Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: The historic Teal wave at the last election delivered the
Speaker 1: two major parties their worst electoral results in decades, so
Speaker 1: perhaps it's no surprise that the government looks set to
Speaker 1: introduce new laws that could make it harder for newcomers
Speaker 1: to compete. The Minister Responsible says he wants to address
Speaker 1: the growing threat of big money in politics with rules
Speaker 1: lack a requirement that all donations over one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: be disclosed, caps on the amount that can be donated,
Speaker 1: and a requirement that those donations are made public in
Speaker 1: real time. A cap on spending is also at my table,
Speaker 1: somewhere around a million dollars per candidate per seat, which
Speaker 1: is significantly less than many of the Teals spent to win. Today.
Speaker 1: Independent Member for Goldstein Zoey Daniel on how much it
Speaker 1: costs to beat an incumbent and the double standards of
Speaker 1: the major parties. It's Monday, July twenty nine. Hi, Zowe,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me on seven am.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Thanks for having me so.
Speaker 1: I thought we could start by going back to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, when you run against and you successfully unseated
Speaker 1: Liberal MP Tim Wilson. Why do you think you won?
Speaker 3: I mean, I must say when I was asked by
Speaker 3: a community organization to run in Goldstein, my initial response was,
Speaker 3: there is no chance we can win that seat. You know,
Speaker 3: it had been a safe liberal seat with a male
Speaker 3: member for more than one hundred and twenty years. But
Speaker 3: it became very evident during the campaign that a lot
Speaker 3: of people felt the same way as me, that they
Speaker 3: was sick of two party politics and they wanted someone
Speaker 3: who could contribute in a different way. And also that
Speaker 3: the isue that I was focused on so particularly climate policy,
Speaker 3: gender equality and integrity in politics, really resonated with a
Speaker 3: lot of people.
Speaker 2: I think that we were able to.
Speaker 3: Build momentum around that issues and run a really positive campaign.
Speaker 3: What we have achieved here is extraordinary safe liberalcy two
Speaker 3: term incumbent.
Speaker 2: Independence.
Speaker 1: And of course at the time a lot was made
Speaker 1: of the so called Till wave and the backing that
Speaker 1: you had from Climate two hundred. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: about how you raised money for your campaign and how
Speaker 1: much you raised.
Speaker 3: So we spent I think in the end it was
Speaker 3: about one point eight million dollars on the campaign, and
Speaker 3: we raised over a million of that from within the electorate.
Speaker 3: So Climate two hundred obviously made a substantial contribut to
Speaker 3: my campaign, and Climate two hundred is a crowdfunding movement
Speaker 3: with around eleven and a half thousand donors, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the funding that came into my campaign from
Speaker 3: Climate two hundred went to advertising, for example, But the
Speaker 3: main fundraising effort on my part was within the community.
Speaker 3: So my team and I spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: out simply talking to members of the community around why
Speaker 3: it was important to do politics differently, and we had
Speaker 3: thousands of people who donated quite small amounts to the campaign.
Speaker 2: So I had very few large donors.
Speaker 3: I didn't have any one individual donating hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars or even one hundred thousand dollars to my campaign.
Speaker 3: It was predominantly people inside and outside the electorate who
Speaker 3: were keen to get an independent into Parliament. If not us,
Speaker 3: if not, now, let's do this Goldstein. So as an independent,
Speaker 3: you really need to spend a lot of time building
Speaker 3: that reputational respect, if you like, and the only way
Speaker 3: of doing it really is through direct engagement with people.
Speaker 2: I'm with Zoe because I believe in positive change.
Speaker 1: I'm for Zoe because I want to see the gold
Speaker 1: in Goldstein. I'm with Zoe because the current federal government
Speaker 1: is not doing enough for climate action or women's equality.
Speaker 3: So although we did a lot of fundraising, that money
Speaker 3: was spent on the right staff with the right skills
Speaker 3: to enable the kind of campaign that iran. Predominantly the
Speaker 3: funding went to advertising, vote on the Issues, Vote with
Speaker 3: Conviction authorized by Zoe Daniel Brighton, billboard advertising which is
Speaker 3: extremely expensive, social media advertising, and call flutes so the
Speaker 3: election side that people put on fences.
Speaker 2: So it's quite a lot of moving parts.
Speaker 1: And so obviously all of that worked. We of course
Speaker 1: saw a whole lot of community independence including you people
Speaker 1: like Monik Ryan, a Leke rospender win against major party incumbents.
