Battle of transparency

BY ROJE ADAIMY

The race for Sydney’s top job has heated up this week, as two of the leading candidates battle it out over whose campaign will be more transparent.
Both the current Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Labor’s candidate Meredith Burgmann revealed to The City News their plans to win the trust of voters in the lead up to the City of Sydney Council’s election in September.
In an unprecedented move, former president of the NSW upper house, Meredith Burgmann, said that she was not going to accept any donations from Labor Party headquarters, following the spate of claims of inappropriate associations between party members and developers.
Dr Burgmann said she will only collect money for her campaign through community fundraisers.
“We want to show that we’re a new type of inner-city Labor,” she said. “We won’t be getting any donations from the Labor Party, developers or from the alcohol industry, so we will be raising our own money . . . [from] a series of community lunches, dinners, and trivia nights.”
Dr Burgmann also said she was willing to publicly disclose any donations over $200 on a weekly basis.
In response, Clover Moore told The City News she was prepared to disclose donations to her team, above $200, on the internet before the election. This was despite having told The Sydney Morning Herald last week that she didn’t know “if it’s physically possible because we don’t have the paid workers that the major parties, including the Greens, have”.
It comes after reforms to the NSW political donation system passed through both the lower and upper house of parliament last week.
The Election Funding Amendment (Political Donations and Expenditure) Bill requires political parties and candidates to report donations every six months instead of every four years.
It also stipulates that election candidates will no longer manage their own campaign funds, but must have an ‘official agent’ to control campaign finances. For political parties and their State election candidates, and members of Parliament, will have their ‘party agents’ take over the position.
“Requirements for political party central offices to manage donations will not increase transparency or accountability, as most donations already go to the central party office and concerns about the undue influence remain,” Ms Moore said.
Even though Ms Moore is part of a registered political party, the Clover Moore Independent Team, she said the new laws won’t favour her because she will not be directing donors to give money to a head office.
“This is not the same as unknown State or Federal head office party apparatchiks managing donations for a state or nation-wide structure, and then effectively leaving local candidates to claim they know nothing about the donations,” she said.
Under the amendments, individual councillors must also disclose donations made directly to them ‘ and not their party ‘ when relevant planning and development applications are lodged with their councils.
Developers with applications before councils must also disclose any donation of $1000 or above to individual councillors only, and are not legally obliged to reveal how much they’ve donated to a councillor’s party.
Greens Councillor Chris Harris said that this has created a loophole, while the laws in general fall well short of what his party wanted.
“People need to know who is influencing the candidates they are voting for before they vote, not after,” Cr Harris said. “All they have done is to make direct donations to councillors the responsibility of the candidate ‘ that is, that the candidate can’t vote.”
The NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, said the amendments will become law before the local government elections on September 13.