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Political Donations
Tell the government to get corporate and third-party influence out of politics and end all large scale political donations.
Our democracy should not be for sale but right now the people we elect to govern us take money from those who stand to gain from government policy and contracts.
Small donations towards a political cause can be empowering and most importantly don't have an undue influence on public policy. It's time to restore faith in our political system - sign the petition to end corporate influence.
Dear Prime Minister, State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers,
You work for us - end large scale political donations and ban all corporate and third-party political donations.
45,939 have joined this campaign - help us get to 50,000.
We have achieved 91.88% of our goal. Let’s keep going!
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What we're calling for
We think it's time to get the undue influence of big donors out of
our democracy. Four principles underlie this campaign:
Only individuals should be allowed to donate to political parties.
When corporations and other organisations donate large sums to political parties it undermines public confidence in the integrity of those parties and candidates and can lead to perceived conflicts of interest, if not conflicts themselves.
Immediate public listing of donations
We also need to increase transparency of individual donations to
make sure corporate money isn't being funneled through individual
donations instead. This means individual donors who give more than a
certain threshold (we propose $500) would have to disclose the name of
their employer.
Cap individual donations at a reasonable limit.
Donating is a legitimate means of political engagement - GetUp is
a great example of that. But there should be reasonable limits.
Individual donations should be capped at $1,000 a year to prevent
anyone having undue influence on our representatives.
Increase public funding of political parties.
Parties have become reliant on big donors to fund their campaigns
and operation. If we are to eliminate the influence of corporate
donations on politics, more public funding will have to be provided to
parties. Depending on the system used and the level of funding, this
is estimated to cost in the vicinity of $30 million dollars. This may
sound like a lot, but international studies have shown that public
funding has a positive effect on political competitiveness and
decision-making. Given that the policies and private contracts our
politicians oversee add up to tens of billions of dollars, we think
paying a little more to make sure those decisions are free from undue
influence is a good investment.
The legislation required to make this happen will require a lot of
thought and research - but the principles are simple. Caps on
political donations are working well in other democracies around the
world and we deserve no less in Australia.
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