Political donations on the table

Greens MP and Upper House candidate Lee Rhiannon yesterday hosted a donations roundtable forum at NSW Parliament House on political finance reform, organised by the Gilbert & Tobin Centre at UNSW and the University of Melbourne Law School.

"Public concern is growing about the damaging impact that donations are having on the political process. The Greens are hosting today's roundtable to discuss ways to rein in chequebook democracy and reform political donations", said Ms Rhiannon.

"Academics and federal and state parliamentarians from all over Australia are attending the roundtable today, including MPs from the Greens, the ALP and the Democrats.

"The roundtable will debate reforms to donations disclosure laws and election expenditure limits.

"Every major party is represented at the roundtable today except the Liberal Party. Invitations were sent to a number of Liberal MPs at both a state and federal level.

"The Greens launched our political donations project five years ago to expose the extent that donations have a corrupting influence on our democracy. Since that time, many voices have joined the call to reform the political donations system", said Ms Rhiannon.

"The best way to clean up politics is for the major parties to take this issue up at all levels of government to at least tighten up disclosure laws or at best ban political donations altogether", said Ms Rhiannon.