Greens make bid to clean up political donations laws

The minor party has its own version of legislation to clean up the state’s weak electoral laws. LATEST FROM PARLIAMENT >>

A Greens attempt to “clean up Tasmanian politics” from the influence of big donors will be debated in state parliament this week.

The source of the vast bulk of donations to Tasmanian political parties remains secret because of the state’s weak electoral rules, although Premier Peter Gutwein has promised reform this year.

Both the Liberals and Labor has put forward proposals in the form of competing bills but Greens leader Cassy O’Connor says the Greens would go further.

“We’ll be moving to make sure that Tasmania has not the weakest, but the strongest electoral laws in the country,” she said.

Ms O’Connor said the debate over gambling industry reform legislation in the Legislative Council was instructive.

“We’ve got a debate happening in the upper house right, which is the consequence of vested interests being able to buy political influence and therefore votes in Tasmania’s parliament.

Cassy O'Connor. Picture: Richard Jupe

“We never again want to see legislation go through this place, which is so absolutely bought and paid for by a vested interest, and in this case it is the gambling industry.”

She said the Greens legislation would remove the influence many donors wielded over state politics.

“Our legislation would ban donations from corporations and foreign donors,” she said.

“If you want to donate to a political party in Tasmania, you need to be a natural born person, a citizen or permanent resident, you also wouldn’t be able to donate more than $3,000 in an electoral term and if you donate more than $1,000 that triggers your disclosure threshold.

“We set caps on expenditure for candidates and parties and we introduce a measure of public funding which is set at the Commonwealth rate – which is $2.87 for first preference votes. “Tasmania is the only state in the country which doesn’t have public funding of its campaigns, which means that there’s much greater sway for vested interests.”

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Originally published as Greens make bid to clean up political donations laws