there should be harm minimisation—
CHAIR: Decriminalised.
Senator Brown: through the process. Harm minimisation, we say.
CHAIR: Moved outside the criminal framework would mean decriminalised.
Senator Brown: If you go the next step—
CHAIR: Sort of criminal, totally criminal, not criminal at all?
Senator Brown: I am sorry?
CHAIR: Should it be criminal or should it not be criminal?
Senator Brown: People who sell drugs, who make money out of drugs, should go to jail.
CHAIR: Should currently illegal drugs be moved outside the criminal framework?
Senator Brown: I think the process your party is involved in of trying to prevent people being sent as criminals to jail and instead getting them off their addiction and back into gainful work is a good one.
Mr DANBY: You are making a distinction between users and drug dealers?
Senator Brown: A clear one, yes.
Mr DANBY: People who are addicted.
Senator Brown: Yes, the victims, and that includes society.
Senator BRANDIS: Before I start my area of questions I do not want to let your attack on Mr Gerard McManus go unremarked. Mr McManus is a journalist who is respected in his profession, and around this place enjoys the highest reputation. May I say I think your attack on him under parliamentary privilege is disgraceful.
Senator Brown: Let me just respond to that, Senator Brandis. I have said nothing about him I did not say directly to him in a press conference. You may have your opinion about it—
Senator BRANDIS: I do indeed.
Senator Brown: but the Press Council, the arbiter of his own profession—
Senator BRANDIS: I do not agree with all of Mr McManus’s opinions, but it is one thing to disagree with a journalist’s opinion—
Senator Brown: Let me finish.
Senator BRANDIS: and another thing to attack their character which is unimpeachable.
Senator Brown: found that he seriously misled voters who were readers of this newspaper. That is a very serious charge for any professional journalist to have against their name, and it was a charge that the Press Council found proven.
Senator BRANDIS: You have spoken here today about the importance of honesty in political advertising. I take it that you would also advocate honesty in compliance with disclosure obligations under the Commonwealth Electoral Act.
Senator Brown: I think there should be good laws for that.
Senator BRANDIS: As you know, under the Commonwealth Electoral Act, there is an obligation to make an honest and accurate disclosure of donations. In fact, it is a criminal offence under the act if that obligation is breached. You are aware of that, aren’t you?
Senator Brown: That is the law, as you stated.
Senator BRANDIS: That is the law—section 315 of the act. Leaving aside the legalities, you would say, would you not, that all political parties, including your own, have an obligation to be honest in their dealings?
Senator Brown: You are leading to a statement of claim here, Senator Brandis, so let us have it.
Senator BRANDIS: Why are you avoiding the question? Don’t you believe that the Greens have an obligation to be honest in their dealings?
Senator Brown: I believe you do and so does everybody else.
Senator BRANDIS: Do you?
Senator Brown: And that is trite. We can get past that to come up with whatever it is you have got there, Senator Brandis, that you want to make a claim.
Senator BRANDIS: Senator Brown, do you think the Greens have an obligation to be honest in their dealings?
Senator Brown: I think you do and I think everybody does.
Ms PANOPOULOS: Are you above the law, Senator Brown?
Senator Brown: Are you, Miss Panopoulos, above the law?
Ms PANOPOULOS: Answer the question.
Senator BRANDIS: Senator Brown, I will put the question once more and you can either give an evasive response or you can give a direct response. Do you accept, as the national leader of the Greens, that the green party, like all other political parties, has an obligation to be honest in its dealings?
Senator Brown: All political parties should be honest in their dealings, Senator Brandis, including your Liberal Party.
Senator BRANDIS: And including your green party, Senator Brown?
Senator Brown: I have answered the question.
Senator BRANDIS: I find it hard to understand why you feel uncomfortable giving a direct response.
Senator Brown: I am not the least bit uncomfortable, Senator Brandis, but I am not going to have you put words in my mouth.
Senator BRANDIS: I am just asking you whether you think the Greens should be honest in their dealings, Senator Brown, and four times you have avoided responding assertively.
Senator Brown: I have been around long enough with you in the chamber, Senator Brandis, to know when you have got some form of revelation you want to make, so let us have it.
Senator BRANDIS: I do not want to particularly make a revelation. You know Mr Drew Hutton, don’t you? He has been the leader of your party in Queensland for many years now.
Senator Brown: A Senate candidate at the last election and—
Senator BRANDIS: He almost won a Senate seat, in fact.
Senator Brown: outpolled a good many Liberals.
Senator BRANDIS: Yes, indeed he did. And you are very familiar with Mr Hutton, I dare say.
Senator Brown: As I say, I know him as a Senate candidate.
Senator BRANDIS: I do not want to trick you or anything so let me give you the document I am going to ask you about. I have a copy for you too, Chair.
Mr Danby interjecting
Senator BRANDIS: I am about to identify it, Mr Danby. Be steady; all will be revealed. Senator Brown, this document appears on its face to be, as it is entitled, the ‘Minutes of the QLD Greens management committee meeting Thursday 8 August 2002 Queensland Greens Office, Grass Roots Centre, West End’. Do you see that, Senator Brown? Have a look.
Senator Brown: No. I am not going to be directed to go through a document that you hand to—
Senator BRANDIS: I am going to take you to some things in the document then ask you some questions about it.
Senator Brown: Then read it out and ask me the questions.
Senator BRANDIS: You declined to answer Mr Smith’s questions responsibly—
Senator Brown: No, I answered all Mr Smith’s questions.
Senator BRANDIS: because Mr Smith had not put a copy of the web site in front of you. I am putting in front of you the selfsame document that I have so you can verify that I am quoting from it accurately.
