Our government should be building a future for all of us, not for their big corporate donors and big business mates.
Right now, our political system is stacked in favour of big corporate donors who buy access and outcomes through political donations and powerful lobbying. The Greens’ plan will clean up politics, end the corrupting influence of corporations and ensure that our representatives are accountable to all of us.
Big corporations and the vested interests donate to political parties for a reason. In return for their donations, property developers, big banks, gambling corporations and mining giants have received billions of dollars worth of favourable policy decisions from Liberal and Labor governments.
While the major parties continue to take money from big corporate interests, they will never be completely focused on what is good for our communities.
Unlike the major parties, the Greens refuse to take donations from corporations trying to buy influence. That means we are entirely focused on outcomes that are good for our community, not outcomes that suit big donors. We have a plan to return integrity and transparency to the political system and hold politicians and major parties to account.
Our Plan for Donations Reform
- Banning political donations from the mining, development, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, banking, defence and pharmaceutical industries, industries with a record of shady influence on decision makers.
- More donations disclosed by lowering the threshold for disclosure of donations to individual candidates and parties from the current $14,500 to $1,000.
- Placing a cap of $3,000 per parliamentary term ($1,000 per year) on everyone else so that no single individual or industry can influence political decisions through large donations.
- Banning ‘donation splitting’, which can see donations split into smaller amounts that fall under the reportable threshold, sometimes also donating to different branches of a political party over the course of the year.
- Ensure that information about donations should be disclosed in real time, or as close as possible.
- Banning donations from all foreign entities.
- Require the disclosure of all payments made by corporate representatives to attend ‘fundraising events’ held by the major parties and their front groups. These payments will then be classified as donations and brought within the cap
Restoring Integrity to Politics
In addition to substantial reforms of our political donations; the Greens will:
- Establish a federal anti-corruption commission that includes the power to investigate and charge MPs and public servants.
- Protect the rights of community groups to speak out and use their funding for important advocacy-based work.
- Shine a light on shady lobbyists and close the revolving door between big business and politics by banning all MPs from becoming industry lobbyists for five years after they retire, where a conflict of interest may arise.
- Allow everyone to participate in democratic processes; including reforms to advisory bodies, consultation processes and freedom of information laws.