Hey Hazza, we agree! Yarhooo! ( :>)

I’d prefer to see all donations abolished. But I guess small personal donations wouldn’t be a problem.

So then, how would it work? Where would the money come from to replace all the big donations?

There are only two choices that I can envisage:- the taxpayer, or those that currently give donations.

I think that it should come from pretty much the same sources that it comes from now, but in such a manner as to be compulsory and not at all voluntary.

We need a full analysis of where donations have come from over the last ?decade. We should work out the average donation size compared to annual profit for each type of business (and unions and other organisations) that has given donations, work out an average for all businesses in each category and then enshrine in law the compulsion for them to contribute that sort of funding, for the health of our political parties and of true democracy.

Another option would be to pool all donations and distribute them evenly amoung the parties.

Of cause this would reduce the total amount donated, as many would sit on their hands rather than see thier money go to others as well, but so beit.

After all, all we really want is a level playing field, don't we!

Funny how it always seems that Labor is keen to introduce caps on donations just at the end of its terms of government when the opposition seems to be getting more. This happened in both NSW and QSL where the labor governments did nothing for a decade, and suddenly introduced it (with exclusions for union and other labor friendly organisations).

Divergence: better to have no donations.
If the parties cannot survive without then so be it.
That would cut down on corruption

Rob,

The corruption is not in the donations to parties, but the undeclared "donations" to individuals, or in MPs making decisions that benefit them personally, or in MPs making investments based on insider knowledge, or from MPs selling "access". All these were rife in NSW and QSL Labor, and none of which will be addressed by the window dressing reforms that Rudd is proposing.

Robert LePage,

I would not be too concerned if there were no donations allowed at all, but we do need some mechanism whereby candidates can tell the voters where they are coming from and what they would do if elected. The lack of this information for independents frequently annoys me when I am trying to decide how to vote.

The problem with Ludwig's idea of public funding relates to how the money would be divided. It isn't reasonable that a very small party, the Marijuana Party, say, should get the same funding as the Liberals, but if you allocate funding by how many seats the party has or how many votes they got, then you are giving a tremendous advantage to the incumbents, which they may not deserve. Letting individuals donate small amounts would provide a better test of support.

Another idea would be to make sure that everyone has at least a secondhand computer and basic internet access. Candidates and parties could then be required to put up information about themselves on the Web, minus the sound bites and sloganeering.

Shadow Minister,

You are assuming that only individual politicians can be corrupted, but don't accept the possibility that a whole party can be corrupted by accepting big donations from the property developers, say, or the hotels and clubs. Both types of corruption are problems.