Sometimes it is difficult to work out what is going on inside people’s brains. Tony Abbott has copped plenty of deserved flak over his ludicrous defence of the Liberal Party’s decision to solicit donations not for flood victims but so that the party can run a campaign against the government’s flood tax.
If his judgment has been found wanting, more questionable is the judgment of anyone who would dip into their hard-earned for a political party, when there are much important things to spend money on, such as children’s books or beer.
Abbott had the easiest of outs on this issue, and messed it up completely. He could and should have said that the Liberal Party had issued the appeal for donations under its own steam and that he had spoken to the people involved and ordered them, as leader, to set aside any money raised to be handed directly and entirely to the Queensland Flood Appeal.
The fact that Abbott chose to defend this low-rent can-rattling exposes the clubby, crooked culture which exists across the political divide when it comes to political donations.
There are some who would draw a distinction between large donations made to political parties by powerful corporations, and donations made by private individuals seeking to fly their particular ideological flag with the party of their choice. Whatever the case it is money that could and should be spent on more important things, or not spent at all.
The figures released this week by the Australian Electoral Commission around politician donations in the 2009-2010 financial year show that the entire system is still completely out of hand. It would be much better for our democracy if all donations were ruled illegal, both from corporations and individuals, save for charging annual membership fees from private citizens who are politically active.
Politicians might complain that this would damage our democracy, and limit their ability to stay in touch with their constituents and run informative local campaigns. This presupposes that the stuff they jam into our letterboxes at election time is informative, rather than high-gloss attempt to see how many times they can get their mugshot into a 16-page newsletter.
To the extent that any of this material is necessary, it would make much more sense to shift to a national and state-based funding system where public money is used to underwrite a sensible level of campaign spending by MPs. At the national level political parties would be forced to fund their own campaign advertising themselves, rather than relying on donations from the big end of town and cashed-up individuals.
The public might initially jack up about the cost of funding federal and state elections, but most people would be reasonable enough to see that it’s the only effective way to stamp out improper influence. It would also involve less money than is currently being generated through donations.
We’ve just been through staggering floods and a massive cyclone and the political debate is now framed around questions of revenue. There’s widespread concern as to whether we will have enough money to pay for the clean-up and repairs, whether a flood levy is the way to go, or whether as the Coalition is arguing, we should make savings elsewhere.
With this debate as a backdrop, it’s galling to reflect on the amount of cash that was blown on donations last year by groups of self-interested people who want a word in the ear of the minister of their choice. As the Government was wasting our money on taxpayer-funded advertising to defend the Resources Super Profit Tax, the mining industry responding by kicking in more than $21 million of its own cash, and handed hundreds of thousands directly to the Liberals to help their cause. Mining magnate Clive Palmer donated $1m nationally to the Coalition.
It’s hard to imagine what the total bill would have been in this arms race of spending if a truce hadn’t been called after Julia Gillard seized the leadership and scrapped the tax.
There are other examples which give the lie to the claim by political parties that donations help keep our democracy robust. They often pervert it, as no business, driven as it rightly is by the bottom line, is going to throw money away out of the goodness of its heart. Businesses only donate because they want influence.
One example is the NSW branch of the Australian Hotels Association, which donated $130,396 to the Labor Party last year. If you’ve ever marvelled at how so many pubs in Sydney have been transformed into soulless pokie barns over the past decade, donations such as that give you the answer.
Equally, if you take a walk along the waterfront in parts of Sydney, and marvel at the explosion in high-density apartment housing which often precludes the public from accessing the water, what you’re seeing there is the result of years of donations by property developers to a party which has known which side its bread is buttered on.
Paul Keating called for a ban on donations by property developers in 2006 on the basis of the aesthetic carnage being wrought in the Harbour City. He is not the only person to have questioned the donations system, but it still seems that we are stuck in a pattern where the questions keep coming and nothing of major substance is done about it.
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