Ban big corporate donations to politicians

The Greens will get money out of politics by banning big corporate donations to politicians, candidates and political parties.

We'll stop vested interests, like the gambling, pokies and property industries, and fossil fuel corporations, from buying influence. Politicians should be working for you, not their corporate donors. 

Make political ads tell the truth

Victoria lacks laws to prevent candidates from getting elected on the basis of lies and misinformation.

The Greens will introduce South Australian-style Truth in Political Advertising Laws.

Give our anti-corruption body teeth to fight corruption

Victoria’s anti-corruption body, IBAC, doesn’t have the full powers it needs to properly investigate corruption.

Both the Liberals and Labor have worked together so IBAC cannot investigate the vast majority of corruption allegations, including in Victoria’s Big Build projects that diverted billions of public dollars.

State governments can also arbitrarily lower IBACs funding, meaning it isn’t resourced to properly investigate government corruption.

The Greens will give IBAC the power it needs to investigate all forms of corruption, hold open and public hearings, and provide it with consistent funding that cannot be cut by the government of the day.

Public services for people not profit

Labor and the Liberals have spent years selling off the public services we rely on to corporations. We end up paying more for worse services, because the need to make corporate profit comes at our expense.

Labor and the Liberals have sold off our electricity, roads, port, public housing land and even some hospitals – and now they want to sell off Melbourne Water. Even our drinking water isn't safe from privatisation.

At the same time, Victoria has the lowest-funded public schools and public housing in the country, with hospitals under strain, crumbling roads, breaking-down fire-trucks and underfunded mental health services. This is the result of choices Labor and the Liberals have made.

The Greens believe public services should work for the public, not corporate profit. In a society as wealthy as ours, we can properly fund good-quality public services for all if we make the big banks, gambling companies and big corporations pay their fair share of tax.

The Greens will:

• Introduce legislation to stop public assets being sold off.
• Bring road maintenance and electricity back into public hands, cutting costs and improving services by removing corporate profit.
• Tax the big banks, gambling companies and big corporations, so we can properly fund public schools, community health centres, public transport, homelessness and mental health services.

Cap election campaign spending and donations to local government campaigns

Right now, political parties can spend as much as they like on election campaigns. Which is bad news if they’re backed by billionaires like Clive Palmer or Gina Reinhardt.

The Greens will cap campaign spending, like they have in New South Wales and the ACT.

We have been key to securing donations caps in state politics, and the Greens will introduce caps to local government elections, so the local developer can’t fund getting the pro-developer candidate elected.

Politics should be determined by the quality of candidates and their policies, not the deepness of their pockets.

Full transparency: freedom of Information laws that actually work

Freedom of Information laws are broken and rather than fixing them, Labor has made FoI requests more expensive and even more impenetrable.

Information requests routinely take months or years to process, and documents are then heavily redacted with entire pages blacked out for dubious reasons.

Victorians are fed up with the dodgy deals, secret decisions and being kept in the dark about the government policies and programs that personally affect them.

The Greens will reform freedom of information laws so people can always obtain any information about themselves held by the government, along with all key reports, records and data relating to government decision making.

Read more

• The Greens plan: Local Government
• Explore our complete election policy platform
• How we'll pay for it