Federal Opposition shows contempt for transparency and accountability

I can't add anything more or say it better than Bernard Keane writing in Crikey today, so here are most of his comments about an important vote in the Senate that didn't get much attention in the major media:

"...yesterday probably witnessed the low point in political accountability in this Parliamentary term.In the Senate, the Coalition combined with Steve Fielding to block the Government’s electoral reform bill, which would have reversed some of the Howard government’s savage attacks on political transparency, such as returning the donation disclosure threshold from $10,900 to $1000.

The return of the donation disclosure threshold to $1000 was a well-advertised election commitment by the ALP in 2007. It has been blocked by the party that lost the election and a senator elected on the vote of 1.77% of Victorians.

The bill also tightened donation reporting requirements to end the farce that meant we didn’t find out who had donated to parties before the 2007 election until February this year and banned foreign donations.

Shadow special minister of state Michael Ronaldson, who has not supported a single one of the Government’s efforts to increase political transparency and accountability, immediately issued a gloating press release declaring “Labor has only itself to blame” for the defeat of the bill. Well, actually Senator, the people who voted against it are to blame. You and your colleagues and the fragile fundamentalist from Victoria.

Fielding, at least, had a sort of reason why he blocked the bill. Fielding complained that public funding of political parties “has been rife with rorting”. You’d think that, given the bill specifically includes a Pauline Hanson-inspired limit so that parties can only claim funding for their actual expenses, Fielding would therefore support it. Instead, Fielding wants a separate cap on public funding of political parties of $10m, an entirely separate issue. And a limit on public funding -- the Labor and Liberal parties got about $20m each for the 2007 election -- would, one would expect, further encourage reliance on donations. But, nevertheless, that was Fielding’s excuse for voting against it.

Perhaps he’s grumpy that the Government will no longer be participating in the death of women in developing countries who are forced to seek unsafe abortions.

The Opposition, however, have been trying to block this bill from the get-go. They referred it to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Affairs, which is conducting the usual inquiry into the last election. This was an attempt to ensure it wasn’t even considered before June this year. Labor circumvented that by bringing forward the inquiry into the bill. To demonstrate how important they thought the inquiry was, the Liberal Party lodged a contemptibly brief one-page submission demanding the bill be withdrawn. Nevertheless, the Joint Committee recommended some amendments to the bill, which the Government accepted. It was good enough for the Greens and Nick Xenophon, but Fielding and the Coalition killed it.....

Faulkner will reintroduce the bill as soon as possible -- possibly next week. The Coalition has placed on record its utter contempt for transparency and accountability. Will Steve Fielding do the same again?"

Pork sale details hard to find

Not only were yesterday's political donations disclosures so long after the event as to be laughable, but the gory detail of large contributions to oil the wheels of democracy by foreign casino operators, developers, unions, ethanol manufacturers, clubs and others reported in today's press still don't add up, according to Malcolm Knox:

"Attempts to make the political donations process more transparent have been hampered by startling discrepancies between donor and recipient declarations in the latest Australian Electoral Commission figures. Of the top 20 donations to the major parties, more than half show inconsistencies between what the donors and recipients say. With the ALP's top corporate donor, the Hong Kong casino billionaire Stanley Ho and his associated companies, the discrepancy is the largest. Dr Ho signed a declaration saying he had given $200,000 to the ALP in NSW on May 29 last year. In the party's declaration, however, ALP official Brendan Kavanagh signed documents saying Dr Ho gave $400,000 on October 31, 2007. With other donations by Ho-related entities tallying up to $700,000, it is unclear whether Dr Ho gave the party $900,000 or $1.1 million. Eight of the Labor Party's top 10 corporate donations and five of the Coalition's top 10 fail to add up. The largest discrepancy was on the Coalition side: Iain Thompson, the company secretary of Brickworks, declared it made three donations totalling $265,000 to the Liberals in the months leading up to the 2007 federal election. But in the Liberals' declaration, there was no sign of Brickworks - or any donation from it."

Faulkner on the record as Parliament packs up for the year.

Cabinet Secretary and Special Minister of State Senator John Faulkner made this ministerial statement " Restoring Integrity in Government" in Parliament yesterday, as the parliamentary year draws to a close.

