Take for example why is Christopher Pyne trying to get University fees deregulated?

It has nothing to do with education and more to do with making a very few people lots and lots of money.

I second this. It tells it like it is. Well done.

So which would you consider more 'Democratic' Graham: a candidate impressing one donor for a million dollar donation, or a candidate impressing a million donors for one dollar donations?
There seems to be a red herring being waved here. To the question “are political donations vital for democracy” I would say yes. The real question is, how much and why should they be anonymous? The current system has locked us into an adversarial, 2 party system; the unions on one side and big business on the other, as the 2 opposing groups most capable of making large donations.
Sadly, neither group is now representative of the largest majority of people. The quiet majority of working/middle class people no longer belong to unions, and they certainly don't belong to the wealthy elite.
Who can represent this majority, when the smaller parties can't compete with the big money donors?
Australia -and indeed every Democratic country- would be better served if their Representatives were actually representative, and not beholden to their financial benefactors.
Posted by Grim, Sunday, 21 September 2014 9:40:42 AM

Hello everyone,
Democracy hey... It's certainly not perfect but its the best system we've got.
I could sometimes criticise democracy in that the rights of the 49% can be taken away by the other 51% at any time.
I could say that instead of banning political donations we instead ban political parties and force individuals to stand as candidates simply on their own merits.
I could say that ones ability to generate campaign contributions and donations should itself be an entirely different matter than the business of running a country fairly.
I could ask if democracy actually exists at all when parties come out with ridiculous ideas like taking peoples dormant bank accounts after a few years (I couldn't see 1% of the citizens of any nation agreeing that's a good idea).
I could say that the two-party preferred system is like a feces sandwich where the only real choice is choosing which half of the feces sandwich you would like to eat.
And I might be being a little ignorant in saying that political donations and lobbyists have the potential to sway political opinion towards a particular cause and not serve the general population fairly but this is generally how I see it.
But after being critical of democracy all I can really do is repeat what I said at the beginning of this post which is that democracy certainly isn't perfect but its the best system we've got.
The real question worth asking is can we make it better?
- Scott