longweekend58 wrote on Jul 29
th, 2015 at 1:30pm:
Bam wrote on Jul 29
th, 2015 at 1:14pm:
longweekend58 wrote on Jul 29
th, 2015 at 11:59am:
Given that Australia's democracy is more robust that probably anybody on the planet except perhaps UK, Canada, USA and NZ, I take this report not very seriously. These complaints always come from labor supporters because they dont get as many donations and yet, the union movement is allowed to STEAL money from its members to support a labor party many dont even vote for. Let's see that being addressed first.
The LIBERALS have taken donations from the MAFIA when they were in government. It's not a problem with the Liberals, however; it's a problem with the system that allows direct donations to parties or individual politicians without sufficient accountability. Keeping
all political donations a state secret for 18 months is not in any way an open and transparent system.
Having political parties taking donations AND allowing them to keep sponging off the taxpayer for weeks during election campaigns is NOT a system worth defending. It's no different to Bronwyn Bishop's inappropriate use of a helicopter to attend a Liberal party fundraiser.
Party political fundraising should NOT be paid for by the taxpayers. Either we ban all donations to political parties, or we ban the taxpayer subsidies.
Having a high threshold for declarations, inconsistent rules that can be be easily circumvented and all the numerous loopholes that can be easily subverted is NOT a system that is open and transparent.
And you still think our system is robust? We need to clean up the political rorts. All of them. Bronwyn Bishop's helicopter ride is just the tip of an iceberg of rorts.
All hysteria aside, I dont have a problem with transparent donations. I do however have a problem with asserting that we have a corrupt democracy as a result. In the corruption index I beleive we rank #4 in the world. IN the democracy stability rankings we are also top four. Sure, there is always room for improvement but our democracy is not under threat nor corrupt. Bishops stupid stunt was a rort but was also noted and corrected. Robust, non-corrupt democracies are not free from crime or corruption. INstead they expose and correct them.
Corrupt? Yes, there's corruption.
Case in point - the Liberals took donations from the Calabrian Mafia in exchange for favours about 10 years ago. Don't deny it. It happened. The Mafia don't EVER give out money unless they are sure they can get value for it. The favour they got was Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone cancelling a deportation order against a senior Mafioso with a long criminal record that was issued by her predecessor, Philip Ruddock. The Mafia fought this deportation order for about four years until they could lobby a new Minister. Lobbying bought with Mafia cash donations.
I'm not asserting that Vanstone acted improperly on purpose, but she was definitely exploited.
Quote:I dont beleive we have a transparency problem with donations. And I am serious when I say that it is always Labor complaining about it and not from principle.
I'm not sure why you've got a beef with Labor complaining about the problems with the system when it's the Liberals that introduced the problems such as higher threshold for donations, and it's the Liberals that fight efforts to remove these problems every step of the way. The Liberals also take donations through front companies. This is highly questionable.
Quote:And as an aside, what do you think of the practice of unions taking MANDATORY deductions from employees pay to supper the ALP, especially in industries where unionism is effectively mandatory? I guess you are happy because it is transparent, but it is hardly ethical or fair.
No worse than any business actively seeking to reduce pay to staff so they can have more money to donate to the Liberals, or perhaps donating to the Liberals in the hope that the Liberals would introduce laws that allow pay cuts (eg: abolishing penalty rates).
The whole culture of donations in exchange for favours needs to be examined, not just the narrow focus on trade unions.