As a new law threatens to reveal the Greens and Teals’ dirty little secret, PETER VAN ONSELEN reveals what Australia’s most saintly politicians DON’T want you to know

Are the Greens and the crossbenchers who claim that transparency and integrity are at the heart of their reason for going to Parliament in the first place hearing themselves?

In recent days they have made self-serving arguments against the proposed electoral reforms, which the major parties are expected to jointly support.

The reforms include caps on how much money wealthy individuals can donate, caps on the amount candidates can spend in individual electorates to prevent the equivalent of an arms race, and a $90 million cap on what a party can spend in elections — actually less than the major parties are currently spending.

The proposed new laws also include lower disclosure thresholds for donations, increasing transparency of who makes political donations in the first place.

So the rich will not be able to hide behind anonymity while using their money to influence election outcomes – and the extent to which they can use their wealth at all will be limited.

The bill will further improve transparency by also increasing the speed and frequency with which donation disclosures must be made.

Right now we have the absurd situation where donations are made, but you don’t find out the details of who gave what to whom until many months later, long after elections have been won and lost.

In other words, what is broadly proposed will result in much greater transparency and much less money poured into campaigns by the wealthy.

Teal Kylea Tink claimed the major parties were ‘scared’ with the policy and warned reform would ‘not stop the rot’

Green Senate leader Larissa Waters (left) fired a warning shot, saying that if it only serves the major parties, “it’s a mistake and not a reform.” Independent ACT Senator David Pocock (right) said: ‘What appears to be happening is a conspiracy between major parties’

Anyone who donates more than $1,000 to a political party, as opposed to $16,000 under current rules, will have to make it public. And how much they can donate will be limited.

Yet the Greens and Teals quickly condemned the proposed new laws, labeling them a ‘stitch-up’, ‘outrageous’ and ‘a tort, not a reform’.

They have lost their collective minds after discovering that Labour’s proposal could well secure the support of the opposition.

I had to double check who exactly was criticizing what before I even started this column.

Because I had assumed – wrongly – that these important transparency measures, which root out the influence of the rich, must have been proposed by the virtue-signalling Greens or the corruption-fighting Teals, in a joint effort between several banks to bring the major parties closer to accountability .

Fool me more.

The bill, aimed at cleaning up a rotten system, is being introduced by Labor and opposed by a growing cabal of crossbenchers.

You wonder what they have to hide. Simply put, the Greens and Teals protest too much on this issue.

It is thought that Labor is trying to eliminate major political donors such as Clive Palmer

Another potential target of the laws is businessman and Teal financier Simon Holmes à Court

The Greens have received huge donations in the past, in contrast to their irregular calls to tighten donation rules (Greens leader Adam Bandt and Senator Mehreen Faruqi are pictured)

The major parties have long complained about the influence that people like Simon Holmes à Court exert behind the scenes among the Teals.

And we know that the Greens have in the past accepted huge donations from the wealthy, in contrast to their irregular calls to tighten donation rules.

Now that tangible changes have been proposed, these bastions of virtue are running away from reforms that will curb the dark art of political donations.

The Labor government is not even aiming for these transparency rules to come into effect immediately. It will not be a quick power play before the next elections, designed to gain the upper hand.

They aim for implementation by 2026 so that everyone has enough time to absorb and understand the changes before preparing for them.

Don’t get me wrong: no deal has been struck between Labor and the Coalition yet. I can imagine that the opposition wants to go through the laws with a fine-toothed comb.

As it should be, because it is certainly not beyond Labor to include hidden one-party advantages in the proposed draft, which would create loopholes that only the unions can benefit from, putting the coalition at an electoral disadvantage for years to come.

But barring such baked-in ploys that stall a deal to get these proposed laws implemented, the crossbench should offer their support, not cynical opposition, to what is being advocated.

They may even be able to offer something valuable to include in the package.

Not doing so exposes their utter hypocrisy and outright false commentary about being in politics to ‘clean things up’.