Charlie Caruso

Charlie Caruso

Citizen Journalist and author/editor of Understanding Y, who obsesses over the idea of re-engineering the political system, Charlie was head of global growth for MiVote, is an avid #auspol Tweeter and passionate about political disruption and improving the way we make decisions in Australia. "Right now, we’re all on a plane, and we've realised the pilot is drunk. The election is our opportunity to get the drunk pilot out of the cockpit and hand over to one that’s flown the plane before and can get us down safely," she said.
Charlie Caruso
What I am REALLY interested in is re-engineering a new kind of plane that doesn't allow drunk pilots to even get into the cockpit. One that requires a new kind of pilot, new kind of pilot training, more fuel efficient and goes longer, feels better etc. You’ll hear a lot from me on this, once #ausvotes2019 is over. Disclaimer - I’ve been a member of the Liberals, Labor, Greens, and have preferenced the Independents and minor/micro parties almost exclusively. I don’t see political colours, but I keep an eye on the actions and try to fight against the dysfunction across the political rainbow.

Charlie Caruso (@CharliCaruso) interviews Kate Griffiths (@_kgriffiths) on political donations in Australia for the latest edition of the NoFibs podcast.

Kate Griffiths is a researcher at the Grattan Institute, who, along with some of her colleagues, published several articles on The Conversation about political donation reform.

Who’s in the room? Access and influence in Australian politics is the report by Danielle Wood and Kate Griffiths that uncovered how businesses with the most at stake in government decisions lobby harder and get more access to senior ministers.

The big loophole in the federal system at the moment is that the donation doesn’t need to be disclosed unless it exceeds the threshold of $13,800 dollars, but multiple donations under that threshold don’t have to be declared by the party, so the party could receive multiple donations of $10,000 from the same donor, and that doesn’t need to be declared because they’re not required to aggregate donations.

Kate Griffiths

How are political parties using loopholes to hide political donations? How are political donations influencing policy outcomes in Australia? Would 100 per cent publicly-funded political campaigns even be viable? Charlie Caruso and Kate Griffiths explore some inconvenient truths about political donations in Australia.

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