John Howard says there is no need to ban political donations from trade unions or corporations.

The former prime minister says the only thing that needs to be fixed is more timely disclosure of donations, because voters have to wait far too long to see who is donating to whom.

Just days after the Labor senator Sam Dastyari resigned from Labor’s frontbench amid questions about donations from a wealthy Chinese businessman, Howard said the whole political class in Australia had been “panicked” about the donations issue.

He said he was “completely at odds” with the positions taken by Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten on the need for political donation reform.

“I am not against foreign donations, I don’t believe in banning corporate donations, I don’t believe in banning trade union donations, so therefore I’m the odd man out in this whole debate,” Howard told Sky News on Sunday.



“The one big change that’s needed is more timely disclosure of donations. Transparency is the key.



“It seems as if we are, as a collective political class, saying federal politics is so potentially corrupt that we’ve got to insulate ourselves against undue financial influence. In all the years I was in federal politics I did not see any significant evidence of corruption.

“We bewail the fact that people don’t respect politicians. Well, you won’t win respect if you, by implication, admit you’re capable of being bribed by the size of a donation.

“So I am completely at odds with what Tony Abbott said, what I hear Malcolm saying, what I hear Bill Shorten saying. I think transparency is the key. You can debate as to whether it should be disclosed in 24 hours, 24 days, 24 weeks but it’s far too long now.”

Turnbull, Abbott and other Liberals have been calling for only individuals to be allowed to donate to political parties, in effect banning union, foreign and corporate donations.

On Thursday, while travelling in Laos, Turnbull said he had argued for many years that “ideally, donations to political parties should be limited to people who are on the electoral roll – voters”.

“I would like, if we can manage it, financial participation in the election process to be limited to those people who can vote and that’s where we should get to,” he said.

After his near-death election loss, Turnbull has also been seeking to widen the reform conversation to include spending on political campaigns by third-party entities, including unions and GetUp.

Last week Abbott said: “We need to look long and hard at restricting donations to real people on the electoral roll.”

He told Fairfax Media: “To that end, there should be no union donations, company donations or foreign donations.”

Labor backs a ban on foreign donations but opposes a ban on union and corporate donations, which the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has warned the high court has already found is unconstitutional.