The feeble political excuses voters won't tolerate

Political parties don't pay MPs salaries or the other financial benefits that go with the job; taxpayers do.

Nor can political parties cast a vote in an election. That privilege belongs to individual voters.

Why then do so many MPs fail to respond to the people's clearly stated wishes, especially when those wishes stretch back decades?

It seems that the growing number of independents are listening.

It is why they are doing all they can to improve integrity, transparency and accountability in public life.

While not exhaustive, policy areas in which the majority of MPs have prioritised party and personal interests over the interests of the people include truth in advertising, the federal political donations regime and freedom of information.

Even though "pork barrelling" is not a public policy, it is a common practice that is embraced by the major parties yet derided by the community.

Thanks largely to the independents, these integrity related policies and practices have been placed on the political agenda.

But what meaningful actions will the majority of MPs take to remedy the situation?

At the risk of stating the obvious, all of these policy areas have been seriously neglected by the Federal Parliament for far too long.

The fact that they have, demonstrates that the vested interests of too many MPs have been continually leapfrogging over the public interest.

It is difficult not to be totally disenchanted with politics when one considers that MPs are preparing to debate whether they should be allowed to continue to be untruthful to the Australian people, especially in the lead up to elections.

At the core of the truth in advertising debate is the word "truth".

Too many MPs have granted themselves permission to be untruthful in relation to political advertising, a permission they have denied other institutions.

Businesses, large and small, are not allowed to lie when advertising.

If they do, there are independent organisations to whom the public can lodge a complaint, and these institutions have been granted the power to investigate and levy fines to recalcitrant businesses.

There is no justifiable reason why political advertising should be exempted from the same level of accountability.

Reforming the current unacceptable federal political donations scheme is another policy area being debated by MPs.

At long last, it seems that some significant changes may be introduced.

But what took MPs so long to recognise the obvious; that the current scheme has been hopelessly inadequate for decades.

The Parliament's disinterest in reforming the political donations regime meant that extremely wealthy individuals have been able to spend millions of dollars in an effort to influence the outcome of elections.

The Parliament has the power to place a cap on the amount of money any one individual, company, lobbying group and trade union can donate to a political campaign before it has to be publicly declared.

The Parliament has the power to bring in genuine real-time disclosure on political donations - within 24 to 48 hours of receipt of a donation.

The Parliament has the power to place a cap on how much can be spent by any person or organisation in an election campaign.

So why doesn't the Parliament act?

Is it yet another case of personal and party interests leapfrogging over the public interest?

At its core, pork barrelling has elements of dishonesty as the practice misuses public funds for party political purposes.

The unacceptable mantra by major parties to try to justify this unethical behaviour is to claim that other political parties engage in the same practice.

This feeble excuse will no longer be tolerated by voters.

The term freedom of information is a misnomer. Stifling freedom of information is a much more accurate term.

We have a democratic political system which is supposed to deliver transparency and accountability to the people. It doesn't.

Public servants (the administrative arm of government) redact, delay and/or deny access to information more often than necessary.

Of course, there are some security related issues that should not be made public at a particular point in time, but as the Fourth Estate has repeatedly revealed, too many redactions and refusals are not warranted.

Change is required.

Members of Parliament belonging to the major political parties need to reorder their priorities.

They need to remember that public office is a public trust and that the role of MP is first and foremost to serve the people not the party.

If they don't, the number of independents that champion reform in these and other integrity-related areas will increase; for the day of the "rusted on voter" is a thing of the past.