I find your protestations unconvincing, Ludwig.

>>one person, who has not done anything manifestly wrong<<

You cannot accept that a politician receiving $360,000 for no visible reward is wrong?

Can you name any of your own acquaintances who would do such a thing for you?

>>...activities along the margins of legality<<

He was found guilty in a properly constructed court, with a defence counsel, facing clearly defined criminal charges that were understood by a jury.

Some "margins".

>>...crucified and held up as an example, while the culture that facilitated this behaviour continues?<<

There is a culture of giving, and a culture of receiving in action here.

Your suggestion is that until the giving part is stamped out, no-one should be guilty of receiving. I find that logic a little perverse and - if I may say so - somewhat unethical.

After all, it is pretty obvious that if no-one was receiving, the custom of giving would quickly die out.

>>There remains an enormous grey area around integrity, conflict of interest and disclosure. Anyone who undertakes activities within that grey area should NOT be crucified for it.<<

That sounds to me like a licence to rort, while the rortin' is good.

Newsflash: most people can determine whether an action crosses an ethical boundary, well before they need to ask "is what I am doing strictly legal?"

“I find your protestations unconvincing, Ludwig.”

This is a crucial point Pericles. It shouldn’t be up to me to convince you or anyone else that Nuttall should not have been found guilty. If we are not convinced that he is guilty, he should walk.

We and the courts need to be convinced that he is guilty. If we can’t be….and we can’t….he should be deemed innocent, or guilty of a lesser charge perhaps.

Does the age-old basic dictum of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ mean anything?

“You cannot accept that a politician receiving $360,000 for no visible reward is wrong?”

No I can’t be 100% sure that it was ethically or legally wrong. To repeat myself from an earlier post, it made no sense for Talbot or Shand to enter into this arrangement if they thought that there was any chance of it being seen as illegal or a subject for a media frenzy and their reputations being damaged. Their interpretation, and there were lawyers involved, was apparently that it was all above board.

“He was found guilty in a properly constructed court, with a defence counsel, facing clearly defined criminal charges that were understood by a jury.”

Does that mean you have total faith in our legal and courts system Pericles? Again, what about the reversal of the onus of proof, to the situation where Nuttall’s team had to essentially prove his innocence, instead of the cornerstone requirement of our legal system of him having to be proven guilty?

continued

Ludwig: >>There remains an enormous grey area around integrity, conflict of interest and disclosure. Anyone who undertakes activities within that grey area should NOT be crucified for it.<<

Pericles: “That sounds to me like a licence to rort, while the rortin' is good.”

Yes you could suspect that. If things are too ill-defined, then people could take advantage of grey areas. So what’s the answer? Obviously it is too tightly define the parameters. And until that is done, those operating in the grey zone should not be deemed guilty of breaking the law. Infringing ethics, codes of conduct, etc…yes possibly, but not the law.

“Newsflash: most people can determine whether an action crosses an ethical boundary, well before they need to ask ‘is what I am doing strictly legal?’

Ethical boundaries and legal boundaries are not necessarily the same. Ethical boundaries can be extremely fuzzy. And it is human nature to cross ethical boundaries. That’s why we need legal boundaries that are supposed to tightly define the cut-off between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

All this talk during the trial about ethical behaviour was pretty useless. The arguments really should have been about, and only about, the legal boundaries and interpretations.

I’d suggest that most people can’t determine ethical boundaries in all sorts of instances, largely because the boundaries are very different in different peoples’ minds.

Premier Bligh’s recent failure to register a holiday on the pecuniary interest register seems to me to be a pretty blatant ethical infringement. But she’s got away with it unblemished. Incidentally, I wonder if she would have got away with it if she’d been an ex-minister rather than an incumbent premier??

And I see the donations regime as being the most blatant and serious ethical infringement within our political system...while scant few people have any ethical problems with it at all.

It was not my intention to get bogged down in the guilt or innocence of Nuttall. It was my intention to highlight the ...................... UTTER DUPLICITY.......................... of our political and legal system in condemning Nuttall while completely stepping past the donations regime…which is a vastly bigger and more blatant favour-buying corruption scandal than any questionable antics of individual politicians.

But upon exploring the Nuttall case, quite apart from this extraordinary contradiction, it became apparent that there are major problems with his conviction. I got drawn into the detail of that.

So back to the donations regime then.

Mark O’Connor, author of ‘Overloading Australia’, had some brief comments to say about this right at the end of a speech a few days ago - http://www.population.org.au/. Move forward to the 27th minute.

To quote him;

“It is illegal to give your shareholders’ money to a political party if you do it out of political enthusiasm. That’s a misuse of the shareholders’ money. It is only legal to do it if you’re getting something back in return. If you are getting decisions out of government in favour of your company that you could not have got by making reasonable representations to the government, then it’s not illegal. But then it’s a bribe isn’t it? Oh no because you are only giving it to the whole party, not to an individual politician!"

Without more details on the trial Ludwig's analysis is probably simplistic and missing much of the details. That a jury unanimously found him guilty would tend to imply that.

I agree that the donations regime needs to be overhauled, as well as the NSW labor gov practise of requiring "donations" for audiences.

Belly,

Yes I am biased against the stench of corruption and the parties and unions where it seems to fester.

Your distance is therefore appreciated.

Please see this new thread for discussion on political donations:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2945