Politicians need to clean up their mess so people can trust them again
The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report into foreign donations once again highlights the problem that politicians refuse to fix - secretive dark money flowing into our parliament while making it harder for people to engage with the political process.
Paul Oosting, National Director at GetUp, said it was about time political parties adopted better laws around political donations but they were trying to deflect the attention onto people powered groups.
"We need a ban on offshore cash to political parties.
"Australia is one of the few countries in the world without a ban on foreign donations to political parties.
"We know that a full 66% of the Liberal Party's income leading up to the 2016 federal election was completely untraceable Dark Money.
"Multinational companies clearly have too much power over our politicians, or why else would we be handing Adani a billion dollars of taxpayers money to build a coal mine. We have to reduce this sort of special treatment.
"The Coalition have sought to use a process that could be used to clean up their mess to blame everyone else for their poor performance at the election.
"The vast majority of GetUp's funding comes from everyday Australians. They generously donate because they are fed up with the secretive and way many politicians act.
"If the Liberal Party seek to misuse their power to attack advocacy groups, organisations millions of regular Australians support, then they clearly don't get why people are losing confidence in their ability to make decisions that benefit their lives.
"This is just another example of the Liberal Party putting their mates in big businesses interests ahead of the interests of ordinary Australians, people who they are either extorting money through Centrelink, pushing up their power prices by attacking renewable energy or cutting funding to their school or hospital," said Mr Oosting.
