2017-02-11
The Greens will ban all political donations from property developers and corporations, call for real time declaration of donations over $1000, limit the influence of lobbyists, protect whistleblowers and strengthen the freedom of information process in the biggest policy package to clean up politics this election.
The Greens call for an end to backroom corporate influence from companies that who sought to pollute and destroy our environment, as well strengthening the system of transparency so the community can see businesses cases for all projects.
Greens candidate for North Metro Alison Xamon said The Greens would start by introducing real time declarations of political donations over $1000 and a ban on corporate donations full stop.
“Western Australian voters deserve to know who was greasing the hands of politicians, who in turn stood up in Parliament as a mouth-piece to those corporations,” she said.
“We all deserve to know who is wielding their influence through political donations and begin the process of cleaning up politics once and for all.”
The Greens would also call for the increase in funding to the Office of the Information Commissioner and more FOI staffers within each government department to deal with the release of contracts that governments attempted to keep secret.
“The distribution of power is weighted heavily in favour of the Government not to release information, and by claiming something is cabinet or commercial in confidence keeps voters and tax payers in the dark,” she said.
“It is then incumbent on the community or opposition political parties to spend their time and resources to reveal this kind of information and sometimes that process can take years.
“This is the complete opposite of transparency and the onus needs to be reversed so that all documents are automatically made public and the Government should have to make the case for secrecy.”
The Greens Not For Sale policy will:
Donations
- Implement bans on political donations from for-profit corporations, including developers.
- Implement declaration of donations over $1000 in real time.
Limiting Lobists' Interests
The Greens WA will introduce legislation that will:
- Expand the definition of ‘lobbyist’ so that includes for–profit corporations and organisations employing in-house lobbyists, many of whom are in a position to influence government policy.
- Expand disclosure requirements to include, in a timely manner: when the lobbying occurred; who stood to benefit; who was lobbied; the subject matter of the lobbying; and the meeting outcome.
- Adopt meaningful sanctions with appeal rights to apply to MPs, public servants and lobbyists.
- End the revolving door between politics and big business, by prohibiting ex-Ministers from working in a role, which exploits their special knowledge or connections gained as a Minister for a period of five years.
Protect Whistleblowers
- Expand the categories of people who can make disclosures to include former employees, people on work experience, contractors and subcontractors.
- Ensure the capacity to escalate a disclosure should the disclosure not be acted on in an appropriate or timely way.
- Ensure support is made available to disclosers, including counselling and legal support.
- Criminal indemnity provisions to be made more flexible in order to encourage disclosure.
- Ensure disclosers can not be penalised or pursued if they choose to withdraw or not pursue the complaint.
- Protection to be made available for people in the public sector.
- Enabling disclosure to third parties such as journalists or MP’s (subject to limiting provisions); and
- Ensuring disclosers are protected from reprisals or detriment.
Strengthen FOI Povisions
- Change the onus of proof, so that information is assumed to be available to the public unless certain criteria restricts its release.
- Move legislation that will require all government departments to proactively release information including their budgets and contracts, publishing the information in an easily searchable format.
- Advocate for more FOI staffers within each government department.
- Support transparent, accountable government that includes the public having easy access to information in the public interest.