‘Alternate facts’ not true
The release of financial disclosure returns for the political parties revealed that Greg and Sophie Mirabella donated $35,000 to Sophie’s 2016 Indi election campaign for the Liberal Party (The Border Mail, February 1).
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Political parties provide little detail of local donations and local campaign expenditure. This is in contrast to the detailed information that Independent member for Indi Cathy McGowan provided to the Australian Electoral Commission which they published in December 2016.
Donations to Cathy’s campaign totalled nearly $204,000 from 1490 donors, mostly from residents of Indi who attended numerous fundraising events.
Cathy and other independents proudly disclose their donations, as a result of being subject to much higher standards of transparency.
Although Mr Mirabella may like to invent ‘alternative facts’, the truth is that Cathy did not receive any donations from trade unions as he “believed”, or from corporates. And certainly no individual donations approaching the size of the Mirabella’s $35,000 (or the Prime Minister’s $1.75 million), for that matter.
Mr Mirabella also says that the Liberals were “outspent by Ms McGowan’s volunteer donations”.
We don’t know this because the Liberal party, unlike Cathy’s campaign, won’t tell the public what they spent in Indi.
What we do know is they ran and staffed a campaign office in Wangaratta after the 2013 election which cost about $100,000 per year. Add this to all their other costs of running a long campaign, including expensive TV ads which ran over many months, and I don’t think the Liberal party would have seen much change from $500,000.
The Age editorial of February 2 stated that at least half the money – more than $70 million – given to the Liberal and Labor parties before the recent election is untraceable, with “only 13 per cent of the Liberal Party’s income and 21 per cent of Labor’s income clearly attributed to specific donors”.
Major reform of political donations’ law in Australia is long overdue.
Phil Haines, campaign manager for Cathy McGowan 2013, 2016
A seasonal approach
I think a different approach needs to be taken when it comes to green bins. My idea is that the green bins are good at the moment in this weather – spring and summer are months where there is a lot of green waste, more so than the cooler months.
It would seem to make sense that in those cooler months the green waste could be collected once a fortnight, rather than every week.
It would also make sense that houses would have a full-size green bin while smaller households like units have a smaller green bin.
Yellow bins are fine as it is. Red bins should be collected every week.
Walter Turner, Wodonga
Another shameful chapter
I’ve read about it. I’ve looked at it, and I’ve thought about it and I am convinced that future generations will judge our treatment of refugees on offshore islands as one of the Australia’s most shameful black spots.
It will be placed along some of the other things in our history of which we are ashamed and we never mention on Australia Day, like, for example: genocide of Tasmanian Aborigines; the riots of Lambing Flat; blackbirding; the stolen generation; the lads from Liverpool and deaths in custody.
Obviously there are no easy solutions to the refugee problem as other countries will attest, but ours must be one of the nastiest and I don’t want my great grandkids to think I supported it. We are better than this.
Len Shefford, Thurgoona
Letter of the week
The winner of the letter of the week is Trish Carter, of Wodonga. You can collect your prize from the offices of The Border Mail at 1 McKoy Street, Wodonga.