ACDJ calls for major electoral reform

Submissions to the Green Paper on Electoral Funding were made available from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet today (available at: http://www.pmc.gov.au/consultation/elect_reform/submissions.cfm )

The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice contributed a submission which can be downloaded from here: http://www.pmc.gov.au/consultation/elect_reform/pdfs/sub35.pdf

Our submission made four key points:

  1. That Election Expenditure should be capped removing incentives for political parties and candidates to fundraise.
  2. That there needs to be a centralisation of disclosure regimes and that the various state branches of a political party should be treated as one entity to provide a more realistic picture of the funding of political parties.
  3. All donations to political parties must be banned with the possible exception of small donations from individuals to a maximum of $500 per financial year.
  4. That the public funding of elections should continue to be made available but that:
    • there should be provisions for access to public funding for new political parties
    • that the money should be only made available for electoral expenditure and not an automatic entitlement

The rules of the system will help determine the type of politics that are engaged in.

It is our belief that with these changes there would be significant improvements to the transparency and accountability of political parties.

Because Australians currently have the ability to buy political influence, debate has been restricted in Australia and political parties have been able to ignore the concerns of their rank and file members. Why look to support from your members when you can just receive a handful of donations from large donors?

We believe that by making the above changes we would see a re engagement with the membership base of political parties which can only be good for democracy.
 
2007/08 Political Donations Disclosure

The Australian Electoral Commission has released the details of disclosed political donations for the 2007/08 financial year.

Once again, Australia's appalling disclosure regime means that only donations of $10,500 or more are disclosed and it has taken until February 2009 to disclose donations from July 2007.

Please go to our campaign site, www.lobbyocracy.org to see who has donated to which party.

The Federal Government has released a Green Paper on Electoral Reform. The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice will be replying to that by February 23.


 
ACDJ Condemns Police Infiltration of Activist Groups

The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice today condemned the infiltration of activist groups by the Victorian Police saying that it will negatively impact the democratic process.

“Victoria Police’s actions are an abuse of civil liberties and negatively impact on our democracy,” ACDJ director Hammy Goonan today. “Healthy democracies have high levels of participation. When the Police start infiltrating the peaceful activist community people start to think twice about their participation – I don’t think anyone feels comfortable about the police collecting information on them.”

While the ACDJ was not one of the groups infiltrated, it had close ties with some of the groups that were, including the organising committee for the annual Palm Sunday rallies that the ACDJ endorsed every year.

“One can only assume that these actions are being carried out because there is some suspicion that the activists concerned are criminals or terrorists. Is that what the Victorian Police think of people that disagree with the government? It’s ridiculous that this can happen in present day Australia,” said Mr Goonan.

The ACDJ has also raised concerns about the 2006 amendment of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act which prevents those being monitored from getting access to the information gathered about them.

“Democracy has two key elements, participation and access. Police infiltration will mean that concerned citizens are more reluctant to participate. The amendment of the FoI Act means the Australian populous has less access to information that is vital to the decision making process.”

The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice calls for an immediate halt to this practice and for the information collected on these peaceful activists to be released.
 
Inquiry into the Disclosure regimes for charities and not-for-profit organisations

On Friday (29th August) the ACDJ put in a submission to the Inquiry into the Disclosure regimes for charities and not-for-profit organisations.

The inquiry has important implications for non-profit groups and community empowerment.

The ACDJ's submission now available from the Parliament of Australia website here. A list of all submission can be found here.
 
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