It is a rare occasion that a labor government has a flash of brilliance and comes up with a ground breaking policy which has the potential to dramatically change the Australian political landscape forever. And this they have or at least will seriously consider –

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23533581-5006009,00.html

Hopefully banning all donation to all political parties will cancel out loud minority groups who give money to pollies so only as to get there agenda put ahead of the mainstream. We see this in Australia with regards to immigration with big business demanding hundreds of thousands of new immigrants so as to get more customers for there products. We also see it with the ACTU and extreme religious groups.

If banning all donations to political parties through out the world was done it would grantee a better place for the majority. For example if it was done in the United States, the gun lobby there would all of a sudden find tough new restrictions on guns, the Jews and Israel would have to start making a real effort on Palestine instead of there Jewish peace discussions “just talk and make it look like we are trying but achieve nothing” The agriculture lobby would also be torpedoed with not only more exports for Aussie farmers but also cheaper food prices for Americans.

If Kevin Rudd goes ahead with this it could be the greatest gift his government gives to the Australian people

Is this connected to the 4 corners report last night? There are laws of disclosure as I understand but they can be subverted, obviously.

This is just fiddling around the edges of our current system, which already had limits on dontations and compulsory disclosure. Our democracy was designed to overcome difficulties that no longer exist. There is significant scope for real reform that would improve participation and the responsiveness of government:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/electoral-reform/electoral-reform.html#direct-democracy

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080414-australian-government-wants-power-to-snoop-work-e-mail-ims.html

With ideas like this (and there have been quite a few of them recently) hell will freeze over before I admit the Labor party is doing anything good.

This crop are authoritarian to the core and seem to believe it's all ok for "the common good" or some such communist excuse.

Dear EasyTimes,

As all the news stories indicate - a total ban on private donations would be a great advance for Democracy.

But with Labor holding government everywhere in Australia, it benefits from the advantage incumbents always have in fundraising -

Do you really think it's likely to every happen?

cont'd ...

Elections cost so much money. Wouldn't it be political suicide to
pass such legislation?

You need money - lots of it - to succeed in politics.

I can't see any political party killing the 'goose that lays the golden eggs' (i.e. political donations). Especially a party that now has the advantage of being in power throughout Australia.

Duh...

The benefit of such legislation to the ALP should be obvious. The unions will just do the advertising on their behalf and nobody has suggested that compulsory 'donations' to the union movement should stop.
Now if we had no election advertising at all just policy statements from all parties (with a word limit)...okay, okay - life would be a lot less exciting for those of us addicted to this sort of thing.

Both the ALP and the Liberals have a stake in maintaining a status quo of government funding of parties, squeezing out newcomers.

A pure democracy would be more open to citizen referenda. Moreover, in some Ancient Greek City states citizens were enpaneled [like our jurists] to serve on government to break-up party power - sounds a good idea to me. Say, ten seats in the the Senate with two year rotation.

EasyTimes, I don’t know if it is a “flash of brilliance” on the part of the Rudd government. More of a rather fundamental correction to an obvious grossly undemocratic aspect of our governance; the sort of thing that, I would like to like to think, our new PM would seek out for reform.

As good as it is, it is only for election campaigns (isn’t it?), not for all political donations. It needs to encompass all donations! So it’s not an indication of ‘Pure Democracy’ by any means. It is just one tiny step towards it.

Political donations do indeed have huge implications. As you say, it no doubt has an enormous connection “with regards to immigration with big business demanding hundreds of thousands of new immigrants so as to get more customers for there products”, and hence with population policy and the constant promotion of continuous growth, which runs counter to the necessity of achieving a balance between the pressure we place on our environment and resource base and the ability of our environment to provide what we need.

In other words; political donations, which come predominantly (~99.99%) from the strongly vested-interest business sector, greatly compromise the ability of governments and hence societies to achieve sustainability, and strongly facilitate the continued rushing towards a hugely destructive resource crunch and a massive reduction in quality of life.

Political donations strike right at the core of the purpose of government; to protect our future and find the right balance between facilitating the profit motive and mitigating its downside.

That’s not to say that everything would suddenly be rosy if political donations were entirely banned. But it would help enormously.

Ludwig,

Are companies constituents?

In a democracy the Elected and instrumentalities [companies too] I psoist should subordinate to The People.

Were I to speed in my car on many occasions the penalties increase and I eventually loose my license. When the Heart tick symbol was used fraudently by a company seven times. The ACCC hit it wuth 7 X $100,000 fines. Industry complained to Government and the multiple offence was dropped from the leglisation.

Would any Gocernment increase "relation back" from six months to three years to prevent doggy dealers shifting there assets out of harms way before they face court? I suspect not.