I agree with your comments, Scott, but there are further issues to consider as well. The recent example of Senator Chris Ellison taking his family to Broome for 5 holidays in 7 years is one; the huge printing expenses that federal MPs are given every year is another.
As a former state MP, my view is that politicians should be paid much more than at present but with virtually no perks or hidden payments available. All expenditure by MPs should be on the public record and political parties should be forced to publicly show where they spend the money they get from taxpayers via the public funding of election campaigns. More seriously, however, the use of public funds to reimburse political parties is a serious threat to democracy, since it allows MPs and parties to rely less on direct approaches to electors, thereby diminishing the contact between the real world that citizens live in and the artificial world of MPs. All a political party has to do is raid the public piggybank to give themselves more money, not directly as salaries or allowances, but in a more subtle manner via increases in taxpayer funding of election campaigns or other expense refunds.

For starters: If our extremely arrogant PM can have two tax payer funded homes and then can use the RAAF as a taxi service between Canberra & Sydney what chance has any one to stop this legalised stealing by over-paid incompetant pollies?
In my electorate in SE Qld. the sitting member (often referred to 'the minister for asking dorothy dix questions')at election time sends out her 'information?' packs we usually get one or two a year but come election time we get many many more. These could also be seen as the members family photo album as there are so many photos of her "humble" self. Then closer to the election it seems that EVERY newspaper in her area gets a four too eight page spread in every issue at an estimated cost in the tens of thousands. Of course the others running for the seat get nothing at all. I did question Abetz (a name like that he is a senator responsible for election spending) well this most arrogant little chap (nearly said wart) almost told me to mind my own business and then used the liberals favourite excuse "Labour did it when they were in power" All I can say we are lucky that labour did not resort to infanticide or something similar. So another result of this 'legalised?' criminal rort is it makes them even more bloody arrogant to us the voters. Regards, numbat

Public funding increases the cost of campaigns by making it easier to spend money. As the funding is based on votes received, it doesn't level the playing field but merely amplifies existing advantages.

To reduce the cost AND level the playing field, one must stop trying to take the message to the voters, and start bringing the voters to the message.

See the post at http://grputland.blogspot.com/2007/07/democracy-vs-universal-suffrage.html (it's short, but doesn't quite fit within the 350-word limit).

to save time, i'll content myself with the general field theory of political science:

"you get the government you deserve"

Demos, you're correct: we get what we deserve. But the best governments (and there have been a few at both state and federal level - Kawke/Keating and Sir Charles Court in WA in the 1970s) generally have strong oppositions sitting on the cross benches to keep the B*@#$@$'s honest. We still need to get the best possible people into our parliaments or we'll have a repeat of Jo Bjelke-Petersen or Brian Burke or Goff Whitlam or financial disasters as occurred in the 1980s in SA and Victoria. So, sadly, we still need to address issues such as how much we pay our MPs, what their expense allowances should be and so on.

Few are going to argue against Prasser's findings here, but I can't help but feel that at this stage, the bigger threat is still the issue of campaign contributions from private sources.

Until some kind of a communications model is set up wherein both the toll upon the public purse vs the conflicts set forth by private donations is resolved, there are going to be issues of improper influence. This is politics after all...

I'm not sure Scott is aware of how angry most people are about all the perks. And no they are not unaware of the public funding at all. To some it sounds fair as otherwise the rich always win. Well they do anyway don't they?

The problem is most people have just given up and are thankful that government's don't last forever. They don't know how to fight against a system where those running the system vote themselves as much as they want, and more.

How do you fight this? Well first you don't vote for them. Even if you have to make Labor and the Coalition last and second last at least they won't get your $2+ per vote. Yes that money is of course indexed although none of your entitlements are.

Vote for anyone but these two and give the money to the small parties. Even if the big two do get back in they will have far less money.

Which I suppose just means they will cheat us elsewhere.

I'm with Bernie on this. Cut ALL perks and just give them a salary. I'd suggest that salary is negotiated with their electorates as an AWA which is what Howard expects you and me to do. Have the electorate pay them and audit them.

But first you have to break the Party system down. Any ideas?

