In Australia, political donors get to call the shots in policy.
From 2013 to 2018, when Kenneth Hayne began his royal commission, the big banks and financial advisers controlled financial regulation via the Coalition government. They paid for that right: between 2010 and 2019 they gave $5.99 million in donations to the Coalition. It also helped that Arthur Sinodinos, Josh Frydenberg and Kelly O’Dwyer, successive ministers for financial regulation, were all former major bank executives, as is the current minister, Jane Hume. The big banks didn’t just dictate financial regulation, the Coalition gutted the corporate regulator ASIC for them as well.
The result? Tens of thousands of bank customers fleeced, gouged, ripped off and immiserated through a variety of ways identified by the royal commission, and a compensation bill running into many billions.
Until 2019, Crown got to dictate gaming regulation in Victoria and Western Australia — again with cowed, weak regulators. Since 2010, Crown has given the Victorian Labor Party more than $177,000 in contributions. It gave the Victorian Liberals nearly $274,000. It has paid the WA Labor Party nearly $290,000 and the WA Libs more than $460,000, as well as more than $60,000 to the WA Nationals. Crown also employed former Labor and Liberal politicians and former Andrews government staffers.
The result? Organised crime indulged, industrial-scale money-laundering permitted, problem gambling allowed to run unchecked, Australia’s border security undermined and treated with contempt. Crown’s only error was in NSW, where it paid the Liberals just $25,000 and NSW Labor $43,000. The Bergin inquiry in NSW, beginning in 2019 off the back of excellent journalism from Nine journalists, brought the whole thing undone, prompting painful inquiries in Victoria and WA.
And the biggest one of all — fossil-fuel interests dictate climate and energy policy. The major fossil-fuel companies have handed the major parties more than $9.5 million in donations since 2010 (not counting Clive Palmer’s donations to his own party). Unions opposed to climate action like the AWU and the CFMEU’s energy division have donated another $1.7 million to Labor. News Corp, committed to climate denialism and supporting the Coalition, has delivered millions of dollars in free advertising to the Coalition.
The result? A decade of inaction on climate, Australia becoming an international pariah facing punitive carbon tariffs, and countless missed opportunities for new jobs, investment and economic growth in boom industries, in favour of propping up dying industries like coal and gas.
Now we’re taking a gamble on another group of donors dictating policy — specifically the NSW government’s plan to end its lockdowns based on benchmarks inconsistent with the national reopening plan agreed by national cabinet, with a determination to reopen even while the NSW health system is under intense pressure, scores of people die every week and more than 1000 people are infected every day. As the nation’s most senior health economist Stephen Duckett noted: “This plan was developed by business for business.”
The NSW Liberals’ donors will indeed be happy to be able to reopen far sooner than if the NSW government was committed to getting case numbers down. In particular, the state’s clubs and pubs and casino will be beneficiaries. While it’s a smaller scale than the national level of donations, clubs’ and pubs’ peak bodies have given the NSW Coalition $1.7 million in donations since 2010 (including those from Star Casino).
The serviced office sector has also been a generous donor to the NSW Coalition — more than $580,000 since 2010, mainly from long-time Liberal supporters the Moufarrige family.
The stakes are much higher than for financial plundering by the banks or unchecked casino operators, and even higher, in the short-term, than for climate inaction. The best case scenario is a relatively small number of additional deaths and hospitalisations — sufficient that on a cost-benefit basis, reopening early is justified in terms of more jobs.
The worst case scenario is very scary. Thousands of additional deaths from COVID among both the unvaccinated and the vaccinated, as well as from other diseases and injury unable to be properly treated in a ravaged health system. And all for the bottom lines of club, pub and hotel operators and commercial property groups.
If the worst case, or a worse case, scenario comes true, will the political class reflect on the mechanisms that enable donors to control policy? Or will we continue with business-as-usual, with the mess each time left to yet another royal commission or special inquiry? Bet your house on the latter.
