“Australia's laissez-faire approach to political funding has not served it well and has resulted in serious threats to the integrity and fairness of the political process.”

I’d put it somewhat more strongly; the very concept of political donations sits in direct contradiction to democracy. Donations are afterall a form of bribery, pure and simple.

They need to be outrightly banned. Political parties need to be funded entirely from neutral sources…..or as neutral as we can make them.

Rudd will tinker around the edges of the donations regime and tighten up some of the more outrageous aspects, but he won’t tamper with the concept of big and powerful vested interests making huge donations that significantly sway political decision-making in their favour.

The reason we have the current situation is because the Electoral Commissioners of Australia (State and federal) are gutless and have been neutered by the major parties.

Simple electoral reform is in their hands.

Candidate nominates and pays set fee.
Electoral commissioner prepares website for each candidate. (Uploads unlimited.)

Electoral commissoner prepares a flier for all households that details the electorate, polling locations, how to vote (not who to vote!)and gives a run down of each candidate from a text the candidate provides (to a limit of X hundred words).

A public advertisement in the local paper detailing the above is also provided by the Electoral commission.

These details are provided in numerous large print info sheets at the polling booths.

Electronic advertising is prohibited.

Posters and voting handouts are prohibited, especially on election day.

let's give this a try!

As someone who has stood as an independent candidate in the federal election with little funding, I can't see election caps working in the long term. Crooked politicians will always find a way to get funded. I do support full disclosure of amounts over say $500.

For me a bigger issue is the way taxpayers (ie not via donations) funded $47 MILLION to the big 4 political parties being 97% of all money paid at the 2007 Federal election.

For what purpose? If the $49 Million was used on something else would our politicians be of a much lower quality?