Senator Brown: You have raised this matter before—
Senator BRANDIS: I have.
Senator Brown: and it has been looked at by the Australian Electoral Commission, and you have been found wanting on it, haven’t you?
Senator BRANDIS: I want to hear what you have to say.
Mr Danby interjecting
Senator Brown: Thanks, Mr Danby. Senator Brandis is raising a matter he has raised previously before a committee. It has been looked at by the Australian Electoral Commission and he has been found wanting in the charges he makes about it.
Senator BRANDIS: No, that is not the truth, Senator Brown.
CHAIR: This committee has not looked at it, and we are inquiring into the conduct of the election and matters related thereto. So we will look at it now.
Senator Brown: Just let me tell you this, Chair: it was the same with you and the web site earlier. If the committee wanted to have a productive debate on political matters to improve electoral outcomes for 20 million Australians—
Senator BRANDIS: We think that honesty and political conduct are pretty important, Senator Brown.
Senator Brown: then the courtesy is in any situation like this—and Senator Brandis as a lawyer knows it—is to furnish the documents first so that you can then have an informed debate. We can proceed—
Senator BRANDIS: Senator Brown, you told us before that you were familiar with this issue because, as you rightly say, I have raised this before in estimates. So you cannot say you have been taken by surprise.
Mr DANBY: Senator Brandis, have you provided Senator Brown with the document previously?
Senator BRANDIS: Previous to this? No. That is why I am giving him a copy now.
Mr DANBY: Do you expect him to read a 20-page document?
Senator BRANDIS: No. There are not many sections of the document that are relevant to the questions I want to ask.
CHAIR: With respect, Deputy Chair, we are wasting time and he has not asked a single question on it. Perhaps if Senator Brandis could go to his questions, that would be—
Senator BRANDIS: I will. Senator Brown, the minutes of the Queensland Greens meeting on 8 August 2002 record, if you care to satisfy yourself, that one of those present was Mr Drew Hutton. We know who Mr Hutton is. If you look at the first page of those minutes, halfway down the page there is a minute of what appears to be Mr Hutton’s report to the meeting. Let me read it to you: Drew could only stay a short time—
Senator Brown: Just a moment—
Senator BRANDIS: I am just going to read something to you,
Senator Brown: you have got it in front of you—and then I am going to ask you a question. You are not here to make political speeches. You are here to answer questions.
Senator Brown: You said ‘appears to be’. Is this a hypothetical?
Senator BRANDIS: I am saying what the minutes appear to be on their face. If you say they are a forgery or a fraud, you make that point, but the minutes appear to be, in a regular fashion, the minutes of the Queensland Greens management committee meeting.
Senator Brown: We are dealing with appearances, not substance, then.
Senator BRANDIS: Let me read what is recorded from Mr Hutton’s report: Drew could only stay a short time, so matters that we had to dealt with him were discussed at this point. Item 1 is not relevant to what I wanted to ask about. Item 2 is not relevant either. Item 3, the last item on the first page, says: The NSW Greens are having a ‘We don’t take money from developers’ campaign and have asked us to abide by this. We have been asked to ask ecologically sensitive developers who wish to donate to donate to the Rainforest Information Centre’s account which they have agreed to pass on to us. Drew moved that ‘we approve that donations be made to the Rainforest Information Centre who will reroute the money to the Queensland Greens’ John— that appears to be a Mr John McKeon— seconded. Approved by consensus. Senator Brown, isn’t that a fairly patent attempt to conceal the source of donations from ecologically sensitive developers?
Senator Brown: Can you authenticate the minutes and reveal your source of them, Senator Brandis?
Senator BRANDIS: I will not reveal my source. These minutes came to me. But I can tell you this, Senator Brown: I raised this in a Senate estimates committee last year and nobody—not you, nor any officer of the Queensland Greens, nor anybody else—has suggested in all the time that has passed that these minutes are not authentic. And I note that you are not saying that here today.
Senator Brown: I am questioning your source of them and you are not giving it.
Senator BRANDIS: No, I am not giving you the source of it.
Senator Brown: My second question is: have you taken action outside the parliament on this matter, Senator Brandis?
Senator BRANDIS: No. I am a member of parliament. I take action inside parliament, which is what I am doing right now, Senator Brown.
Senator Brown: That is because you know that there is no validity to taking action outside the parliament, don’t you?
Senator BRANDIS: If you go to the fourth page of the document I have put in front of you—
Senator Brown: It is a simple exercise in coward’s castle, isn’t it?
Senator BRANDIS: Just for the sake of completeness, the minutes finish off by saying, ‘Minutes kept and compiled by Clare Rudkin’. Do you know Clare Rudkin, Senator Brown?
Senator Brown: I quite possibly do but—
Senator BRANDIS: You do. Okay.
Senator Brown: offhand I am not familiar with the name.
Senator BRANDIS: Do you know Clare Rudkin, Mr Oquist?
Mr Oquist: I do not believe so.
Senator BRANDIS: Fair enough. They are dated 10 August 2002. Senator Brown, if I can take you to the seventh page of the bundle of documents I have put in front of you—and I note that you are declining to look at it but it is there for you if you want to see it—there are a series of emails, the first of which is an email from Clare Rudkin sent on Sunday, 11 August 2002, at 1.49 pm to a series of addressees who are the people who are recorded in the minutes as having been at the management committee meeting. The email reads: Subject: Man Com minutes 8/8/2002
Mr DANBY: Senator Brandis, are these emails part of the minutes?
