The political donations season was shorter than most this year, with the detail of who donated what to whom, and how much was disclosed, swamped by the royal commission report on Monday.
One story that (rightly) attracted media attention was the extraordinary extent of gambling industry support for the Tasmanian Liberals, who reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from gambling interests opposed to Labor’s plan to ban pokies in pubs. They were so big that they more than doubled the gambling industry’s total political donations — from around $700,000 in 2016-17 to over $1.5 million in 2017-18. The Tasmanian branch of the Australian Hotels Association (AHA) alone gave around $270,000 to the Liberals.
Don’t feel too sorry for Labor, however. Take away Tasmania, and Labor actually enjoyed more gambling industry donations than the Coalition. Across all its branches, Labor attracted nearly $700,000 in gambling industry donations (Tasmanian Labor received no gambling donations at all). That compares to the donations to the Coalition nationwide of just over $820,000, including to the Tasmanian Liberals and the Nationals.
And some of the amounts flowing to Labor in other states are extraordinary. While the federal branch of the AHA gave $90,000-100,000 to both sides, its South Australian branch was like a fire hose of cash, gushing over $140,000 to the South Australian ALP and $30,000 to federal Labor, compared to around $110,000 to the South Australian Liberals. The AHA’s New South Wales branch was similarly generous: it gave over $85,000 to the NSW ALP while federal Labor got another $76,000. Its generosity to the Liberals was via the federal branch, which received around $110,000.
It’s not just AHA branches that favoured Labor with its donations. Clubs NSW gave $68,000 to federal Labor and over $50,000 to NSW Labor; the Liberals only received $48,000 via their NSW branch (Clubs NSW’s donations are purely tactical, however — they gave $180,000 to the federal Liberals in 2013 plus tens of thousands to other Liberal branches that year). And you can bet that with a NSW election looming, the AHA and Clubs NSW chequebooks will still be out for both sides.
This is what I like about Bernard Keane’s writing these days.
He puts both Lib/Lab to the sword and does n’t favor one over the other or play the game of party allegiance or political philosophy allegiance. If the Lib/Lab show is not serving to the people, he says it and does n’t get caught up in the immaturity of ..Left/Right politics.
Unlike some of the commenters here.
Having read BK’s writing for a few years now I feel your comments regarding his non-partisan approach to political punditry can only begin to make sense if you’d written ‘these past few days’.
It’s a vexation to the spirit of political community for any party to accept donations from gambling interests. The sooner both parties ban pokies from anywhere and everywhere the better.
Not only gambling interests. What reason does any commercial entity have for donating to a political party, except for the anticipation of favours?
I wonder if the politicians get the same level of dopamine rush as the pokie punters when they receive the donations from vested gambling interests. Pokies are also known as the “crack cocaine” of gambling addiction. The pokie machines design and format also have considerable input from Psychologists using colours and graphics to add stimulation and attraction. It’s time we all took a base-ball bat to these insidious machines and break the spell they hold over people.
It might be an idea to first “break the spell” and hold over the politicians who are on the “take” from the various gambling groups. Problem Gambling people will always be exposed until we wean politicians off the political donations and avoid the inherent conflict of interest. I agree with all the above comments.
Labor’s enslavement to the AHA & gmbling revenues was never more apparent than when the Reine Ranga, to her eternal shame, stiffed Wilkie by installing Slipper as Speaker to get Jenkins’ vote back.
If only they had gone with the initial proposal – $1 bets – the entire unOz ad campaign over the licence to gambling would never have occurred, dimwits could still waste their time but only a fraction of their families’ resources. Win-Win but a big loss for the people that matter, donor$.
It doesn’t take that much to buy an election, does it? Half a million to buy the Tasmanian election and maintain the ‘ rivers of gold.’ The’piss’ industry is even more powerful. We need rich philanthropists to sway a few elections for noble deeds.