Donations conflict of interest involving PM

Les Taylor, chairman of the Whitehouse Institute of Design, provided the Prime Minister’s daughter with a fee-free education and has donated more than $12,000 to the NSW Division of the Liberal Party. The Liberal party recently announced that Government money can now be acccessed by private higher education providers such as the Whitehouse Institute of Design. Mr Abbott should now reveal if he was lobbied by the chairman of the Whitehouse Institute of Design, Les Taylor, to open up Federal Government funding to private higher education providers.

I have long called for donations reform to end the perception that political donations are linked to political decisions. The decision to make public universities compete with private, for profit education companies like the Whitehouse Institute of Design for Government funding will have disastrous consequences.