Senator BRANDIS: No, I did not say they were part of the minutes. I said they were part of a bundle of documents. If you wait, Mr Danby, all will be explained to you.
Mr DANBY: I will exercise your normal patience.
Senator BRANDIS: I have no interest in this being other than manifest.
Mr DANBY: I do not normally associate emails with minutes.
Senator BRANDIS: They are not part of the minutes and I did not say they were. I said they were part of a bundle of documents. Wait, and all will be revealed. Senator Brown, the first email, the Clare Rudkin email to the various addressees, including Drew Hutton and a man called Richard Nielsen, says: Hi all, Man Com minutes time again. Could you check that I have not been indiscreet (or conversely could have put more info in such as Peter’s mini-budget) before I send it on to branches? Cheers, Clare A response comes from Mr Richard Nielsen. Do you know Mr Richard Nielsen, Senator Brown?
Senator Brown: I have met Mr Nielsen a couple of times.
Senator BRANDIS: He is one of those recorded as being present at the meeting of 8 August 2002. What office does Mr Richard Nielsen hold in the Queensland Greens, apart from being a member of the management committee?
Senator Brown: None that I am aware of. However, he may do. I do not know.
Senator BRANDIS: But he is a member of the management committee, obviously.
Senator Brown: I simply do not know.
Senator BRANDIS: Do you know, Mr Oquist?
Mr Oquist: No.
Senator BRANDIS: Mr Oquist, you are quite important in the green party too, aren’t you? Aren’t you an office holder of some description?
Mr Oquist: No.
Senator BRANDIS: Have you been?
Mr Oquist: Yes.
Senator BRANDIS: What is the highest office you have held in the green party?
Mr Oquist: I could not say which was highest. I have held a number of roles in the Greens for a long time. Perhaps being founder of the Greens New South Wales newsletter was the most prestigious position—I do not know. It depends what you think is best.
Senator BRANDIS: I just want to qualify you, Mr Oquist, as somebody who can speak with authority about the Greens, that is all. Mr Richard Nielsen replies to Clare Rudkin, with copies to other people on the email chain, with these words—and, Senator Brown, you can read them if you like: Hi to all, With regard to the minutes Clare circulated. I’m not sure that Drew’s idea for re-routing of donated money is good minute material ... I think Peter needs to check over the part about the mini budget ... Then it goes on to some unrelated matters and it is signed ‘Richard’. Senator Brown, be honest—when somebody says, when asked to scrutinise some draft minutes, ‘I’m not sure that Drew’s idea for rerouting of donated money is good minute material,’ can that suggest anything other than the fact that the author of the email is suggesting that it would be embarrassing to include that in the minutes?
Senator Brown: What do you think?
Senator BRANDIS: I am asking you. You are the witness.
Senator Brown: I will leave it to you to make up your own mind on that. We are dealing here with documents that are—
Senator BRANDIS: Perhaps your beguiling and embarrassed smile tells us all we need to know.
Mr DANBY: What did Senator Brown say? I did not hear it over the shouting.
Senator Brown: What I am saying is that he will have to make up his own mind about this and take whatever action he needs to take. When we go through this process he will find that no improper action has been taken, and that no action has been taken by him or the—
Senator BRANDIS: You say that, and you have the forum of the Senate to say it in if you choose to, incidentally. You have the best forum in the country. But I think that—
Senator Brown: I am just saying,
Mr DANBY
Senator BRANDIS: these things should be put to you face to face, which is what I am doing.
Senator Brown: that otherwise Senator Brandis would be the first to have taken some action, and he might well do to look to the inner workings of his own party.
Senator BRANDIS: We are all politicians here. I think we can all tell bluff and bluster when we see it.
Senator Brown: I sure can, Senator Brandis. I am looking right at it.
Senator BRANDIS: In response, then, to Clare’s email, Richard Nielsen says that Drew’s idea for rerouting the donated money is not good minute material. Then there is a reply, again, this time from Drew Hutton to the same chain of addressees on the list. It says: Hi to all, I agree with Richard about not mentioning the re-routing. So it is not even equivocal this time. This is Drew Hutton saying that there should be no mention of the rerouting of these funds in the Greens minutes. He goes on to talk about some unrelated matters. He signs the email, ‘Cheers, Drew.’ Again, Senator Brown, I will give you the opportunity to respond. If you choose to evade, people will make of that what they will. But that looks pretty plainly like Mr Drew Hutton concurring with Mr Nielsen in amending the minutes by falsifying them so as to omit embarrassing material.
Senator Brown: Whatever the basis of your document—and it would have been much more productive if you had given it to me before—
Senator BRANDIS: I put this document on the public record in 2004 at a committee of which you are a member.
Senator Brown: Yes, I know, but I tend not to follow your political writings and output very much—
Senator BRANDIS
Senator Brown
Senator Brown: but just let me finish—
Senator BRANDIS: from your track record—
Senator Brown: Just let me finish—
Senator BRANDIS: of appearing at Senate committees—
Senator Brown: Don’t be rude!
Senator BRANDIS: you do not seem to follow Senate committees much either.
CHAIR: Senator Brandis, let Senator Brown finish.
Senator Brown: Don’t be ruder than you have to, Senator Brandis. Let me finish by saying this: this committee is charged with improving the electoral process in Australia. If you think, as I do, that there are shortcomings in accountability in political parties in the way funding is accountable to the public then it is incumbent upon you, as it has been upon me, to move to make that more transparent. In my experience, every time I have put such a motion forward over the last several years you have voted it down. So you ought to look at your own record there.