Yes, bet your house on the latter. Given that Labor has no appetite for being an opposition to the Coalition and only offers the same thing with different branding, it will continue. There might stil be some changes because, as Keane has pointed out, there has been some embarrassment and even a little turbulence for some of the parties’ paymasters in recent years. So expect more action to reduce oversight, hobble inquiries and Royal Commissions, intimidate investigative journalists, terrify whistle-blowers and make government even more secretive. That should sort it.
SSR – agreed – it’s clear the LNP is in front on a bamboozling level. Clearly everyone outside of the LNP is wondering how to navigate the circumnavigation that the LNP has set up around most points of power sources.
* look stupid.
* be stupid
* be naive
* look naive
* look like you have dementia
* actually have dementia
* seem empathetic
* make money at the expense of whatever or who ever
* believe in a higher power
* be on a board or multiple ones.
I’m feeling sick and can’t continue…
I’m still not sure that people will be out spending money in NSW if Sydney is open, but no one knows where they can go to avoid an outbreak of a potentially-fatal illness. There’s no contact tracing so it could be anywhere. People tend to self-lockdown in those situations.
I will one of those Jimbo, in spite of double AZ jabbed status. Other people will be free to gamble with their own lives and those of their friends, families, and innocent passers by.
I will be waiting to make sure the ICU;s and ambos are back in reasonable control before starting to take measured risks.
The economic whingers and troublemakers are free to go and shag themselves.
I suspect there must be some big businesses that will profit in addition to Qantus as what you say is the near uniform opinion of economists, ie covid needs to be controlled for business to flourish, and for the reason you state. Either that or are a lot of businesses who bought the LNP spin that the choice is between lockdowns and no lockdowns when the actual choice is between lockdowns and uncontrolled covid.
Viva Energy collected $100 million in government handouts from JobKeeper and other corporate welfare programs, then handed $140 million to shareholders. By John Durie.
..”.it is only one corporate slush fund established by the government in the wake of the pandemic.
Case in point is the money going to Geelong-based refinery Viva Energy, which is returning $140 million to shareholders after collecting about $100 million in handouts, including $24.9 million in JobKeeper, $33.3 million to build a new diesel storage plant as part of the fuel storage plan, and $40.6 million as part of the potential $2 billion-plus refinery support plan, to keep its Geelong refinery running.
Viva is best known in Australia as the owner of the retail Shell petrol stations – and like the rest of the industry is facing a battle for survival as it converts to rely less on fuel and more on mainstream retail sales”.
And how did the putrid Angus Taylor and Scovid Morrisin sell this corporate welfare?
“The government’s fuel security package will help secure Australia’s recovery from the Covid crisis and it will help secure our sovereign fuel stocks, locking in jobs and protecting families and businesses from higher fuel prices”.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison added that the government was “delivering on its commitment to maintain a self-sufficient refining capability in Australia”.
Complete tosh given that our emergency supplies are in America!
Taylor’s refinery support package is a classic exercise in socialising the losses by paying the company support when the refining margins are too low, while privatising their profit when the margin increases.
Taylor argues having a local refinery base is worth $4.9 billion in terms of price suppression.
But someone in the industry, who declined to be named, said, “This is nonsense because you are importing the crude oil either way, so in national sovereignty terms what is the difference between the finished product and crude?”
Never ends
Australian refineries are much cleaner, aren’t they? Just like Aussie coal?
Cough, cough Sulphur and EU Fuel Standards. 😉
The LNP is just “doing” Business as usual. However, it is not as unconscionable as the Labour Party “doing” Trade Unions, it appears. No matter what your perspective is, the unconscionable doing of political business as usual renders that disarmingly quaint and ethically dishonest honourific of “Honourable Member” ever more misrepresentative of the vast majority of Australian political schills.
I hope all the additional victims who are left sick, long covided or dead appreciate that they suffered to keep the billionaires cash registers ringing. Bless them.