Document Actions
Rolling political donations scandals underline need for urgent reform
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Greens MP and donations spokesperson Lee Rhiannon called on Premier Nathan Rees and opposition leader Barry O'Farrell to order their parties to impose a ban on corporate donations and cease holding party fund raisers in light of the latest political donation scandals.
"If Premier Rees and Mr O'Farrell are sincere in their call for a ban on political donations they should act today and tell their respective parties to stop banking the cheques and stop holding fundraisers targeting the big end of town", Ms Rhiannon said.
"The latest scandals involving the Liberals with Mafia-linked donations and Labor doing favours for developers should embarrass the Premier and Opposition Leader into taking immediate action.
"Labor, Liberal and National leaders need to wake up to the fact that they will be dogged by more political scandals if they do not clean up the current corrupting funding practices.
"The latest allegations today see the Minister for Fair Trading Virginia Judge accused of lobbying the Minister for Police, Tony Kelly, to open a police station at Strathfield Plaza, a shopping centre owned by Memo Corporation. Memo Corporation has donated over $50,000 to Ms Judges campaigns over the past six years and in 2007, Memo Corporation donated $69,300 to NSW Labor and $52,000 to NSW Liberal parties.
"This scandal comes on the back of yesterday's bad news story that Mafia-liked businessmen donated about $100,000 to the Federal Liberal Party in return for helping to keep an alleged Mafia figure in Australia.
"These scandals show that the big end of town is still using money to buy influence with the Labor and Liberal parties.
"Despite tough talk by the major parties on political donations reform, new donations data released by the Australian Electoral Commission this month shows that millions of dollars in donations continue to flow to the major parties in 2007/2008.
"The Rudd government increased by eight times the amount of donations received compared with the previous year and the Rees government, despite bad poll results, still managed to increase donations from $8.1 million in 2006/2007 to $8.7 million in 2007/2008", said Ms Rhiannon.
Contact: Greens MP Lee Rhiannon 9230 3551, 0427 861 568
