The ruckus in the senate caused by the shenanigans of a couple of rogue senators, such as One Nation’s Rod Culleton from WA and Family First’s Bob Day from SA, might at first appear to be merely isolated cases of individual rotten apples calling for nothing more than for both parties to tighten up their preselection processes.
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However, Bob Day’s situation is also somewhat symptomatic of the wider corruption endemic in federal politics, which makes his case of concern to us all.
Readers will remember that the then Senator Bob Day case involved irregularities in donations and loans made from him and his companies to Family First, which he was then that party’s sole member of Parliament.
Family First certainly needs to clean up its act, but of more importance to the rest of us, this sorry tale calls for an overhaul of federal funding regulations, more of which below, and also for a national Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), which I’ll explore first.
The Bob Day saga gives added weight to the already strong case for a national ICAC.
I was therefore pleased to see Greens democracy spokesperson, Senator Lee Rhiannon, say the Greens are renewing their push for a federal anti-corruption body.
"Since June the Greens have called for Day to answer questions about irregularities in donations and loans made from him and his companies to Family First," Senator Rhiannon said.
“Now the spotlight is also on the Liberal-National government, which has serious explaining to do over the approval of a lease agreement for Day's electorate office.”
In an exercising of good timing, the Greens have also completed an overhaul of their donations data search engine, Democracy for Sale, and have published analysis on all payments made to political parties since 1998.
They say the grand total of reported payments made to political parties since then will reach $1 billion in the 2015-2016 year.
Importantly, as Senator Rhiannon said, "Hidden among this data could be many more donations scandals, and more nefarious relationships between vested interests and political parties.”
The Democracy for Sale is about trying to illustrate that bigger picture.
Given that we have donations laws in this country that allow enormous sums of money to flow from vested interests into the coffers of political parties, our democracy is severely compromised.
Ironically, as the case for a national ICAC is gaining momentum here in NSW, where our state ICAC has performed such valuable service, the Baird Liberal/National coalition government has seriously weakened it by its decision to replace the single commissioner by a triumvirate of commissioners.
This thereby forces the incumbent, Megan Latham, to re-apply for her own job.
Given that this comes after ICAC's Operation Spicer investigation into Liberal party fundraising before the 2011 state election ended the political careers of a number of Mr Baird's Liberal party colleagues, former Assistant Commissioner and current Chair of Transparency International Australia Anthony Whealy rightly said, “The perception will arise immediately that there's a very direct link between the two," he told ABC radio.
"It will look like payback from a vengeful government” (Sydney Morning Herald, November 16).
Quite.
