Straight Talk from some Senior Politicians
Below are some occasional moments of clarity of thought from where we would least expect it.
At the 2005 NSW ALP State Conference the assistant secretary, Luke Foley, accused former state secretary and Upper House MP Eric Roozendaal of orchestrating the stacking of the Bondi ALP Branch to assist local developers. "Follow the dollars and you will find Eric Roozendaal at every turn", Mr Foley said.
(The Financial Review, 06/04/2001)
Former Prime Minister, Paul Keating.
"I think we would be better off if developers were forbidden from donating election funds to municipal candidates and to political parties."
(The Financial Review, 06/04/2001.)
Carmen Lawrence, ALP President.
"It disturbs me, as it should all citizens, that there are some who are more equal than others. Corporations do not make large donations out of a charitable impulse or a commitment to civic duty... We do not know how much is being spent to inform, persuade and cajole our decision-makers. It is time we subjected the process to scrutiny, and judged the decisions of our governments knowing who has been in their ears."
Damian O'Connor, Assistant General Secretary within the Australian Labor Party (NSW)
"The sharply rising cost of funding election campaigns is making the ALP more and more reliant on large donations from the corporate sector. This compromises our ability to develop and implement policy that may offend the corporate sector much more than it does the Liberal Party, who proclaim the sector as their natural constituency. It's interesting that those who want a value-free ALP have little problem with corporate donations.
To be clear, the ALP needs to develop relationships with the corporate sector along with all other sectors of the community. But no non-party relationship should be characterised by dependence. It is becoming the case that the ALP literally cannot afford to lose a significant number of large corporate donations, and this must play on the minds of our key decision-makers.
From the 1995 to 1999 state elections, campaign spending by all participants blew out from $13 million to $23 million, and the gap between costs and public funding more than doubled from $6 million to $13 million. This gap is only funded by private means. The ALP increased its TV advertising alone from $1.4 million to $4.5 million. Some of this money is still raised by a lot of people paying modest amounts. But more and more is raised in large donations of $10,000 or more.
The NSW ALP took 78 different donations of this size for the 1999 election, with donations from the corporate sector outweighing union donations by a factor of six-to-one. We took over $900,000 from developers and construction companies, over $300,000 from the finance sector and $73,000 from the tobacco industry, to name a few, in a total of over $3 million.
Last year, Paul Keating called for developers' donations to be banned because of their eventual effect on the urban environment. Paul Keating knows how the wheels really turn in politics. Bob Carr said he'd look into it. We're still waiting.
It's not in the interest of a party of reform or our political system for this addiction to continue growing to US levels. It affects the integrity of the political system, and fosters disengagement with the wider party and the electorate. We urgently need to revisit this matter as a federal-State policy issue and the Carr Government must look at options, including limiting election costs, the size of donations to all parties and, possibly, increases in public funding (which was introduced, after all, to stop private influence over the political system)."
Excerpt from article on the Evatt Foundation website, 18/03/2002.
Tim Gartrell National Secretary of the ALP, April 2004
"Our guiding principle in dealing with the regulation of political donations is there must be a complete and meaningful trail of disclosure back to the true source of funds received by, or of benefit to, political parties. This is an essential precondition if the disclosure system is to be effective. Labor believes there is an overwhelming public benefit in having reasonable controls on, and proper transparency of, political donations. Without a credible funding and disclosure regime there will continue to be a perception that secret donations buy government policy....The perception money can buy public policy is highly corrosive to democratic government."
Excerpt from his letter to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.