Much of the ground was similar to that covered in his speech to Transparency International at the end of October, with a couple of new references to recent initiatives such as the plan to provide assistance to public servants on ethical issues, and a fresh commitment to respond to reports to government within three months.

As stated previously, the Government is to be commended for its overall record in this area, though something closer to real time public reporting of political donations, something more stringent than a published register of lobbyists, and something much faster than the snail-paced approach to Freedom of Information reform would have boosted our assessment of performance.

On FOI after referring to the bill to abolish conclusive certificates Senator Faulkner said

"This is a first and significant step towards meeting our commitment to greater openness and transparency. Early in 2009 an exposure draft of legislation covering other pre-election commitments on FOI, including the proposal to establish an Information Commissioner to champion FOI across Government, will be released. The Government is determined to make access to information an easier process for members of the community. Naturally we accept, as I know those opposite have in the past, that there is some information which, for the protection of Australian interests, will not be made public. My goal is to ensure that information is withheld only when there are sound reasons. As part of the Government’s determination to strengthen integrity in governance, the Australian Government is committed to a pro-disclosure culture within the public sector."

He concluded:

"..the challenge to achieve and maintain integrity, transparency, responsiveness and accountability in government is never really over. The Government will continue to work towards even better outcomes. The start that has been made, however, is I believe impressive. It amply demonstrates the strength of our commitment to these principles."

A glimmer of light on political donations-at least for NSW local council candidates

Much needed reforms to Federal election laws, particularly in relation to political donations, have been sidelined for a year, according to Special Minister of State John Faulkner, as a result of the Opposition using its numbers in the Senate to refer the bill to a committee with a very generous report deadline.The proposed reforms could be improved, but the Opposition move seems primarily designed to give it another year under the current unsatisfactory rules.

In NSW a Legislative Council Committee has tabled its report on state political donation laws, recommending a ban on donations from business, and on donations of more than $1000 from individuals, with disclosure twice a year of donations of more than $500. This report provides an overview.The Committee's Report is here. All eyes on the Iemma Government to see what emerges, but it has acted to require all donations of more than $1000 to candidates in this year's local council elections to be disclosed. No mention of when- the requirement should be public disclosure before we have to vote.

Good news and no news on transparency and accountability

The good news is that Minister of State John Faulkner's announcement of the first stage in electoral law reform saw legislation introduced into the Parliament on 15 May to

• Reduce the disclosure threshold for donors, registered political parties, candidates and others from ‘more than $10,000’ (indexed annually to the CPI) to a flat rate of $1,000.
• Treat donations to different branches of a political party as donations to the same party, so that donors will need to disclose donations totalling $1000 or more to any combination of the branches of the party.
• Reduce the timeframes for the lodgement of returns by political parties to every 6 months, and shorten a range of other reporting periods under the Act.
• Make it unlawful for registered political parties, candidates and members of a Senate group to accept overseas donations, and unlawful for associated entities and other third parties to receive overseas gifts that are used solely or substantially to incur political expenditure.
• Extend the prohibition on accepting anonymous gifts and donations for registered political parties, candidates and Senate groups to all anonymous gifts, and to also cover associated entities and other third persons that use anonymous donations for political purposes.

The legislation will also put a halt to the"money for running"(should that be jam?) rort where candidates who get more than 4% of the vote qualify for public funding but get the money regardless of whether they spent that much during the campaign:"any payment of election funding should be tied to actual “electoral expenditure” that has been incurred. The policy intention behind these measures is that candidates, registered political parties and Senate groups should only receive the lesser amount of either the electoral expenditure that was actually incurred in an election campaign, or the amount awarded per vote (currently approximately$2.18), provided at least 4% of first preference votes have been won. The existing entitlement remains unchanged, but the new claims process will require the agent of the candidates, registered political parties and Senate groups to lodge a claim specifying all or part of the electoral expenditure incurred in an election campaign for which they wish to receive election funding."(Senate Hansard 15 May page8).

The "no news" is that "The Rudd government is progressing with several accountability measures - Freedom of Information, privacy and whistleblowers reform," Senator Faulkner told The Weekend Australian , as reported on Saturday, six months since the election that brought the government to office, following its commitment to act on these issues.