The Victorian Greens say Labor\u2019s donation laws have been dodgy from the beginning, designed to entrench power for the major parties by protecting Labor and the Liberals\u2019 political slush funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It comes as the Allan Labor Government has finally conceded defeat in the face of a High Court challenge and announced it will amend Victoria\u2019s donation laws to allow other parties and independents to establish nominated entities and place new limits on how funds can be transferred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The current laws, introduced by the Andrews Labor Government in 2018, have always been a \u201cmajor-party stitch-up\u201d, with special carve-outs for Labor, the Liberals and Nationals to access tens of millions in \u201cpolitical slush funds\u201d while locking out independents and minor parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Greens say that if Labor were serious about fixing the system, it would scrap the slush funds entirely, not just tweak the rules to protect the advantages of the major parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, Labor still refuses to abolish group voting tickets, which allow backroom preference deals to determine upper house results rather than voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With yet another upper house inquiry handing down its report today, the Greens say Labor has kicked this reform down the road for so long it has finally reached the end of the road, and that abolishing group voting tickets must be part of any genuine fix to Victoria\u2019s electoral system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the Leader of the Victorian Greens, Ellen Sandell:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLabor\u2019s donation laws were dodgy from day one. This has always been a major-party stitch-up designed to protect Labor and Liberals\u2019 political slush funds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLabor and the Liberals rigged the rules so they could access tens of millions in slush-fund money while everyone else was locked out. It\u2019s dodgy, and Victorians are sick of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLabor is only changing these laws because it was dragged to the High Court – and even now, it\u2019s offering a patch-up job to preserve its own advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf Labor were serious about fairness, it would scrap the slush funds and abolish group voting tickets so Victorians can have confidence that our elections work for voters, not backroom deals or major parties desperately clinging to power\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Victorian Greens say Labor\u2019s donation laws have been dodgy from the beginning, designed to entrench power for the major parties by protecting Labor and the Liberals\u2019 political slush funds. It comes as the Allan Labor Government has finally conceded defeat in the face of a High Court challenge and announced it will amend Victoria\u2019s … Continue reading “Labor\u2019s donation laws dodgy from the beginning, Greens call to shut down major-party slush funds”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36345,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36344\/revisions\/36345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}