Senator BRANDIS: I think before we start reforming the law there is something even more immediate before us—that is, enforcing the law and exposing occasions when the law, in this case section 315 of the existing act, has been violated. We have the leader of the party that apparently violated it condoning it before this parliamentary committee.
Senator Brown: The chair should object to that statement. But, patently, Senator Brandis does not have the guts required to follow up on his words or there would have been action in the public arena.
Senator BRANDIS: I have raised this now in two parliamentary committees in two consecutive years.
Senator Brown: He is lacking the backbone to follow up his words in here and take action in the public arena, which would follow through from his words. He is found wanting.
Mr DANBY: Where should he follow through?
Senator Brown: If Senator Brandis has a problem with somebody transgressing the law, he should go to the police. That is the obvious course. He knows that, but he has not done it.
Mr DANBY: Do you know what the provenance of these emails is, compared to these minutes?
Senator Brown: I have no idea.
Senator BRANDIS: Senator Brown, you have not condescended to even look at the document that I have helpfully put before you.
Ms PANOPOULOS: No, because he thinks he is above this committee. He thinks he is above the law. If we are talking about backbone, Senator Brown is the one who lacks backbone. The one time that the media and other political parties tried to hold them accountable for their policies, he cried and was the ultimate political wussy boy and said, ‘No, no, they’re not our policies.’
Mr DANBY: Chair, please. That is unparliamentary.
CHAIR: Ms Panopoulos, that is not a question.
Ms PANOPOULOS: He just does not like being held accountable. He thinks he has got a political halo and can be outside the political system.
Senator BRANDIS: Senator Brown, you were pretty free in attacking Mr Gerard McManus before—
Mr DANBY: Chair, I think you ought to let the senator respond to that.
Senator BRANDIS: I do not need to respond. I just want to move through my questions, please.
Mr DANBY: No, Senator Brown ought to be allowed to respond to Ms Panopoulos.
CHAIR: If Senator Brown wishes to, he can, or he can take the next question.
Senator Brown: I do, thank you, Chair. I think that says much more about Ms Panopoulos than it does about me.
Ms PANOPOULOS: You said it yourself and the Australian people judged it, because they saw through you.
Mr DANBY: Sophie, keep calm.
CHAIR: All right, you two. Does Senator Brandis have any further questions?
Senator BRANDIS: Absolutely. Senator Brown, I have shown you the original draft minutes with the fraudulent device of rerouting by concealing the source of money from ecologically sensitive developers. I have shown you the email chain in which the members of the management committee conspire fraudulently to alter the minutes. The last document in the set I have given you, which appears on the page after the email chain, is a document on which somebody, I do not know who, has written in handwriting ‘amended minutes’. There is, typed as the formal heading of the document, ‘Minutes of the Queensland Greens management committee meeting, Thursday, 8 August 2002’. It is plainly a set of minutes in relation to the same meeting. You may satisfy yourself if you choose, but I can tell you, having studied it, that it is in all material respects identical to the first—that is, the draft set of minutes—save for the fact that item No. 3 of Mr Drew Hutton’s report—that is, the device to conceal the source of donations in breach of section 315 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act—has been removed, apparently in accordance with, and certainly consistent with, the conspiracy cooked up by the exchange of emails. What do you say about that, Senator Brown?
Senator Brown: I say you should have taken action on this if you believe there was an infraction there.
Senator BRANDIS: I am taking action now, Senator Brown, in the highest forum in the land.
Senator Brown: No. In cowards’ castle you have.
Senator BRANDIS: In the Commonwealth parliament I am putting it to you face to face and we all look on in amazement that you have not yet once in the course of these questions sought to explain yourself. Let me show you another document, please.
Mr DANBY: Senator Brandis, can you explain to me how these documents are connected and why Senator Brown has to explain himself, in the sense that he is not mentioned here in any of these things. I do not know whether these documents are true and accurate documents or where they were obtained or who has produced them. It is very mysterious, I must say, to have two sets of minutes, one of which is making, admittedly, a shocking claim and a linking set of emails that proves a fraud and then a final, amended set of minutes. It is an extraordinary document if it is all accurate and true.
CHAIR: Senator Brandis has furnished those documents to Senator Brown. Senator Brown has, in the middle of the disagreement, confirmed at the start his knowledge of these from an earlier estimates hearing. It is not the job of this committee—
Senator Brown: Can I clarify that, Chair?
CHAIR: Please do.
Senator Brown: And please do not verbal me.
CHAIR: So it was you that raised the fact that Senator Brandis had previously raised them.
Senator Brown: Yes, on advice from Ben Oquist. I do not follow Senator Brandis’s perambulations for other committees, I can assure you.
Senator BRANDIS: Mr Danby, through you, Chair, the reason I am directing these questions to Senator Brown is that Senator Brown is the national leader of the Australian Greens. These documents appear to be, on their face, minutes of the meetings of the management committee of the Queensland Greens. Senator Brown and Mr Oquist have indicated that they are aware of at least some of the participants, certainly Mr Drew Hutton, who was the principal offender here. Having been invited on several occasions now by me to suggest that the documents are not accurate minutes, Senator Brown has declined to do so. On top of that, Senator Brown, at least through his staff member Mr Oquist, has known of these allegations since they were first raised by me more than a year ago. Senator Brown, just to complete my questions: the second set of documents I have given you is three annual returns in each case for 2003-04. For the first, the organisation name is the Queensland Greens; the second, which is at the first little blue flag I have inserted, is for the Greens New South Wales; and the third, which is marked at the second blue flag, is for the Australian Greens. You acknowledge, don’t you, that the Queensland Greens and the Greens New South Wales are—however the structure of your party works—in effect the state branches of the Australian Greens, the political party of which you are the federal leader?
