Labor senator Sam Dastyari is drawing attention for accepting money from interests linked to the Chinese government. But Dastyari isn’t a single bad apple -- he’s a sign that Australian political donations policies are rotten to the core.

Parties have been scrambling to condemn the acceptance of dubious political donations across the aisle, but no one’s hands are clean. Liberal Party has also drawn fire for accepting more than a million dollars since 2008 from the company Parakeelia for vaguely described “services”.

Shady campaign finance policies stand in the way of transparency and accountability in Australian politics. We need our elected officials to be accountable to average Australians, not the corporations and foreign individuals who finance their campaigns. We need to get our democracy back on track -- and that starts with cleaning up our political donations policies.  

Tell Parliament to clean up Australia’s political donations policies.

Countless flaws in political donations policies make the process far from transparent. Election donors have up to 15 weeks after polling day to file returns for their contributions -- meaning it takes months for us to find out what individuals and companies are meddling in the political process.

Dastyari has resigned amidst the Chinese payment scandal. But what’s really scary is that Dastyari likely never broke any laws -- which goes to show that the law itself must be changed to prevent further corruption.

Political donations policy is a betrayal of the public’s trust. We can’t allow lawmakers to be bought out by corporations and foreign entities. We need to come together now to demand the transparent, accountable government we deserve.