Speaker 1: So how important was being able to raise funds to
Speaker 1: campaign in the ways that you're describing, so billboards, social media,
Speaker 1: hiring the right people. How important was all of that
Speaker 1: ultimately in changing the makeup of the parliament the way
Speaker 1: that Australia is now represented.
Speaker 2: Look, it's really critical.
Speaker 3: It's unfortunate that you need a substantial amount of money
Speaker 3: in each of the independents that were elected at the
Speaker 3: last election, spent a substantial amount of money to get
Speaker 3: elected in.
Speaker 2: Save seberal seats.
Speaker 3: As a new face and a person with new ideas,
Speaker 3: you have a really limited amount of time and runway
Speaker 3: to actually get those ideas out to people and to
Speaker 3: help people to understand what they're voting for. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously I can see where you're going with the conversation,
Speaker 3: and I think that you know the tension is the
Speaker 3: fact that that's required in order to enable fresh thinking.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, we certainly don't want to
Speaker 3: end up with a US style system where you know,
Speaker 3: people get elected because I've got a lot of money
Speaker 3: and money kind of rules.
Speaker 2: That's definitely not where we want to end it.
Speaker 1: The Special Minister for State Don Farrell, is expected to
Speaker 1: table a set of proposals that if they pass, they
Speaker 1: will be some of the biggest changes to the way
Speaker 1: that we run elections in this country that we've seen.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what your understanding is of what's
Speaker 1: being proposed and why you think it is that the
Speaker 1: government is doing this now?
Speaker 2: So I haven't seen an exposure draft.
Speaker 3: I would love to see one because we do have
Speaker 3: concern that the two major parties will collude to protect
Speaker 3: their Coals and Wullies duopoly and to cut out new entrants.
Speaker 3: My understanding of it is that they're looking at real
Speaker 3: time disclosure and reduce thresholds for real time disclosure. This
Speaker 3: is something that I and everyone on the cross Bench
Speaker 3: did anyway at the last election, and I think reducing
Speaker 3: the threshold for that, to say one thousand dollars is
Speaker 3: absolutely fine and should happen. People should have transparency around
Speaker 3: where donations have come from. And then it seems evident
Speaker 3: that they're looking at either donation caps or spending caps
Speaker 3: or both, and that's really at the core of the issue.
Speaker 1: Do you agree with donation caps and spending cups?
Speaker 2: Well, it depends what they are.
Speaker 3: And really the devil is in the detail here because
Speaker 3: the playing field is already to filtered in favor of
Speaker 3: the major parties because of their history, their visibility.
Speaker 2: The entrenched awareness in the community of them.
Speaker 3: But also that they have the collective power if you like.
Speaker 3: So a general ad that just says vote liberal or
Speaker 3: vote labor will still benefit the individual candidate within my electorate,
Speaker 3: because some people don't really care who the candidate is.
Speaker 3: They'll just go in and put a one next to
Speaker 3: a particular party and if, for example, has been I
Speaker 3: think has been floating around in the press that the
Speaker 3: cap could be a million dollars per electorate while the
Speaker 3: vast majority of that still flows to the major parties.
Speaker 3: And do they have to spend only a million dollars
Speaker 3: in each each electorate or can they split it up
Speaker 3: to spend more money in marginal seats and less money
Speaker 3: in other seats.
Speaker 2: And they also have sort.
Speaker 3: Of external funding vehicles, and they do things like run
Speaker 3: dinners where they charge you know, five thousand dollars a
Speaker 3: seat to sit next to the minister, and those sorts
Speaker 3: of things, and there's a level of opacity around those
Speaker 3: kinds of fundraising mechanisms. So I think the key to
Speaker 3: it is the level playing field, but also the transparency
Speaker 3: and you can't sort of let the major parties get
Speaker 3: around it with you know, things that are convenient to them.
Speaker 3: And then the bigger concern is that because obviously, if
Speaker 3: the Labor Party and the Coalition got together to push
Speaker 3: this through, then no one else has any say in
Speaker 3: how that looks.
Speaker 2: And to me, that means that the roughly thirty percent.
Speaker 3: Of the population who didn't vote for either of the
Speaker 3: major parties is not being heard.