Senator Brown: I think they are separately registered parties—
Senator BRANDIS: They are.
Senator Brown: and ‘related parties’ is the terminology there.
Senator BRANDIS: But they are not foreign to you. The Queensland Greens and New South Wales Greens are, to use the vernacular, part of your operation, aren’t they? They are under the overall umbrella of the Australian Greens.
Senator Brown: No. The vernacular is wrong. They are not my operation. I am a senator elected after endorsement by the Australian Greens in Tasmania. We are part of a national confederacy.
Senator BRANDIS: Quite. That puts it well, if I may say so. The Australian Greens, if you like, is the peak group.
Senator Brown: It is the national group.
Senator BRANDIS: All right. Can I invite you to go through the returns for the 2003-04 financial year to satisfy yourself that, in those returns, there are no donors to the Greens recorded who appear to answer the description of developers or environmentally sensitive developers, which could mean one of two things: one is that you received no donations from such a group; the other could be that the donations were—and I think this is an expression used by many— laundered through the Rainforest Information Centre. Please, feel free to go through the documents.
Senator Brown: If you had sent me the documents before this we could have an intelligent debate about this. I have just heard—
Senator BRANDIS: You can raise this in the Senate, Senator Brown. You have got them now.
Senator Brown: Yes, Senator Brandis, that is the proper place for you to have done it, actually. But you have just—
Senator BRANDIS: I could not have put these propositions to you directly under the procedures of the Senate.
Senator Brown: Let me just finish.
CHAIR: Senator Brandis, we will let Senator Brown answer, but point out to him that this is a joint committee of both houses. I know senators have a particular fondness for the Senate, but there is no difference raising it here or in the Senate chamber.
Senator Brown: Thank you for your comment, Chair. Senator Brandis, a moment ago, found guilty of a claim he had made—
Senator BRANDIS: No, I am not finding you guilty, Senator Brown. I am putting material before you—
Senator Brown: If I can finish—
Senator BRANDIS: that seems to suggest something and inviting you to respond, and it amazing to me that you will not.
CHAIR: Let us invite Senator Brown to respond.
Senator Brown: If I can just get through the pompous peroration I am getting from Senator Brandis, when you have a fellow member of parliament who comes in here with no action outside and makes claims against a person and then pronounces them guilty—
Senator BRANDIS: I am not pronouncing anyone guilty, Senator Brown.
Senator Brown: as he did just a moment ago—
Senator BRANDIS: That is a deliberate misstatement of what I have said.
Senator Brown: It is exactly what you—
Senator BRANDIS: I am not arriving at any conclusions. I am putting documents before you which speak for themselves which appear, on their face, to be Greens documents.
Senator Brown: You described somebody as the offender.
Senator BRANDIS: I am inviting you to explain them and you consistently decline to do so.
Senator Brown: I just think Senator Brandis ought not apply to join the Greens. He falls outside the qualifications required.
Senator BRANDIS: The second bundle of documents I gave you, that is the three annual returns: can I ask you to go to the second last page of the last of them, which is the Australian Greens return. That indicates under the heading Receipts and the subheading Intra-party transfers that the Australian Greens received funds from the New South Wales Greens in the sum of $78,290 and the Queensland Greens in the sum of $8,171 in that reporting year. If the minutes and the exchange of emails are accurate and speak for themselves, it appears inescapable, does it not, that the Australian Greens, the party for which you have direct responsibility as its national leader, was a direct beneficiary of this fraud.
Senator Brown: ‘If’ is the starting word of your sentence and it pulls the rest of it apart.
Senator BRANDIS: You are an intelligent man, Senator Brown. You are capable of answering a hypothetical question. If the minutes and the email exchange are indeed accurate, and you have not suggested they are not, then the Australian Greens, for which you have direct responsibility, is the beneficiary or a beneficiary of this fraud.
Senator Brown: I am not here for hypotheticals from you or anybody else, Senator Brandis. I have put forward a submission here to improve the accountability—
Senator BRANDIS: Why don’t you improve your own accountability, rather than try and conceal violations of the Commonwealth Electoral Act?
Senator Brown: For example, I could talk about the Liberal Party trying very hard to deceive people into thinking—
Senator BRANDIS: We are onto the Greens now. You are responsible for them. Why don’t you take responsibility for the conduct or the misconduct of your own political party?
Senator Brown: Settle down a bit, Senator Brandis. What I am saying is that if you want to go into this miscarriage of the committee process a little further then I will raise the issue, and we can explore the issue, of the Liberal Party handouts with Greens triangles on them given to voters on their way to the ballot box to try to deceive them.
Senator BRANDIS: You are at liberty to raise any such matters before this committee. That is what the committee is tasked with.
Senator Brown: I have raised the matters I wish to raise in my submission.
Senator BRANDIS: I have raised the matter of the Greens with you as the national leader—
CHAIR: Senator Brandis, you can ask questions as you have done but if Senator Brown does not want to answer them he does not have to. We will now move on to the deputy chair, who has some questions.
Mr DANBY: Thank you, Senator Brown, for appearing. The 2,928,941 formal votes—
Senator Brown: Before we go to that, Mr Danby, Mr Ben Oquist has just given me a note. Let me read it out, because it will help the committee.
CHAIR: We have sworn him in. Why doesn’t he read it out?
Senator Brown: Because I will read it out, if I may. It says that no donation was laundered through the Rainforest Information Centre, no donation was received from the Rainforest Information Centre and no donation was sought from the Rainforest Information Centre.
