Political Cash Donations in Australia and NSW

The NSW Greens have put up a well designed website, provocatively titled, Democracy 4 Sale which contains the AEC Funding disclosures for the Federal and NSW Parliaments. The Greens website makes the accessing of information simpler than the AEC website . So who were the top donors? to whom? and finally - why was NSW Labor able to raise nearly twice as much money as Federal Labor?

NSW

Of the top ten donations to NSW Labor, eight of them were Unions. The other two were property/developer companies. The top five donors to the NSW Labor Party were;

  1. $1,525,008 National Union of Workers
  2. $288,066 Liquor Hospitality and Misc Workers Union
  3. $251,650 Transport Workers Union
  4. $204,000 Australand Holdings, Walker Corporation
  5. $178,004 Electrical Trades Union

The NSW Liberal Party received donations from a mix of private industries. There was one lobby group included - CLUBNSW - but the dollar amounts the Liberals received were far smaller than the amounts Labor received from Unions;

  1. $117,500 Macquarie Bank Group
  2. $112,500 Salmat
  3. $99,750 Servcorp Australian Holdings
  4. $77,000 Weebin
  5. $76,050 CLUBNSW

From this small set of data it appears that in terms of raw amounts the Unions are a direct advantage to the NSW Labor Party. The Labor Party was also able out raise the Liberals and Nationals in NSW.

  1. $7,401,820 NSW Labor
  2. $4,734,920 NSW Liberal
  3. $797,911 NSW Nationals
  4. $71,643 NSW Greens
  5. $0 NSW Democrats

The odd result is the donations to the NSW Democrats, they must receive their funding from the Federal Democrats or some other arrangement.

Federal

At the Federal level Labor's biggest donors were no longer predominantly Unions. Only one Union was in the top ten. The rest were a mix of property developers, financial companies, plus, food, retail and industrial.

  1. $1,515,867 John Curtin House
  2. $307,500 Westfield Holdings
  3. $202,160 Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union
  4. $152,500 ANZ
  5. $100,000 Pratt Holdings

Given the large amounts from different Unions Labor gets at the NSW level there must be some legislation limiting the amounts Unions can donate at the Federal level.

The major donors to the Liberal Party at the Federal level are a similar mix of companies and industries as with Labor.

  1. $117,500 Macquarie Bank Group
  2. $112,500 Salmat
  3. $99,750 Servcorp Australian Holdings
  4. $77,000 Weebin
  5. $76,050 CLUBNSW

The totals by party at the federal level are;

  1. $3,679,412 Labor
  2. $3,586,618 Liberal
  3. $656,337 Nationals
  4. $146,834 Democrats
  5. $35,672 Greens

What is plainly obvious is that the NSW branches of the parties, other than the Democrats, were able to raise more funds by donations than the Federal parties. In the case of Labor in NSW, they raised almost twice as much in donations than the Federal Labor Party. This suggests there is dire need for donation reform in NSW.

If the funding debate is to be opened, a fundamental question I want answered is - why should anyone other than an individual be able to donate to a political party? Why should corporations, unions, lobby groups, societies etc be able to donate money to political parties?

cam
Permalink, Political Cash Donations in Australia and NSW, Feb 2005, cam
avocadia: Funding:

Why should corporations, unions, lobby groups, societies etc be able to donate money to political parties?

No taxation without representation? That only works for corporations - and any other taxed organisation -though.
cam: Yes but a corporate body is composed: of individuals. Those individuals already get representation.

cam
avocadia: Individual versus Corporation:

Firstly, we don\'t tax a corporation as a group of individuals, we tax it as an independant body. Secondly, it is reasonable to assume that the aims of a corporation are independant of the aims of the individuals that are employed by that corporate body.  A corporation operating in Australia is beholden to the industrial relations laws of this country and the wage laws. The individuals that make up the corporate body would no doubt be more than happy to have a minimum wage increase of many dollars, the corporate body much less so. If we demand that the corporate body - with its interests that are divergent to the interests of the indivduals - be beholden to our laws, then why should it be expected to do so without means to support the party that will best support the interests of the corporation?
cam: The people that embody that corporation: .... as individuals are capable of giving money to political parties. The corporation itself does not need to give to a political party, as the individuals that make up that corporation or have the corporation\'s interests encompassed by their self-interest are already capable of doing that as individals. And more importantly individuals that are capable of voting. A corporation cant vote.

cam
avocadia: So are Corps out of politics altogether:

…or are they allowed to run politically-based advertising?

I\'ve actually been down that road. Couple of years ago in my present job, Company X was concerned about Government Organisations\'s Potential Action Y, and dumped a whole load of money into newspaper ads. I was involved on the fringes. My employer, Company Z, handled the mail out of requested disinformation packs (can you detect my bias? :- ); I recall there was one of those 8 minute adverts on the Ray Martin advocacy show (yep, definitely no chance of me qualifying for Druid). Having said that, the campaign was pretty benign; they genuinely were advocating an issue.

So are they allowed to continue issue advocacy?

On a more or less unrelated tangent, do political ads is the US have the same disclosure at the end as Australian political ads (the "spoken by such and such for the Liberal Party, Australia"?
cam: No they just cant donate money: ... same with unions.

A company I was with in the US I saw round up the secretaries and ask them to send letters to the politicians authorising a bill to vote for more a certain transport project. It was essentially coercion. Had no benefit for them as individuals.

I think the US ads have to put disclaimers in them, but they get spoken at a million miles an hour and are a flash on the screen. To be truthful, Virginia is not a swing state, so I have not seen many political ads. When I stayed over in Pittsburgh, I saw more in a weekend than I have in a year in Virginia.

cam
cam: Working off the principal: that money buys access, as it does in the US.

cam
avocadia: Ad disclaimers:

I was thinking about the Times and Post stories on pre-packaged news stories. My train of thought essentially led to the conclusion that if they showed a disclaimer at the end it was probably all right, if not then it was a problem. The television stations shouldn\'t be playing them, and the administration shouldn\'t be putting them out.

Something happened to your Allowed HTML, btw. It didn\'t like the title attr on those links.
avocadia: Okay:

I\'m a bit antsy on the topic. I\'m inclined to agree with the position above. But I see the weaknesses in it. If corporates are allowed to spend money on issue advertising, but not donate money and presumably not engage in express advocacy - since, with fungability, it is essentially the same as donation - then we are left with a "magic words " problem. Yes, we can leave it up to a judge to decide when the line has been crossed. You\'d want some stonking big fines though.
cam: As long as it doesnt go directly into the hands of: the politician then I am not too concerned about it. I know they will make holes and rivers around that. Money and power corrupt. But in an ideological sense I dont think anyone or anything other than a voter should be able to give money to a politician.

cam
cam: Will have a look into the title thing: No idea why though, it is part of the allowed html.

cam

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