"When you give," Donald Trump once said of donating money to politicians, "they do whatever the hell you want them to do."
This is the widespread impression of political donations in his country but also in ours.
More News Videos
Sam Dastyari quits shadow ministry
The high-profile senator quits Labor's front bench but will stay on in parliament. Courtesy ABC News 24.
The Sam Dastyari affair is merely, for most, a confirmation of how it works. And of how cheaply influence can be bought.
Trump is promising to fix a rotten system, even though he's been a grunting, gorging participant and beneficiary, his snout deep in the trough of a corrupted democracy.
As he freely admits. Speaking of politicians during the Republican nomination contest, he said: "When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me." I know how it works, he's saying, so I know how to fix it.
The rising destructive populism in Trump's America, Nigel Farage's Britain and Pauline Hanson's Australia is partly an angry reaction against open markets and free trade.
Malcolm Turnbull has grasped that part. As he posed on Wednesday: "How do we maintain public confidence in open markets, free trade, and economic reform in the face of a rising tide of protectionism in a lot of countries?"
And it's partly an angry reaction against inequality. Bill Shorten has grasped that part: "There is a very real alienation between the boosters of change and those on the receiving end of change," he said on Thursday. "It has never been more important to prove to the people who feel forgotten, left out and left behind that they have a stake in society."
![Malcolm Turnbull is at risk of being engulfed by a movement that will make no distinction between the establishment parties.](/web/20160909194414im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/9/y/k/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grd06v.png/1473447651886.jpg)
It's partly an angry reaction against "the other" in the form of refugees and immigrants. Turnbull and Shorten have both understood that part. That's why the boats will continue to be turned back under either leader.
But it's also a wider rage against a system too remote to reach and too corrupt to care. Remember Trump's refrain: "The system is rigged."
![Senator Pauline Hanson during the opening of the 45th Parliament.](/web/20160909194414im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/4/d/x/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grd06v.png/1473447651886.jpg)
Rigged by whom? How? "Powerful interests," he said in accepting his party's nomination, "have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit.
"Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place.
![Illustration: John Shakespeare](/web/20160909194414im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/d/0/5/8/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.grd06v.png/1473447651886.jpg)
"They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings."
His nickname for Hillary Clinton, the representative of the status quo, is "Crooked Hillary".
The term "political donations" is code for the corrupt exchange of favours that goes on above the heads of the ordinary voters, who can see it but feel powerless to do anything to stop it as their interests are sold out.
Like satanic sulphur, the acrid stink of political funding burns the nostrils of voters across the democratic world, fuelling an angry revulsion.
Across the leadership of Australia's political parties, Malcolm Turnbull seems the least animated, the least concerned.
Even though he has a history of arguing for reform of funding, now that he's prime minister he seems to be remarkably philosophical about actually acting on it. Leave it to the parliamentary committee, is his position, a committee that has yet to be convened and has no terms of inquiry before it.
Turnbull has been happy to watch Dastyari burn and Labor squirm, but this issue is much bigger than the old partisan game of Labor and Liberal gleefully notching points against each other.
Turnbull, his government and the Australian political system is at risk of being engulfed by the rising anger of a movement that will make no distinction between the establishment parties but will embrace any alternative bent on destruction.
Australia's Trump, Pauline Hanson, did jail time for electoral fraud on a conviction that was later quashed, but it's hard to claim that she's been compromised by big donors.
One Nation's last electoral return showed that the party had raised a mere $11,487 in donations in 2014-15 while the major parties count theirs in the millions.
Hanson hasn't said much on this recently but, in her persona as angry outsider, she's well positioned to.
When the Liberal Party's Bronwyn Bishop resigned as speaker after abusing her parliamentary travel allowances to take a $5000 helicopter ride on party business, Hanson called for an independent inquiry into the allowances spending by all MPs and senators over the previous five years.