I want to know why nobody in South Australia is jumping up and down about the South Australian government's $3m taxpayer funded contribution to the Labor Party's federal election campaign. It does not matter which party or person you vote for this is a blatant misuse of taxpayer funds.
Oh it was done very neatly. The money was given to the union movement ostensibly to run courses on occupational health and safety in the workplace - courses more about the union movement than OHS. What it has done of course is free up the money that the unions should have used so that they could contribute that money to the ALP election campaign.
OHS should be paid for by employers (and most employers will do the right thing because it saves them from expensive law suits and damages).
Mike Rann has got away with it. The media has said almost nothing (I understand that the NUJ has told their members not to make a fuss about the issue)
The public funding of election campaigns is bad enough but this is infinitely worse because it is openly party political and stinks of corruption in high places.

RobbyH well said

yes we do have a problem but until we get rid of them we can only stand in our own electorates and fight them with independents.

The Australian peoples Party not registered will come about one day and treat those who stand for their electorates with the respect they deserve, and that is represent their communities not political parties.

Reference is constitutional debates.

This is a rort and please correct me but the labor party changed this for the pay for vote.

Sounds just like centenary house pay the labor party to get them out of debt.

They are constitutionally corrupt and inept and until the people vote as if it is them standing in government and representing those within theirelectorates then we have a party dictatorship system who makes the rules,They make the policy, not the people.

By the way has anyone seen any real policies or just spin

Stuart Ulrich
Independent Candidate for Charlton

Scott has missed the point.Mark Lathem was stupid.We need to pay our pollies and top cats more money.We just have too many of them.
Just look at the quality of our pollies and lazy cats at the moment particularly at a state level.It is abysmal.

Pay fewer a lot more to perform and have rewards with real consequences for bureaucratic cowardice.

Scott makes a compelling argument - however, this funding is crucial to the smaller parties who deliberately choose not to take political donations from those with dodgy links with the major two parties and with unwanted agendas (property developers, resource companies, religious nutters, etc).

As with most arguments, it is not an all or nothing outcome that should be sought, and a better argument would be to ensure that the public funding decreases as more votes are garnered. The smaller parties would not suffer, but the favoured parties would see a declining income stream that deceases to zero for, say, 1 million votes or more. Couple this with a Canadian style constraint on political donations and campaign spending, and voila, our loyal pollies would need to actually earn our votes, not buy them.

The best protest of course is to vote one for the grass roots parties with any other preferences you choose to give (if you choose to give them) then progressing to the other parties as your primary vote falls to the next party still standing. At least you can dictate who gets your money, er I mean vote. This only applies to the lower house of course. The Senate ticket is different. By the way, please enrol to vote, change your address, do what you need to do to make your voice count.

An absolutely excellent, and timely, article Scott.

Don't get too carried away with this praise, as there are many points upon which you can be picked up upon, but such criticisms or corrections are likely only to relate to the adjectives you have used, not the verbs and nouns that make the structure of your article. Allow me to begin a friendly demolition of some of the notwithstandingly necessary points you have made.

You say "Since public funding was introduced, party membership in Australia has declined by more than 50 per cent." Possibly 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' (after this, therefore because of this) reasoning, Scott. I suggest that party membership was known to be on the decline before the introduction of public funding of election campaigns; in fact I suggest public funding was introduced in order to sustain the facade of political parties representing significant numbers of real people in our community. The funding being seen to be necessary to sustain the credibility of the continued existence and activities of established political parties as legitimate organizational players in the political 'game' when real membership was all the time evaporating.

You say "Surely, in a democracy it should be for party supporters to fund their party not the general public.". Too right. Spot on. The proof of that particular pudding would be in the eating, and I suspect many in the party machine and 'professional parliamentarian' world would already know the taste it would have!

You say "Now, party policies and campaigns are developed by expensive polling, focus groups, market analysis and consultants." This quote is an assertion that carries with it the seemingly necessary implication that the EFFECTS of policies and campaigns arise from the adoption or execution thereof. The possibility exists that the governmental EFFECT desired has already been decided upon and that party policy development and campaigning is merely about packaging these results that it is already confidently believed are electorally attainable in public believability. Providing a covering explanation for an otherwise predetermined outcome, in other words.

Now how could anyone possibly predetermine an electoral outcome?

While public funding of election campaigns may have been introduced at a time of diminishing lay party membership, my 20 years as a member of the Liberal Party (including 8 years as a state MP) have convinced me that public funding has significantly hastened that trend. With campaign money coming from the public purse, most MPs now see little need for lay party members other than to vote for them at preselection, but even here only a dozen or so loyal lay party members in each branch will be sufficient. However, when a party's major source of funds was from functions organised by branches, the number of members was critical for obvious reasons: annual membership fees, attendance at functions, bringing non-member friends along to functions, etc.