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.