Speaker 1: So is the government listening to crossbench concerns. That's after
Speaker 1: the break Zolli. The government is working on this draft
Speaker 1: legislation to change the parameters on electoral spending. Have you
Speaker 1: had any consultations with the minister who's driving is Don Farrell,
Speaker 1: about your concerns and how have those conversations gone.
Speaker 3: The Independence as a group have had a couple of
Speaker 3: meetings with the minister. I'm not going to talk about
Speaker 3: what's happened in those meetings. I mean they're in effect
Speaker 3: meetings in which the cross Bench has been able to
Speaker 3: articulate the kinds of concerns that I've articulated to you,
Speaker 3: and the Minister's done some listening and the cross bench
Speaker 3: has since been doing some waiting for an exposure draft
Speaker 3: so that we can look at the kind of details
Speaker 3: that I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: And Don Farrell has accused Independence of being hypocrites. Essentially,
Speaker 1: He's quoted as saying that some of the tills are
Speaker 1: saying to us that they agree with banning big money,
Speaker 1: just not theirs. What's your response to.
Speaker 3: That, Well, I mean he kind of would say that,
Speaker 3: I suppose, but I guess I would throw the same
Speaker 3: thing back to him. I mean, take a look at
Speaker 3: how much money the major parties are raised, which is
Speaker 3: in the hundreds of millions for the last election. You know,
Speaker 3: a single donation from a Union could have funded my
Speaker 3: entire campaign, but all that money went into Labour's coffers,
Speaker 3: so it's a little bit pot kettle. And also Climate
Speaker 3: two hundreds, which was only a contributor to my and
Speaker 3: the other campaigns, is made up of eleven and a
Speaker 3: half thousand donors. These are ordinary Australians who want politics
Speaker 3: done differently. So this whole sort of equivalency that both
Speaker 3: the major parties like to use in.
Speaker 2: Regard to the independence.
Speaker 3: That you know where funded by a billionaire or a multimillionaire,
Speaker 3: is just complete rubbish and is very sort of convenient
Speaker 3: for them.
Speaker 2: To foster their own position.
Speaker 3: And what you've seen in New South Wales and Victoria,
Speaker 3: for example, is that changes to donation rules in Victoria
Speaker 3: in effect meant that the independents all lost their seats
Speaker 3: at the last election. And I don't think that that's
Speaker 3: what the population wants.
Speaker 1: And so if that is the case, if the smaller
Speaker 1: players do get cut out, what is it that voters stand.
Speaker 3: To lose, accountability, pressure a new way of doing politics.
Speaker 3: This is still a very new phenomenon and look, I
Speaker 3: think anyone who expects you know, politics to miraculously metamorphous
Speaker 3: into something that's perfect in two years after you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty plus years from Federation of Bad
Speaker 3: Habits being created is being somewhat naive. But absolutely there
Speaker 3: has been positive change in terms of the fact that
Speaker 3: the Crossbench interacts with the Government and the opposition to
Speaker 3: some degree to create better policy and is to do
Speaker 3: with holding the government to account, making them more ambitious
Speaker 3: and calling out failures bad behavior when they can do
Speaker 3: it better, working with the government on legislation and policy
Speaker 3: to point out the issues and to stack up evidence
Speaker 3: based reasons to create improvement, rather than just having a
Speaker 3: combative environment of one side says we're going to do
Speaker 3: this and the other side says no. I think we've
Speaker 3: been stalled for a long time on a range of
Speaker 3: policies because of that approach, and that's what the Crossbench
Speaker 3: seeks to change.
Speaker 1: Saway, Thank you so much for your tame.
Speaker 2: My pleasure, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Northern Territory. Senator Melanderie McCarthy
Speaker 1: has been named as the new Minister for Indigenous Australians
Speaker 1: as part of a cabinet reshuffle announced yesterday afternoon. Senator
Speaker 1: McCarthy replaces Linda Burney, who will retire from federal politics
Speaker 1: at the next election. Linda Burney was the first Indigenous
Speaker 1: person elected to the new South Wales Parliament and the
Speaker 1: first Indigenous woman to be elected to the House of
Speaker 1: Representatives and to be appointed a Cabinet minister. And Tony
Speaker 1: Burke has replaced Andrew Giles as Minister for Immigration. Mister
Speaker 1: Giles has been under increasing pressure for months over his
Speaker 1: handling of last year's High Court ruling on indefinite immigration detention.
Speaker 1: And Clara O'Neill has been removed from Home Affairs. She
Speaker 1: will now be Housing Minister. I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 2: This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.