The Coalition revisits 1972-75 and thinks voters won't notice

The Federal Liberals and Nationals are nothing if not predictable.
Today in the Senate they revisited the tactics used to destabilise another duly-elected Labor federal government in the 1970s.
If anything was needed to confirm an intention to wreck and spoil, yesterday's Hansard offered ample proof.

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008 was a case in point and, although Labor's Senator Faulkner made as much political capital as he could about the Coalition move to take this bill off the current agenda he was more right than wrong when he said:
"Today we see the true colours of the coalition. I particularly
want to concentrate on the decision of the opposition
to block the Commonwealth Electoral
Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures)
Bill 2008. To delay the bill by more than 12 months
reveals, on the one hand, all the opposition’s hypocrisy
and willingness to sacrifice the health of our democracy
on the alter of partisan politics. On the other hand,
the government is committed to a transparent and accountable
electoral system. To achieve this, we have
introduced the bill that I have mentioned. This bill contains
five urgent measures to address critical weaknesses
in the act’s current funding and disclosure regime.
These new measures include ensuring all donations
over $1,000 to political parties and candidates are
subject to proper public scrutiny and that donations are
reported in a more timely manner.
The bill also bans overseas and anonymous donations
and prevents political parties and candidates from
making a profit from public funding. These measures
are straightforward, they are positive, and they ought to
be uncontroversial. But the opposition, under Dr Nelson,
want to use their Senate majority to block these
necessary and urgent reforms to send them to a committee
until, at the earliest, the financial year after
next—in other words, to send this bill into legislative
limbo. They want one whole year—a minimum 12
months—to pretend to look at this simple bill. This
charade clearly shows their contempt for our electoral
system and their determination to turn their backs on
any effort to clean up the system. It proves that the opposition
clearly do not support transparency and accountability
of our electoral laws. This proves the opposition
do not want the Australian public to know who
gives how much money to which party.
The decision to block this bill raises two questions
for Dr Nelson. The first is: does Dr Nelson honestly
think that less accountability, less transparency, less
integrity benefits our democracy? The second is: what
do Dr Nelson and the opposition have to hide? Clearly,
the answer to the second question is a lot of money ..."