It's not just that the Federal and state rules relating to political donations are weak, and as shown, ineffectual. So too those that relate to lobbyists. NSW rules on that front may be ahead of other jurisdictions but recommendations from the ICAC in 2011 still await a response
And as the program points out while we have anti-corruption bodies in the states there is no Federal commission to fight corruption.
The Greens introduced the National Integrity Commission Bill into Parliament last year. When it came up for debate in May Liberal and National party senators who spoke dismissed the idea out of hand. As Senator O'Sullivan put it:
This government is proud of Australia's position and reputation. Australia is consistently ranked by Transparency International as one of the least corrupt countries in the world. This is a recognition of the net measure of respective coalition governments in this place and in states right across this country. As a political movement, we have a sub-zero tolerance to corruption.Watch or read the Four Corners transcript. A couple of extracts follow including Senator John Faulkner's call for a lower threshold for reporting political donations and close to real time disclosure, and adding his voice at least to the national integrity commission cause.
LINTON BESSER:...the ICAC investigation they sparked has exposed major vulnerabilities in our political system.The first is the patchwork of campaign finance laws that promote the perception politicians are for sale.
AJ BROWN: Where it becomes very, very murky is where the level of access that you can get starts to be affected by whether or not you've made a political donation. Because it automatically starts to become a question of getting something very concrete in return for your money.
ASHLEY PITTARD: And as you've seen with a lot of the hearings recently, there is a fringe element that want access and want a favour and want a return on their money.
And that's what has to be stamped out.
JOHN FAULKNER: We need a transparent electoral funding and disclosure regime. We need a transparent expenditure regime; this is in the interests of the Parliament; it's in the interests of politicians; it's in the interests of a good political system and it's in the interests of Australian democracy.
LINTON BESSER: Six years ago, Senator John Faulkner repeatedly tried to introduce reforms that would finally open up political fundraising to proper scrutiny.
The bill never passed.
JOHN FAULKNER: There is absolutely no reason why donations to political parties can't be made publically available effectively at the time they are given. The technology exists to enable this to occur and it would massively enhance ah any ah transparency regime. But, along with ensuring that those donations are reported ah quickly in the public arena, obviously the threshold level needs to be reduced.
LINTON BESSER: The evidence about the Free Enterprise Foundation and the role played in this saga by figures outside ICAC's jurisdiction has exposed the lack of a national anti-corruption commission.
AJ BROWN: It's clear that the type of corruption that we see in New South Wales is not simply isolated to New South Wales, that those issues go wider, that they go across all political parties.
DAVID IPP: It is so screamingly obvious that there is a breakdown in trust at the moment and that the only way of maintaining trust, or recovering the trust, is to demonstrate that there are adequate means of discovering corruption so that the public can be confident that what the government is doing is not tainted by dishonest behaviour.
JOHN FAULKNER: A person who's done the right thing has nothing to fear from the work of a corruption commission. And I think it's really important that those who serve in territory, state of Commonwealth parliaments acknowledge that that is the case.
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