Michael Ronaldson is a Liberal Party senator from Victoria and Shadow Minister of State.
I would call him the Hon. Michael Ronaldson except that he, along with his Coalition cronies, has acted most dishonourably of late in the Senate.
On Wednesday 11 March 2009 "Ronno" (as he supposedly likes to be called) helped the Coalition and Senator Fielding vote down the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008 [2009].
This is a bill which would fulfil the Rudd Labor Government's election promise to bring back a lower limit for the reporting of political donations and, end the farce which saw the former Howard Government allow donors to make donation of up to $9,999 without those donations being publicly disclosed.
Consequently the number of disclosed donations to political parties started to fall away and confusion reigned.
Ronaldson in a remarkable piece of verbal contortion chortles that Labor has only itself to blame for the Coalition blocking this bill.
It won't be long before he adds the bill failure to the list of alleged broken Labor promises he constantly mentions on his own website.
I think that Senator Bob Brown's reply to the nonsense put forward by Ronaldson bears quoting here:
I listened carefully to Senator Ronaldson's plea that the legislation not be supported until we get comprehensive legislation into the parliament, but that is not the example that was set by the Howard government over the previous 12 years. In fact, piecemeal legislation which increased the ability of donors to the political system to be hidden and not identifiable was the order of the day. It is a good thing that we now have legislation that is reversing that order.
We look forward to consequent legislation in this parliament, and I hope that will be this year, to clean up the electoral processes in Australia, and that means quite massive and comprehensive changes to electoral laws.
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