Tasmanians deserve to be able to trust that politicians are making decisions in the best interests of the community.

But as long as Tasmania has no laws governing political donations, Tasmanian politics will never truly have the level of transparency that we and the community rightly demand.

Labor has been fighting for the introduction of a strong framework to govern Tasmania’s political donations laws for more than five years.

The reforms in the Government’s bill that have finally come up for debate today do not go far enough – but only go as far as we can expect with the Liberals in charge.

We understand that there is very little appetite remaining in the Liberal Government to progress any reform whatsoever, which been evident from the lack of progress of the bill.

This was also confirmed in the former Attorney General Elise Archer’s statement that she was unsupported by her caucus to progress these reforms. Without Ms Archer in the caucus room there is little if any commitment to progress.

It is now clear to us that any amendments to the current bill will not be progressed back to the House of Assembly by this Government and will only lead to yet another election with no disclosure regime whatsoever.

For this reason, we will not be moving the amendments we had previously foreshadowed, and we will not be supporting any amendments today.

Instead, we will be introducing a private members bill to progress our amendments at the earliest possible opportunity.

We remain entirely committed to the reforms covered in the amendments we circulated and our policy position has not changed

Labor remains committed to further reform, and will create an opportunity as soon as we can for us to debate measures to take the reforms even further.

But most likely, it will be up to a Labor Government to deliver the reforms required for all Tasmanians to have faith in the political process.

Sarah Lovell MLC
Leader of Opposition Business in the Legislative Council