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Fairness and integrity are underlying principles of all good democracies, and the system of political donations in Australia fails on both counts.

How else are we to judge a model that allowed an estimated $7.5 million to flow into the coffers of our major political parties courtesy of ‘anonymous’ donations in the 2007-08 financial year?

According to government figures for that period, the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition received almost $30 million in donations that exceeded the legislated disclosure threshold of $10,500 and were therefore placed on the public record.

The government’s Electoral Reform Green Paper, published in December last year, contains research from 2004-05 showing that donations above the disclosure threshold accounted for about 80 per cent of all contributions. Applying this ratio to the $30 million in disclosed contributions during the last financial year, we are left with that staggering gap of around $7.5 million in donations that can never be traced to their source.

This is one of the major reasons we are seeing the ‘arms race’ of election spending in NSW and Australia going through the roof, without the requisite public scrutiny and the much-needed trail of accountability that shows who gave what, where and why.

Put simply, the disclosure threshold, currently indexed to $10,900, is morally and ethically too high. 

Think about it as ‘you the donor’.  Would you give $10,800 to a candidate without expecting something in return? And doesn’t this figure therefore deserve the widest possible scrutiny through a public declaration process?  In my view, it doesn’t pass the moral “pub test” of what is fair.  It is too high and is open to manipulation – real or perceived.

So what is a fair figure?

Proposed laws, oddly voted down in the Senate, would have reduced this public scrutiny figure to $1000, a much more acceptable benchmark of accountability for both donors and candidates alike. 

Even this, however, is open to abuse and it is therefore a ‘live’ question to ask why we have a benchmark at all. If you receive money from any source, shouldn’t you, the individual or the political party, have to declare it and be open to public scrutiny as an elected policy maker? 

The flaws in the existing system are further exposed when you consider that donations to the individual state and territory branches of a political party are considered separately for the purpose of applying the disclosure threshold. In other words, a party can accept donations of $10,900 from a single backer to all nine of its state, territory and national branches without having to disclose a cent. That’s almost $100,000!

To make matters worse, the system grossly disadvantages non-party aligned candidates, who may receive just 1/9th of this figure - $10,901 - before it needs to be declared.

On the issue of fairness, it is also a case of ‘one rule for some, a different rule for others’ when we look at the timing of declarations. 

A candidate who represents a political party at the ballot box does not have to declare his/her expenditure until an annual calculation by the party that rolls all expenditure into one statement.  By comparison, an election candidate who chooses to remain unaligned from the major political parties has 15 weeks after polling day to declare, in full, all expenditure. 

This means in last year’s federal by-elections in Gippsland, Mayo, and Lyne, all unaligned candidates have now fully complied and declared their election expenditure figures. 

By comparison, the figures for the ‘heavy-hitters’ in the major political parties, suspected to be in the millions, remain a mystery, and will more than likely be lost in global accounting by their parties. 

For the dollars in question, surely local communities – subjected to blanket television adverts at $500 a pop and direct mailouts every second day at a cost of $20,000 per round – have a right to know how much was spent and, more importantly, the trail as to where this money has come from and why. Until that right is met, cynicism of political processes will remain high, and our democracy will be weaker due to its inherent unfairness.

The good news is that reform is on the table, with the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2009 scheduled for debate in the Senate this week. The bad news is that this bill, which would reduce the donation disclosure threshold to $1000, is currently being blocked in the Senate by the Liberal Party, the National Party, and Families First. 

Anyone who gives a damn about a better democracy should be asking them why.

With the change of Federal Government in November 2007, we saw a pretty substantial change in policy in regard to the government’s view on taxpayers money being spent on privately-delivered technical training in secondary schools.

This meant changes to the way the Australian Technical Colleges (ATCs), in Port Macquarie, Taree and 23 other locations around Australia, were funded.

In Port Macquarie, one of my first jobs as the new MP for Lyne was to take a delegation to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard to confirm the future of the Port Macquarie ATC site.

We wanted to see it continue as a technical and trade delivery location and a secondary school, under a different name – the Newman Senior Technical College - and under a new funding structure, with the diocese of Lismore Catholic Church taking an even greater financial role in the delivery of courses and maintenance of the facility.

This is all fine. BUT seven months into the job, we remain unresolved about the Taree ATC site and it remains one of only a couple of unresolved sites throughout Australia.

Due to both its location in the industrial area of Taree, and the era of contestability that we increasingly are entering in the delivery of vocational education training, finding the lead agency who wants to take on a $2.2 million building is proving problematic. Reason? A building is not necessarily an asset but more a liability in a world of education where flexibility and the cheapest delivery models are key.

On this broader issue of contestability, it is very hard to both conceptualise this and support it, and the reasons why are showing themselves with TAFE, schools and business all doing ‘business case modelling’ on the ATC site in Taree and all coming back with a ‘it doesn’t stack up’ answer.

So the policy extension of this model for all to consider is the school of the future being the Tarago. I say this because it is cheaper and more efficient to drive into towns around Australia, rent a bit of space, undercut prices for delivery of courses, make a nice little profit, and drive off to the next town to do it all again.

No campus experience whatsoever because, quite literally, the future, if it is going to all come down to ‘price’ and ‘100% contestability’ and this is heading towards no campuses whatsoever.

So in this context, due both to its size and location, and because of the era of ‘price is everything’ that we live in when talking education services, it is hard to find a purely educational future for the Taree ATC building.

It looks like most are agreeing the future of the site is not as a school.

We also have most agreeing that the other option come January 1, 2010 - of a padlock going on the door, a For Sale sign going up, a ‘firesale’ occurring and all money returning to the Treasury coffers - is the worst case outcome.

Hopefully the answer can be found in between these two extremes. And the good news is that there is a growing recognition by the ‘powers that be’ that the answer for the building may not lie purely in the education field, and that so long as an arm of Commonwealth Government service delivery is being met, we might be able to argue the case for ‘best-use’ for the future.

So everyone out there, it’s time for the thinking caps and all good ideas will be welcomed. We have this month to resolve it or a decision to close it will be made.

I have heard of a few ideas – a communications centre, an innovation centre, a Home and Community care location for the delivery of predominantly aged care services. All good ideas, but none that on their own really satisfy that ‘best-use’ question.

Please give it some thought, and throw in some good solid ideas if you have any. Time is running out.

I have often wondered at the name of our electorate.

It was named after Sir William Lyne who was Premier of New South Wales from 1899-1901.

But to the best of my knowledge, he never even visited the Mid-North Coast of NSW. Nor did he seem to have family or political ties to the region.

If that’s so, is it worth considering a name change for the electorate? There are certainly more pressing political issues but if this is something you feel passionate about, let me know.

That way, when the next redistribution comes around, we can make a case for a new name.

Send me an email or leave comments on my online forum or blog.

And if anyone has more information on Lyne, and his connection with this region, it would be great to hear from you.