Sarah Hanson-Young, Again !!!!

Last week, when Christian Porter was under attack for using a blind trust to help pay for his defamation case against the ABC, the former attorney-general and industry minister received some free advice on how to finance litigation.

It came from Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young who won $120,000 in damages when she was defamed by former senator David Leyonhjelm.

Hanson-Young told her Twitter followers on September 15: “FYI when I took legal action after suffering harassment in the parliament, I was able to do so with the support of a crowdfund.

Withholding that information served the public interest by eliminating any possibility that his donors would receive favoured treatment from the government.

Now consider Hanson-Young’s entry on the register of interests.

Last week the Greens senator gave the impression that all those who helped finance her legal action were listed on the register. The implication is that if she ever uses her position to reward those people the register makes it possible to hold her to account.

Compared to blind trusts, this method of avoiding the risk of conflicts is cumbersome and requires regular monitoring of the register. It breaks down altogether if the information on the register is inadequate.

Hanson-Young’s entry shows the senator has allowed a handful of financial backers to hide their identities behind obviously fake names such as “Phoenix The whippet girl” and “Poopy Head”.

Some of the names that appear on Hanson-Young’s register of financial backers are either blatantly fake or too obscure to provide any guide as to the donors’ true identities.

They include: A Non, John51884010, Mary W, Anna B, Buzz Rainbow wolf, Geoff CB, Anne5597418226387985, Xander B, M G, stef stef, Dave C, Bin H, Nikki, E T and Leanne W.

For the senator to view this as somehow superior to Porter’s blind trust is ludicrous This is not the case when politicians use blind trusts. By keeping politicians in the dark, they ensure there is no possibility that donors can buy influence with the beneficiaries.

There is nothing remotely novel about blind trusts. They are mentioned repeatedly in the statement of ministerial standards that was issued by Scott Morrison in August, 2018.

In 2007, when Kevin Rudd was federal Labor leader, he established a blind trust to take control of his family’ share trading.

Once the trustee took over, Rudd and his family had no say in buying or selling assets and were not told about any transactions.

While this protected Rudd, it also protected those on the other side of transactions that made money for Rudd’s trust. Even if those people subsequently received high honours from the government, they had the comfort of knowing it had nothing to do with deals that benefited Rudd.

Rudd’s trustee would have engaged in deals with unknown parties that generated profits but which were unknown to Rudd. There is little difference between this and what happened inside Porter’s blind trust.

Porter’s trustee assembled a legal fighting fund and kept Porter from knowing the identity of the donors. Both trusts generated financial benefits for politicians from unknown third parties.

Neither man did anything wrong. Yet Porter was hounded from office and Rudd was not.

From the perspective of defamed politicians, blind trusts and crowdfunding are both effective in raising money.

But the most important issue is their effectiveness in preventing the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Blind trusts do that admirably.Porter’s blind trust is ludicrous.

Her filing has compromised the effectiveness of the register as a method of preventing the appearance of a conflict of interest.

This an excerpt  by an opinion Piece in the Financial Review by Chris Merritt is vice-president of the Rule of Law Institute of Australia.

Since has been divorced since 2011  Hanson-Young has been single but now she has married Ben Oquist. No guessing where he is a director, that progressive think -tank  The Australian Institute, which  undertakes economic analysis with special emphasis on the role of the public sector as well as issues such as taxation, inequality, including gender inequality, poverty, privatisation, foreign investment and corporate power.  Right up her alley.