Tony Abbott looked a fool this morning, scrambling away from the rotting carcass of political donation reform despite signing up to the proposal — in writing — just a week ago.
But the Opposition Leader did what we’re always asking politicians to do: he listened to public opinion and was honest about changing his mind.
Which is more than you can say for Labor. It drafted this dog of a bill — leaving gaping holes in the disclosure laws while funnelling $60 million into party coffers for compliance — for Parliament, secured the support of Abbott in a grubby bit of bipartisan politicking, and emerges from the whole mess looking less deserving of being in power than at any point in the last two and a bit years.
This morning Labor demonstrated its remarkable ability to get stuff done by signing the ACT up to its Gonski education funding package. It will be forgotten, once again, in a mire of self-serving incompetence.
Part of that new funding was to give AEC more resources to speed up audits of private donations, many of them hidden behind fraudulent and secretive “associated entities”. Any journalist rubbishing this failed deal and who moans in future about how long it takes the AEC to post private funding disclosures is a big fat hypocrite.
Agree with Susan Winstanley but there’s no reason the government couldn’t re-draft the Bill to cover the donations aspect.
They got greedy, took an ill-advised and over-generous bite then choked on it.
Wrong, again. Abbott got well and truly wedged.
This is my last subscription to crikey. More crap from MSM
Still don’t understand why political donations can’t be logged electronically the moment they are received – like any other e-transfer. Then they could be put up on a public site, monitored by the AEC and EVERYTHING would be transparent. Every single dollar could be logged, no exceptions. If pedants then want to trawl through the evidence it should all be there. Why do we allow politicians and only politicians to make decisions about how political donations are revealed?