Senator BRANDIS: What conclusion does that produce, Senator Brown?
Senator Brown: It is evidence from which you can make whatever conclusion you wish to make.
Senator BRANDIS: If that were to be taken at face value, and I have no reason to doubt that Mr Oquist is an honest man, perhaps it means that the fraud conspired in by Mr Drew Hutton came to nothing.
Senator Brown: There you go, finding people guilty again. It is an abuse of the process.
CHAIR: Here is what we are going to do. The deputy chair is going to ask his questions. Mr Oquist has passed you a note. He has been sworn in, and if people want to question Mr Oquist they can.
Senator Brown: Let me object, however, to that statement from Senator Brandis acting with parliamentary privilege against a citizen outside. It is absolutely cowardly.
Mr DANBY: I notice that the Senate Privileges Committee has had a lot better record than the House Privileges Committee in allowing members of the public to respond to these kinds of things, so perhaps you could even respond to a committee thing if you feel that that person is really outraged. With reference to your submission, there were nearly three million formal votes cast in the Senate election in Victoria that were ticket votes and some 67,000 non-ticket votes in the election. Doesn’t that indicate a degree of preference of voters for the current ticket system of voting?
Senator Brown: It does, and that is because it is so much easier. One of the interesting things, at some elections at least, is that where voters are used to voting below the line, if you like—in the Hare-Clark system in the ACT and Tasmania—there is a greater proclivity to vote below the line when you get to federal elections. It is a matter of people being used to it.
Mr DANBY: You mean there is a greater proclivity above the line in federal elections as people are used to it.
Senator Brown: If people are used to voting in the Hare-Clark system, going 1 to 27 in their state election, they are more likely to vote below the line in a federal election.
Mr DANBY: I see. So you say that people who have learnt that system in Tasmania and the ACT are therefore more familiar with voting below the line when it comes to—
Senator Brown: Feel easier with it, yes.
Mr DANBY: Why do you prefer full preferential voting above the line instead of optional preferential below the line?
Senator Brown: I think there should be preferential voting in both places.
Mr DANBY: I understood from your submission that you preferred it above the line.
Senator Brown: Yes, but leaving the option for people to vote below the line if they want to.
Mr DANBY: I see—so one would not exclude the other. Do the Greens support the current alternative of people putting 1 and that still being a valid vote in the Senate?
Senator Brown: What we are saying is people should either vote from—if there are 17 boxes—1 to 17 above the line or, if there are 58 candidates, vote from 1 to 58 below the line and be allowed mistakes without invalidating their vote.
Mr DANBY: But you would not allow them to continue with the current system where they could vote 1 according to their party ticket. Say the Greens ticket was ordering those 17 above the line, if they put 1 in the Greens box that would not be a valid vote.
Senator Brown: Our real concern there is the problem we have now that people putting 1 above the line at the moment have their preferences taken by the party direction. You would expect people to vote above the line 1 to 17 if there were 17 parties and being able to make three mistakes, but they would be expected to vote 1 to 17 to show their preferences for other parties. In the Senate those preferences become very critical, particularly in a compulsory voting system, as to who ends up getting elected.
Mr DANBY: Exactly. What action did you take, with the AEC or with anyone else, concerning your complaints about the Family First TV ads?
Senator Brown: I took it to the Press Council.
Mr DANBY: To the Press Council? What was the result there?
Senator Brown: I am sorry—the Family First ads?
Mr DANBY: Yes, the TV ads.
Senator Brown: I took it to the Australian Electoral Commission and to Free TV Australia, and they found there was nothing to be done about it.
Mr DANBY: Both of them said that?
Senator Brown: Yes. In fact—
Mr DANBY: One is the commercial organisation that looks after advertising on TV?
Senator Brown: Yes. FACTS, which was the body that used to send back ads to say: ‘Prove that this is true,’ announced in the last interregnum between elections that it was not going to do that anymore, that it felt legally at jeopardy. Therefore there is effectively no-one you can refer to who has the power to determine whether an advertisement is true or not.
Mr DANBY: This is a more parochial matter but, nonetheless, the Liberals for Forests and allegations about people being paid to stand at polling booths to represent them have become an issue of this inquiry and one that has had questions asked about it all around Australia. Are you aware that in Melbourne Ports and at other election places during the last federal election people handed out a ticket purporting to voters how to vote green, vote environment, and that the ticket they handed out was very similar to your ticket with a green box at the top and with a how-to- vote card like that? Are you aware of that?
Senator Brown: I was told about that.
Mr DANBY: Are you aware that there were affidavits from people, like Roberta Littlewood, who were handing out Greens how-to-vote tickets who said that several voters who were offered the Greens card said they already had one and they had clearly been misled by what turned out to be a green Liberal how-to-vote card?
Senator Brown: I had complaints about that, as I recollect, at the time of the election.
Mr DANBY: I am following the model, by the way, with regard to how-to-vote tickets set up by Senator Brandis, where he compared various how-to-vote tickets.
CHAIR: Have you put those into evidence yet?
Mr DANBY: These ones?
CHAIR: Yes.
Mr DANBY: No. I am happy to put these into evidence too. I am asking Senator Brown about the Greens’ view of this rather than the Labor Party’s view of this. Are you aware that all of the people who were handing out these tickets which were very similar to the Greens tickets but which were in fact Liberal tickets were dressed in green with green hats and were all young women?
Senator Brown: I did not know they were all young women but I do remember being told about that at the time of the election.
Mr DANBY: Were you aware that many of them were professionally employed and thought they were coming to participate in something else? One of them thought they were coming to dance.
