As this election year gets under way, we’ll go through an annual ritual that is supposed to enhance our faith in the political system. Except everyone knows it’s a sham.

Sure, there’s lots of useful information in the February disclosure of donations to political parties from the Australian Electoral Commission.

But we also know it’s very easy for a donor to retain anonymity. Parties and donors only need to declare donations over $13,000. By donating just under that amount to each state and territory branch a donor could give more than $100,000 and remain in the shadows.

And anyway the companies, unions and individuals whose generosity is reported all insist they are motivated by an altruistic desire to help the functioning of our democracy, and in no way by an expectation that they are buying influence or access to decision makers.

That may be true. Except we keep getting examples where it isn’t. Like the 2008 Wollongong council scandal in which donations were made in return for favourable development decisions. That led to a New South Wales ban on donations from property developers in 2009. But six years later the Independent Commission Against Corruption heard evidence that NSW Liberal figures circumvented the state ban by “washing” money through the federally controlled Free Enterprise Foundation.

The NSW premier, Mike Baird, has written to his federal colleagues asking that they work on a national system similar to the NSW laws, which include a $1,000 threshold for donations to be disclosed and caps on total allowable donations. National laws would mean the state laws could no longer be circumvented. That led to ... well, so far that’s led to absolutely nothing. Baird raised it at the dinner before the last Council of Australian Governments meeting in December, but he didn’t get far.

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that last year’s federal financial disclosures showed property developers and investors among the biggest donors to the major parties.

The truth is every political party knows the system has to change. The cost of election campaigns has increased beyond their capacity to pay. They are forced to effectively beg for funds and that leaves them potentially dangerously beholden to corporate interests and, in the case of the Labor party, to the union movement. But the fear that any change might advantage an opponent – and the risk of a public backlash against higher rates of public funding, which is the only possible funding source – has stymied reform for decades.

A former Liberal party president and treasurer, Shane Stone, recommended in 2007 that all corporate, trade union and third party donations be banned.

And Labor’s elder statesman John Faulkner warned for years that the cost of electioneering had created a campaigning “arms race”, “heightening the danger that fundraising pressures on political parties and candidates will open the door to donations that might attempt to buy access and influence”.

He said the current system was pernicious even if the donors weren’t actually demanding political favours.

“The perception of undue influence can be as damaging to democracy as undue influence itself,” he said in his Light on the Hill lecture in 2014.

“It undermines confidence in our processes of government, making it difficult to untangle the motivation behind policy decisions. Electors are left wondering if decisions have been made on their merits.”

There have been numerous parliamentary reviews, the latest set up in October at the urging of independent senator John Madigan. Its first act was to write to the government asking why there had been no response to the last inquiry, which was finalised in 2011.

The major parties came incredibly close to an agreement in the last parliament to increase public funding by $1 a vote (it is $2.62 for all parties or candidates that get more than 4% of the vote) and to reduce thresholds for declaring donations back down to $5,000. Tony Abbott had even signed the deal but after a backlash from his party room he reneged and it all fell apart.

Labor still supports a reduction in the disclosure threshold to $1,000, with caps on donations and campaign spending, extra public funding and nationally consistent laws.

The Greens have long championed change. Baird has the backing of other premiers.

And in the current parliament both major party leaders have something to gain from breaking the decades-long deadlock and actually agreeing on change.

'I don't care as long as the tax-payer doesn't have to pay for it'.

Exactly the right wing attitude that fosters the corrupt ' brown paper bag' thinking in the liberal party.

macman wrote on Jan 16^th, 2016 at 5:30am:

Why should my tax pay for anyone's election campaign?

In the lead-up to the 2004 election, Tony Madafferi organised a fundraiser for the Liberal party in Melbourne where Amanda Vanstone, who by then had replaced Ruddock as immigration minister, was speaking. He donated $15,000 to the Liberal party’s Millennium Forum at that event, Four Corners said.

In November 2005, Vanstone intervened in Frank Madafferi’s deportation case and had it overturned. She and other politicians involved in the decision stated it was prompted by humanitarian concerns for Madafferi’s family should he be deported, not any donations or lobbying efforts. A police report into the case found there was no suggestion that Vanstone had acted corruptly or inappropriately.

Swagman wrote on Jan 16^th, 2016 at 12:34pm:


I would prefer to pay for it knowing when these policy decisions are made its for the consumer and not for  powerful constituencies , how can you say with any conviction this is the case when you have these companies and individuals donating huge sums to political parties . I am no illusion its not the government of the day running any country.