"Surely no member would object to this if they have nothing to hide?" Hanson wrote. "As a taxpayer and mother of four, I watch each of my children struggle to own their own home, raise a family, while living a meagre life. This is common practice throughout Australia, I am not alone.
"Yet we see pollies travel flights at the highest available class, daily meal allowance equivalent to that of a single pensioner's weekly entitlement."
If Hanson were to make a similar call for an investigation into party donations, moved on the floor of the Senate now, it would be incendiary. The flames would most threaten the major parties.
Is Turnbull going to need a helicopter of his own? But instead of a Bronnie joyride, will he, like the last Americans escaping the onrush of destruction in the fall of Saigon, need an emergency helicopter from the roof of Parliament or is he going to snap out of his torpor?
Even Tony Abbott, a reluctant donations reformer and famously criticised for his political "tin ear" as prime minister, has discovered the urgency of fixing the funding system.
"I think it is time to look at donations reform again," Abbott told Fairfax Media's James Massola on Thursday.
Labor is calling for an end to foreign donations and a reduction in the disclosure threshold from $13,000 to $1000. The Greens are calling for a federal anti-corruption watchdog.
Nick Xenophon wants immediate – "real time" – disclosure of all donations. He's also acting on the alarm at the ease with which the Chinese Communist Party has been using Australia's freedoms to extend its influence over Australian opinion and policy.
Australia, says Xenophon, needs to look at restricting "foreign agents" as the US does: "To get rid of or at least tackle covert political interference from foreign powers," he says. "We need to include or consider at the very least what the US has been doing since before World War II."
And now Abbott is putting internal Liberal pressure on his leader to act decisively: "There should be no union donations, company donations or foreign donations," says the former prime minister.
"Obviously, we don't want influence buying, we don't want subversion of our system."
Turnbull used to talk about agility a great deal. When he returns from his successful week of diplomacy, an agile prime minister would hold a press conference on Sunday: "I want Australia to have the cleanest political system in the world," he'd declare.
He'd announce an urgent, high-level inquiry into the best way to protect the integrity of the federal Parliament. He'd include a review of the donations system.
He'd say that every state has an independent anti-corruption body and say it's time for a federal one, too.
He'd name a panel of eminent Australians to recommend on the best design. An agile prime minister would have had his staff working on this for the past few days.
He'd seize the initiative, take the high ground as a reformer and put some idealism back into his public persona. If he doesn't get on top of this movement, he will be overpowered by it.
Australia doesn't have the objective conditions of the countries that are now gripped by the destructive populism of Trump, the Brexit movement and far-right parties in Europe like Marine Le Pen's National Front or the fast-rising Alternative for Germany.
Indeed, this week Australia achieved an extraordinary feat. While all these countries have struggled with recession in recent years, Australia has just achieved 25 years of continuous economic growth.
It's a first for Australia since the GDP statistics began in the 1950s and a feat not matched by any major developed nation. As my colleague Ross Gittins put it this week: "To have avoided another severe recession for all the years since then is something for which we should be profoundly thankful."
Yet rather than being thankful, the latest election results show that we are disenchanted, even angry. Objective conditions may be one thing; the subjective narrative we tell ourselves is another. It's more powerful because it's more emotional.
Turnbull and Shorten are both right that Australia needs to preserve an open trading system. We have traded our way to success and to close it off would be suicidal. New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key explains simply to his people the need for an open trading system:
"You won't get rich by selling to a market of four million people" – the domestic market – "but you might get rich selling to four billion." And if you want to export your way to wealth, you have to be open to imports, too.
And Shorten is right that Australia needs to attend to the fairness agenda, too. Open trade adds to national wealth but unequally. You need domestic policies of tax, redistribution, welfare, labour laws and public goods to pull in the opposite direction and preserve fairness. This is no new insight, it has always been true.
These steps are necessary but insufficient. The political parties need to recover public confidence in the system, to demonstrate that it's not rigged. It's time to clear the air. It's time for agile leadership.
0 comments
New User? Sign up