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Ingram blasts Liberal Party’s secret donations pushThe Independent member for Gippsland East, Craig Ingram, has condemned the Federal Liberal Party’s calls to raise the threshold on secret political donations, as reported in Tuesday’s "Age" newspaper this week. By Craig Ingram - 11th August 2005 - Back to News In evidence presented to a Federal Parliamentary Inquiry, Federal Liberal Party director, Brian Loughnane, called for an increase in the amount that individuals or companies could secretly donate to political party or candidates.
"If implemented the changes would allow individuals, organisations or companies to hide up to $89,991 in donations to a political party without any public accountability or disclosure," Mr Ingram said.
"This further highlights the problems with a political system that is totally dependent on political donations without adequate accountability measures.
"It’s time to fix the money dependence and transparency issues that surround political donations whilst some voters still trust some politicians.
"The Liberal Party is out of step on this issue with the public who would like greater accountability and disclosure - not less.
"I have been endeavouring for some years to change the disclosure and accountability mechanisms for political parties, but the political parties are so dependent on political donations that they refuse to see the risks in the current unethical practices.
"The associated entities provisions allow millions of untraceable dollars to be donated to political parties without any public scrutiny.
"If individuals and companies do not want their support for a political party or candidate publicly known, then we should question why and what strings are attached to that support.
"All parties are equally to blame for supporting a system that promotes deception and at the worst could allow corruption and hide donations from organisations in exchange for policy legislative or political bias.
"The current disclosure laws are a joke and its no wonder the public is sceptical about the honesty of some of their elected representatives," Mr Ingram concluded.
Source: http://gippsland.com/ Published by: news@gippsland.com
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