Senator Brown: No.
Senator MASON: I do not know why you would dance at a polling booth but that is just an allegation.
Mr DANBY: Were you aware that all of these young women in the green T-shirts and green hats handing out how-to-vote cards—
CHAIR: My information is that the only person dancing on election day was you, Mr Danby.
Mr DANBY: The chair is not taking a very neutral stance. Were you aware that they were all hired by an events company that did not declare that this was their contribution to the election campaign?
Senator Brown: No, but that again is a serious matter. I am aware, or I am told, that in the seat of Richmond in northern New South Wales people related to the government parties were handing out how-to-votes with green triangles on them. I think voters have got to be aware that they are getting the information they want, because ultimately you cannot proscribe how-to- votes, although in Tasmanian electoral law how-to-votes are not handed out and election material is not handed out.
CHAIR: Is that because of the Robson rotation?
Senator Brown: It came with the Hare-Clark system. You could quite well have how-to- votes outside. They do away with it and it is a very peaceable Saturday. However, if we are going to permit how-to-votes and people outside polling booths, there have to be rules. If there is an increasing tendency, from wherever it comes—whether it comes from the Greens or the Democrats or the Liberals or Labor—to imitate what the other parties are doing, we need to start putting down some rules.
Mr DANBY: It might surprise you to know that just prior to this the National Party representative said that the view of liberals for forests—and I know this was the view of Senator Brandis too—was so bad around the country, particularly in the seat of Richmond, that misleading conduct and deceptive behaviour ought to be considered as well as misleading and deceptive how-to-vote cards. That is certainly my experience from the deceptive and misleading campaign in my own electorate. It may be unpleasant for some people but we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. The act only deals with how-to-vote cards.
Senator Brown: An independent authority has to be able to do the investigation. We do not have that. The electoral authorities are not empowered to do that in any meaningful way.
CHAIR: Let us move on. We have more questions and we are grateful for your time.
Ms PANOPOULOS: I will try and be brief. Senator Brown, you had been given a relatively free ride by the media for years, and I can understand your anger when Mr McManus ended your media honeymoon. Why didn’t you have the backbone to defend your own policies of an inheritance tax, more voting rights for prisoners and taxpayer funded sex change operations? You cried foul instead. My second question is: can you understand the electorate’s disappointment when you could not face the same scrutiny of your policies as other political parties? People thought you were a player and just as accountable as other politicians and other political parties, and they found you were not. Thirdly, can you please direct us to where we can get a comprehensive, unabridged version of current Greens policies at any particular time?
Senator Brown: In answer to the first two questions, that is just politics.
Ms PANOPOULOS: No, they are fair questions.
Senator Brown: I defend, and did throughout the election campaign, the Greens policies, and I will continue to do so. I would hope you would do the same for Liberal Party policies. What you will find, however—
Ms PANOPOULOS: It is just that you seem to spend a bit more time crying foul, that is all.
Senator Brown: Let me say this: you do not know what your drugs policy is; you are unable to tell me that. But that is fair enough, because the Liberal Party in this country—
Ms PANOPOULOS: I am not here to be cross-examined by you, Senator Brown; you are here to give evidence.
Senator Brown: had 24 small pages of policy before the last election. The last three were blank and all the rest were blandishments. There were no policies put forward except those that came from the Prime Minister. As far as the party is concerned, there was no policy platform that you could put anything to at all. I find your wish to criticise a party that has the gumption to come forward with very specific and comprehensive policies is a bit wanting.
Ms PANOPOULOS: But you tried to hide them.
Senator Brown: I did not try hide them—
Ms PANOPOULOS: You took them off your web site; you did not want to talk about them.
Senator Brown: They were not taken off the web site—
Ms PANOPOULOS: You still wanted to pretend you were a soft, tree-hugging party when you were quite extreme on drugs, on foreign policy and on taxation. When one journalist exposed all of that, you could not cop it, could you?
Senator Brown: I was very happy to take him on—
Ms PANOPOULOS: And you lost.
Senator Brown: I took him all the way to the Press Council, where he lost.
Ms PANOPOULOS: I think the Australian public voted on who won and who lost on that one.
Senator Brown: It doubled the Greens’ vote up to 900,000, so you might take a leaf from our book. It would do you some good.
Ms PANOPOULOS: Certainly not, and I do not think my constituents would direct me in that direction either.
Senator MASON: I have some policy questions that relate to the issue raised by Senator Brandis.
Senator Brown: Do you have any questions about my submission?
Senator MASON: This will touch it.
Senator Brown: Or about voting above the line particularly, because I am very keen on that.
Senator MASON: I was going to ask a question about that at the end. Do you want me to ask you it first?
Senator Brown: I am glad I have got you to do it, because none of your colleagues has done so yet.
Senator MASON: Let me ask you that question first about voting above the line for the Senate. You may have answered this before and I may have missed it, but do you want to make it optional or fully compulsory?
Senator Brown: It should be that you have to fill in all the boxes. As with below-the-line voting, there should be provision for making mistakes without having your vote discounted.
Senator MASON: Do you still believe there should be the option simply to vote 1 above the line?
Senator Brown: If there are 17 boxes above the line, you should vote 1 to 17.
Senator MASON: If I am misrepresenting you, let me know; I am sure you will. This question relates to the issue Senator Brandis raised before about other entities—charities and so forth. As you are probably aware, I have raised in the parliament, in things I have written and elsewhere issues relating to charities being used to funnel money. This does not just relate to the Greens; it relates elsewhere. For political parties, there is a $100 limit on tax deductibility; you would agree on that. It is $1,500 in relation to the limit on disclosure.
