Increasingly there is no escaping the reality that political fundraising is tawdry and border-line illicit. If the bagmen themselves are saying it, it must be true. And I just did.
Michael Yabsley, Dark Money
Michael Yabsley is the perfect political figure to lead the charge for political donations and campaign funding reform. After 40-plus years of political fundraising — Yabsley’s NSW Parliamentary career started when he convinced preselectors in the state seat of Bligh that he’d already developed formidable fundraising skills in student politics — his self-description of “poacher-turned-gamekeeper” doesn’t quite convey how incendiary his paper Dark Money is. It’s 40-odd pages of quotable quotes about how genuinely rotten the current system is and the urgent need for reform — indeed, it’s probably the political read of the year.
This is no longer minor parties or independents, or small outlets like Crikey, pointing out that the system is broken, that there is corruption at the core of the political process, and that donors get to influence policy by buying access. It’s a veteran political figure who has organised and run fundraisers at state and federal level since the era of Neville Wran and Bob Hawke.
And he was backed by business doyen Luca Belgiorno-Nettis (describing himself as the “token businessman” present at yesterday’s launch) referring to his own experience of political donations and the many “rubber chicken” fundraisers he’d attended before Transfield stopped donating. “We all know it’s pay to play,” he said. The bagmen are saying it, and the ones who fill the bags.
Yabsley has no time for the idea that merely buying access doesn’t amount to influence, by the way. “Pull the other one,” he says in Dark Money. “Who apart from Walter Mitty or Pollyanna would not believe that access and influence are basically indistinguishable… why do they ban journalists covering these conferences…?”
Most of Yabsley’s guests had some kind of issue with Yabsley’s 10-point plan — especially Stephen Loosley; he thinks severing the connection between unions and Labor would kill his party. Yabsley wants:
- A $200 cap on political donations per individual, covering the entire electoral cycle in each jurisdiction
- A cap on election expenditure, including advertising
- Only enrolled Australian citizens permitted to make donations
- All donations to be anonymous and non-disclosable, as their small size would remove the case for disclosure
- No other entities, corporations, unions or organisations to be permitted to make donations
- All public funding of elections to be removed
- Laws to be enforced with criminal sanctions carrying custodial sentences, including targeting the aggregation of small donations into significantly larger donations
- National uniform donation laws across all states and territories
- Electoral commissions to police laws and review caps
- A bespoke federal/state body to develop a program of election debates and set media pieces during election campaigns.
Some problems present themselves: a company or union could simply get its employees to “voluntarily donate”; it doesn’t grapple with the problem of third-party participants engaging in election advertising, or the potential rise of US-style PACs.
But there are plenty of positives — Yabsley wants to force our hollowed-out parties, where powerbrokers prefer low membership numbers because they make stacking easier, to re-engage with the community; it would remove paying for access from politics, it presents a coherent argument for cutting off public funding for parties, which enables the perpetuation of hollowed-out major parties, and by capping election and advertising spending, it would limit the desperate thirst parties have for funding.
Yabsley is aware that a potential big loser from his reforms is the mainstream media, which relies on an injection of tens of millions of dollars of election advertising spending every three years at the federal level and every four years at the state level, and says he’s already been told by media figures that his reforms would be highly damaging to their revenue. “Tough titty,” he says.
There’s “an unorganised, largely silent conspiracy” between the major parties on political donations, Yabsley writes. If nothing else, he’s removed any justification for the perpetuation of that silence, either by politicians currently in parliaments, or the media that is supposed to be holding them to account.
Listen here Bernard – your headline sets out our political reality and the very reasons our politicians will never agree – none and Buckley’s is the discouraging answer. I am old enough to recall policies, good and bad, cogently argued by all sides of the political debate in serious and respectful terms on bills before Parliament and at election time. Ah, the good old days!
Australian political change is more like selling route canal therapy to the Australian public than ever before. There is always a little passing pain to achieve worthwhile long term outcomes – something apparently eschewed by our current fellow residents and politicians. I look forward to more Independents in our Parliaments to replace the sinecure holding party political automatons suckling the public cash breast.
When the delivery of blatant lies in the national parliament is waved away as unimportant we are all in trouble irrespective of personal preferences.
A couple of comments.
One Electoral Commission for Federal. State and Local elections. (more efficient and simpler)
Agree no election funding as currently exists but each candidate given the opportunity to provide a document (3 000 words?) circulated by Electoral Commission to all electors via hard copy and/or electronically.
No signs except a limited number (say 5 for Federal and less for others) erected by Electoral Commission with a standard sized sign attached by all candidates except Senate.)
Also State electorates to have the same boundaries as Federal Electorates with multi member representatives.
All donations to be made directly to electoral commission who in turn will forward to relative Party of Candidate. Any direct donations attract a Jail holiday.
What have I missed?
I like it! Although I would drop all donations as once it is allowed it just a slippery slope! I would also tend to suggest we have too many levels of government and should drop the states as it has created nothing but problems since its inception.
I used to think that state governments were becoming redundant. Then COVID hit, after at which I concluded that if there was one level of government that provided little or no value to the community, it was the federal government.
The brown paper bags!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How about withdrawing any fundraising right in electorates where a party has lied in election advertising? (including the 3000 word election document circulated by the EC)
Absolutely with you on the one electoral commission. When Mum got dementia and the State Admin Tribunal gave me administrator powers and the doctor said she could no longer vote; no probs with the electoral guys at state level – but bloody federal! They wanted additional doctor’s reports, and wouldn’t accept the SAT ruling. They seemed to think they were special. So now I just pay the $20 or whatever it is when she hasn’t voted.
Every system is vulnerable to corruption when power over people is the prize
Reading this, and reading about the Hewson/Barry Jones drive for integrity, and not forgetting the Rudd/Turnbull anti-Murdoch mission – could this be rays of golden sunlight we are seeing, breaking thru the dark clouds of what was looking like a very bleak political landscape?
I hope so!
I have a problem with equating the power of unions with the power of corporations to influence government. Unions represent working people, the larger the union the more people represented, which is vastly different to the influence of large corporations. I think there needs to be a different funding model, but a blanket ban on all “entities” isn’t necessarily a fairer system.
I don’t think the Coalition concern is about “union power/influence” : as with everything that makes the Limited News Party go-round, I think it’s more about Mammon and avarice, “the money”. The sheer numbers.
Like their (and their donors’) attitude to ‘industry super’ – if only they could get their hands on that too?
This “Money is wasted on the underserving under classes” sort of dogma?… “Robodebt”? “NDIS”? “GST”? “Owning their own homes”? …….
I’ve been saying this for several years. Any problems with donations: the $200 could come from the voting tax payers. The small amount wouldn’t be noticed as it would be spread out over the duration. The tax payer is also contributing directly to their democracy and it stops companies, unions, politicians etc. from stacking the decks so-to-speak.
Personally, I think the whole political system needs scrapping and reestablished from the ground up. We live in the 21st century, whilst being governed by a 19th century relic.