“Will it restore trust or entrench incumbents?”.

It would not restore trust in politicians. Nobody trusts politicians, and some version of the breed will always be “entrenched”. But, we shouldn't be paying them to do the appallingly bad job that they all do. If they want the job, they are the ones who should pay for it.

Unfortunately, there is no chance of getting back to the days (19th century-ish) when people of private means did the job for nothing. Now, politics is a life-long career, with practitioners doing whatever keeps them in the job.

Public funding of elections should be pared back to a bare minimum to cover costs.

But, the Greens are kidding themselves if they think money is the reason why they struggle to get 6% of the vote.

On donations, people should be able to voluntarily give money to whom they choose. It's the use of taxpayers’ money that is the problem.

And if one politician or party gets more donations than others for advertising what they will or won't do (the stuff they forget after they are elected) then it is up to voters to make a choice. Which brings us to the fact that the huge amounts of money involved in electioneering allows the mind-numbing, boring onslaught in the media and junk mail in letter boxes of rubbish that most voters know is BS anyway