Senator Brown: It is about to be changed. Government policy is not for that into the future; it is to raise it.
Senator MASON: But you would agree that those are the rules at the moment?
Senator Brown: I do not have to; that is the law.
Senator MASON: Yes, that is what I mean; you agree that that is the law. I am not trying to trick you. Do you agree that that is the law?
Senator Brown: You can state that it is. Let me just say,
CHAIR
Senator MASON: Senator, I was just asking.
Senator Brown: if the senators want to make a statement about things as they exist and then ask a question, I am happy to answer. But I do not have to agree with them that the earth is round or that trees grow upwards—
Senator BRANDIS: That is the last thing you believe, Senator Brown, judging by some of your policies!
Senator Brown: If they want to be primitive about that, then sure, but can we get on with something substantial?
Senator MASON: I was not trying to be clever.
CHAIR: Just for the record, we all do think the earth is round.
Senator Brown: We are in good agreement there.
Senator MASON: With respect to charities, Senator Brown, an issue that has been circulating in the press and here in Parliament House is about ‘charitable purposes’. Charities, whether they are educational, environmental or religious, can engage in ‘charitable purposes’, and they have all these tax breaks. Many charities engage in political activities and are not subject to the same strictures as political parties. It cuts across the Left and the Right; it cuts both ways. Do you agree that is an issue? Is it an issue that concerns you?
Senator Brown: I think it has to be taken in the light of where the taxpayers’ money is going. In the last study I saw of it, the corporate sector in Australia was getting $14.5 billion in largesse from state and federal governments. That is taxpayers’ money. That is corporate welfare.
Senator BRANDIS: Are you including Telstra in that calculation?
Senator Brown: The last time I looked at it, corporations were prodigious donors, directly and indirectly, to political parties, in particular to the coalition. I put it to you that they get far more of the taxpayers’ money than any charity in Australia and ought to be under much greater scrutiny. I am in favour and the Greens are in favour of a prohibition on donations coming from other entities to political parties. That is what public funding is for. I have just been in Canada, where, nationally, they put a ban on donations coming from unions, corporations and so on. They have given very good public funding to make up for that, to get rid of all the—
Senator MASON: So there would be no undue influence, in effect.
Senator Brown: Yes, and I think that is something that the government might look at seriously and certainly the parliament should.
Senator MASON: I asked the question, and it is true that I have used the argument, for political purposes. It concerns me that green charities can engage in politics. I do not hold you responsible for the Wilderness Society—
Senator Brown: I hope that to some degree you might. As a founding member of the Wilderness Society, I would be very pleased if you did.
Senator MASON: I know that. I am not saying it does not cut both ways. For example, there could be a church group, let us say, that is a charity. It might give money to the coalition, or it might serve conservative politics. These issues cut both ways. I ask you this quite genuinely—it is an issue we have not grappled with properly. I am wondering if there are any solutions. It is not a matter of me just attacking the Greens or the Wilderness Society, because it does cut both ways. It worries me that we have not come up with a legislative solution that is acceptable across the board.
Senator Brown: That is a very fair point. I think we should look very carefully at the Canadian law which came in about two years ago which dealt with just this problem. I think it is a much better system. Let us make no bones about it: donations to political parties rarely come without some string or some wish attached inherently. It may be just that they want a certain political party to be elected. It would be much better if we got rid of the donations system as they have done in Canada. It would save taxpayers—they would get much better value out of their vote—if we were to have public funding and restrict it to that. We might continue to allow individuals to give $100, but the large donations need to be history.
Senator MASON: But would you agree in principle that, in terms of public policy, it is not good that charities give moneys to political parties?
Senator Brown: The biggest charities in Australia are the corporations, and they should—
Senator MASON: So you agree with me?
Senator Brown: Yes, but let us not pick on—
Senator MASON: I have not mentioned any names—
Senator Brown: You have.
Senator MASON: I am just raising the principle.
Senator Brown: And I appreciate that, but I think it needs to be looked at across the board. The biggest donor of government largesse is the corporate sector. Looking just at charities to say, ‘We’ll put prohibitions on them,’ is to miss the bigger game. Legislation to end donations to political parties should be across the board.
CHAIR: I thank you for your submission, for appearing today to discuss all of those issues and for staying the additional time that you did.
Senator Brown: Thanks, Mr Smith, and thank you, members of the committee.
CHAIR: On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank all witnesses who have given evidence today. Before we wrap up we need to accept into evidence exhibits tendered by Senator Brandis—a number of documents, each of which the Hansard will record, which were handed to Senator Brown.
Senator BRANDIS: Just for clarity, there were two separate bundles, which should be treated as two separate items. Bundle 1 comprised original draft minutes, a one-page set of email exchanges and amended minutes. Bundle 2 comprised the annual returns for the 2003-04 year of, respectively, the Queensland Greens, the New South Wales Greens and the Australian Greens. I move that those be accepted into evidence.
CHAIR: There being no objection, it is resolved that those items be included as exhibits for the inquiry. There being no objection, it is also resolved that the submission from the ACT Electoral Commission from 9.30 this morning be accepted as evidence for the committee and authorised for publication. I have one final point with respect to the evidence from Senator Brown and his submission. He spoke throughout the afternoon about the Press Council’s deliberation. The Press Council is not automatically right, in my view. In the interests of candour, I have publicly said that I think the Press Council erred in that decision. This committee, in its deliberations, will consider all the matters raised. We will reach our own conclusions on all of these matters after discussion, and make our report. Resolved (on motion by Senator Brandis):

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