Ludwig, I am not being cynical when I say this. Woolworths one of the largest and most successful businesses in Australia is in every respect driven by the bottom line. I know this first hand, and I'm not saying this in a disparaging way Woolworths are most likely no different to other large successful business in that regard. Every dollar invested is expected to return even more dollars to the bottom line. Money invested in a new store is no different to money invested in the community or in a political party, all are expected to make a contribution to profit and they do. Money in the community is only effective if you tell everyone about it, blow your own trumpet so to speak. Political donations on the other hand, well its better to keep them quiet.
This is interesting, during election campaigns, its not uncommon for Liberal candidates to go into small shops on the main road and give them a 'coreflue' to put in their shop window. Most will put the poster in the window as asked. In many cases as soon as the Lib leaves down comes the poster. Why? because the shop keeper is a raving commie, no, he's a Liberal supporter, but he knows at least 50% of his customers vote Labor and that poster could have an adverse effect on the bottom line. Now if the Lib asked for a donation, well that's another matter all together.
p/s I never ask shops if they would like a Greens 'coreflue', not even the Green grocer, don't waste my time, besides Liberal and Labor have so many they can afford to toss a couple of hundred in the bin, we can't afford to lose one at 10 bucks each. In a by-election I reckon the ALP must have put up 2 or 4,000 coreflutes, they had 2 pallet fulls and there wasn't even a Lib running, they must have spent $150,000 on their campaign to retain the safe seat, against us, their friends.

Ludwig and Paul,

You have both demonstrated that:

You don't like big business,

You don't like the coalition,

You don't like donations to the coalition, but you are quite happy with donations to everyone else,

You have shown that some companies give money to parties whose policies are less damaging to its business,

But,

What you have not done is show that there is even one instance where the coalition has changed its policies to get a donation. So why on earth can anyone take you seriously when you want new laws to fix a problem that you can't even show exists?

<< So why on earth can anyone take you seriously when you want new laws to fix a problem that you can't even show exists? >>

SM, you are asking a question without answering the question that I asked of you.

You answer mine and I’ll answer yours.

I asked:

>> Ok, so why then do big businesses give donations to political parties? <<

If you can demonstrate that they do it for entirely honourable reasons and have no intent to sway government decisions in their favour, that is: in the favour of powerful vested interests, and you can assert that there is no bias when a whole lot of big businesses give big donations, then you might be able to assert that there is no problem with donations.

Can you do that?

Ludwig,

I have already answered the question. The vast majority of businesses give money to political parties for the same reason that individuals do, namely because the parties reflect their views. Corruption occurs primarily when the donations go unregistered directly to individuals, as has happened with Labor.

With any legislation, there are always unintended negative consequences, and there is very strong argument against introducing legislation without clear evidence that it is needed. An immediate problem with limiting donations to political parties is that the political parties are not the only ones campaigning. Labor has the unions, Getup etc, all who are not limited in donations, political activity, or in the case of unions, using members funds for politics which according to your definition is corruption. Also there is nothing stopping a plethora of "organisations", such as Getup, springing up aligned to various parties, doing political work, and being exempt from the donations law. The only way to stop this would be to ban political activity by anyone other than the parliamentary parties. The cost of enforcement and compliance would be huge.

You have asked me to prove that no problem exists. The onus is clearly on you to show that there is one, and that it is sufficiently serious to install draconian and costly laws.

SM, this discussion is becoming circular. It looks like we can’t really progress it any further.

I’ll just say that we have enormously divergent views on this subject and that it amazes me that you can see no significant issue here, while I can see it (donations and the overall persuasive power of the business lobby) as being one of the most fundamental flaws and corruptions of democracy, which is very strongly contributing to a highly antisustainable approach to running the country.

I’m not going to go to the bother of hunting for specific examples of something which to me is to glaringly obvious. Paul has given us a couple on this thread.

Over the last two and half decades that I have been interested in population and sustainability issues, I have spoken to thousands of people in all walks of life. The vast majority have expressed concerns about high immigration and population growth.

Even when I was a member of Townsville Enterprise – my local chamber of commerce – most people agreed with me, despite them being just the group that has a strong vested interest in population growth in our city and region.

In short; it seems to me that the wishes and concerns of the general populace do not match the policies of continuous rapid growth that our government, of both persuasions, imposes upon us.

If one of the major parties could break away from this never-ending-expansionist mentality and head towards a stable population, it would win majority support at the next election for sure.

But the main thing that is preventing this from happening is the power of the big business lobby which has a huge vested interest in the maintenance of high immigration and thus a rapidly increasing demand for everything.

Ludwig,

The argument has become circular. You postulate that there is a problem that needs draconian legislation, yet are not able to provide a shed of evidence.

Having worked as engineer for decades, the basics of problem solving are:

1 Define the problem: collect the evidence, find the root causes of the problem,

2 Define the scale and consequences of the problem,

3 Review all possible solutions, their impact on the problem, the costs, and the other consequences of implementing the solutions.

4 Select the solution with the greatest impact on the problem, with the least costs to implement and the least unintended consequences.

Ludwig, you have merrily skipped all these steps, and declared that there is a problem that you cannot define or quantify, and proposed a solution with significant implementation costs, undetermined impact, and significant unintended consequences.

This is why I see your proposal as a knee jerk reaction to a thought bubble problem. If you want to be taken seriously you need more than you and your mates think it is a problem.